FILM 3321-001: FILM NOIR (FILM IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT)

Spring 2008
2:30-5:15 PM Tuesday, JO 4.614

Instructor: Dr. Adrienne L. McLean

Phone/Messages: (972) 883-2755; e-mail amclean@utdallas.edu. Also check website message
page at www.utdallas.edu/~amclean/messages.htm.
Office Hours: After class and by appointment; room JO5.606 (Jonsson Building). E-mail
queries are answered promptly, and are encouraged.
Required Texts: Alain Silver and James Ursini, eds., Film Noir Reader (Limelight, 1999)
(FNR).
James Naremore, More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (University of
California Press, 1998; available as an e-book through the UTD library
website).
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (1929).
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939).
There are some additional reserve readings (RR) posted for perusal on and/or
downloading through WebCT.
NOTE: If you have not satisfied the prerequisite for this class, you will also
need to acquire one or another of the recent editions of David Bordwell and
Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (McGraw-Hill, 2001, 2004,
2008). It will be assumed that you understand the components of narrative
film form and the history of their use in commercial cinema.
Full-length films are assigned each week for viewing outside of class. These
films are required texts as well. All are on reserve at McDermott Library, and
are likely also available in a number of other venues.
Other Information: Please note that WebCT and other university online resources are going to be
used only for the posting of the syllabus and reserve readings. No other
information will be transmitted or read by the instructor through such
Web-based resources except in an emergency, when an e-mail may be
circulated to all students using the course roll.

* * * * *

Course Description and Format. This course considers the mode of Hollywood filmmaking now widely
referred to as film noir. We will examine its antecedents and related stylistic and generic modes of filmmaking
(German Expressionism, the detective film, the gangster film, the gothic melodrama, etc.); its hard-boiled
relatives in popular literature (magazine fiction, the novels of James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond
Chandler, etc.); and, perhaps most important, its historical and ideological meanings through the present day
and its significance as a vision of American life and culture as well as an international style of filmmaking.
Among the many issues usefully engaged by a study of film noir are its representations of women and their
sexuality; a concomitant anxiety about masculinity in America and the limitations of, and on, heroic action in
an increasingly urbanized and white-collar culture; the relationship of industrial imperatives or limitations to
film authorship; and the nature of broader terms or categories such as genre, intertextuality, and adaptation.
Because this is a seminar, class will consist primarily of discussion and some lecture augmented by brief
screenings of relevant material. We will see only a few complete films during class time; rather, each week
full-length films will be required viewing on your own, whether you choose to watch them in the library or to
acquire them in some other manner. You are responsible for all in- and out-of-class screening material, both
full-length films and clips used in lecture.
Grading and Requirements. You are expected to attend all classes and screenings, to be punctual and
attentive, and to participate vigorously in discussions of films and readings. The week’s reading and screening
assignments are all to be completed by the beginning of each Tuesday session. If you must miss a class, you
remain responsible for all course material covered in that class; there are no make-up sessions, and each class
will only be taught once. Each class period represents one week’s worth of work, so roll will be taken at the
beginning or end of every class session. The exams, including the final, are in-class exams, and will all include
essay components as well as some combination of multiple choice, matching, and/or fill-in-the-blank questions.
Particulars regarding the papers are attached and will be discussed further in class.

Please note that the Rules on Student Services and Activities, specifically the Policy on Scholastic Dishonesty,
of the University of Texas System will be strictly adhered to. For information on the administration’s rules and
policies regarding student conduct and discipline, academic integrity, e-mail use, withdrawal from class,
student grievance procedures, incomplete grade policies, disability services, and religious holy days, consult
the material, generated by the administration, available on the WebCT course syllabus or in the university
catalogue. There will be no incompletes given in the course, all of the following course requirements
must be met (including attendance; if you miss more than four class periods, you will generate an
automatic failing grade for the course), late work will be heavily penalized, and assignments and exams
must be completed in full.

Grades will be figured as follows (one grade may be weighted):

Attendance and participation 20%

Midterm exam 20%
Final exam 20%
Paper 1 20%
Paper 2 20%
 CLASS CALENDAR

DATE TOPIC/READING/OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENINGS

Week 1 Introduction and Course Mechanics

January 8 SCREENING [in-class]: The Maltese Falcon [Dangerous Female] (Roy del Ruth,
1931; 79 mins.).
NOTE: All students are assumed to have seen and studied Citizen Kane (Orson
Welles, 1941; 119 mins.); if you have not, this is also assigned.

Week 2 Film Noir Is [About]. . .

January 15 READING: FNR Introduction; Borde and Chaumeton, “Towards a Definition of
Film Noir”; Higham and Greenberg, “Noir Cinema”; Durgnat, “Paint it Black”;
Schrader, “Notes on Film Noir.” Naremore ch. 1.
OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENING: Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944; 107 mins.)

Week 3 Pulp Plots, Pulp Novels

January 22 READING: Hammett, The Maltese Falcon. RR Timothy Corrigan, “Pens, Pulp, and
the Crisis of the Word, 1940-1960” and “Critical Borders and Boundaries,” from Film
and Literature (1999).
OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENING: The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941; 101
mins.).

Week 4 Hard-Boiled Heroes

January 29 READING: Chandler, The Big Sleep. RR Raymond Chandler, “The Simple Art of
Murder” (1944).
OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENING: The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946; 114 mins.).

Week 5 Femmes Fatales and Spider Women

February 5 READING: RR Janey Place, “Women in Film Noir,” from E. Ann Kaplan, ed.,
Women in Film Noir (1998). Naremore ch. 3.
OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENING: The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett,
1946; 113 mins.).
··· Paper 1 due ···

Week 6 Motifs, Modernism, Melodrama

February 12 READING: FNR Place and Peterson, “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir”; Porfirio,
“No Way Out.” Naremore ch. 2.
OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENING: Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947; 97 mins.).

Week 7 ··· MIDTERM EXAM ···

February 19

Week 8 Rotten Families

February 26 READING: RR Sylvia Harvey, “Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir,”
from Kaplan, Women in Film Noir.
OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENING: Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945; 110 mins.).

Week 9 Masculinity in Crisis

March 4 READING: RR Richard Dyer, “Resistance Through Charisma” and “Queers and
Women in Film Noir,” from Kaplan, Women in Film Noir. FNR Hollinger, “Film
Noir, Voice-over, and the Femme Fatale.”
OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENING: Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946; 110 mins.).
Week 10 SPRING BREAK
March 10-14 OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENING: To be assigned.

Week 11 Fear of The Other

March 18 READING: Naremore ch. 6.
OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENING: The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1948; 89
mins.).

Week 12 Fate, Alienation, Obsession, Despair

March 25 READING: FNR Kerr, “Out of What Past?” Naremore ch. 4.
SCREENING [in-class]: Detour (Edgar Ulmer, 1945; 68 mins.).
OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENING: The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946; 103 mins.).

Week 13 Psychopaths and/as Heroes

April 1 READING: FNR Silver, “Kiss Me Deadly.”
OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENING: Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955; 110 mins.).

Week 14 Urban Corruption

April 8 READING: Naremore ch. 5.
OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENING: Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974; 131 mins.).

Week 15 Illicit Sex and Sexuality

April 15 READING: FNR Erickson, “Kill Me Again”; Silver, “Son of Noir.” RR Kate
Stables, “The Postmodern Always Rings Twice: Constructing the Femme Fatale in
90s Cinema,” from Kaplan, Women in Film Noir.
SCREENING: Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981; 113 mins.).
··· Paper 2 due ···

Week 16 Summing Up: The Noir Mediascape

April 22 READING: Naremore ch. 7
OUT-OF-CLASS SCREENING: Chosen by class vote (from either film or
television).

*****

··· FINAL EXAM is Tuesday, April 29 (regular class time);

FINAL PAPERS are due under my office door by
5:00 PM Friday, May 2 ···

*****

All screening times are approximate.

Syllabus subject to change, but not without notice.

*****
 PAPER INSTRUCTIONS

Both of the papers you write for this class should make sense to any prospective reader of roughly your own
educational background who is not enrolled in the course. I will be looking for thoughtfulness, coherence,
concrete examples, clarity. For both papers, your film and/or topic must be approved by the instructor.
Below is a sort of checklist of formal requirements and expectations (a more general set of writing
guidelines is attached as well):

· Both papers should be typed and double-spaced; do not add extra spaces between paragraphs.
· Employ a font no smaller than 10-point and no larger than 13-point; margins should be an inch or
one-and-a-half inches all around.
· Although you do not have to do extensive outside research for either paper, properly cite any material you
do use or learn from any published source, including information from the course texts, magazines,
DVD commentary, Internet sources, etc.
· Number every page after page 1, and italicize or underline film titles (choose one, not both). Give the
director and date of a film upon its first mention.
· Do not use gender-specific language (i.e., do not use “he” and “him” as generic or impersonal pronouns).
· Employ the present tense to write about what is going on in a film--for example, what happens (not what
happened), what the camera does (not what it did), how the performer acts (not how he or she
acted).
· Do not provide a cover page or use a folder; simply staple your paper together in the upper left corner.
· Proofread and edit your work before you turn in the final version, and do not rely on computer
spellcheckers for accuracy.
· Finally, do not turn in any assignment as an e-mail attachment. All papers will be marked by hand and
returned. If you feel you need help with your writing, complete rough drafts of papers may be
handed in at least ten days before the due date. Please note that your papers will be screened for
plagiarism by turnitin.com.

Paper 1 (20% of grade, 4-5 pages long): In their 1955 discussion of film noir, Raymond Borde and Étienne
Chaumeton claim that “The history of film is, in large part, a history of film cycles” (18), and that what they
call film noir “exists in response to a certain mood at large in this particular time and place” (19). They also
list various features of such films, among them the “ambiguous protagonist,” the “femme fatale,” the
“theme of violence,” “likeable killers and corrupt cops” (22-25). To them, and to many other critics and
scholars, all these elements “conspire to make the viewer co-experience the anguish and insecurity which
are the true emotions of contemporary film noir” (25). For your paper, you are to put yourself in the
position of a critic looking back over the U.S. commercial film market of the past several years--a decade at
most--and write about what you think marks current films as a “response to a certain mood” at the present
time. What do you observe to be the films’ “true emotions,” and how are they exemplified stylistically and
visually as well as narratively? (You may also refer to television shows in your essay.) What cycles seem
to be prominent now? In short, what films, in your estimation, are registering most clearly the concerns of
the “mood at large,” and how?

The goal is not to be completely right or completely wrong but to be convincing and thoughtful, to provide
evidence for your assertions, and to show that you can be attentive to the visual as well as narrative
components of film texts. Although mistakes in spelling, grammar, and punctuation will be noted, I will be
looking primarily for a competent analysis of what you see and hear in relation to some of the
characteristics of film noir that were named in the work on the subject assigned as reading in the first
several weeks of class, and that occur in films you have been assigned to see outside of class.
Paper 2 (20% of grade, 4-5 pages long): This paper must consider one or more of the important themes of
this class, and should provide concrete examples from specific films. Although it cannot be simply a
journalistic review of two or three of your favorite films noirs, this is your chance to deal with films or
television forms that we have perhaps not devoted extensive attention to in class--detective or forensic
science shows on television, commercials, The Simpsons or The X-Files, YouTube videos, comic books,
foreign films (etc.). In addition to being carefully written, your paper must express a compelling thesis
clearly and concretely. (At this point, you should always be paying attention to how the articles and essays
you read are themselves constructed--the sorts of arguments they make, the evidence they employ, their
organization and use of sources, etc. In addition to providing “information,” they are models for your own
work.) If you have difficulty deciding what to write about, the following suggestions might help you to
come up with a topic:

· Compare several versions of the same nominal source material, noting whether the films are similar or
different in plot, story, style, and describing the way that formal devices as well as “history”
operate to create differences and similarities (e.g., the two versions of The Big Sleep, The Postman
Always Rings Twice, Detour, Kiss of Death, et al.). Literary adaptations can also be employed in
this way.

· Extend the topic of the first paper, and explore how noir elements function and where they appear in what
might otherwise be considered non-noir films (or media texts of many different kinds). Because
noir elements are now foregrounded in many films (serious and otherwise), and/or are a
self-conscious reference to a film past, and you might find something of interest in the use of noir
elements as a generic convention or as part of what Naremore calls the “mediascape.”

· You may also employ one or several of the interpretive methods outlined in assigned readings and apply
them to a particular film or group of films, to comic books, to television shows, etc.

Again, these are suggestions only; any reasonable topic will be considered.
 EDITING YOUR OWN CRITICAL FILM ESSAYS

1. What is the title of your essay? If it is more than simply the name of a film under consideration,
does your title relate to your essay’s main point? Is your main point (or thesis) clearly stated close
to the beginning of the paper? Is your point analytical, specific, manageable enough? Does the
paper successfully argue this point?

2. Evaluate your introductory paragraph. Does it accurately forecast the rest of the paper? Does it
contain your thesis sentence (if not, why not)? Are your terms well defined?

3. Does each subsequent paragraph contain a subpoint? Are the subpoints analytic? Are they relevant
to the main point?

4. Are the paragraphs unified (do they stick to proving their subpoints or do they wander off on
tangents)? Do they develop their points? Where could you push your analysis further? (NOTE: If
your paragraphs are more than a page long, they probably contain too much information and need
to be divided into several shorter units.)

5. Do you provide enough evidence to support your subpoints? Note places where additional or
stronger evidence is needed. (If you employ any quotations, are they gracefully introduced and
correctly documented?)

6. Are the subjects or agents of each of your sentences clearly identifiable--e.g., do you ever use “he,”
“she,” “it,” “they” (etc.) ambiguously? Is your language gender-specific when it should not be--do
you use “he” and “him” and “his” to represent the entire human race?

7. Is the action of each sentence located in the verb (e.g., it is usually more compelling to employ “X
influenced Y” rather than “Y had an influence on X”)? If not, why not?

8. Find all your transition sentences (those that end one paragraph and lead into the following
paragraph). Are they clear and useful?

9. Evaluate your conclusion. Does it reiterate the main point and subpoints as well as add to or
amplify them? If it does not, what could you do to improve your concluding paragraph(s)?

10. Where are the analytic parts of your paper--individual words, phrases, sentences? If you can’t find
them, why not? Are you using too much plot summary, wasting time recounting a film’s “story”
rather than discussing the film as a film?

11. Finally, check spelling (do not rely on computer spellcheckers!!), usage, and punctuation (e.g.,
affect and effect? It’s and its? Their, there, they’re? To, two, too? Diegetic rather than diagetic?
Etc.).

12. DO ALL OF THIS AGAIN!!