Lectures For Lifelong Learners!

Film noir is a genre that has created some of Hollywood’s most distinctive images, including private detectives prowling rain-soaked streets and shadowy nightclubs to uncover dangerous crows. This lecture explores the emergence of noir during the 1940s and 1950s through formative films such as Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon and Sunset Boulevard. We will look at the genre’s morally ambiguous characters and its connections to the anxieties of wartime and post-war America whilst also considering how film noir tropes travel beyond Hollywood.