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Film Noir: 100 All-Time Favorites

Film Noir 100 All-Time Favorite MoviesFilm Noir: 100 All-Time Favorites
Edited by Paul Duncan
(Taschen)

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Opening with the wonderful essay “Notes On Film Noir” by Paul Schrader and taking the reader through the entire spectrum of noir films, Tashen’s latest tome Film Noir: 100 All-Time Favorites, is a book no film fan can be without. Schrader’s piece not only explains what noir is but it mentions the many films that are discussed at length later on in the book by Paul Duncan and Jurgen Muller.

Of course being as this is a Taschen book you get plenty of pictures along with the text. In the case of film noir, those stills come from deliciously shot movies so the pics from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to Nightmare Alley, Gaslight and Touch of Evil all the way up to 2011’s Drive (the last film explored) are arresting to say the least (though for my money, the black and white’s, pretty much making up the first 2/3rds of the book are the best, as are, in my opinion, the early B&W noir films).

The years represented here range from 1920 to the afore mentioned 2011, with a heavy concentration on arguably noir’s ‘golden age’  of 1944-1958. What I was so taken with was the fact that Duncan and Muller included films from years before and after this time, films I have since learned by reading Film Noir: 100 All-Time Favorites are indeed film noir films.

Taschen leaves no detail here undiscovered in this thick hardcover, right down to including an attached bookmark that’s fashioned to look like the strip of a film negative. Film Noir: 100 All-Time Favorites is another fantastic book of specific culture study (plus a fun read) from Taschen.

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