Self-fashioning, Freedom, and the Problem of His-story: the return of noir

With a mix of two patently American film genres - film noir and the western - David Cronenberg’s critically acclaimed A History of Violence (2005) sets up a group of oppositions through the story of a man who leaves a life of crime and violence behind to assume a new identity, start a family, and settle down in the quiet town of Millbrook, Indiana. The oppositions between gangster thug, super-killer and good citizen, family-man are paralleled in another opposition particularly typical to the ...