Divided Families on Film
The family dynamics in World War II-era movies make today's political disagreements seem like sandbox squabbles.
A long dark night of the soul.
With all the talk of Hollywood happy endings and superficiality, take a gander at film noir and the films produced in Hollywood from 1941 to 1958. Film noir. These collaborative efforts of American and European exile filmmakers plunged the depths of what would come to be known as the American abyss.
Coinciding with the U.S. entry into World War Two, this was the era when European émigrés from Hitler's continent found a home and work in Hollywood, where they would capture their most intimate and immanent nightmares—what they had left, what they knew, what might come—and explore the shadowy alleys in the soul of humanity. A long dark night.
Marc Svetov's writings on film noir originally appeared in the Noir City Sentinel, now Noir City E-mag, published in electronic format by the Film Noir Foundation. A number of the articles were later printed in Noir City Annual #1 Noir City Annual #2, Noir City Annual #3, as well as Noir City Annual #4 (2011), Noir City Annual #6 (2013), and Noir City Annual #7 ( 2014).
For further information on the Film Noir Foundation's subscriber-based quarterly publication, go here.
Click on any title below to read the PDF version.
Before Hollywood: Max Ophüls, Curtis Bernhardt, and Robert Siodmak in Exile in Paris (Bright Lights Film Journal site), PDF version
Strangers in Purgatory: On the "Jewish Experience," Film Noir, and Émigré Actors Fritz Kortner and Ernst Deutsch (Bright Lights Film Journal site), PDF version
Returning Veterans in Film Noir
Forbidden Films - Nazi Films 1933-1945
Rubble Noir A7
Three Bad Men - Neville Brand, Elisha Cook, Dan Duryea A6
Atomic Noir - Aspects of Postwar Paranoia A4
Jean-Pierre Melville - Film Noir 2.0 A4
Racism and Rage - Robert Ryan in Crossfire and Odds against Tomorrow A4
Life and Death (Mostly Death) in the Streets: Weegee and Film Noir A3
Bernhardt, Litvak, Negulesco: The Forgotten Noir Directors A3
Don Siegel, Film Noir, and Politics: The Twists and Turns of a "Post-Noir Anti-Auteur" A2
Funny Games and the History of Hostage Noir A2
Franz Kafka: Noir's Orphaned Father: Tracing the Roots of Modern Dread
Beyond the Fedora: Gothic Noir
European Exiles in '40s Hollywood: Their Impact on Film Noir A1
Émigrés and the Film Noir: Expressionism and the Dispossessed A1
Émigrés and the Film Noir: Fritz Lang A1
Émigrés and the Film Noir: Max Ophuls: Noir's Stealthy Modernist A1
Émigrés and the Film Noir: Billy Wilder A1
Nazis & Commies in Noir: Taking the Low Road of Caricature and
Omission A1
Unsung Heroes of Film Noir: Clifford Odets, Broadway's Blackest Bard A1
Unsung Heroes of Film Noir: Daniel Fuchs, New Yorker in the Golden
West A1
A1 Available in Annual #1
A2 Available in Annual #2
A3 Available in Annual #3
A4 Available in Annual #4
A6 Available in Annual #6
A7 Available in Annual #7