How Angel Heart Works

1. The Devil's Pact and the Crisis of (Post)Modern Subjectivity

2. Devil's Pact, Oedipus, and Film Noir
   • What is Film Noir?
     • American film genre (or style) of the 1940s and early 50s (includes Double Indemnity, The Woman in the Window, The Maltese Falcon, Laura, and Murder, My Sweet)
     • Fusion of German expressionist cinema, hard-boiled detective (Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett), and realist modes
     • first person perspective (often the somewhat seedy detective)
     • often a crime story (murder, theft)
     • chiaroscuro effects (stark contrast of light and dark)
     • favors vertiginous images (cf. the numerous staircase shots)
     • use of flashbacks to reveal (and conceal) the past
     • generally pessimistic, but also moralistic (in the sense of condemning) world view

   • What is the Oedipus Story?
     • Sophocles
     • exemplary tragedy for Aristotles' Poetics
     • the basic plot
     • Oedipus as detective
     • anagnorisis and peripeteia

3. Figuring out the plot of Angel Heart
   • Harry Angel's perspective
   • Johnny Liebling's perspective
   • Louis Cyphre/Lucifer's perspective

4. The Mind Screen: Films within the Film
   • The Images and Sounds of the Mind Screen
     • Fowler's Murder
     • Toots Suite's Murder
     • Making Love to Epiphany

5. The Film's Conclusion: Who killed Epiphany?

6. Rolling the Credits: The Ultimate Self-Reflexive Moment