Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Art of Noir The Posters and Graphics from the Classic Era of Film Noir by Eddie Muller Muller, Eddie 1959– PERSONAL: Born 1959, in San Francisco, CA; son of Eddie Muller (a sportswriter); married Kathleen Maria Milne. Education: Attended San Francisco Art Institute. ADDRESSES: Agent —Denise Marcil, 156 5th Ave., Ste. 625, New York, NY 10010. CAREER: Journalist; author of fiction and nonfiction. AWARDS, HONORS: Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination for best critical/biographical work, Mystery Writers of America, 1999, for Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir , and 2003, for The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics from the Classic Era of Film Noir; Shamus Award for Best P.I. First Novel, for The Distance , 2003. WRITINGS: NONFICTION. (With Daniel Faris) Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of "Adult Only" Cinema , St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1996. Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir , St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1998. Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir , Regan Books/HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001. The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics from the Classic Era of Film Noir , Overlook Press (Woodstock, NY), 2002. (With Tab Hunter) Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star , Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 2005. NOVELS. The Distance , Scribner (New York, NY), 2002. Shadow Boxer , Scribner (New York, NY), 2003. SIDELIGHTS: Eddie Muller became fascinated with film noir while growing up in San Francisco, and his interest eventually led to three books on the subject: Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir , and The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics from the Classic Era of Film Noir . Muller watched two hundred noir films while researching his 1998 book Dark City . In it he details the history of film noir, beginning with 1940's Stranger on the Third Floor , and ending with Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1960 film Psycho . Also included are illustrations and background information on film noir actors. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted: "Muller writes with a real flair." Bill Ott stated in Booklist that "film noir fans will have plenty to enjoy here." While researching Dark City Dames , Muller interviewed six film noir actresses: Coleen Gray, Jane Greer, Evelyn Keyes, Ann Savage, Audrey Totter, and Marie Windsor. He records the career of each actress, includes insider stories from the women, and discusses the turns their lives took over six decades. Library Journal contributor Stephen Rees described the book as "briskly written and well researched." The Distance is Muller's first novel. Set in San Francisco in 1948, it tells the story of Billy Nichols, boxing columnist for the Inquirer newspaper. Boxer Hack Escalante phones Nichols and asks for his help after he realizes that he has accidentally killed his manager. Billy finds himself helping Hack bury the body, which he later realizes was a huge mistake. Billy tries to protect Hack from the police and cover up the murder but soon finds his job and his own life in danger. A Kirkus Reviews critic described the book as "pungent, poignant, wonderfully atmospheric—an absolute knockout of a first novel." Muller continued the story of Billy Nichols in Shadow Boxer , published in 2003. In this story, the sports columnist is enlisted by a woman seeking to clear her husband of a murder charge. Billy also becomes involved with a friend who is struck and hurt by a truck owned by a liquor company. A witness says that the injured party was at fault, and Billy must try to unravel the case. A Publishers Weekly reviewer found Billy "a compelling personality" whose second adventure proves to be an "exciting romp." Numerous reviewers noted the connections between Muller's book and the film-noir movies he had written about previously; a Kirkus Reviews writer called Shadow Boxer "steamy, noirish, and lovingly pitch-perfect in its treatment of the world of boxing." Muller's knowledge of Hollywood made him a logical choice to work with former matinee idol Tab Hunter on the actor's autobiography: Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star . Hunter began life as Art Gelien, a shy boy who loved horses. His outstanding good looks caught the attention of agent Henry Willson who, along with Dick Clayton, proceeded to transform Art Gelien into Tab Hunter, a Hollywood star designed especially to appeal to teenage girls. Hunter's acting skills were limited; nevertheless, he was soon living a glamorous life as one of the movie industry's hottest properties. The underside of Hunter's story is his homosexuality: if the truth about his sexual orientation had been widely known, it would have destroyed his career. Hunter relates his own search for self-identity, his hidden affairs, and his eventual decision to publicly proclaim his sexuality. His book proceeds in "sharp, succinct anecdotes," stated Chris Freeman in Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide . Rosellen Brewer, writing in the Library Journal , called Hunter's story an "engrossing tale" with a "surprisingly happy ending," as the actor comes to terms with his true self. BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: PERIODICALS. Booklist , November 1, 1996, Mike Tribby, review of Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of "Adult Only" Cinema , p. 472; February 15, 1998, Bill Ott, review of Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir , p. 964; December 1, 2001, Connie Fletcher, review of The Distance , p. 633. Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide , January-February, 2006, Chris Freeman, review of Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star , p. 39. Kirkus Reviews , November 15, 2001, review of The Distance , p. 1584; November 1, 2002, review of Shadow Boxer , p. 1574. Library Journal , May 1, 2001, Stephen Rees, review of Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir , p. 88; January, 2003, Bob Lunn, review of Shadow Boxer , p. 157; September 1, 2005, Rosellen Brewer, review of Tab Hunter Confidential , p. 143. New York Times Book Review , December 25, 2005, Jacob Heilbrunn, review of Tab Hunter Confidential , p. 18. Premiere , May, 2001, Aimee Agresti, "Dark Angels," p. 23. Publishers Weekly , December 22, 1997, review of Dark City , p. 47; April 23, 2001, review of Dark City Dames , p. 62; November 5, 2001, review of The Distance , p. 43; December 9, 2002, review of Shadow Boxer , p. 65. Sight and Sound , August, 1998, review of Dark City , p. 27. Village Voice , winter, 1996, Guy Trebay, review of Grindhouse , p. 22. The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics from the Classic Era of Film Noir. The poster art from the noir era has a bold look and an iconography all its own. During noir's golden age, studios commissioned these arresting illustrations for even the lowliest "B" thriller. The Art of Noir is the first book to present this striking artwork in a lavishly produced, large-format, full-color volume. The more than 300 dazzling posters and other promotional material range from the classics to rare archive films such as The Devil Thumbs a Ride and Blonde Kiss. With rare offerings from around the world and background information on the illustrators, The Art of Noir is the ultimate companion for movie buffs and collectors, as well as artists and designers. About the Author. Eddie Muller, "The Czar of Noir," is the founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, and provides commentary for noir films and specials on Turner Classic Movies. He created his own graphics firm, St. Francis Studio, and is the author of Grindhouse, Dark City Dames, and Dark City. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics from the Classic Era of Film Noir by Eddie Muller. Often I'm asked to cite my "Top Ten" from the classic film noir era, so I figured it was about time to post something "definitive." Take this with a grain of salt, because I am not one to apply academic criteria to art, popular or otherwise. These are simply films that I have viewed and enjoyed multiple times, and expect to appreciate even more as time goes on. A "classic" is in the eye of the beholder anyway; to me there's only one way to assess a film's greatness—is it still engrossing the sixth time you've seen it? Because our goofy culture loves to see everything ranked, I'm even putting them in order of preference, although it's ridiculous to think that Night and the City is somehow 2.6% better than Out of the Past. Consider the listing a sort of carnival barometer, ranging from INFATUATED to PASSIONATE. ACT OF VIOLENCE MGM, 1949. It directly confronts lingering WWII nightmares, mixes up the "good" guy versus "bad" guy premise to stunning effect, is beautifully directed and shot, and features great work from the four leads. Damn near perfect. The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics from the Classic Era of Film Noir by Eddie Muller. "A particular delight if you’re intrigued by the whole world of film advertising and the way ad art was designed to lure customers to drop their dimes, quarters (and, eventually, dollar bills) at the box office in the ’40s and ’50s." —Robert Osborne, Hollywood Reporter. "In the images and writing of The Art of Noir , Muller has nailed down the essence of the genre." —Adam Bregman, S.F. Chronicle. "Sleek and deadly as a pair of silk stockings . . . there’s a whole malignant universe of desperate fun in these pages." —George Tysh, Metro Times Detroit. THE ART OF NOIR: THE POSTERS AND GRAPHICS FROM THE CLASSIC ERA OF FILM NOIR. Overlook Press, November 2002 Available in both hardcover and trade paper. Film Noir is all about style, even as much as it is about crime. The poster art from the noir era has a bold look and iconography all its own. A sizzling marriage of sex and violence—the sinuous figures of femmes fatales alongside the granite features of the tough guy stars—made this artwork dynamic and dangerous. The more than 330 dazzling posters included in this volume range from classics Out of the Past, Touch of Evil, and The Big Sleep to obscurities such as The Devil Thumbs a Ride and Blonde Ice. Featured are rare offerings from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Japan, rounding out the knockout graphics of Hollywood. Background information is provided on the illustrators, many of whom have rarely received credit for their work. The Art of Noir is the biggest selling poster book in Overlook Press history, its been translated into French by publishers Calmann-Levy, and its was nominated by the Mystery Writers of America and Mystery Readers International as the Best Critical/Biographical Work of 2002. It’s a lurid and indispensable companion for movie buffs and collectors, as well as artists and designers. SAYS EDDIE "Sometimes selling a book is blissfully simple. I sent a two paragraph fax to Overlook and said 'Somebody’s going to do a film noir poster book and it might as well be me.' It took about two years to assemble and every minute was fun. If you don’t love this stuff, you’re not an American—or French, Italian, German, British, Spanish, Japanese, Swedish . . . A dame with generous decolletage brandishing a .38—who doesn’t love that?" Film noir posters: the art of smoking guns and bared flesh. Gone Girl may have all the hallmarks of a modern film noir, but it falls sadly short in one crucial respect: the poster. Whether it's photographs of evidence bags, Ben Affleck having vertical hold problems against a brooding sky, or Affleck with Rosamund Pike on a mortician's slab, the ad campaign is cool, clever - and a bit dull. Dull is an adjective you would never use to describe the posters from film noir's heyday in the Forties and Fifties, more than 350 of which are reproduced in The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics from the Classic Era of Film Noir by Eddie Muller. Jean-Luc Godard, who paid homage to Hollywood B-pictures in several of his early films, once famously said "all you need for a movie is a gun and a girl", and the posters hammer that idea home with unabashed promises of sex and violence. Film noir was first tagged as a genre by French cinephiles; the name they gave it was a deliberate echo of the Série Noire imprint of translated hard-boiled fiction from the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M Cain, whose novels were providing source material for some of the most celebrated crime movies coming out of postwar Hollywood - films such as The Maltese Falcon, Farewell my Lovely and The Postman Always Rings Twice. The recurring noir protagonist is a conflicted and often doomed anti-hero who is invariably lured by a manipulative femme fatale into an Apache Dance of duplicity, lust and death. The setting was a world exhausted by war and permeated by moral ambiguity and an almost existential malaise. Many of the films were thrillers and B-pictures, lacking the prestige of critically feted dramas and unable to flaunt a glittering cast of A-list stars to entice the crowds. So the poster designers pumped up the exploitation angle. Whereas the films themselves were characterised by their shadowy black-and-white cinematography, the posters were riotous explosions of garish colour and eyepopping imagery. Hollywood production codes of the Forties decreed that crime should never pay and thatmurderers should never go unpunished, and there's little in classic noir, at least on the surface, that would shock today's desensitised audiences. But the posters themselves revel in what might be seen today as political incorrectness - lurid compendiums of phallic imagery, erotic display and mental derangement, whether it's Dan Duryea slapping Lizabeth Scott around in the artwork for Too Late for Tears (1949), non-PC cigarettes dangling from the lips of Robert Mitchum, John Garfield or Peggy Cummins, or sexy dames flouting fundamental fashion rules by flashing cleavage and leg at the same time. And of course there are guns, lots of guns - many of them brandished by the women, and most of them smoking. Looking at these posters from a modern perspective, it's not just nostalgia that makes them so extraordinary. In the days before poster artwork became almost exclusively photographic, and before the now ubiquitous Helvetica font was even invented, the artists and designers seem unconstrained by mealy-mouthed considerations of perspective, realism or what might constitute tasteful design - particularly in the European and Asian markets, a world away from the rather more puritanical United States. Whereas, for example, the American poster for Double Indemnity shows Barbara Stanwyck and FredMacMurray in a romantic clinch, with Edward G. Robinson looking on almost benignly, the Spanish one depicts MacMurray flanked by grotesque demons, a corpse on the railway tracks below him and Stanwyck smiling out at us. Nor were the non-American poster designers as anonymous as their Hollywood counterparts; the names of Anselmo Ballester, Bernard Lancy and Rolf Goetze deservedly live on in these works of art. This collection is a hallucinatory trove of looming green faces, insane photomontage, drunken typefaces and overwrought taglines: "HATE IS LIKE A LOADED GUN!", "MURDER! JAIL-BREAK! KNIFE and GUN LAW!", "DAMEHUNGRY KILLER-COP RUNS BERSERK!" Some of the imagery is reminiscent of the covers of pulp paperbacks, but unlike book artwork it was always destined to be big, to seize the attention as a one-sheet, quad or billboard. And the very best are exquisite displays of creative skill and imagination, larger-than-life windows into a dangerous yet infinitely seductive world.