Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia

by Wheeler Winston Dixon

Noir . A shadow looms. The blow, a sharp surprise. Waking and sleeping, the fear is with us and cannot be contained. Paranoia. Wheeler Winston Dixon's comprehensive work engages readers in an overview of noir and fatalist film from the mid-twentieth century to the present, ending with a discussion of television, the Internet, and dominant commercial cinema. Beginning with the 1940s classics, Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia moves to the "Red Scare" and other ominous expressions of the 1950s that contradicted an American split-level dream of safety and security. The dark cinema of the 1960s hosted films that reflected the tensions of a society facing a new and, to some, menacing era of social expression. From smaller studio work to the vibrating pulse of today's "click and kill" video games, Dixon boldly addresses the noir artistry that keeps audiences in an ever-consumptive stupor.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film

198 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 2005

About the author

Wheeler Winston Dixon is an American filmmaker, scholar and author, and an expert on film history, theory and criticism.

His scholarship has particular emphasis on François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, American experimental cinema and horror films. He has written extensively on numerous aspects of film, including his books A Short History of Film and A History of Horror. From 1999 through the end of 2014, he was co-editor of the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. He is regarded as a top reviewer of films. In addition, he is notable as an experimental American filmmaker with films made over several decades, and the Museum of Modern Art exhibited his works in 2003. He has taught at a number of schools of higher learning.

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dixon’s take on film noir is expansive. He starts from the perspective Raymond Durgnat put forth in his famous essay “Paint it Black: The Family Tree of Film Noir” - in which Durgnat argues that noir is really a motif, a tone - and pushes it to its reduction ad absurdum when he (Dixon) writes: “At one point, noir could be contained. Now, it exists everywhere.” [168] His view is that “Film Noir is the cinema of paranoia, of doubt and fear and uncertainty,” [1] and with that as the dominant tone he finds examples far beyond what is typically considered the noir canon. It is certainly useful to look, as Dixon does, at a broader range of films and the noir motifs and tones they possess, and Dixon’s analysis is insightful. But surely he goes too far when he writes: “It’s all around us, in the news, in politics, in the economy, and in the unfathomable depths of the next door neighbors we will never really know. We live with horror, now, every day.” [128] Because that is ultimately Dixon’s conclusion: We’ve gone from noir films to a noir culture.

[Raghav Khanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

The chronological categorization of noir films by era is helpful for the novice who wants to immediately dive into a particular time period for recommended titles, but that is where the buck stops. I might as well be browsing a magazine. The titles listed in each chapter are endless, and the author's explanation does no justice to the inclusion of them into "the best noir films of the era" category. It would have wiser wiser to explore common in depth themes of a couple of films rather than state all these films were great and all had something to do with soldiers returning from war and failing to become an active part of society, or some other shit.

[Brice Fuqua · Rating 4 out of 5]

A broad survey of the film noir genre from it's beginnings in the 1930s to the present. The best chapters are the early ones, dealing with how transplanted European directors from authoritarian nations adapted their paranoid visions to Hollywood melodramas.
Toward the end of the book, Dixon goes off on a political rant that has little to do with film making.
Recommended for fans of classic Hollywood movies.