Abstract
What do Jean Gabin, Stanley Baker, Silvana Mangano and Toshiro Mifune have in common? This book will argue that all four actors, in their participation in a form defined as International Film Noir, played characters who fell afoul of the law and who represented working- and middle-class frustration and dissatisfaction at the way the post-war world was being organized. Until now film noir has been almost solely considered an American phenomenon, consisting, in its classical phase, of dark, seedy, low-budget crime films of the 1940s where the criminal everyman, and woman, was the center of attention. In the contemporary era, noir is recognized as a global form, albeit one that has migrated out from the Hollywood center to the periphery, with other countries and regions (in the present particularly prominent are Mediterranean and Scandinavian noir) adapting the Hollywood form to their own uses. Noir is acknowledged as having international roots in 1920s German Expressionism and 1930s French Poetic Realism, but the form itself is then seen to come to fruition in Hollywood with only scant attention paid to any complementary and parallel expression, and, if so, only in Britain and France.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
J. Anderson and D. Richie (1959) The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (New York: Grove Press).
R. Boyer and H. Morais (1955) Labor’s Untold Story (New York: Cameron Associates).
D. Broe (2009) Film Noir, American Workers and Postwar Hollywood (Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida).
A. Campbell and J. McIlroy (2010) ‘Britain: The Twentieth Century’ in J. Allen, A Campbell and J. Mcllroy (eds), Histories of Labour: National and International Perspectives (Pontypool, Wales: Merlin Press).
C. Crisp (1997) The Classic French Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press).
C. Faulkner (1986) The Social Cinema of Jean Renoir (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
D. Forgacs and S. Gundle (2007) Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press).
A. Gramsci (1985) Selections from Cultural Writings (London: Lawrence & Wishart).
S. Guilbaut (1983) How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press).
E. Herman and R. McChesney (2003) ‘The Rise of the Global Media,’ in L. Parks and S. Kumar (eds), Planet TV: A Global Television Reader (New York: New York University Press).
E. Hobsbawm (1959) Bandits (London: Penguin).
E. Hopkins (1979) A Social History of the English Working Classes 1815–1945 (London: Edward Arnold).
G. Home (2001) Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930 [1950: Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds, and Trade Unionists (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press).
S. Jonsson (2008) A Brief History of the Masses: Three Revolutions (New York: Columbia University Press).
J. Lucassen (2004) ‘A Multinational and its Labor Force: The Dutch East India Company, 1595–1795,’ International Labor and Working-Class History, 66, 12–39.
M. Marcus (1986) Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
T. Matsumura, J. McIlroy and A. Campbell (2010) ‘Japan,’ in J. Allen, A Campbell and J. Mcllroy (eds), Histories of Labour: National and International Perspectives (Pontypool, Wales: Merlin Press).
L. May (1989) ‘Movie Star Politics: The Screen Actors’ Guild, Cultural Conversion and the Hollywood Red Scare,’ in L. May (ed.), Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
T. McCormick (1989) America’s Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press).
K. Moody (1988) An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism (London: Verso).
J. Naremore (1998) More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
L. Parks and S. Kumar (2003) Planet TV: A Global Television Reader (New York: New York University Press).
M. Rediker (1987) Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
R. Rossanda (2010) The Comrade from Milan (London: Verso).
T. Rose (1994) ‘A Style Nobody Can Deal With: Politics, Style and the Postindustrial City in Hip Hop,’ in A. Ross and T. Rose (eds), Microphone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture (New York: Routledge).
A. Silver and E. Ward (1992) Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, 3rd edn (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press).
M. Smith (1995) Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
P. Stead (1989) Film and the Working Class: The Feature Film in British and American Society (Routledge: London).
J. Tomlinson (2003) ‘Media Imperialism,’ in L. Parks and S. Kumar (eds), Planet TV: A Global Television Reader (New York: New York University Press).
R. Williams (1977) ‘Structures of Feeling,’ in Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
T. Williams (1999) ‘British Film Noir,’ in A. Silver and J. Ursini (eds), Film Noir Reader 2 (New York: Limelight Editions).
M. Van der linden (2010) ‘Labour History Beyond Borders,’ in J. Allen, A Campbell and J. Mcllroy (eds), Histories of Labour: National and International Perspectives (Pontypool, Wales: Merlin Press).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Dennis Broe
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Broe, D. (2014). Introduction: Global Fugitives — Outside the Law and the Cold War ‘Consensus’. In: Class, Crime and International Film Noir. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137290144_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137290144_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45041-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-29014-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)