Samuel Khachikian and the Crime Thriller in Iran

Samuel Khachikian was the most successful director of crime films in Iran during the genre’s heyday in the late 1950s and early 60s. Debates among critics about his films highlight how the crime film was able to thrive as a prestige form in the years before boundaries had solidified between commercial films and intellectual films made in Iran. Film noir, from its earliest transatlantic imaginings to its recent global circuits, has consistently engaged with an imagined elsewhere through its modernist style. In many parts of the world, it allowed a kind of performance of exuberant cinephilia while also attracting attention about its originality. In Tehran, as elsewhere, the genre accompanies the global circulation of modern design with strong, but mixed, feelings.