Hopper was the first artist I thought of, too, but I'm
thinking his
paintings may be more noir than hardboiled. They show a lot
of quiet
alienation--you'll notice his characters never make eye
contact--but
not crime or violence.
You may want to talk about pulp fiction covers or detective
comics.
www.pulpcards.com has lots of pulp fiction covers posted to
sell or
send as e-postcards. The Crimeboss web site,
www.crimeboss.com,
has many covers from detective comics--not much analysis, but
lots
of pictures to look at.
For music, the soundtrack to Devil in a Blue Dress is
composed of
period jazz and blues pieces. The soundtrack to LA
Confidential is
also period pieces--I remember reading, maybe in the liner
notes, that
the numbers were chosen to contrast the Eisenhower optimism
of the
time with the dark events of the picture.
You might also want to look into some of the new swing bands,
like
Indigo Swing, Blue Plate Special, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, or
Royal
Crown Review, which touts itself as "hard-boiled swing"
(hard-boiled
swingers or martini-swiggin' poseurs? You decide).
Your question makes me think you might want to make
critical
distinctions between history and nostalgia, and hard-boiled
and
noir (not to bring that up again).
-----Diane Trap
trap@mail.libs.uga.edu
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