Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the Underside of American Urban Life - Hardcover

Acclaimed novelist and poet Nicholas Christopher explores the cultural identity of film noir in a seamless, elegant, and enchanting work of literary prose. Examining virtually the entire catalogue of film noir, Christopher identifies the central motif as the urban labyrinth, a place infested with psychosis, anxiety, and existential dread in which the noir hero embarks on a dangerously illuminating quest. With acute sensitivity, he shows how technical devices such as lighting, voice over, and editing tempo are deployed to create the film noir world. Somewhere in the Night guides us through the architecture of this imaginary world, be it shot in New York or Los Angeles, relating its elements to the ancient cultural archetypes that prefigure it. Finally, Christopher builds an explanation of why film noir not only lives on but is currently enjoying a renaissance.

Nicholas Christopher is the author of two novels, Veronica and The Soloist as well as five books of poetry including Desperate Characters, In the Year of the Comet, and 5°. He has won many awards and fellowships, most recently from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Poetry Society of America, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches at Columbia University and New York University, where he is an Adjunct Professor of English. He lives in New York City.