In the example above, a teacher could go a step further after students write comparison and contrast papers on the films, and have students compare and contrast the films with the novels upon which they are based. "L.A. Confidential" was written by James Ellroy; and "Devil in a Blue Dress" was written by Walter Mosley. The students then read two novels with a critical eye, and begin to understand the differences between writing conventions and film conventions, even when they use the same story line.
Comparison and contrast can actually be used to develop an entire course of study. For example, upon completion of papers comparing noir novels with noir films, the students could be asked to compare and contrast noir crime fiction with other genres of crime fiction, for example, "police procedurals." They might read "A Dark Coffin," the police procedural novel by Gwnedoline Butler, which also offers them a woman writer to compare to Ellroy and Mosley. This will emphasize similarities in crime fiction, such as intricate plotting. Differences might be that police procedurals generally show the police and the establishment in a good light, whereas noir fiction emphasizes corruption and often contains strong social criticism between the lines.
In the background of L.A. Confidential is a television series that is a police procedural. This background story is based on the once popular early television series named "Dragnet." Students can watch two episodes of "Dragnet," then watch two episodes of the more modern L.A. police procedural, "Law and Order -- LA." They can then write another comparison and contrast of the two procedurals to study how conventions of the genre are the same and how they have changed.
Since the stories were set in Los Angeles, and both were period pieces that gave glimpses of a chequered history of the city, students could then be asked to read "Los Angeles, A Portrait of a City," by Starr, Ulin and Hiemann; then read "Ecology of Fear," by Mike Davis. "Portrait" contains a lot of pictures with a fairly standard history, while Davis' book looks at class conflict in Los Angeles history as it is manifested in fiction about Los Angeles (taking students back to Mosley and Ellroy). In four compare and contrast essays, students will traverse art, history, politics, environmentalism and sociology, while getting to read some great books, and watch a couple of great films.