Neo-noir : ciemne zwierciadło czasów kryzysu

Abstract

Neo-noir. The Dark Reflection of the Times of Crisis is a book devoted to problems of new film noir genre. In the opening part, the author recapitulates previous definitions of this phenomenon, simultaneously proposing her own understanding of neo-noir as an aesthetics developing dynamically especially in the times of the broadly understood crises. The following chapters are of interpretative character. The author illustrates how neo-noir diagnoses crises present in the contemporary culture: identity, gender and epistemological crises, as well as these connected with doubt about humankind. The new cinema noir seems to be a reaction to all the questions regarding the status of film as a medium, and to crises affecting genres and conceptions of film authorship. The last chapter is devoted to “neo- -noir touches” – the author follows the traces of elements of this aesthetics, among others, in the works of Atom Egoyan, in the Polish cinema and the contemporary film pop-culture, including the one which may be defined as design cinema. Although the author grounds her analysis mainly in the film examples, she also refers to selected comic books (Joker by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo), video games (L.A. Noire), music videos (Who Is It? by Michael Jackson), and even advertisements (BMW series: The Hire). The book not only contains studies and interpretations of works defined as retro-noir (such as The Postman Always Rings Twice by Bob Rafelson or The Black Dahlia by Brian De Palma), whose authors pay tribute to the classical black cinema, but also of numerous science fiction movies, (Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Terminator and Matrix cycles, and Battlestar Galactica series), thrillers (Basic Instinct by Paul Verhoeven or Jagged Edge by Richard Marquand), and comic book adaptations (Christopher Nolan’s cycle about Batman and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City). Simultaneously, the author refers to both Western and Asian cinematography (i.e. Hong Kong, Korean, Japanese and Indian).