Academic literature on the topic 'Suspense Thriller'

The appearance in 2003 of 21 Georges Simenon novels in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade reaffirmed a widespread consensus that French-language crime fiction, especially the roman noir with its vigil over the political and social ills of the nation, had secured its position as an important vector of French cultural history. Its sister genre, the thriller, has fared less well. Justly criticised for its expedient style and limited intellectual horizons, the thriller continues to appeal to a mass readership drawn from all sectors of society.This article locates its attractions in the ways in which we might once have engaged with the adventure stories of our collective youth that furnished our first solitary contact with literary fiction. It argues that our response to narrative suspense in adventure stories consumed in early adolescence is later rekindled and developed in the more adult thrillers of the modern age. Working within a conceptual framework that includes the psychologically based thrillers of Boileau-Narcejac and Sébastian Japrisot juxtaposed with the adrenalin rush of events supplied by Dan Brown and Maxime Chattam, it analyses the different modalities of suspense and their concomitant reading pleasures, concluding that the thriller meets the expectations not of a certain group of readers but of a certain type of reading experience.

Abstract Thriller is considered to be a subgenre of criminal fiction, in which the most significant role is played by fast-paced action, suspense, spectacular events. In case of so called international and political thrillers it should also be mentioned that their authors construct their plots around the problems such as global conflicts, international conspiracy, terrorism, the development of nuclear weapon. However, problems commonly mentioned by many authors of other subgenres of criminal fiction, are also present in the novels classified as thrillers. The collapse of well-being society, unstable interpersonal relationships, mental problems of an individual, childhood traumas are therefore often mentioned by the writers, although they do not usually constitute main subjects of the novels. The article concentrates on some examples from international and political thrillers, in which such issues seem to be equally important, written by the most popular Finnish authors of this particular genre, namely Ilkka Remes and Taavi Soininvaara.

Abstract Suspense as an aesthetic effect is a key narrative strategy of thriller movies, serving the function of entertainment for wide audiences. As the plot unfolds, arcs of suspense rely on triggering an appealing sense of anticipation that calls for a resolution. The present study examines the creation of suspense throughout fictional dialogue in Quentin Tarantino’s popular feature films Pulp Fiction (1994), Inglourious Basterds (2009), and Django Unchained (2012). In these movies, dialogic interaction is often dominated by eloquent villains who skilfully flout the conversational maxims of Grice’s cooperative principle, thereby exercising verbal power over other interlocutors. As is demonstrated in a qualitative pragma-stylistic framework, the villains’ discursive strategies amount to stylistic deviation resulting in suspenseful implicatures. In particular, suspense is commonly caused by digressing from current topics, by giving too little information or too many details, by being insincere or ironic, and by making equivocal or redundant statements.

O presente ensaio percorre ao longo da carreira acadêmica do pesquisador Charles Derry, seus textos mais relevantes de forma crítica, visando à análise de sua contribuição como catalogador e pensador de cinema, buscando aporte em teóricos da psicanálise e da filosofia, auxiliando na compreensão para o estudo teórico e do “thriller de suspense” como um gênero e o nascimento de subgêneros cinematográficos que evoluíram em conjunto com o panorama sócio histórico ao longo do século vinte

The production of suspense thriller films has recently surged in Taiwan. These films adopt narrative techniques and visual aesthetics reminiscent of classic and neo-noir Hollywood cinema but also address social issues in Taiwan and represent transcultural aesthetic appropriation of film noir. This article employs a case study approach to examine the narrative and visual style of the Taiwanese suspense thriller Who Killed Cock Robin (2017), using film narratology as a textual analytical framework. This study considers themes, characters, visual style, and narrative structures, focusing on fundamental characteristics of classic film noir and neo-noir. This study reveals that the selected film both appropriates and deviates from the aesthetics of Hollywood film noir. It effectively incorporates aesthetic elements from classic Hollywood film noir and neo-noir, enriching the intricacies of storytelling and character depiction, while also localizing them through complex narrative strategies and nuanced Taiwanese cultural and social elements. The film brings attention to several prevalent issues in Taiwan’s media landscape, including truth manipulation, sensationalism, tabloidization, and conglomerate and political control. The film portrays Yi-Chi as a morally compromised character embodying the detective archetype with classic noir traits, while also reflecting the “Eastern mentality” in Taiwan journalism. Despite his moral compromises, Yi-Chi partly retains traditional virtues, presenting a nuanced view of human nature that blends pessimism and optimism in Taiwan. This approach creates a distinct cross-cultural narrative that resonates emotionally with Taiwanese audiences, while also contributing to the broader global cinematic discourse on film noir.

This paper compares the modernist musical-narrative separations of The Dark Mirror (Robert Siodmak, 1946), Dead Ringer (Paul Henreid, 1964), and Sisters (Brian De Palma, 1973) with the postmodernist musical-narrative fusions of the Canadian film Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988). The two earlier films (starring Olivia de Havilland and Bette Davis, respectively) mainly conform to the aesthetic of film noir or "suspense-thriller," whereas the two later films (starring Margot Kidder and Jeremy Irons, respectively) also contain substantial elements of "horror." The musical scores of these four films (by Dimitri Tiomkin, André Previn, Bernard Herrmann, and Howard Shore) feature, in varying degrees, the meaningful placement and development of leitmotifs and titles music, changes in meaning by altering instrumentation and/or mode, gender representations, and issues of cultural hierarchy and class distinctions.

The comic book industry in India began in 1950. Back then leading American comic books like The Phantom, Flash Gordon and Rip Kirby started to be published in India and translated into local languages. Indian youngsters in no time became interested in the new medium, especially in superhero comics known from the American popular culture. The success of these translations encouraged local publishers and cartoonists to create Indian themed comic books, set in India with Indian heroes (and superheroes) − even though Indian comics were still strongly influenced by American ones, mainly in terms of esthetics. However, around 1950, American comics publishing companies also tried to attract adult readers by presenting more adult content in a form of horror and thriller stories. Publishers in India quickly adapted this trend launching a very popular comic book series in Hindi of thrill, horror and suspense. In this way horror – till then almost completely absent from Indian literature and popular culture – was introduced to the local audience. The question remains, how different are those local spooks from the American ones and finally: what are Indians afraid of?