Jazz and Cocktails : : Rethinking Race and the Sound of Film Noir / / Jans B. Wager.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Wager, Jans B.,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (176 p.)

Film noir showcased hard-boiled men and dangerous femmes fatales, rain-slicked city streets, pools of inky darkness cut by shards of light, and, occasionally, jazz. Jazz served as a shorthand for the seduction and risks of the mean streets in early film noir. As working jazz musicians began to compose the scores for and appear in noir films of the 1950s, black musicians found a unique way of asserting their right to participate fully in American life. Jazz and Cocktails explores the use of jazz in film noir, from its early function as a signifier of danger, sexuality, and otherness to the complex role it plays in film scores in which jazz invites the spectator into the narrative while simultaneously transcending the film and reminding viewers of the world outside the movie theater. Jans B. Wager looks at the work of jazz composers such as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Chico Hamilton, and John Lewis as she analyzes films including Sweet Smell of Success, Elevator to the Gallows, Anatomy of a Murder, Odds Against Tomorrow, and considers the neonoir American Hustle. Wager demonstrates how the evolving role of jazz in film noir reflected cultural changes instigated by black social activism during and after World War II and altered Hollywood representations of race and music.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Permissions -- Introduction. Nostalgia for the Lush Life -- Chapter One. Pie Eye’s Juke Joint: Jazz and Its Interpretations -- Chapter Two. The Porters and Waiters Club: Jazz, Movies, and Ogden -- Chapter Three. Studio Jazz from Harlem to Acapulco -- Chapter Four. The Blue Gardenia, Club Pigalle, and Daniel’s: Charting the Alienation Effect in Film Noir -- Chapter Five. From Elysian to Robards, from Real to Reel -- Chapter Six. A Paris Bar Where Miles Innovates -- Chapter Seven. “All the Very Gay Places”: Ellington and Strayhorn Swing in Northern Michigan -- Chapter Eight. Cannoy’s Club: “All Men Are Evil” -- Chapter Nine. “Jeep’s Blues” and Jazz Today -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index