Lehrende/r: Dr. Jochen Ecke
Veranstaltungsart: Übung
Anzeige im Stundenplan: 05.874.521
Semesterwochenstunden: 2
Credits: 4,0
Unterrichtssprache: Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl: - | 45
Inhalt: In his seminal essay “Notes on Film Noir”, Paul Schrader describes Film Noir, that particularly dark and cynical strain of the cinema, as a purely American phenomenon: “In 1946 French critics, seeing the American films they had missed during the war, noticed the new mood of cynicism, pessimism, and darkness that had crept into the American cinema. . . . . Hollywood lighting grew darker, characters more corrupt, themes more fatalistic, and the tone more hopeless. By 1949 American movies were in the throes of their deepest and most creative funk”. However, it can be argued that noir was – and continues to be – an international or even transnational phenomenon. In the UK, too, there was a notable wave of sardonic, disillusioned crime films, and in British literature, we can find the equivalents of the American hardboiled writers as well: Graham Greene’s crime fiction, for example. This class is going to be an investigation of what some critics have come to call Brit Noir from the 1940s to the present day through the lens of cultural studies. We will consider major examples of Noir and British hardboiled fiction in a variety of media: on the cinema screen, in the novel, and on TV.
