Perché noir. Come funziona un genere cinematografico

[Autom. eng. transl.] The noir or neo-noir is a figure of the media imaginary all over the world. The book by Massimo Locatelli intends to clarify what a film genre is and how it is formed, what are the mechanisms that make it vital and why it can disappear, remain under track and reappear after decades with new strength: precisely the example of noir, commonly recognized as the most specifically cinematographic of all genres, it is particularly effective and fascinating. On the one hand, each chapter recounts a later moment in its classic history in the Hollywood golden age, but on the other it uses it to investigate a particular aspect or historical-theoretical problem. On the basis of the concrete and vital case of the noir and of the vast literature that has chosen it as the object of study, the inter-media roots of the genres, the models of their categorization and definition, the problems of periodization and of field mappings, the processes of generation in production and distribution, the peculiarities of style, the logic of narration and intertextuality, social and cultural dimensions, reception and consumption, thus offering a broad and articulated panorama of the generic phenomenon, a necessary condition for its understanding yesterday as today.