Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity »

Edward Dimendberg is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California at Irvine.

Film noir remains one of the most enduring legacies of 1940s and '50s Hollywood. Populated by double-crossing, unsavory characters, this pioneering film style explored a shadow side of American life during a period of tremendous prosperity and optimism. Edward Dimendberg compellingly demonstrates how film noir is preoccupied with modernity—particularly the urban landscape.

The originality of Dimendberg's approach lies in his examining these films in tandem with historical developments in architecture, city planning, and modern communications systems. He confirms that noir is not simply a reflection of modernity but a virtual continuation of the spaces of the metropolis. He convincingly shows that Hollywood's dark thrillers of the postwar decades were determined by the same forces that shaped the city itself.

Exploring classic examples of film noir such as The Asphalt Jungle, Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, and The Naked City alongside many lesser-known works, Dimendberg masterfully interweaves film history and urban history while perceptively analyzing works by Raymond Chandler, Edward Hopper, Siegfried Kracauer, and Henri Lefebvre. A bold intervention in cultural studies and a major contribution to film history, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity will provoke debate by cinema scholars, urban historians, and students of modern culture—and will captivate admirers of a vital period in American cinema.

Christopher Wood - Times Higher Education Supplement

Edward Dimendberg's aim in Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity is to show how closely film noir is associated with 20th-century American urban experience...He shows with lucidity and persuasiveness how throughout its life, loosely 1941 to 1959, noir and its doomed heroes provided a filmic map of a period of disconcerting change...Dimendberg's book is a fascinating memorial to a film genre and a lost America. It should prove as durable as the urban sites it discusses turned out not to be.