Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir (Limelight) Review

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(More customer reviews)I liked this book, although it seemed that half the time I disagreed with Hirsch on the film he was discussing.For example, he found a lot more to like the the Lumet-Fonda "The Morning After" than I did.Curiously enough, even when Hirsch criticized a film I liked, I didn't find him annoying.
The book begins very well, with a discussion of "Odds Against Tomorrow," a film noir that came out after "Touch of Evil," the last "official" noir.This leads Hirsch, after a discussion of noir in French cinema, into looking at neo-noir.Hirsch organizes his material by subgenre or archetype, such as private eye films.
My serious problem with the book was that it covers so much, from 1959 to the late 90s.That is much longer than the original noir era (1941-59).Thus it seems odd to have films like "Shock Corridor" and "The Long Goodbye" discussed with "Reservoir Dogs" and "Basic Instinct," as if they were part of the same era.I think Spicer in his new book on film noir treats neo-noir better by splitting it in two (Sixties and Seventies vs. Eighties and Nineties).
However, Hirsch discusses a large number of films in detail and it is always interesting to see what he has to say, even when you disagree.

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Product Description:
"Detours and Lost Highways begins with the Orson Welles film, Touch of Evil (1958), which featured Welles both behind and in front of the camera. That movie is often cited as the end of the line, noir's rococo tombstone...the film after which noir could no longer be made, or at least could no longer be made in the same way... It is my belief, Hirsch writes, that neo-noir does exist and that noir is entitled to full generic status. Over the past forty years, since noir's often-claimed expiration, it has flourished under various labels. Among the movies he discusses as evidence: Chinatown (1974), Body Heat (1981), John Woo's Hong Kong blood-ballets (e.g., The Killer, 1989) and the pulpy oeuvre of Quentin Tarantino." -Washington Post Book World

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