UI Press | J. P. Telotte | Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of *Film Noir*

Voices in the Dark

The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir

The American film noir, the popular genre that focused on urban crime and corruption in the 1940s and 1950s, exhibits the greatest amount of narrative experimentation in the modern American cinema. Spurred by postwar disillusionment, cold war anxieties, and changing social circumstances, these films revealed the dark side of American life and , in doing so, created unique narrative structures in order to speak of that darkness. J.P. Telotte's in-depth discussion of classic films noir--including The Lady from Shanghai, The Lady in the Lake, Dark Passage, Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, and Murder, My Sweet--draws on the work of Michel Foucault to examine four dominant noir narrative strategies.

"Telotte's book goes beyond the catalogs and anthologies we have to examine how narrative voice itself becomes both subject and distinguishing characteristic of film noir. This is an innovative move and one that should prompt debate among those already familiar with noir and its critical legacy."--Bill Nichols, author of Ideology and the Image and editor of Movies and Methods

"A valuable contribution to the study of narrative structures and strategies in the cinema."--Bruce F. Kawin, author of How Movies Work and Mindscreen: Bergman, Godard, and First-Person Film

J.P. Telotte is associate profesor of English at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the author of Dreams of Darkness: Fantasy and the Films of Val Lewton.