Volume XXXII:2

Although not traditionally considered as such, chiaroscuro lighting in film noir can be understood as recapitulating the structure of an X-Ray--a radiograph of a hermetically sealed interior space. Like the 1940s promotional discourse surrounding X-Ray technology, noir seeks to generate an overall resonance, aura, or hype--the buzz of the unsuspected--conceptualizing the division between outside and inside, public and private, as a vacuum-like idea, with no visible evidence, no loose ends, no way in. This theme of unsuspicion is epitomized in the plight of the noir amnesiac, who at every point of encounter with the world knows one thing: that he cannot know. These X-Ray-like paradoxes help to differentiate noir from its close generic others, the classical detective narrative and the gangster film.

Jean Renoir's films of the 1930s often feature murder as a spectacle dramatically linked to scenes of group festivities. Tellingly, the structure of the murder scene varies according to the gender of the victim. While camerawork and editing separate the female victim, the festive group, and the spectator, cinematography implicates both the group and the viewer in the murder of males. This article addrsses the importance of gender and cinematography in four major films and explores how and why in each case the female victim is ultimately cut out of the picture. By contrast, the male victim's death creates community, as characters and spectators alike come together over his dead body.

Home Current Issue Back Issues News & Notes Subscribe Contact Us Editorial Board Archives Links	Hugh S. Manon X-Ray Visions: Radiography, Chiaroscuro, and the Fantasy of Unsuspicion in Film Noir Hugh S. Manon is an Assistant Professor in the Screen Studies Program at Oklahoma State University, where he specializes in Lacanian psychoanalysis and film noir. He has published on Double Indemnity as well as on Kubrick's films noirs, and is currently completing a book project that links the rise and decline of classic American film noir with the advent of television. Katherine Golsan Murder and Merrymaking: The "Seen" of the Crime in Renoir's 1930s Cinema Katheriine Golsan is Professor of French and Film Studies at the University of the Pacific. She is translator of books by Tzvetal Todorov and the Francois Furet/Ernst Nolte. She has published articles on major 19th century French authors, Baudelaire and painting, and film adaptation. This is her fourth article on gender in Jean Renoir's films. Simon Petch Return to Yuma Simon Petch is an Associate of the Department of English at the University of Sydney. He has written extensively on British Victorian literature and on the Western film. His previous contribution to Film Criticism is "The Radical Vision of One-Eyed Jacks" (Fall 2004), co-authored by Roslyn Jolly, with whom he is writing a book on the Western.	Although not traditionally considered as such, chiaroscuro lighting in film noir can be understood as recapitulating the structure of an X-Ray--a radiograph of a hermetically sealed interior space. Like the 1940s promotional discourse surrounding X-Ray technology, noir seeks to generate an overall resonance, aura, or hype--the buzz of the unsuspected--conceptualizing the division between outside and inside, public and private, as a vacuum-like idea, with no visible evidence, no loose ends, no way in. This theme of unsuspicion is epitomized in the plight of the noir amnesiac, who at every point of encounter with the world knows one thing: that he cannot know. These X-Ray-like paradoxes help to differentiate noir from its close generic others, the classical detective narrative and the gangster film. Jean Renoir's films of the 1930s often feature murder as a spectacle dramatically linked to scenes of group festivities. Tellingly, the structure of the murder scene varies according to the gender of the victim. While camerawork and editing separate the female victim, the festive group, and the spectator, cinematography implicates both the group and the viewer in the murder of males. This article addrsses the importance of gender and cinematography in four major films and explores how and why in each case the female victim is ultimately cut out of the picture. By contrast, the male victim's death creates community, as characters and spectators alike come together over his dead body.


	Book Reviews Robert Stam, Francois Truffaut and Friends: Modernism, Sexuality and Film Adaptation by Erin Foster Jeffrey Skoller, Shadows, Specters, Shards: Making History in Avant-Garde Film by Gerd Bayer Christian Keathley, Cinephilia and History, or The Wind in the Trees by Marc Raymond	Festivals The 57th Berlin Film Festival by Gerd Gemunden Cannes Film Festival, 2007 by Karin Luisa Badt


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