The Introspective Realist Crime Film

This book explores the formal and thematic conventions of crime film, the contexts in which these have flourished and their links with the social issues of a globalized world. The crime film has traditionally been identified with suspense, a heterogeneous aesthetic and a tacit social mind. However, a good number of the crime films produced since the early 2000s have shifted their focus from action or suspense and towards melodrama in narratives that highlight the social dimension of crime, intensify their realist aesthetics and dwell on subjectivity. With the 1940s wave of Hollywood semi-documentary crime films and 1970s generic revisionism as antecedents, these crime films find inspiration in Hollywood cinema and constitute a transnational trend. With a close look at Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic (2000), David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007), Jacques Audiard’s Un prophète (2009) and Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), this book sets out the stylistic and thematic conventions, contexts and cultural significance of a new transnational trend in crime film.

“Since the 1990s a distinct kind of transnational crime film and television production has risen to prominence with its combination of intense interest in its characters’ personal lives and the cultural politics in which they are embedded – from Syriana (2005) to El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret in their Eyes, 2009) to Forbrydelsen (The Killing, 2007-12). But we have not had a rich and synoptic account of these productions. Now we do. Luis M. García-Mainar’s brilliant Introspective Crime Film weaves together theories of genre, transnationalism and narrative into an argument about what he calls the “introspective crime film.” The concept and García-Mainar’s virtuoso development of it provide readers a means of seeing a pattern in the carpet of transnational popular culture.” (Andrew Nestingen, University of Washington, USA)

“This is an important and timely study of a new kind of crime film which has emerged in recent years. The Introspective Realist Crime Film shifts the emphasis from action and suspense onto broader social issues, which it explores through a focus on the individual’s experience of crime. Through a series of incisive readings of a wide range of films, Luis M.García Mainar develops a compelling argument that crime cinema is moving beyond the parameters of established genres (film noir, the gangster film, the detective film, etc.) in order to comment powerfully on the new ethical era which characterizes the early Twenty-First Century.” (Bran Nicol, Director of Postgraduate Research at the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences (School of English and Languages), University of Surrey)

Luis M. García-Mainar is Associate Professor in Film Studies at the Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain). He is the author of Clint Eastwood: de actor a autor (2006) and his work has appeared in, among other journals, Screening the Past, CineAction and Journal of Film and Video.