CIN404H5

Film Noir and the Problem of Style

By way of an introduction to some of the key instances of film noir, this course is concerned with what we will call the paradox of style; namely, that style can indicate both what is specific and also what is general, what is unique and what is repeatable. We will look at the way in which this paradox is amplified by issues of gender, genre, fashion, and power that seem to concern so many films in this tradition.