The BFI Companion to Crime edited by Phil Hardy, with an Introduction by Richard Attenborough Cassell, 352pp, £50/£20 in UK
What grainy images of the past this volume evokes. The Cinema Palace, Wexford, in the late Forties and Fifties; Saturday afternoon matinees and those black-and-white double-bills; the great Bogart movies: The Maltese Falcon, High Sierra, The Big Sleep and the sublime Casablanca; other, luminous stars such Glenn Ford, Cornel Wilde, Robert Ryan, sleepy-eyed, laconic Mitchum, crumple-faced Edward G. Robinson, Richard Widmark as the giggling Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death; the lubricious slitherings of Jane Greer in Out of the Past (Build My Gallows High) - that expressionless face, the open top button, the bee-stung lips; Lana Turner as she vamps John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice; lisping Gloria Grahame, whistling Lauren Bacall, Rita Hayworth taking off those long gloves in Gilda.
There were also re-runs of the more frenetic gangster films of the Thirties, with Cagney of the sticklegged walk and fast delivery going up against or partnering good guy Pat O'Brien. The Bowery Boys, with squeaky Leo Gorcey and idiotic Huntz Hall. William Powell and Myrna Loy in the Thin Man series. Edward G. in Little Caesar, Paul Muni in Scarface.
They are all here between these covers, those mentioned, and many, many more. In his introduction, Phil Hardy remarks that the book does not seek to offer a formal definition of what constitutes a crime film. What it does attempt is a survey and classification of the main types and examples of crime fiction in the cinema. Set out in alphabetical order, it covers the history of a genre, the fabric of society ripped and torn, as portrayed on the silver screen.
Before the artistic offering on celluloid, of course, there must be the screenplay, and many of the crime writers who plied their trade in the studios are dealt with. Such men and women as Vera Caspary - Laura, with the definitive bitchy performance by Clifton Webb as Waldo Lydecker - W.R. Burnett, Steve Fisher, David Goodis, Jonathan Latimer, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain all contributed in one way or another to the noir films of the period.
Cain, mostly unhappy during his seventeen years of graft for the studios, only contributed three screenplays, but his novels - The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce - were made into seminal crime films. The Postman was remade in the early Eighties with Jessica Lange and Jack Nicolson, while back in the Forties Visconti filmed an Italian version called Ossessione.
The book ranges from the earliest crime films right through to the latest. It even mentions that a version of James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential was being made at the time of publication - a film that figures in my personal top ten. There is also mention of crime films made in European countries, and in Australia and Latin America. All in all, then, a comprehensive survey, and a book with which I know I'm going to form a beautiful friendship. Here's looking at you, kid.
And as a valediction to those who, like myself, frequented Cinema Palaces in the lovely long ago, here is my top five of noir films: High Sierra, Laura, Out of the Past, The Maltese Falcon and The Big Combo.
Vincent Banville is a freelance journalist