To aid in the selection of videos for your class and research needs, we've created a large number of filmographies on many subject areas.
If you'd like help linking streaming videos to your Canvas Course Reserves or reserving DVDs for you or your students, please contact
mediaservices@american.edu
This is a selective list of video holdings in the American University Library. Filmographies are created by doing multiple keyword searches in the catalog to capture as many titles on a topic as possible.
For complete, up-to-date holdings please search the library catalog search box on the Media Services homepage. (http://www.american.edu/library/mediaservices/) Finding Aids on the same page includes other subject oriented content.
For more information take a look at the Streaming Video Guides and Browsing Collections.
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Neo-Noir
The AU Library Media Services collection includes many titles that have been labelled noir or neo-noir, though for the sake of brevity and research interests, the titles on this list are restricted to American films made after 1955 and the end of the classic noir period.
See Film Noir filmogrphy for earlier titles.
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Attack. 1956. (ca. 107 min.). Film looks at the Battle of Bulge, emphasizing a group of American soldiers in Fragile Fox Company led by the cowardly Captain Cooney. Cooney's previous mistakes have been covered up by Colonel Bartlett who hopes after the war to make use of Cooney's political connections. When Cooney fails to provide support for his men as they fight in Belgium, Lt. Joe Costa although badly wounded, seeks him out with the intention of killing him. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 6627
Blast of silence. 1961. 1 videodisc (77 min.). Frankie Bono is an orphan who has learned to make a profitable living as a contract killer. Traveling from Cleveland to New York during the Christmas season, he is charged with taking out mid-level Harlem numbers and drug kingpin Troiano. Stalking his prey as he goes about his daily routine, Bono is distracted by an unexpected encounter with a childhood friend whose sister sees him as a lonely man, not the barely human shell he has become. Acutely aware of his own mortality, Bono sees everything as a facade, the pretty Christmas lights mere glitzy decorations covering the festering rot of existence, and his own personal hell. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 8150
Brothers Rico, The. 1957. 1 videodisc (92 min.). A businessman and husband is contacted by his former mafia boss, and is drawn back into the danger of the mob, putting his family on the line. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 7298
Ceremony, The. 1963, 1 videodisc (107 min.). "The brother of a man sentenced for committing murder during a bank robbery plans his brother's escape on the condition his brother's girl dates him instead."--Container. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 8982
City of fear. 1959. 1 videodisc (75 min.). A criminal escapes from jail with what he thinks is pure heroin, but is actually a radioactive powder. Now, the cops must find him before he exposes the whole city. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 7300
Crime in the streets / Armored car robbery . 1956 / 1950. 1 videodisc (151 min.). Crime in the streets: Following a turf rumble with a rival gang, the street gang leader tells his gang to kill the snitch. Armored car robbery: Film about a deadly heist and the battle of wits between a fugitive gangster, his stripper moll, and a bulldog cop out to avenge his partner's death. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 7323
Crime of passion. 1957, 1 videodisc (86 min.). Kathy Ferguson is an extraordinary woman, trapped in a decade that worships the ordinary. She's smart and witty, and an ace at her job. She's an advice columnist at a San Francisco newspaper, with her name on billboards all over town. But Kathy makes a big mistake--she falls in love. After marrying Bill Doyle, a Los Angeles detective, somewhere between the olive dip and the shiny waxed floors, she begins to realize that Bill wants nothing more than this--for him or her--ever. Her thwarted ambition turns ugly, and before long this capable career woman is capable of anything. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 6565
Crimson kimono, The. 1959. 1 videodisc (81 min.). Los Angeles homicide detectives Charlie Bancroft and Joe Kojaku investigate the shooting of a stripper. Clues lead them into Los Angeles' Little Tokyo and to artist Chris Downs. Both detectives are smitten by Downs who is implicated in the murder. Bancroft becomes jealous of Kojaku, who is deeply hurt, feeling that Bancroft's animosity is borne of racism. Their friendship, and the central romance, is resolved after the detectives bring the murderer to heel in Little Tokyo. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 7206
Farewell, my lovely. 1975. (97 min.). Private eye Philip Marlowe is hired by an ex-con to find the ex-con's missing sweetheart. In the course of Marlowe's search he is beaten unconscious and wakes up next to a corpse. So Marlowe's tasks are multiplying- find the girl, clear himself of the murder and discover the link between the two. ON ORDER
House of games. 1987. (101 min.). A woman psychiatrist, trying to help a patient whose life has been threatened, is drawn into the dangerous but provocative underworld of a smooth-talking con man. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1575
I want to live! 1958. 1 videodisc (ca. 2 hr., 1 min.). Arrested for fatally beating an elderly widow, Barbara Graham at first goads the police, refusing to answer their questions. But when an alleged accomplice turns state's evidence, Graham insists that she is innocent. Condemned by the press and the public, Graham is found guilty of murder and sentenced to die in the gas chamber. With her execution date getting near, Graham desperately attempts to expose the truth and save her life against all odds. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4613
Killing, The. 1956. (89 min.). Using a darting camera style that creates the feeling that he is stalking his cast, Kubrick lays bare the inner workings of a bold racetrack robbery engineered by a group of small-time crooks. It's the almost perfect crime. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4672
Lineup, The. 1958. 1 videodisc (86 min.). Follows the duel plots of two criminals smuggling dope, and the policemen trailing them across San Francisco. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 7294
Man of the west. 1958. (99 min.). When the train he is on gets robbed, Link Jones finds himself unwillingly reunited with his old gang. Dock Tobin, the gang's sadistic, half-crazed patriarch, was like a father to Link some twenty years past and welcomes him back. To survive, Link must take up his old ways--his killing ways. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4584
Man who wasn't there, The. 2001. (116 min.). In a sleepy Northern California town in the 1940s, Ed Crane, a humble barber, suspects that his wife Doris is having an affair with her boss. When a stranger comes into town hinting that there is a fortune to be made in investing in the new invention of dry cleaning, Ed hatches a blackmail scheme he hopes will make him rich and get him some revenge at the same time. His plan goes horribly awry when he accidentally commits a murder for which Doris is blamed, landing her in jail, and Ed at the mercy of big-city lawyer Freddy Riedenschneider. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 365
Murder by contract. 1958. 1 videodisc (80 min.). A hired assassin's latest assignment is hard to get to, which leaves him time to think about the fact that this time, he has to kill a woman. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 7295
Nightfall. 1957. 1 videodisc (79 min.). A commercial artist is pursued by the police for a crime he didn't commit, and chased by criminals for money he didn't steal. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 7299
Odds against tomorrow. 1959, 1 videodisc (96 min.). One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, ready for the taking. It's too much to resist for Earl Slater, a bigoted ex-con slumming through life with a patronizing girlfriend, an obliging neighbor and zero expectations. He agrees to be part of a bank job planned by former cop Burke. Until, that is, he finds out one of his partners will be a black man. Earl's desperate need for cash, however, leads him to reconsider. For the job only, he'll put his racism aside ... until moments away from the score, hatred erupts. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 10963
Portland exposé / They were so young. 1957 / 1954. 1 videodisc (149 minutes, 45 seconds). Portland exposé (72 min.): " ... the story concentrates on an honest tavern owner named George Madison (Edward Binns) who is involuntarily sucked into the city's rotten-to-the-core political machine. When Madison refuses to allow his establishment to serve as the gathering place for hoods and delinquents, the powers-that-be threaten to harm his family. Only after his daughter is attacked by a syndicate flunkey does Madison decide to fight back. At great personal risk, he manages to tape-record damning evidence against Portland's 'untouchable' criminal kingpin (Russ Conway)"--ClassicFlix website. They were so young (78 min.): "Innocent young Johanna Metz is hired for a modelling job in South America. Upon her arrival, she finds herself broke, stranded and at the beck and call of a criminal gang. Escaping from the crooks, Johanna is rescued by Scott Brady, an engineer in the employ of tycoon Raymond Burr. Unfortunately, Burr turns out to be the leader of the gang from whom Johanna has escaped"--ClassicFlix website. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 5214
Shock corridor. 1963, 1 videodisc (101 min.). A journalist fakes mental illness to get himself committed to a mental hospital for a story. Soon, he starts to lose his mind. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 708
Touch of evil. 1958. (111 min.). An elaborate mystery involving a corrupt police official in a squalid town on the Mexican border and a murder that ensnares a narcotics agent and his wife. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 163
Vertigo. 1958. (128 min.). Scottie Ferguson, a San Francisco police detective, is forced to retire when a freak accident leaves him with a severe fear of heights. He becomes a private detective and is hired by a rich shipbuilder to follow his wife Madeleine who is behaving suspiciously and might be planning suicide. Ferguson falls in love with her but she plunges to her death from a tall bell tower with Ferguson unable to take any action. Then he spots another woman who looks like Madeleine and he becomes obsessed in his desire to re-create her in another woman. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 14
While the city sleeps. 1956. 1 videodisc (100 min.). "Ask mother" says the message scrawled in lipstick at a murder scene by an unknown serial killer who preys on women. It's a sensational story - if it bleeds, it leads - and a news conglomerate offers a big promotion to the high-level company exec who solves the case. So begins the wheeling, dealing and backstabbing of the competing media hotshots as they vie to unmask the so-called Lipstick Killer. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 7621
Wrong man, The. 1956. (105 min.). An innocent man is arrested, jailed, and brought to trial for serious crimes committed by someone else who looks very much like him. As he struggles to prove his innocence, his life collapses around him. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 3530