I stumbled across this blog recently, which is currently featuring classic film posters from across the years with an emphasis on crime movies, or film noir. It's called Where Danger Lives, and it's been growing in popularity lately. Browsing through its archives, I was thinking about the resurgence of film noir interest that's been cropping up. For one thing, people are increasingly interested in well-crafted visuals. There is a certain aesthetic to film noir that makes it especially appealing to our design-oriented society. We are on the hunt for beautiful things, and contemporary film is often too heavily saturated with . . . well, visuals.
Proof of the growing attention to film noir isn't hard to find. Let me just throw down the upcoming video game from Rockstar Games, L.A. Noire. Heralded as one of the most visually stunning games of this generation and the most heavily anticipated game of the year, I need hardly suggest that a renewed interest in the genre will be cropping up on a number of fronts.
My own Detour to Murder is a small testament to that interest. My love for stories began with film noir - watching them at the cinema as a kid - and bringing that into the Jimmy O'Brien mystery series has been very satisfying. If anything, my hope has been that such efforts will serve to remind a new generation about the gems of both film and fiction that lie waiting for lovers of good stories, if they have the mind to look. I'd be interested to hear your own noir discoveries, the detours you may have taken from contemporary film to classic - or the other way around.
