Modernization noir in Greek cinema of the 1990s and early 2000s: New topographies and temporal tensions

Abstract

The focus of this article is the examination of the Greek crime film during the 1990s and early 2000s. The main question concerns if and how certain crime narratives from the 1990s and early 2000s responded to ideological discourse of ‘modernization’ that prevailed at the time. The analysis of three films (Apo tin akri tis polis, O hamenos ta perni ola and Sti skia tou Lemmy Kosion) with neo-noir features, unveils a field of representations produced in contrast to the period’s mainstream discourse of uplifting transformation, which was closely linked to Greece’s entry to the Eurozone and to the preparations for the Olympic Games. These films provide a critique of the city’s transformation into a metropolis, and of the subsequent transmutation of its societal tapestry not only within a European environment but also within the cultural logic of late capitalism. The ‘modernization noir’, as named in the article, includes two narrative trends: the first negotiates the arrival of new ethnicities, which transform the city and produce new hierarchies and topographies; the second self-consciously uses the genre in its ‘neo’ phase to comment on the transition between old and new.