Brook will explore the seminal influence of German-speak- ing Jewish film directors on the dark American crime genre known as film noir. Although the repercussions of exile and German expressionist aesthetics of filmmakers such as Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak, Otto Preminger, and Max Ophuls have been noted as contributing to film noir’s evolution, no one has yet examined how these directors’ Jewishness crucially factors into the equation.
