Film Noir: 1940s Hollywood Cinema
30 January 2027
10:00am-5:00pm
Rewley House 1 Wellington Square, Oxford, OX1 2JA
Event status:
Applications being accepted
Dates:
30 January 2027
Study Format:
In-person day/weekend
Fees:
£90.00
With the emergence of Los Angeles as a cultural centre in the early 20th century, a new form of crime fiction emerged from the City of Angels. Dubbed ‘hard-boiled’ fiction or ‘noir’ fiction, novels of the 1930s by writers such as Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler used private investigators and 'femme fatales' to survey L.A.’s social strata: from the wealthy elites to the criminal underclass.
In the 1940s, a wave of exiled European film-makers with first hand experience of fascism arrived in Hollywood and proceeded to adapt hard-boiled ‘noir’ fiction into popular movies. Directors like Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Michael Curtiz imported their experience with German expressionism and the social threat of the Nazis into their adaptations of novels about contemporary social reality in L.A. Along with American directors John Huston and Howard Hawks, they pioneered a new film genre termed ‘film noir’, which came to define Hollywood cinema of the 1940s.
Together, these novels and movies elevated popular commercial crime fiction into a modernist form. Blending psychoanalysis with mystery plots, fragmented narratives with sinister threat, anti-fascist politics with melodrama, and the Hays Code censorship with scandalous eroticism, film noir has continued to be an influential genre in contemporary story-telling. This lecture-style day event will serve as an introduction to its key features and introduce some defining instances of the form.
Please note: this event will close to enrolments at 23:59 GMT on 27 January 2027.
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Accommodation
If you wish to stay with us before and/or after the event, please contact our Residential Centre for availability and discounted rates.
Call +44 (0) 1865 270362 or email res-ctr@conted.ox.ac.uk
Our accommodation in Wellington Square has been rated as 4-Star Campus Accommodation under Visit England. All bedrooms are modern, comfortably furnished with tea/coffee making facilities, Freeview television, private bath/shower rooms and free WiFi. For more details see our accommodation information.
Recommended reading
No reading required. However, watching some film noirs will be an advantage. Recommended films include the following:
The Maltese Falcon (1941), Dir. John Huston
Double Indemnity (1944), Dir. Billy Wilder
Murder My Sweet (1944), Dir. Edward Dmytryk
Mildred Pierce (1945), Dir. Michael Curtiz
The Big Sleep (1946), Dir. Howard Hawks.
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Dir. Tay Garnett
One can also read the pulp novels that are the source of these films:
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (1930)
James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934)
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce (1941)
The best academic book on film noir is James Naremore, More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts (1998)
Programme details
10am
Introduction to Film Noir
11.15am
Tea/coffee break
11.45am
Dashiell Hammett and The Maltese Falcon
1pm
Lunch break
2pm
James M. Cain and Double Indemnity
3.15pm
Tea/coffee break
3.45pm
Raymond Chandler and The Big Sleep
5pm
Event ends
Fees
| Description | Costs |
|---|---|
| Event fee (includes tea/coffee) | £90.00 |
| Baguette lunch | £7.90 |
| Hot lunch | £22.40 |
Funding
If you are in receipt of a UK state benefit, or are a care-leaver in the UK, you may be eligible for a reduction of 50% of tuition fees. Please see the below link for full details:
Concessionary fees for short courses
Payment
Please see the terms and conditions for our open-access courses.
Dr Angus McFadzean – Tutor
Dr Angus McFadzean is the Programme Director of the Oxford University Summer School for Adults and teaches on international programmes at the Department for Continuing Education, specialising in British and American Literature and Film. He is the author of Suburban Fantastic Cinema: Growing Up in the Late Twentieth Century (Columbia University Press, 2019) and the co-editor of James Joyce’s Epiphanies: A Critical Edition, forthcoming from University Press of Florida (2024). He has published on James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon and Hollywood cinema and has taught widely on literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, specifically modernism and the works of Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf and WB Yeats.
Please use the ‘Book’ button on this page. Alternatively, please contact us to obtain an application form.
