More than Night

"Film noir" evokes memories of stylish, cynical, black-and-white movies from the 1940s and '50s—melodramas about private eyes, femmes fatales, criminal gangs, and lovers on the run. James Naremore's prize-winning book discusses these pictures, but also shows that the central term is more complex and paradoxical than we realize. It treats noir as a term in criticism, as an expression of artistic modernism, as a symptom of Hollywood censorship and politics, as a market strategy, as an evolving style, and as an idea that circulates through all the media. This new and expanded edition of <I>More Than Night </I>contains an additional chapter on film noir in the twenty-first century.