The book is well researched and would appeal not only to film scholars but also to those interested in urban culture, human psychology, and crime. This collection offers fresh perspectives on film noir for all readers, effectively shedding new light on cities of darkness.

Film Matters

This intriguing volume deals with some less-known films noir, although it certainly includes a solid sampling of classic examples of the genre. Ward (history, Cedar Crest College) and Miller (independent cultural anthropologist) collected an excellent group of original essays, all focused, as the title promises, around the urban jungles of New York City and Los Angeles. Receiving persuasive and informed readings are such films as Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011), Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler (2014), and Oren Moverman’s Rampart (2011), all set in the landscape of a hellish Los Angeles. Jacques Deray’s The Outside Man (1972) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Two Men in Manhattan (1959)—New York noirs both—are discussed in two standout essays, and Ossie Davis’s African American noir Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) also gets a detailed examination. There is even an essay on Jeremy Kasten’s splatter/noir The Wizard of Gore (2007), a remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s 1970 film of the same name, which seems an odd choice, at least to this reviewer. This collection embraces a wide variety of films, giving them unexpected and revealing readings, and is thus a must for all noir aficionados. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, faculty and researchers, professionals, general readers.

Choice Reviews