University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Top free sources for film noir on the internet. In no particular order....
Welcome to my Lib-Guide for Film Cultures: Interpretation and Theories of Film Noir, an upper-division undergraduate course, at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.
This page is an introductory resource to supplement your readings and understanding of film noir in Communication 321 Film Cultures: Film Noir. It will also to help you with the two papers assigned for this class.
This guide is a destination where you can see video clips of classical noir, recent reviews that tie classical noir into today's headlines, explore material noir culture in the poster section, learn about user generated noir fan cites on the web, and learn library of congress subject headings and how to do a Boolean search to find what your looking for. In addition to general sources for film noir, I focus on gender, sexuality, and crime explored in your course, but you can also explore film music, or the fiction of noir on your own using my search tools!
An introduction to the course from Professor Pat Gill's syllabus:
This course will examine a
certain category of film, from its inception to recent imitations and
reworkings. Although class discussions will involve discussions of other (types
of) film, our screenings will be only of those films classified as film noir.
Certain American films made between 1942 and 1958 reflected what some critics
thought to be a darkly pessimistic postwar mood. Almost always set in a violent
and corrupt urban landscape, the films featured a worldly, disillusioned hero
who was both a part of and at odds with this degenerate universe. Often the
hero's unspoken principles were challenged by a seductive, morally ambiguous
woman, a femme fatale who made apparent the impossibility of the hero's
efforts to reconcile his desire with his self-conception. By looking at
exemplary selections of this genre, the class will examine the general themes
of film noir, assessing the historical significance of the films as well
as their attempts to come to terms with new, acute challenges to gender and
social identities, challenges that were accompanied by a fading sense of
ethical and moral compunction.
New user-generated music video of Postman Always Rings Twice
So you're a private detective. I didn't know they existed, except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors. My, you're a mess, aren't you?
- Vivian to Marlow in The Big Sleep