Noir

Reference Book of the Day:

The Film Noir Encyclopedia

Alain Silver, Elizabeth Ward, James Ursini, and Robert Porfirio, The Film Noir Encyclopedia, 4th ed. (New York: Overlook Press, 2010).

I just discovered this book, but how can you not love it? More than 300,000 words on noir, broadly understood. (For those who don't think in word counts, that officially counts as big.) It's a mixture of extended essays on big topics and short entries on individual works, and is extensively illustrated. Makes me want to put on Miles Davis's soundtrack to L'Ascenseur pour l'echafaud in the small hours.


I'm a little surprised that the Library of Congress is missing this work — that means my usual source for publication details has failed me. From what I can make out from other catalogues, the book began in 1979 as Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style. One of these days I'd be interested to sort through the various editions.

(N.B.: I inadvertently typed "the book began in 1797." Had that been the case, it  would require some serious rethinking of film history.)

Don't confuse it with the Encyclopedia of Film Noir, ed. Geoff Mayer and Brian McDonnell (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2007).