Geoff Mayer - Historical Dictionary of Crime Films

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HISTORICAL DICTIONARIES OF LITERATURE

AND THE ARTS

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Historical Dictionary of Crime Films

Geoff Mayer

The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Lanham Toronto Plymouth, UK

2012

Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

Copyright 2012 by Geoff Mayer

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

All photos are courtesy of Photofest.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mayer, Geoff.

Historical dictionary of crime films / Geoff Mayer.

p. cm. (Historical dictionaries of literature)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8108-6769-7 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8108-7900-3

(ebook)

1. Crime filmsDictionaries. I. Title.

PN1995.9.C66M39 2013

791.43'655603dc23

2012017334

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Editors Foreword

As anyone who watches crime films will realize, the term is not quite as simple as it at first appears, since it covers, among other things, both detective and gangster filmsdepending on whose side you focus onas well as suspense thrillers, police procedurals, and other subgenres. And, depending on who scripted the film (or more likely, who wrote the original source), you may be dealing with a rather sedate classical detective film or a rougher, grittier hard-boiled version, just to mention two variations. To this, of course, can be added more specialized genres such as the caper film and film noir. Moreoverand this is increasingly the caseyou may have trouble figuring out who the good guy is. Once, it was obviously the detective or policeman, but nowadays it could just as well be the felon, who was almost always the villain when things were simpler and perhaps there was a code to follow. This makes crime films a much richer source of entertainment and instructionyes, instruction, because many people in the audience base their views of life, who is right and who is wrong, who is the good guy and who is the bad guy, on what they see on the silver screen.

Crime film was there at the birth of cinema, and it has accompanied cinema over more than a century of history, passing from silent film to talkies, from black-and-white to color. Once the domain of Americans and Europeans, such movies are now produced around the world. During this time, they have involved countless writers, directors, and actors who are just too numerous to mention. But the best are certainly included in the dictionary section, with hundreds of entries on those who contributed to making the films and a fair number on the most memorable films themselves, as well as some particularly interesting ones on the different genres and the most popular film detectives. As this is a long history, it is certainly handy to have a rather extensive chronology to follow the evolution year by year. The introduction then provides a useful overview, helping to put things in context. Film buffs, and especially those interested in crime film, may find that this Historical Dictionary of Crime Films just whets their appetite and, if they want to read more, the ideal place to get started is the very substantial bibliography.

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