Charles Pappas’ Its A Bitter Little World is a tour through sixty years of the language of film noir. It’s also the sort of book that can be easily dipped into, every time providing another reminder of just how widespread and widely influential film noir has become. Or, as the author points out:

True noir changes with the hemlines, the TV shows, and the Billboard top ten. It Toyota’d out of the city and into the desert (U Turn, Red Rock West), zipped up a down jacket and mushed north (Fargo), rewound into the past (Miller’s Crossing, Chinatown, The Two Jakes, L.A. Confidential), fast-forwarded into the future (Blade Runner), microscoped The Joy of Sex cover to cover (Body Heat), and crammed the CliffNotes for French deconstructionists (The Usual Suspects, Memento). Its piano-key colors are now beetle blacks, lab-coat whites, gargoyle grays, tobacco-stain browns, and autopsy reds.

For as long as people continue to make films, people will continue to make film noir. This book is a timely reminder of why.

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