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The Philosophy of Film Noir.

Article Excerpt
Conrad, Mark T., ed. The Philosophy of Film Noir. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006. xv + 246 pp.

The thirteen essays collected herein represent an attempt to bring into focus, if not to offer convincing solutions to, the major critical and conceptual controversies surrounding film noir, while at the same time seeking to "deepen and enrich [the reader's] respect for and understanding of" the noir, as Conrad says in the Introduction. The first of three parts of the book, titled "The Essence and Elements of Film Noir," seeks to answer two questions: Is noir a genre of film? Is there a set of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions to a film noir? Then three subsequent essays, "Film Noir and the Meaning of Life," "The Horizon of Disenchantment: Film Noir, Camus, and the Vicissitudes of Descent," and "Symbolism, Meaning, and Nihilism in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction," explore the existentialist and nihilist aspects of noir. Finally, five essays covering a wide range of philosophical issues are joined by their focus on one (or two in the case of "Knowledge, Morality, and Tragedy in The Killers and Out of the Past") classic noir film. As a whole, the collection aims to achieve two goals: to introduce genuine philosophical problems and film noir characteristics, while providing sufficiently in-depth discussion that those familiar with either philosophical methods or film noir will not find the material...

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