Film noir
Film noir is a
cinematic term used primarily to describe
Hollywood crime dramas that set their
protagonists in a world perceived as inherently corrupt and unsympathetic. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a
low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in
German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the
hardboiled school of
crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the
Depression.
The term
film noir (French for "black film"), first applied to Hollywood movies by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, was unknown to most of the American filmmakers and actors while they were creating the classic film noirs. The canon of film noir was defined in retrospect by film historians and critics; many of those involved in the making of film noir later professed to be unaware at the time of having created a distinctive type of film.
"We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir
oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel...." This is the first of many attempts to define film noir made by the French critics Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton in their 1955 book
Panorama du film noir amĂ©ricain 1941â€"1953 (
A Panorama of American Film Noir), the original and seminal extended treatment of the subject. They take pains to point out that not each film noir embodies all five attributes in equal measureâ€"this one is more dreamlike, while this other is particularly brutal. Yet, despite the authors' caveats (and repeated efforts at alternative definitions), in five decades it has hardly been bettered as a concise description of the noir mode as perceived by a plurality of critics. The preliminary warning is also well advised: attempts, no matter how lengthy, to define this field whose roots, outgrowths, and very nature are inveterately diverse tend to result not just in the sort of generalizing that comes with all acts of definition, but simplicity over and beyond.
Film noirs embrace a variety of
genres, from the gangster film to the
police procedural to the so-called
social problem picture, and evidence a variety of visual approaches, from meat-and-potatoes Hollywood mainstream to outré. While many critics refer to film noir as a genre itself, others argue that it can be no such thing. Though noir is often associated with an urban setting, for example, many classic noirs take place largely in small towns, suburbia, rural areas, or on the open road, so setting can not be its genre determinant, as with the
Western. Similarly, while the
private eye and the
femme fatale are character types conventionally identified with noir, the majority of film noirs feature neither, so there is no character basis for genre designation as with the gangster film. Nor does it rely on anything as evident as the monstrous or supernatural (viz., the
horror film), the speculative (viz., the
sci-fi film), or the song-and-dance routine (viz., the
musical). A more analogous case is that of the
screwball comedy, widely accepted by film historians as constituting a "genre"â€"the screwball is defined not by a fundamental attribute, but by a general disposition and a group of elements, some (but rarely and perhaps never all) of which are found in each of the genre's films. However, because of the diversity of noir (much greater than that of the screwball comedy), certain scholars in the field, such as film historian Thomas Schatz, treat it as not a genre but a "style." Alain Silver, the most widely published American critic specializing in film noir studies, refers to it as a "cycle" and a "phenomenon," even as he argues that it hasâ€"like certain genresâ€"a consistent set of visual and thematic codes. Other critics treat film noir as a "mood," a "movement," or a "series," or simply address a chosen set of movies from the "period." There is no consensus on the matter.
Film noir has sources not only in cinema but other artistic mediums as well. The low-key lighting schemes commonly linked with the classic mode are in the tradition of
chiaroscuro and
tenebrism, techniques using high contrasts of light and dark developed by 15th- and 16th-century painters associated with
Mannerism and the
Baroque. Film noir's aesthetics are deeply influenced by
German Expressionism, a cinematic movement of the 1910s and 1920s closely related to contemporaneous developments in theater, photography, painting, scultpture, and architecture. Opportunities offered by the booming Hollywood film industry and, later, the threat of growing
Nazi power led to the emigration of many important film artists working in Germany who had either been directly involved in the Expressionist movement or studied with its practitioners.
Directors such as
Fritz Lang,
Robert Siodmak, and
Michael Curtiz brought dramatic lighting techniques and a psychologically expressive approach to
mise-en-scène with them to Hollywood, where they would make some of the most famous of classic noirs. Lang's 1931 masterwork, the German
M, is among the first major crime films of the sound era to join a characteristically noirish visual style with a noir-type plot, one in which the protagonist is a criminal (as are his most successful pursuers).
M was also the occasion for the first star performance by
Peter Lorre, who would go on to act in several formative American noirs of the classic era.
By 1931, Curtiz had already been in Hollywood for half a decade, making as many as six films a year. Movies of his such as
20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) and
Private Detective 62 (1933) are among the early Hollywood sound films arguably classifiable as noir. Giving Expressionist-affiliated moviemakers particularly free stylistic rein were
Universal horror pictures such as
Dracula (1931),
The Mummy (1932)â€"the former
photographed and the latter directed by the Berlin-trained
Karl Freundâ€"and
The Black Cat (1934), directed by Austrian émigré
Edgar G. Ulmer; the Universal horror that comes closest to noir, both in story and sensibility, however, is
The Invisible Man (1933), directed by Englishman
James Whale and shot by American
Carl Laemmle Jr. Directing in Hollywood at the same time was the Vienna-born but largely American-raised
Josef von Sternberg, whose films such as
Shanghai Express (1932) and
The Devil Is a Woman (1935), with their hothouse eroticism and baroque visual style, specifically anticipate central elements of classic noir. The commercial and critical success of Sternberg's silent
Underworld in 1927 was largely responsible for spurring a trend of Hollywood gangster films. Popular movies in the genre such as
Little Caesar (1931),
The Public Enemy (1931), and
Scarface (1932) demonstrated that there was an audience for crime dramas with morally reprehensible protagonists.
An important, and possibly influential, cinematic antecedent to classic noir was 1930s French
poetic realism, with its romantic,
fatalistic attitude and celebration of doomed heroes; an acknowledged influence on certain trends in noir was 1940s
Italian neorealism, with its emphasis on quasi-documentary authenticity. (The
Warner Bros. drama
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang [1932] presciently combines these sensibilities.) A group of films from the middle of the classic noir period, including
The Naked City (1948), directed by
Jules Dassin, and
Panic in the Streets (1950), directed by
Elia Kazan, adopted the neorealist approach of on-location photography with nonprofessional extras. A few movies now considered noir strove to depict comparatively ordinary protagonists with unspectacular lives in a manner occasionally evocative of neorealismâ€"the most famous example is
The Lost Weekend (1945), directed by
Billy Wilder, yet another Vienna-born, Berlin-trained American
auteur. (In turn, one of the primary influences on neorealism was the 1930 German film
Menschen am Sonntag, codirected and cowritten by Siodmak, cowritten by Wilder, and codirected and produced by Ulmer.) Among those movies not themselves considered film noirs, perhaps none had a greater effect on the development of the genre than America's own
Citizen Kane (1941), the landmark motion picture directed by
Orson Welles. Its Sternbergian visual intricacy and complex narrative structure driven by
voiceover narration can be seen reflected in dozens of classic film noirs.
"The Simple Art of Murder"
The primary literary influence on film noir was the
hardboiled school of American
detective and
crime fiction, led in its early years by such writers as
Dashiell Hammett (whose first novel,
Red Harvest, was published in 1929) and
James M. Cain (whose
The Postman Always Rings Twice appeared five years later), and popularized in
pulp magazines such as
Black Mask. The classic film noirs
The Maltese Falcon (1941) and
The Glass Key (1942) were based on novels by Hammett; Cain's novels provided the basis for
Double Indemnity (1944),
Mildred Pierce (1945),
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), and
Slightly Scarlet (1956; adapted from
Love's Lovely Counterfeit). A decade before the classic era, a story of Hammett's was the source for the gangster melodrama
City Streets (1931), directed by
Rouben Mamoulian and photographed by
Lee Garmes, who worked regularly with Sternberg. Wedding a style and story both with many noir characteristics, released the month before Lang's
M,
City Streets has a claim to being the first major film noir.
Raymond Chandler, who debuted as a novelist with
The Big Sleep in 1939, soon became the most famous author of the hardboiled school. Not only were Chandler's novels turned into major noirsâ€
"Murder, My Sweet (1944; adapted from
Farewell, My Lovely),
The Big Sleep (1946), and
Lady in the Lake (1947)â€"he was an important
screenwriter in the genre as well, producing the scripts for
Double Indemnity,
The Blue Dahlia (1946), and
Strangers on a Train (1951). Where Chandler, like Hammett, centered most of his novels and stories on the character of the private eye, Cain featured less heroic protagonists and focused more on psychological exposition than on crime solving; the Cain approach has come to be identified with a subset of the hardboiled genre dubbed "
noir fiction." For much of the 1940s, one of the most prolific and successful authors of this often downbeat brand of suspense tale was
Cornell Woolrich (sometimes using the pseudonyms George Hopley or William Irish). No writer's published work provided the basis for more film noirs of the classic period than Woolrich's: thirteen in all, including
Black Angel (1946),
Deadline at Dawn (1946), and
Fear in the Night (1947).
A crucial literary source for film noir, now often overlooked, was
W. R. Burnett, whose first novel to be published was
Little Caesar, in 1929. It would be turned into the hit for
Warner Bros. in 1931; the following year, Burnett was hired to write dialogue for
Scarface, while
Beast of the City was adapted from one of his stories. Some critics regard these latter two movies as film noirs, despite their early date. Burnett's characteristic narrative approach fell somewhere between that of the quintessential hardboiled writers and their noir fiction compatriotsâ€"his protagonists were often heroic in their way, a way just happening to be that of the gangster. During the classic era, his work, either as author or screenwriter, was the basis for seven movies now widely regarded as film noirs, including three of the most famous:
High Sierra (1941),
This Gun for Hire (1942), and
The Asphalt Jungle (1950).
The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. The movie most commonly cited as the first "true" film noir is
Stranger on the Third Floor (1940). While
City Streets and other pre-WWII crime melodramas such as
Fury (1936) and
You Only Live Once (1937), both directed by Fritz Lang, are considered full-fledged noir by some critics, most categorize them as "proto-noir" or in similar terms. Many claim that there is a significant distinction between the noirs of the classic period's two decadesâ€"other than the relative disappearance of the private eye as a lead character there is no consensus on how that distinction manifests, but it often comes down to a view that the noirs of the 1950s tend to be more "extreme" in one way or another. Orson Welles's
Touch of Evil (1958) is often cited as the last film in the classic period. Some scholars believe film noir never really ended, but continued to transform even as the characteristic noir visual style began to seem dated and changing production conditions led Hollywood in different directionsâ€"in this view, later films in the noir tradition are seen as part of a continuity with classic noir. A majority of critics, however, regard comparable movies made outside the classic era to be something other than genuine film noirs. They regard true film noir as belonging to a temporally and geographically limited cycle or period, and consider subsequent films that try to evoke the classics as something different because the creators are conscious of a noir "style" in a way that the original makers of film noir perhaps were not.
Most of the film noirs of the classic period were low-budget features without major stars (
B-movies either literally or in spirit), in which writers, directors, cinematographers, and other craftsmen, some of them
blacklisted, found themselves relatively free from the typical big-picture constraints. While enforcement of the
Production Code ensured that no movie character could literally get away with murder, at the B level of noir especially, one could come awful close. Thematically, film noirs as a group were most exceptional for the relative frequency with which they centered on women of questionable virtueâ€"a focus very rare in Hollywood films after the mid-1930s and the end of the
pre-Code era. The signal movie in this vein was
Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder; setting the mold was
Barbara Stanwyck's unforgettable
femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichsonâ€"an apparent nod to
Marlene Dietrich, who had built her extraordinary career playing such characters for Sternberg. An A-level feature all the way, the movie's commercial success and seven
Oscar nominations made it probably the most influential of the early noirs; in particular, it led to a spate of what later became known as "
bad girl movies." Conventional A films, however dramatic, were ultimately expected to convey positive, reassuring messages; in terms of style, invisible camerawork and
editing techniques, flattering soft lighting schemes, and deluxely trimmed sets were the rule. The makers of film noir turned all this on its head, creating bleak, sophisticated dramas tinged with mistrust, cynicism, and a sense of the
absurd, in settings that were frequently either real-life urban or budget-saving minimalist, with often strikingly expressionist lighting and unsettling techniques such as wildly skewed camera angles and convoluted flashbacks. The noir style gradually influenced the mainstreamâ€"even beyond Hollywood.
Notable American film noirs of the classic period
(with directors and significant noir performersâ€"supporting players in italics)[ There is no completely objective way of establishing the most appropriate length for a list of notable films in a particular field or for deciding on the criteria for inclusion. A list of 20 films from the 1940s and 15 from the 1950s (reflecting the relative number of noirs detected by latter-day critics in each decade) provides comfortingly round numbers and a scope large enough to include (almost) all the classic film noirs claimed to be essential yet small enough not to overwhelm the reader intent on a self-education in noir from the ground up.]
There are probably not two critics (or Wikipedia editors) on Earth who could agree on the contents of such a list; therefore, the methodology employed to identify "notability"â€"restated later in the text of the article as "enduring fame"â€"relies on the good graces of IMDb.com's invaluable Power Search function. With the "first" (Stranger on the Third Floor) and "last" (Touch of Evil) classic noirs guaranteed inclusion into the rosters of 20 and 15, the list of notables is based on the IMDb-identified film noirs most highly rated by that site's users, with a minimum vote count of 2,000 for the 1940s and (reflecting the lower awareness of later noir) 1,000 for the 1950s, and a minimum average "rating" of 7.1 (out of a possible 10).
This procedure produced very happy results: a perfect 19 films for the 1940s and a perfect 15 films (including Touch of Evil) for the 1950s. One substitution was made in each case. Though identified by IMDb as a film noir, there is not presently a critical consensus that Suspicion (1941), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, qualifies to the category. In addition, Hitchcock is already represented four times on the notables list. The highest rated film with at least 1,000 votes was substituted: The Set-Up, which pleasingly introduces both a significant noir director and star to the list. If the replacement bar had been set at 1,500 votes, the substitute would have been one of two lower-rated films: The Letter (1940)â€"another borderline case, like Suspicionâ€"or, failing that, Detour (1945; covered in the article). In the case of the 1950s exchange, the imperative was not exclusion, but inclusion: Night and the City, for reasons described in the article, is treated by almost all film historians as an American film noir; furthermore, it is regarded by almost all critics who have published extensively in the field as one of the finest movies of the type. Though fewer than a thousand IMDb viewers have entered an opinion on it, those that have rate it very highly, and it is fair to say that any critic would be shocked to see it excluded from a list of notable examples of classic noir. The movie dropped in its favor was The Desperate Hours (1955): (a) it was the lowest-rated film with fewer than 1,500 votes; (b) star Humphrey Bogart is already represented six times on the list; (c) no published critics regard it as a prime example of the form; and (d) the leading encyclopedia in the field, Silver and Ward's, seems utterly torn about whether it's a noir at all. In terms of historical notability, based on the critical literature, the most important film missing from the list is probably Murder, My Sweet (1944) and the most important missing director is certainly Anthony Mann (each is covered in the article).
Actors are listed as "significant noir performers" according to different criteria for stars and supporting players: The former are listed as significant if they were star-billed in at least three film noirs total or in two films on the notables list (stars of listed films who do not qualify as significant noir performers are named in parentheses). The latter are identified as significant (and thus named) if they appeared in at least five film noirs totalâ€"
the name of one nonqualifying suporting player is included: Lee Marvin appeared in only two movies now regarded as film noirs of the classic period, but his performance as Vince Stone in The Big Heat is one of the most renowned villainous turns in the chronicles of noir. An accounting of the most important missing star or featured actors would include at least Veronica Lake, Richard Conte, Dan Duryea, Alan Ladd, Dick Powell, and heavies William Bendix and Raymond Burr. Character actor Whit Bissell appeared in no fewer than a dozen classic noirs.1940â€"1949
Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) d. Boris Ingster, w/
Peter Lorre,
Elisha Cook Jr.High Sierra (1941) d.
Raoul Walsh, w/
Ida Lupino,
Humphrey Bogart,
Arthur KennedyThe Maltese Falcon (1941) d.
John Huston, w/ Bogart,
Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Cook (costarring
Mary Astor)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943) d.
Alfred Hitchcock, w/
Joseph CottenLaura (1944) d.
Otto Preminger, w/
Gene Tierney,
Dana Andrews,
Clifton WebbDouble Indemnity (1944) d.
Billy Wilder, w/
Fred MacMurray,
Barbara Stanwyck,
Edward G. RobinsonThe Lost Weekend (1945) d. Wilder, w/
Ray MillandMildred Pierce (1945) d.
Michael Curtiz, w/
Joan Crawford,
Zachary Scott,
Bruce BennettThe Big Sleep (1946) d.
Howard Hawks, w/ Bogart,
Lauren Bacall,
Dorothy Malone, CookGilda (1946) d.
Charles Vidor, w/
Rita Hayworth,
Glenn Ford,
George Macready, Joseph CalleiaThe Killers (1946) d.
Robert Siodmak, w/
Burt Lancaster,
Ava Gardner,
Edmond O'Brien,
Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, Charles McGraw, William Conrad, Jeff CoreyNotorious (1946) d. Hitchcock, w/
Claude Rains (starring
Cary Grant and
Ingrid Bergman)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) d.
Tay Garnett, w/
Lana Turner,
John Garfield,
Audrey TotterThe Stranger (1946) d.
Orson Welles, w/ Robinson,
Loretta Young, Welles,
Erskine SanfordDark Passage (1947) d.
Delmer Daves, w/ Bogart, Bacall,
BennettThe Lady from Shanghai (1947) d. Welles, w/ Hayworth, Welles,
Everett Sloane, Ted de Corsia, SanfordOut of the Past (1947) d.
Jacques Tourneur, w/ Mitchum,
Jane Greer,
Kirk Douglas,
Rhonda Fleming, Richard Webb, Steve BrodieKey Largo (1948) d. Huston, w/ Bogart, Robinson, Bacall,
Claire Trevor, Thomas GomezThe Set-Up (1949) d.
Robert Wise, w/
Robert Ryan, Totter,
George Tobias, Wallace Ford, Percy HeltonWhite Heat (1949) d. Walsh, w/
James Cagney, O'Brien,
Steve Cochran, Fred Clark (costarring
Virginia Mayo)
1950â€"1958
The Asphalt Jungle (1950) d. Huston, w/
Sterling Hayden,
Barry Kelley, Ray TealD.O.A. (1950) d.
Rudolph Maté, w/ O'Brien,
Luther AdlerIn a Lonely Place (1950) d.
Nicholas Ray, w/ Bogart,
Gloria Grahame,
Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith, Jeff DonnellNight and the City (1950) d.
Jules Dassin, w/
Richard Widmark,
Tierney,
Mike Mazurki [see "
Film noir outside the United States" below for its status as an American noir]
Sunset Boulevard (1950) d. Wilder, w/
William Holden,
Clark, Jack Webb (costarring
Gloria Swanson)
Ace in the Hole (1951) d. Wilder, w/ Douglas,
Jan Sterling,
Robert Arthur, Frank Cady, Richard Benedict, Teal, Lewis Martin, Timothy CareyStrangers on a Train (1951) d. Hitchcock, w/
Farley Granger,
Ruth Roman,
Kasey Rogers, John Doucette (costarring
Robert Walker)
Pickup on South Street (1953) d.
Samuel Fuller, w/ Widmark,
Richard Kiley, Milburn StoneThe Big Heat (1953) d.
Fritz Lang, w/ Ford, Grahame,
Lee Marvin, Carolyn Jones, DoucetteKiss Me Deadly (1955) d.
Robert Aldrich, w/
Dekker, Paul Stewart, Marian Carr, Jack Elam, Helton (starring
Ralph Meeker)
The Night of the Hunter (1955) d.
Charles Laughton, w/ Mitchum,
Shelley Winters (costarring
Lillian Gish)
The Killing (1956) d.
Stanley Kubrick, w/ Hayden,
Coleen Gray,
Vince Edwards,
Jay C. Flippen, Cook, Marie Windsor, de Corsia, Carey, Joe Turkel, Jay AdlerThe Wrong Man (1956) d. Hitchcock, w/
Henry Fonda,
Harold J. Stone (costarring
Vera Miles)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) d.
Alexander Mackendrick, w/ Lancaster,
Tony Curtis,
Levene, Donnell, Jay AdlerTouch of Evil (1958) d. Welles, w/
Charlton Heston,
Janet Leigh, Welles,
Calleia, Ray CollinsFor an expanded list of films considered "noir," see
List of film noirDirectors and the business of noir
While the inceptive
Stranger on the Third Floor was an
RKO B-picture, directed by a virtual unknown, the preceding list of filmsâ€"based primarily on enduring fameâ€"leans heavily toward A-list productions by name-brand directors such as Wilder,
Alfred Hitchcock, and
John Huston (who debuted as a director with
The Maltese Falcon).
Otto Preminger's success with
Laura made his name (he honored the debt by making two other classic noirs with
Dana Andrews,
Fallen Angel [1945] and
Where the Sidewalk Ends [1950]) and
In a Lonely Place did something similar for
Nicholas Ray's career (his other noirs include his debut,
They Live By Night [1948], and
On Dangerous Ground [1951]). Orson Welles had notorious problems with financing, but his three film noirs were reasonably well budgeted:
The Lady from Shanghai received full A-level backing, while both
The Stranger (his most conventional film) and
Touch of Evil (an unmistakably personal work) were funded at levels lower but still commensurate with a headlining release; many of Fritz Lang's noirs (which include a pair of films with
Edward G. Robinson,
The Woman in the Window [1945] and the wickedly entertaining
Scarlet Street [1945]) were produced with similar midrange budgets.
Raoul Walsh never had much name recognition during his half-century as a working director, but his three classic noirs (
The Enforcer [1951], starrring
Humphrey Bogart, completes the set) are all no less than midrange in budget and major in quality. In addition to the aforementioned, other directors associated with top-of-the-bill Hollywood film noirs include
Edward Dmytryk (
Murder, My Sweet;
Crossfire [1947]),
Henry Hathaway (
The Dark Corner [1946],
Kiss of Death [1947]), and
John Farrow (
The Big Clock [1948],
His Kind of Woman [1951]).
Again, however, the vast majority of Hollywood films now considered classic noir were B-moviesâ€"some produced by the
major studios to run on the bottom of
double bills, below their own A-list movies; some by the smaller, so-called
Poverty Row studios, from the relatively well-off
Monogram/Allied Artists (which occasionally splurged on particular films in an effort to emulate the majors' A productions) to shakier ventures such as
Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC); and some by independent, often actor-owned, companies contracting with one of the larger outfits for distribution.
Robert Wise (cited above, also
Born to Kill [1947]) and
Anthony Mann (
T-Men [1947],
Raw Deal [1948]) each made a series of impressive B-films, many of them noirs, before graduating to steady work on big-budget productions.
Jacques Tourneur had made over thirty Hollywood Bs (most completely forgotten now) before directing the A-budget
Out of the Past, considered by some critics the greatest of classic noirs. Directors like
Samuel Fuller (cited above, also
Underworld U.S.A. [1961]),
Joseph H. Lewis (
Gun Crazy [1949],
The Big Combo [1955]), and
Phil Karlson (
Kansas City Confidential [1952],
The Brothers Rico [1957]) carved out substantial ouevres largely at the B-movie level. In 1945, Edgar G. Ulmer made one of the all-time noir cult classics,
Detour, at PRC. The B-movie also provided an opportunity for accomplished noir actress
Ida Lupino to become the sole female director in Hollywood during the late 1940s and much of the 1950sâ€"her best-known film is
The Hitch-Hiker (1953), which she also produced through her company The Filmakers, and which was distributed by RKO. It is one of the seven classic film noirs produced outside of the major studios that have been chosen to date for the United States
National Film Registry; the others are
Detour,
Gun Crazy,
D.O.A.,
Kiss Me Deadly,
Sweet Smell of Success (the preceding four distributed by
United Artists, the "studio without a studio"), and
Force of Evil (1948; dist.
MGM), directed by
Abraham Polonsky and starring
John Garfield, both of whom would be blacklisted in the 1950s. Independent production usually meant restricted circumstances, but not alwaysâ€
"Sweet Smell of Success, for instance, despite the original plans of the production team, was clearly not made on the cheap, though like many other cherished A-budget noirs it might be said to have a B-movie soul.
Perhaps no director better displayed that spirit than the German-born
Robert Siodmak, who had already made a score of films before his 1940 arrival in Hollywood. Working mostly on A features, he made eight movies now regarded as classic film noirs (a figure matched only by Lang and Mann). In addition to
The Killers,
Burt Lancaster's first film, Siodmak's other important contributions to the genre include 1944's
Phantom Lady (a top-of-the-line B and Woolrich adaptation), the ironically titled
Christmas Holiday (1944), and
Cry of the City (1948).
Criss Cross (1949), with Lancaster again the lead, exemplifies how Siodmak brought the virtues of the B-movie to the A noir. In addition to the relatively looser constraints on character and message at lower budgets, the nature of B production lent itself to the noir style for directly economic reasons: dim lighting not only saved on electrical costs but helped cloak cheap sets (mist and smoke also served the cause); night shooting was often compelled by hurried production schedules; plots with obscure motivations and intriguingly elliptical transitions were sometimes the consequence of scripts written in haste, not every scene of which was there always time or money to shoot. In
Criss Cross, Siodmak achieves all these effects with purpose, wrapping them around
Yvonne De Carlo, playing the most understandable of femme fatales,
Dan Duryea, in one of his deliciously charismatic villain roles, and Lancasterâ€"already an established starâ€"as an ordinary joe turned armed robber, a romantic obsessive on a one-way ride to ruin.
Some critics regard classic film noir as a cycle exclusive to the United States; e.g., Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward: "With the Western, film noir shares the distinction of being an indigenous American form...a wholly American film style." Others, however, regard noir as an international phenomenon. Even before the beginning of the generally acccepted classic period, there were movies made far from Hollywood that can be seen in retrospect as film noirs, for example, the French productions
Pépé le Moko (1937), directed by Jules Duvivier, and
Le Jour se lève (1939), directed by
Marcel Carné.
During the classic period, there were many films produced outside the United States, particularly in France, that share elements of style, theme, and sensibility with American film noirs and may themselves be included in the genre's canon. In certain cases, the interrelationship with Hollywood noir is obvious: American-born director Jules Dassin moved to France in the early 1950s as a result of the Hollywood blacklist, and made one of the most famous French film noirs,
Rififi (1955). Other well-known French films often classified as noir include
Quai des Orfèvres (1947) and
Les Diaboliques (1955), both directed by
Henri-Georges Clouzot;
Casque d'or (1952) and
Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), both directed by
Jacques Becker; and
Ascenseur pour l'Ă©chafaud (1958), directed by
Louis Malle. French director
Jean-Pierre Melville is widely recognized for his tragic, minimalist film noirsâ€
"Quand tu liras cette lettre (1953) and
Bob le flambeur (1955), from the classic period, were followed by
Le Doulos (1962),
Le SamouraĂŻ (1967), and
Le Cercle rouge (1970).
A number of thrillers produced in Great Britain during the classic period are also frequently referred to as film noirs, including
Brighton Rock (1947), directed by
John Boulting;
They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), directed by Alberto Cavalcanti;
The Small Back Room (1949), directed by
Michael Powell and
Emeric Pressburger; and
Cast a Dark Shadow (1955), directed by
Lewis Gilbert. Before leaving for France, Jules Dassin had been obliged by political pressure to shoot his last English-language film of the classic noir period in Great Britain:
Night and the City (1950), though it was conceived in the United States and was not only directed by an American but also stars an American actor (
Richard Widmark), is technically a UK production, financed by
20th Century-Fox's British subsidiary. The most famous of classic British noirs is director
Carol Reed's
The Third Man (1949), like
Brighton Rock based on a
Graham Greene novel. Set in Vienna immediately after World War II, it stars
Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, both prominent American actors who starred in U.S. film noirs; despite being a completely British production, the movie is sometimes discussed as if it is a classic Hollywood noir.
Elsewhere, Italian director
Luchino Visconti adapted Cain's
The Postman Always Rings Twice as
Ossessione (1943), regarded both as one of the great noirs and a seminal film in the development of neorealism. (This was not even the first screen version of Cain's novel, having been preceded by the French
Le Dernier tournant in 1939.) In Japan, the celebrated
Akira Kurosawa directed several movies recognizable as film noirs, including
Drunken Angel (1948),
Stray Dog (1949), and
High and Low (1963).
Among the first major neo-noir filmsâ€"the term often applied to movies that consciously refer back to the classic noir traditionâ€"was the French
Tirez sur la pianiste (1960), directed by
François Truffaut from a novel by one of the gloomiest of American noir fiction writers,
David Goodis. Noir crime films and melodramas have been produced in many countries in the post-classic area, some of them quintessentially self-aware neo-noirs, others simply sharing a version of the hardboiled sensibility associated with classic noir. Notable examples include
Il Conformista (1969; Italy),
The Castle of Sand (1974; Japan),
Der Amerikanische Freund (1977; Germany),
The Element of Crime (1984; Denmark),
As Tears Go By (1988; Hong Kong),
Insomnia (1997; Norway),
Croupier (1998; UK), and
Blind Shaft (2003; China).
The 1960s and 1970s
While it is hard to draw a line between some of the noir films of the early 1960s such as
Blast of Silence (1961) and
Cape Fear (1962) and the noirs of the late 1950s, new trends emerged in the post-classic era.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962), directed by
John Frankenheimer,
Shock Corridor (1962), directed by Samuel Fuller, and
Brainstorm (1965), directed by experienced noir character actor
William Conrad, all treat the theme of mental dispossession within stylistic and tonal frameworks derived from classic film noir. In a different vein, filmmakers such as
Arthur Penn (
Mickey One [1964], clearly drawing inspiration from Truffaut's
Tirez sur la pianiste and other
French New Wave films),
John Boorman (
Point Blank [1967], similarly caught up, though in the
Nouvelle vague's deeper waters), and
Alan J. Pakula (
Klute [1971]) directed movies that knowingly related themselves to the original film noirs, inviting audiences in on the game. Conscious acknowledgment of the classic era's conventions, as historical
archetypes to be revived, rejected, or reimagined, is what puts the "neo" in neo-noir, according to many critics. Though several late classic noirs,
Kiss Me Deadly in particular, were entirely self-knowing and post-traditional in conception, none that were top- or midbudgeted (like
Aldrich's masterpiece) tipped its hand in a way noticeable to most audiences of the time. The first broadly popular crime drama of an unmistakabe neo-noir nature was not a movie, but the TV series
Peter Gunn (1958â€"61), created by
Blake Edwards.
A manifest affiliation with noir traditionsâ€"which, by its nature, allows for different sorts of commentary on them to be inferredâ€"can also provide the basis for explicit critiques of those traditions. The first major film to work this angle (that might be thought of as the most "neo" of "neo") was French director
Jean-Luc Godard's
Ă€ bout de souffle (
Breathless; 1960), which pays its literal respects to Bogart and his crime films while brandishing a bold new style for a new day. In 1973, director
Robert Altman, who had worked on
Peter Gunn, flipped off noir piety with
The Long Goodbye. Based on the novel by Raymond Chandler, it features one of Bogart's most famous characters, but in
iconoclastic fashion: Philip Marlowe, the prototypical hardboiled detective, is replayed as a hapless misfit, almost laughably out of touch with contemporary
mores and morality. Where Altman's subversion of the film noir mythos was so irreverent as to anger many contemporary critics, around the same time Woody Allen was paying affectionate, at points idolatrous homage to the classic mode with
Play It Again, Sam (1972).
The most acclaimed of the neo-noirs of the era was director
Roman Polanski's 1974
Chinatown. Written by
Robert Towne, it is set in 1930s Los Angeles, an accustomed noir locale nudged back some few years in a way that makes the pivotal loss of innocence in the story even crueler. Where Polanski and Towne raised noir to a black apogee by turning rearward, director
Martin Scorsese and screenwriter
Paul Schrader brought the noir attitude crashing into the present day with
Taxi Driver (1976), a cackling, bloody-minded gloss on bicentennial America. In 1978,
Walter Hill wrote and directed the
The Driver, a chase movie as might have been imagined by Jean-Pierre Melville in an especially abstract mood. Hill was already a central figure in 1970s noir of a more straightforward manner, having written the script for director
Sam Peckinpah's
The Getaway (1972), adapting a novel by pulp master
Jim Thompson, as well as for two tough private eye films: an original screenplay for
Hickey & Boggs (1972) and an adaptation of a novel by
Ross Macdonald, the leading literary descendant of Hammett and Chandler, for
The Drowning Pool (1975). Some of the strongest 1970s noirs, in fact, were unwinking remakes of the classics, "neo" mostly be default: Altman's heartbreaking
Thieves Like Us (1973), based on the same source as Ray's
They Live by Night, and the last worthy noir starring Mitchum,
Farewell, My Lovely (1975), the Chandler tale made classically as
Murder, My Sweet. Detective series, prevalent on American television during the period, updated the hardboiled tradition in different ways, but the show conjuring the most noir tone was a horror crossover touched with shaggy,
Long Goodbyeâ€"style humor:
Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974â€"75), featuring a Chicago newspaper reporter investigating strange, usually supernatural occurrences.
The 1980s through the present
The turn of the decade brought Scorsese's black-and-white
Raging Bull (cowritten by Schrader); an acknowledged masterpieceâ€"often voted the greatest film of the 1980s in critics' pollsâ€"it is also a retreat, telling a story of boxing and corruption that recalls in both theme and visual ambience noir dramas such as
Body and Soul (1947) and
Champion (1949). From 1981, the popular
Body Heat, written and directed by
Lawrence Kasdan, invokes a different set of classic noir elements, this time in a humid, erotically charged Florida setting; its success confirmed the commercial viability of neo-noir, at a time when the major Hollywood studios were becoming increasingly risk averse. The mainstreaming of neo-noir is evident in such films as
Black Widow (1987),
Shattered (1991), and
Final Analysis (1992). Few neo-noirs have made more money or more wittily updated the tradition of the noir double-entendre than
Basic Instinct (1992), directed by
Paul Verhoeven and written by
Joe Eszterhas. Over the past twenty-five years, the big-budget auteur to work most frequently in a neo-noir mode has been
Michael Mann, with the films
Thief (1981),
Heat (1995), and
Collateral (2004), and the 1980s TV series
Miami Vice and
Crime Story. Mann's output exemplifies a primary strain of neo-noir, in which classic themes and tropes are revisited in a contemporary setting with an up-to-date visual style and
rock- or
hip hopâ€"based musical
soundtrack. Like
Chinatown, its more complex predecessor,
Curtis Hanson's Oscar-winning
L.A. Confidential (1997), based on the
James Ellroy novel, demonstrates an opposite tendencyâ€"the deliberately retro film noir; its tale of corrupt cops and femme fatales is seemingly lifted straight from a movie of 1953, the year in which it is set.
|
Neo-noir/Take 2: Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell, a femme fatale for the 1990sâ€"and the agesâ€"in the smash box-office hit Basic Instinct (1992). She is seen here under interrogation, preparing to open up. |
Working generally with much smaller budgets, brothers
Joel and Ethan Coen have created one of the most substantial film ouevres influenced by classic noir, with movies such as
Blood Simple (1984),
Fargo (1996), considered by some a supreme work in the neo-noir mode, and
The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), featuring a scene apparently staged to mirror the one from
Out of the Past pictured above. The Coens cross noir with other generic lines in the gangster drama
Miller's Crossing (1990)â€"loosely based on the Dashiell Hammett novels
Red Harvest and
The Glass Keyâ€"and the comedy
The Big Lebowski (1998), a tribute to Chandler and an homage to Altman's version of
The Long Goodbye. Perhaps no contemporary films better reflect the classic noir A-movie-with-a-B-movie-soul than those of director-writer
Quentin Tarantino; neo-noirs of his such as
Reservoir Dogs (1992) and
Pulp Fiction (1994) display a relentlessly self-reflexive, sometimes tongue-in-cheek sensibility, similar to the work of the New Wave directors and the Coens. Other movies from the era readily identifiable as neo-noir (some retro, some more au courant) include director
John Dahl's
Red Rock West (1992) and
The Last Seduction (1993); four adaptations of novels by Jim Thompsonâ€
"The Kill-Off (1989),
After Dark, My Sweet (1990),
The Grifters (1990), and the remake of
The Getaway (1994); and many more, notably including
The Hot Spot (1990),
Miami Blues (1990), and
The Usual Suspects (1995). On television, the series
Moonlighting (1985â€"89) paid homage to classic noir while demonstrating an unusual appreciation of the sense of humor often found in the original cycle. Between 1983 and 1989,
Mickey Spillane's hardboiled private eye Mike Hammer was played with wry gusto by
Stacy Keach in a
series and several stand-alone TV movies (an unsuccessful revival followed in 1997â€"98). The British miniseries
The Singing Detective (1986), written by
Dennis Potter, tells the story of a mystery writer named Philip Marlow; widely considered one of the finest neo-noirs in any medium, some critics cite it as the greatest television production of all time.
Among the leading Hollywood directors of noir during the current decade has been the British-born
Christopher Nolan, with the fantastically twisted
Memento (2000), the remake of
Insomnia (2002), and
Batman Begins (2005), his dark-toned take on the superhero. Some of the more recent examples of neo-noir include the films
The Cooler (2003) and
The Ice Harvest (2005) and the video game series
Max Payne. In 2005,
Shane Black directed
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), basing his screenplay in part on a crime novel by
Brett Halliday, who published his first stories back in the 1920s. The film plays with an awareness not only of classic noir but also of
neo-noir conventions, making it perhaps a seminal neo²-noir. Director
Sean Penn's
The Pledge (2001), though adapted from a very self-reflexive novel by
Friedrich DĂĽrrenmatt, plays noir comparatively straight, to devastating effect. The most commercially successful of recent neo-noirs is
Sin City (2005), directed by
Robert Rodriguez in extravagantly stylized black and white with the odd bit of color. The film is based on a series of comic books created by
Frank Miller (credited as the movie's codirector), which are in turn openly indebted to the works of Spillane and other pulp mystery authors. Similarly,
graphic novels provide the basis for
Road to Perdition (2002), directed by
Sam Mendes, and
A History of Violence (2005), directed by
David Cronenberg; the latter, according to many critics, is the neo-noir of the decade. Some have identified in the TV series
Veronica Mars (2004â€"curr.) and movie
Brick (2005) an emerging trend referred to as "teen noir," in which adolescents assume adult roles on behalf of imperiled friends or paramours. Veronica Marsâ€"titular character of a show that is both a youth-oriented and arguably feminist twist on film noirâ€"is a mature, skeptical teenager who works as a P.I. for her father's business and solves felonies in her spare time.
Psycho-noir
The work of
David Lynchâ€"particularly
Blue Velvet (1986),
Lost Highway (1996),
Mulholland Drive (2001), and the
Twin Peaks cycle, both
TV series (1990â€"91) and movie,
Fire Walk With Me (1992)â€"shows the influence of film noir filtered through a uniquely individualistic vision. Featuring delusionary or sociopathic protagonists (or, in the case of
Blue Velvet, a scene-devouring antagonist; in the
Twin Peaks cycle, bizarro spasms at every turn), Lynch's most characteristic work has come to be grouped with others sharing similarly skewed centers of interest as "psycho-noir." Two of the earliest examples after
Blue Velvet are literary adaptations directed by David Cronenberg,
Naked Lunch (1991) and
Crash (1996). Director
David Fincher followed the noir science fiction of
AlienÂł (1992) and the immensely successful neo-noir
Se7en (1995) with a film that earns much greater regard today than it did on original release, the psycho-noir
Fight Club (1999). Nolan's
Memento, as well as his debut feature, the British
Following (1998), may both be classified as psycho-noir. During the new millennium,
Park Chan-wook of South Korea has been the most prominent director to work regularly in a psycho-noir modeâ€"a current of noir that can be traced back through
Taxi Driver, through
Brainstorm, through
White Heat, all the way to
Stranger on the Third Floor and further still, to Fritz Lang's original
M.
Sci-fi noir
In the post-classic era, the most significant trend in noir crossovers has involved science fiction.
The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972) centers on an implacable investigator and an amnesiac named Welles.
Soylent Green (1973), the first major example, portrays a dystopian, near-future world via a self-evidently noir detection plot; starring
Charlton Heston (the lead in
Touch of Evil), it also features classic noir standbys Joseph Cotten, Edward G. Robinson, and
Whit Bissell. The movie was directed by
Richard Fleischer, who two decades before had directed several strong B noirs, including
Armored Car Robbery (1950) and
The Narrow Margin (1952). The cynical and stylish perspective of classic film noir had a formative effect on the
cyberpunk genre of
science fiction that emerged in the early
1980s; the movie most directly influential on cyberpunk was
Blade Runner (1982), directed by
Ridley Scott, which pays clear and evocative homage to the classic noir mode (Scott would subsequently direct the poignant noir crime melodrama
Someone to Watch Over Me [1987]). Later examples of cyberpunk or similarly "sci-fi noir" films include the aforementioned
AlienÂł,
Gattaca (1997),
Dark City (1998),
The Thirteenth Floor (1999), and
Minority Report (2002). The animated Japanese film
Ghost in the Shell (1995) and its sequel,
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), may also be considered sci-fi noir.
Film noir has been parodied many times, in many manners. In 1945,
Danny Kaye starred in what appears to be the first intentional film noir parody,
Wonder Man. That same year,
Deanna Durbin was the singing lead in the comedic noir
Lady on a Train, which makes fun of Woolrich-brand wistful miserablism.
Bob Hope inaugurated the private-eye noir parody with
My Favorite Brunette (1947), playing a baby photographer who is mistaken for an ironfisted detective.
The Big Steal (1949), directed by
Don Siegel, and
His Kind of Woman, both of which benefit from the services of a slyly self-aware Robert Mitchum, are clear examples of the classic film noir parodying itself. The "Girl Hunt" ballet in Vincente Minnelli's
The Band Wagon (1953) is a ten-minute distillation ofâ€"and play onâ€"noir in dance.
Carl Reiner's "
cut and paste" noir
farce, the black-and-white
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), is the best known of the obviously comedic latter-day parodies.
The Lady from Sockholm (2005) is a noir spoof with an all sock puppet cast, exploiting the classic elements of the genre with punny humor.
|
"Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man." Robert De Niro as neo-noir ultra-anti-hero Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976). |
Noir parodies come in darker tones as well.
Murder by Contract (1958), directed by Irving Lerner, is an eighty-one-minute-long deadpan joke on noir, with a denouement as bleak as any of the movies it kidsâ€"an ultra-low-budget
Columbia Pictures production, it may qualify as the first intentional example of what is now called a neo-noir film; it certainly seems to have been a source of inspiration for Melville's acclaimed
Le SamouraĂŻ.
Taxi Driver, one of the quintessential 1970s neo-noirs, caustically
deconstructs the "dark" crime film, taking it to an absurd extreme and then offering a conclusion that manages to mock every possible anticipated endingâ€"triumphant, tragic, artfully ambivalentâ€"while being each, all at once. Flirting with
splatter status even more brazenly, the Coens'
Blood Simple is both an exacting
pastiche and an outrageous exaggeration of classic noir.
The Woman Chaser (1999), based on a novel by
Charles Willeford, sends up not just the noir mode but the entire Hollywood filmmaking process, with seemingly each shot staged as the visual equivalent of a Marlowe wisecrackâ€"funny, but it smarts.
In other mediums, TV series such as
Sledge Hammer! (1986â€"88), cartoons such as
Garfield's Babes and Bullets (1989), and
comic strip characters such as Tracer Bullet of
Calvin and Hobbes have parodied both film noir and the kindred hardboiled traditionâ€"one of the sources from which film noir sprang and which it now overshadows.
The history of film noir criticism has seen fundamental questions become matters of controversy unusually intense for such a field. Where aesthetic debates tend to concentrate on the quality and meaning of specific artworks and the intentions and influences of their creators, in film noir, the debates are regularly much broader. Four large questions may be identified, two of them addressed at the beginning of this article:
* What defines film noir?
* What sort of category is it?A third question applies at a more specific level, but is sweeping:
* What movies qualify as film noirs?This article refers to movies from the classic period as "film noir" if there is a critical consensus supporting that designation. That consensus is almost never complete and is in many cases provisional:
The Lost Weekend and
The Night of the Hunter, for instance, were seldom considered as film noirs a quarter-century ago; today, a growing number of critics refer to
Suspicion (1941), directed by Hitchcock, and
Casablanca (1942), directed by Curtiz, as film noirs. Outside of the classic period, consensus is much rarerâ€"movies are considered as noir herein if a substantial number of critics have discussed them as such. In order to decide which films are noir (and which are not), many critics refer to a set of elements they see as marking examples of the mode. This leads to a fourth major point of controversy in the field, one that overlaps with all those noted above:
* What are the identifying characteristics of film noirs?For instance, some critics insist that a film noir, to be authentic, must have a bleak conclusion (e.g.,
Criss Cross or
D.O.A.), but many acknowledged classics of the genre have clearly happy endings (e.g.,
Stranger on the Third Floor, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and
The Dark Corner), while the tone of many other noir
denouements is ambivalent, in a variety of ways. The ambition of this section, then, can be no more than modest: it is an attempt to survey those characteristics most often cited by critics as representative of classic film noirs. As diverse as that set of movies is, the diversity of films from outside the classic period that have been discussed as noir is so great that any similar survey would be impractical; however, those classic noir identifying marks often referenced in neo-noirsâ€"however frequently or seldom they actually appeared in the original filmsâ€"are noted.
Characteristics of classic film noir
Visual style
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Forget it, Jake. It's...the blinds. Private eye Jake Gittes, performed by Jack Nicholson, undergoes some old-school shadowcasting in Chinatown (1974). |
Film noirs tended to use low-key lighting schemes producing stark light/dark
contrasts and dramatic shadow patterning. The shadows of Venetian blinds, cast upon an actor, a wall, or an entire set, are an iconic visual in film noir and had already become a
cliché well before the neo-noir era. While black-and-white cinematography is considered by many to be one of the essential attributes of classic noir, color films such as
Leave Her to Heaven (1945),
Niagara (1953),
Slightly Scarlet, and
Vertigo (1958) are regarded as noir by varying numbers of critics.
Film noir is also known for its use of
Dutch angles,
low-angle shots, and
wide-angle lenses. Other devices of disorientation relatively common in film noir include shots of people reflected in one or more mirrors, shots through curved or frosted glass or other distorting objects (such as during the strangulation scene in
Strangers on a Train), and special effects sequences of a sometimes bizarre nature. Beginning in the late 1940s,
location shootingâ€"often involving
night-for-night sequencesâ€"became increasingly frequent in noir.
Structure and narrational devices
Film noirs tend to have unusually convoluted story lines, frequently involving
flashbacks,
flashforwards, and other techniques that interrupt and sometimes obscure the
narrative sequence. Voiceover narrationâ€"most characteristically by the protagonist, less frequently by a secondary character or by an unseen, omniscient narratorâ€"is sometimes used as a structuring device. Both flashbacks and voiceover narration are today often used in movies looking to quickly establish their neo-noir bona fides. Relative to other Hollywood films, film noirs are seen as more likely to feature the protagonist in virtually every scene. Bold experiments in cinematic storytelling were sometimes attempted in noir:
Lady in the Lake, for example, is shot entirely from the
point of view of protagonist Philip Marlowe; the face of star (and director)
Robert Montgomery is seen only in mirrors.
Plots, characters, and settings
Crime, usually murder, is an element of almost all film noirs; in addition to standard-issue greed, jealousy is frequently the criminal motivation. A crime investigationâ€"by a private eye, a police detective (sometimes acting alone), or a concerned amateurâ€"is the most prevalent, but far from dominant, basic plot. In other common plots the protagonists are implicated in
heists or
con games, or in murderous conspiracies often involving adulterous affairs. False suspicions and accusations of crime are frequent plot elements, as are betrayals and double-crosses.
Amnesia is far more common in film noir than in real life, and cigarette smoking can seem virtually mandatory.
Film noirs tend to revolve around heroes who are more flawed and morally questionable than the norm, often
fall guys of one sort or another. The characteristic heroes of noir are described by many critics as "
alienated"; in the words of Silver and Ward, "filled with
existential bitterness." Certain archetypal characters appear in many film noirsâ€"hardboiled detectives, femmes fatales, corrupt policemen, jealous husbands, intrepid
claims adjusters, and down-and-out writers. As can be observed in many movies of an overtly neo-noir nature, the private eye and the femme fatale are the character types with which film noir has come to be most identified, but a minority of movies now regarded as classic noir feature either. As an indication, of the 35 "
Notable American film noirs of the classic period" listed above, in only four does the star play a private eyeâ€
"The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Out of the Past, and
Kiss Me Deadly. Just five others readily qualify as "detective stories"â€
"Laura, The Killers, The Stranger, The Big Heat, and
Touch of Evil.
Film noir is often associated with an urban setting, and a few citiesâ€"Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, in particularâ€"are the location of many of the classic films. In the eyes of many critics, the city is presented in noir as a "labyrinth" or "maze." Bars, lounges, nightclubs, and gambling dens are frequently the scene of action. The climaxes of a substantial number of film noirs take place in visually complex, often industrial settings, such as refineries, factories, trainyards, power plantsâ€"most famously the explosive conclusion of
White Heat.
Worldview, morality, and tone
Film noir is often described as essentially pessimistic. The noir stories that are regarded as most characteristic tell of people trapped in unwanted situations (which, in general, they did not cause but are responsible for exacerbating), striving against random, uncaring fate, and frequently doomed. The movies are seen as depicting a world that is inherently corrupt. Classic film noir has been associated by many critics with the American social landscape of the eraâ€"in particular, with a sense of heightened anxiety and alienation that is said to have followed World War II. Nicholas Christopher's opinion is representative: "it is as if the war, and the social eruptions in its aftermath, unleashed demons that had been bottled up in the national psyche." Film noirs, especially those of the 1950s and the height of the
Red Scare, are often said to reflect cultural
paranoia.
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"You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how far you can go." "A lot depends on who's in the saddle." Bogey. Bacall. The Big Sleep. |
Rather than focusing on simple "black and white" decisions, film noirs tend to pose moral quandaries that are unusually ambiguous and relativeâ€"at least within the context of Hollywood cinema. Characters that do pursue goals based on clear-cut moral standards may be more than willing to let the "ends justify the means." For example, in
The Stranger, the investigator is so obsessed with tracking down a Nazi war criminal that he places other people in mortal danger in order to capture his target.
The tone of film noir is generally regarded as downbeat; some critics experience it as darker stillâ€""overwhelmingly black," according to Robert Ottoson. Influential critic (and filmmaker) Paul Schrader wrote in a seminal 1972 essay that
"film noir is defined by tone," a tone he seems to perceive as "hopeless." On the other hand, definitive film noirs such as
The Big Sleep and
The Lady from Shanghai are famed for their hardboiled
repartee, often imbued with sexual innuendo and self-reflexive humor.
* Borde, Raymond, and Etienne Chaumeton,
A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941â€"1953, trans. Paul Hammond, City Lights Books, 2002 ("We'd be oversimplifying...": p. 2.)
* Cameron, Ian, ed.,
The Book of Film Noir, Continuum, 1993
*Chopra-Gant, Mike,
Hollywood Genres and Postwar America: Masculinity, Family and Nation in Popular Movies and Film Noir, IB Tauris, 2005, ISBN 1-85043-838-2
* Christopher, Nicholas,
Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City, Free Press, 1997 ("It is as if the war...": p. 37.)
* Clarens, Carlos,
Crime Movies: An Illustrated History, W.W. Norton, 1980
* Cochran, David,
America Noir: Underground Writers and Filmmakers of the Postwar Era, Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000
* Copjec, Joan, ed.,
Shades of Noir, Verso, 1993
* Dimendberg, Edward,
Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity, Harvard University Press, 2004
*
Durgnat, Raymond, "Paint It Black: The Family Tree of the
Film Noir,"
Cinema 6/7, 1970 (collected in Gorman et al.,
The Big Book of Noir, and Silver and Ursini,
Film Noir Reader [1])
* Gorman, Ed, Lee Server, and Martin H. Greenberg, eds.,
The Big Book of Noir, Carroll & Graf, 1998
* Hannsberry, Karen Burroughs,
Femme Noir: Bad Girls of Film, McFarland, 1998
* Hannsberry, Karen Burroughs,
Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir, McFarland, 2003
*
Hirsch, Foster,
The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir, Da Capo Press, 1981
* Kaplan, E. Ann, ed.,
Women in Film Noir, new ed., British Film Institute, 1998
* Keaney, Michael F.,
Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940â€"1959, McFarland, 2003
* Lyons, Arthur,
Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir, Da Capo Press, 2000
* Mason, Fran,
American Gangster Cinema: From Little Caesar
to Pulp Fiction, Palgrave, 2002
* McArthur, Colin,
Underworld U.S.A., Viking Press, 1972
*
Muller, Eddie,
Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, St. Martin's, 1998
* Naremore, James,
More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts, University of California Press, 1998
* Neale, Steve,
Genre and Hollywood, Routledge, 2000
* Ottoson, Robert,
A Reference Guide to the American Film Noir: 1940â€"1958, Scarecrow Press, 1981 ("Overwhelmingly black": p. 1.)
* Palmer, R. Barton,
Hollywood's Dark Cinema: The American Film Noir, Twayne Publishers, 1994
* Palmer, R. Barton, ed.,
Perspectives on Film Noir, G.K. Hall, 1996
* Rabinowitz, Paula,
Black & White & Noir: America's Pulp Modernism, Columbia University Press, 2002
* Schatz, Thomas,
Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s, University of California Press, 1997
*
Schrader, Paul, "Notes on Film Noir,"
Film Comment 8, no. 1, spring 1972 (collected in Silver and Ursini,
Film Noir Reader [1]) (
"Film noir is defined by tone": p. 54 [
FNR]; "hopeless" tonal referencesâ€""the tone more hopeless": p. 53, "a fatalistic, hopeless mood": p. 57.)
* Selby, Spencer,
Dark City: The Film Noir, McFarland, 1984
* Shadoian, Jack,
Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster Film, 2d ed., Oxford University Press, 2003
* Silver, Alain, and James Ursini,
The Noir Style, Overlook Press, 1999
* Silver, Alain, and James Ursini (and Robert Porfirioâ€"vol. 3), eds.,
Film Noir Reader, vols. 1â€"4, Limelight Editions, 2004
* Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth M. Ward, eds.,
Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, 3d ed., Overlook Press, 1992, ISBN 0-87951-479-5 ("With the Western...": p. 1; "filled with existential bitterness": p. 6.)
* Spicer, Andrew,
Film Noir, Pearson Education, 2002
* Telotte, J. P.,
Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir, University of Illinois Press, 1989
* Tuska,
Dark Cinema: American Film Noir in Cultural Perspective, Greenwood Press, 1984
*
All-Time 100 Movies Time magazine's noir-heavy list includes a single TV production,
The Singing Detective, among its 100 picks
*
Film Noir major survey of the mode by Tim Dirks; part of
The Greatest Films website
*
Film Noir Q&A-style essay by leading noir critic-historian
Eddie Muller*
Film Noir: A Bibliography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Library*
Film Noir: An Introduction essay with links to discussions of ten important noirs; part of
Images: A Journal of Film and Popular Culture*
A Guide to Film Noir Genre ten deadeye bullet points from
Roger Ebert*
An Introduction to Neo-Noir essay by Lee Horsley
*
List of Film Noir extensive list of classic and post-classic films, with directors; part of
Panbello Web Noir*
Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir podcast close readings of many classic noirs by Shannon Clute and Richard Edwards
*
The Shadows of Film Noir essay by Brian W. Fairbanks, representative of the standard view of film noir
