Revelation of the Method and Cultural Demoralization
in Film Noir, Part 1
Excerpted from a forthcoming book titled The Imitation of Christ in Film Noir, the following essay by Steven DeLay is the first of a three-part examination of film noir. Beginning here with Roman Polanski’s epochal neo-noir masterpiece, Chinatown, DeLay reveals how the genre functions, via Revelation of the Method, as a vehicle for cultural demoralization, inuring the viewer to accept the evil-in-high-places that it purports to expose.