From the author of The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Cinema and Postmodern Hollywood (2020), comes this riveting history of the film noir genre. The first wave of the noir film genre began with 1941’s The Maltese Falcon and ended with 1958’s Touch of Evil; but, as Booker argues persuasively, this was only the beginning of film noir. Later came the neo-noir films (eg., Chinatown, 1974) and the revisionary noirs (Basic Instinct, 1992), which incorporated key elements of the noir tradition but took the themes in new directions. Noir came about in part because some German filmmakers—Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, and others—fled Hitler’s Germany and came to the United States; the genre got its name from French film critics, who were searching for something that unified the various films coming out of the U.S. that tackled subjects forbidden by the Production Code through the use of shadow and subtext. The book contains plot summaries, but this is not merely a book full of plot summaries. This is one of the best, best written, most insightful analyses of film noir, and it demands to be read by fans of film history.

Booklist, Starred Review

This perceptive history from Booker traces film noir’s enduring influence on American cinema from its 1940s origins through the present. According to Booker, the genre drew from German expressionism’s 'inventive use of light and shadows' to express wartime malaise and disillusionment with the American Dream. Tracing noir’s evolution through exegesis of Double Indemnity, Blue Velvet, Inherent Vice, and other films, Booker argues that 1941’s The Maltese Falcon aimed to rebut 'saccharine' standard Hollywood fare by depicting life as a 'ruthless dog-eat-dog pursuit of wealth.' The fall of the Motion Picture Production Code in the late ’60s produced a wave of 'neo-noir' films (Chinatown and Body Heat principally among them) freed from restrictions on ridiculing the law or showing sympathy with criminals, allowing filmmakers to portray the world as even bleaker and more corrupt than the original noirs had. More recent films create meaning by toying with noir conventions, Booker contends, suggesting that by focusing Gone Girl on a femme fatale who ultimately prevails, director David Fincher implicitly indicts early noirs for their inability to envision a female character’s successful challenge to patriarchy. By putting noirs from across film history in conversation, Booker’s smart commentary sheds light on how the genre has been retooled and repurposed according to changing attitudes. Cinephiles will be enthralled.

Publishers Weekly

This is a neatly structured and superbly argued study of film noir from the 1940s to the present day. Booker develops a trajectory that leads from classic noir films like The Maltese Falcon to neo-noir efforts like Chinatown to what he calls “revisionary noir,” movies (like Inherent Vice and Uncut Gems) that push the genre’s tropes to their limits in critical and transformative ways. The book offers consistently illuminating discussions of a wide range of topics, from the gender politics of noir to the way the genre engages with historical events and contexts, and Booker has a magisterial command of the relevant primary and secondary texts. American Noir Film is highly recommended to anyone interested in the development of this important and complex cinematic artform.

Rob Latham, LA Review of Books

M. Keith Booker's new book, American Noir Film, offers a fascinating and beguiling trip into the dark heart of American noir. Impressive in both its breadth and depth, it shines a light on some of the most remarkable films that have emerged from Hollywood since the 1940s, all the way up until the present day. It is a book to be savored and one not to be missed.

Terence McSweeney, Solent University Southampton

American Noir Film is a lucid and thoughtful introduction to film noir and its neo- and revisionary variants. Throughout, Booker expertly periodizes film noir and its various tropes, supported by careful close readings of key films. This is an essential read for students and experts alike who wish to learn more about film noir.

Zoran Samardzija, Columbia College Chicago

Film noir is probably the most beloved of old Hollywood genres. In this deep and probing book, M. Keith Booker looks not only at the classics of the genre, but also at the ways its urgent themes of violence and decay, and its bracingly negative vision of American life, continue to be explored and transformed in film today.

Steven Shaviro, emeritus professor of English, Wayne State University