Graduation Year
2009
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.L.A.
Degree Granting Department
Humanities
Major Professor
Margit Grieb, Ph.D.
Keywords
Movies, Thirdspace, Imagined communities, Preminger, Welles
Abstract
After World War II, film audiences of American crime dramas, later termed film noirs, witnessed the relocation of several film narratives to settings outside of the traditional urban environment. These films began to defy the conventional notion that crime only exists in densely populated cities and began to incorporate alternative spaces, like suburban communities, small towns, and the open road, to tell their stories. This thesis examines how social and geographical spaces contribute to, rather than oppose, a noir sensibility by employing an intertextual analysis of three film noirs set in locations out of the city: Fallen Angel, The Stranger, and Gun Crazy. This project explores the possibility that noir cinema is not bound to a conventional urban environment, but that the ambiguous essence of film noir can also flourish in non-urban settings by preying on the fears and anxieties many Americans experienced after the end of the War.
Scholar Commons Citation
LaPorte, Anthony, "Shadows fall on main street: Film noir travels out of the city" (2009). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/2056
