Film Noir

What makes a film, noir? Which films are included in this category, and which are excluded? "This questions have been debated strenuously in the past twenty years with the proliferation of literature on the subject. It has alternatively been described as a movement, a genre, a cycle, a mood and sensibility, and a universe. Some critics and filmmakers have defined it as an American film form confined to a specific period, most often 1940-1959; others have argued that noir never died, that the volume of production simply varied, declining in the 1960s and 1970s and exploding in the 1960s and 1990s with filmmakers' rediscovery of the genre. " ^[3]

"Movies from the film noir era are notable for a number of recurring visual characteristics, including rain-swept streets, murkily lit rooms, mirror reflections, looming shadows and foggy nights. In terms of style and technique, these films abound with interior and exterior night scenes that suggest dingy realism, and feature unique lighting that emphasizes deep shadows and accents the mood of fatalism. Aside from visual characteristics, these films contain both heroes and villains who are cynical and disillusioned, inextricably bound to the past and ambivalent about the future." ^[6]

The Rise of Film noir

"Even though films now called film noir by critics have been made in Hollywoods since 1939, film noir as a genre did not exist until 1946. In that year an exhibition of American movies was held in Paris, and French film critics got their first look at what had been going on in Tinseltown since the advent of World War II. Among the films shown were: Laura, The Maltese Falcon, Murder, My Sweet, Double Indemnity and The Woman in the Window.

Those five film shared enough traits that critic Nino Frank gave them a new classification: film noir, or literally, "black film." The traits they shared were both stilistic and thematic. They were dark in both look and mood. Their primary action took place at night on rain-swept city streets, in narrow ash-can alleys, in claustrophobic diners, and in dingy, shadow hotel rooms with neon signs flashing outside the windows, rooms in which, as hard-boiled author Nelson Algren once put it, "every bed you rent makes you an accessory to somebody else's shady past."

The characters in these films were bookies, con men, killers, cigarette girls, crooked cops, down-and-out boxers, and calculating, scheming, and very deadly women. The well-lit, singing and tap-dancing, happy-ending world of the thirties had in ten short years become a hostile, orderless place in which alienation, obsession, and paranoia ruled. The universe seemed to conspire to defeat and entrap the inhabitants who wandered blindly through it. They were victims of fate, their own worst enemies who, looking for a score, ended by defeating themselves. They were people unwired to anything and for whom nobody prayed. Bradford Galt, who in The Dark Corner finds himself framed for murder, speaks for all of them: "l feel all dead inside. I'm backed up in a dark corner and I don't know who's hitting me." ^[3]

The Origins of Film noir

"A combination of 1930s influences helped create film noir: the German expressionism, the French poetic realism, Hollywood gangster films, and 'tough guy' writers.

The look of film noir can be traced back to the German Expressionist cinema of the 1920s and 1930s. Although the ‘ultimate’ example of this cinema is The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) with its surreal settings and caricatured people, the emphasis on graphic design, weird angles, montage, forced perspective and other technical innovations was to play a major part in the formation of film noir. Also, the Germanic culture paid more attention to the psychology of the characters, and was preoccupied with analysing their actions. They wanted to know what was happening inside people. Fritz Lang’s M (1931), for example, shows us the points of view of police, criminal underworld and child-killer.

Many film directors and their creative personal escaped Hitler’s Germany and hotfooted it to Hollywood. These included Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak, Fred Zinnemann and Edgar G. Ulmer. What is not generally acknowledged is that most came via France. Many of the themes and settings of film noir can be seen in films of the Poetic Realists of the 1930s.

Poetic realism is a term first applied to the French literature of Emile Zola, Francis Carco and their ilk. It was first applied to films with Pierre Chenal’s La rue sans nom (1934). These books and films looked at the outside forces affecting people’s lives. They used real settings (the city), real people in a social context (the proletariat or lower middle classes) and showed that crime came from physical and mental oppression. The weak-willed protagonist would find himself trapped in a situation created by society, surrounded by a romantic aura of doom and despair.

German filmmakers who visited Paris before heading for Hollywood include Robert Siodmak, Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Max Ophüls, Jacques Tourneur and Curtis Bernhardt. Some French directors soon followed (Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier, Jacques Tourneur). And there is one well-known British director, who served his film apprenticeship in Berlin, who made his way to the City of Angels in 1939: Alfred Hitchcock.

It is not surprising then, that these directors later took the opportunity to remake French, German and British crime films as films noirs: La chienne (1931, d. Jean Renoir) as Scarlet Street (1945, d. Fritz Lang); La bête humaine (1938, d. Jean Renoir) as Human Desire (1954, d. Fritz Lang); Pépé le Moko (1937, d. Julien Duvivier) as Algiers (1938, d. John Cromwell) & Casbah (1948, d. John Berry); Le jour se lève (1939, d. Marcel Carné) as The Long Night (1947, d. Anatole Litvak); Pièges (1939, d. Robert Siodmak) as Lured (1947, d. Douglas Sirk); Le dernier tournant (1939, d. Pierre Chenal) as The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946, d. Tay Garnett); Le corbeau (1943, d. Henri-Georges Clouzot) as The 13th Letter (1951, d. Otto Preminger)." ^[7]

"Many of the milieu, characters, icons, actors came from the Hollywood gangster films, also concerned with money, crime, and violence and set in the modern American city. Although the dominant 1930s cycle beginning with Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, both released in 1931, was preoccupied with the rise and fall of the dynamic self-made criminal, many others, including Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927) or Rouben Mamoulian’s City Streets (1931), adapted from a Dashiell Hammett story, depicted a shadowy criminal milieu and explored themes of alienation, paranoia, betrayal, and revenge that directly presaged film noir. Like hard-boiled fiction, the gangster film constituted a dissident tradition in which the desires and frustrations of lower class or ethnically marginalized Americans could find a voice during the Depression. This oppositional aesthetic informs film noir.

Studios hired several hard-boiled authors as screenwriters with varying degrees of success. The hard-boiled authors decisively shifted the locale of crime from the country house drawing rooms of the "English school" onto the "mean streets" of the fast-growing American city, providing film noir with its characteristic image of the city as a dark, corrupt, threatening, and confusing labyrinth, populated by criminals, tough private eyes, and duplicitous femme fatales. The new style - a terse, understated vernacular idiom peppered with laconic wisecracks - provided noir with its distinctive dialogue. The influence of hard-boiled writing was delayed because films were subject to close censorship, which prose fiction escaped. It was John Huston’s prescient The Maltese Falcon (1941), adapted from Hammett’s novel, that first reproduced the cynical, corrosive tone and attitude of the hard-boiled tradition." ^[2]

The Development of film noir and neo-noir

"The influence of German expressionism was evident in the cycle of horror films produced by Universal Studios in the early 1930s. Several, including Robert Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), were overtly expressionist, displaying strong echoes of Caligari in the twisted streets, oddly contorted houses that lean over the glistening cobblestones, and gloomy shadows, all of which directly anticipate film noir. Various émigrés worked on these horror films, including Edgar G. Ulmer, who directed The Black Cat (1934). Universal’s second horror cycle, beginning in 1939, was less aesthetically distinguished, but both cycles were a major influence on the studio’s early experimentation with film noir, beginning with Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Siodmak’s Phantom Lady (1944) that, in turn, influenced the development of the whole noir cycle.

The other studio most associated with the inception of film noir was RKO, mainly through the work of Val Lewton and Orson Welles. The Russian-born Lewton started at RKO in 1942, running his own secondfeature unit to produce horror films that would compete with Universal’s. However, Lewton’s horror films, including The Leopard Man (1943) adapted from Woolrich’s Black Alibi and The Seventh Victim, both released in 1943, were highly distinctive, featuring ordinary men and women in atmospherically lit, mostly contemporary settings and emphasizing psychological disturbance. Lewton’s films acted as a training ground for cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, already known as a specialist in "mood lighting," and for directors Mark Robson, Jacques Tourneur, and Robert Wise, all of whom went on to make distinguished films noir.

Orson Welles’s innovative Citizen Kane (1941) was a major influence on film noir. Its expressionist set design, Gregg Toland’s deep focus photography, atmospheric lighting, and its creative use of wide-angle lenses and low-angle compositions, its use of mirrors, superimpositions, and distorted perspectives as well as its subjective narration and multiple flashbacks all prefigured noir techniques. Bernard Herrmann’s unconventional score, which used unorthodox combinations of instruments, was the first of many he would contribute to film noir. As the most celebrated example of American expressionism, Citizen Kane acted as another bridge between European modernism and film noir.

The coming together of these various influences led to film noir, usually dated from the appearance of Russian émigré Boris Ingster’s Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), in which Peter Lorre played the mysterious outsider. An RKO second feature marketed as a horror film, Stranger had a highly expressionist dream sequence with clear echoes of Caligari. Stranger began noir’s early "experimental" period (1940-1943), with a wide variety of styles and modes including hard-boiled adaptations - The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Street of Chance (1942) from a Cornell Woolrich story - and numerous Gothic melodramas including Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) and Stuart Heisler's Among the Living (1941), photographed by émigré cameraman Theodor Sparkuhl. As wartime restrictions on costs began to take a bite, almost all the major studios encouraged the development of modestly budgeted crime thrillers whose restricted sets could be disguised by "atmospheric" lighting and the use of unusual camera angles. One influential example, Paramount’s This Gun for Hire (1942) based on Graham Greene’s thriller, featured a new type of antihero, a psychologically disturbed hit man (Alan Ladd). Early noirs also included several spy thrillers, notably Orson Welles’s screenplay for Journey into Fear (1943), adapted from one of Eric Ambler’s existentialist novels." ^[2]

"It should be recognised that the ‘gothic’ lighting style of film noir, and the Expressionist angles, were much in evidence during the silent era (the films of Sergei Eisenstein in Russia, and Tod Browning’s horror films in Hollywood, for example). The night-time and location shooting which were common for silent films was impossible with the advent of sound because the equipment was too bulky and noisy. Consequently, the 1930s were a relatively fallow period for dark cinema.

When advances in technology meant that cameras became lighter and more mobile, the cinematographers explored every possibility. Many of the cinematographers (Nicholas Musuraca, George Barnes, Joseph A. Valentine, Hal Mohr, John F. Seitz, Joseph La Shelle etc) were veterans of the silent era, having began work in the 1910s and 1920s. So they were at the height of their skills when asked to layer light and shadows like they had during the silent days. A quick look at Rebecca (1940), for example, shows the camera prowling around Manderley like a wild animal hunting for blood.

In addition, the sparse, single-source lighting style of cinematography which became the norm for film noir arose out of necessity. The advent of World War Two meant the sales market for Hollywood movies shrunk enormously. As a result, budgets were reduced, and dark shadows were employed to hide the fact that there was no set." ^[7]

"The release of Double Indemnity, Laura, and Murder, My Sweet in 1944 inaugurated the second phase of noir’s development, a major burst of energy and sustained production that stretched through to 1952. In contrast to the earlier phase in which most films noir were second features, the majority were now intermediate productions that fell somewhere between first and second features. They commanded reasonable budgets but had far less market hype on their launch than a full "A" production. Visually, this period may be divided between a studio-bound "expressionist" period, 1944–1947, which focused on individual pathologies, and a "location" period, 1947–1952, dominated by semidocumentaries and social-problem films. The latter showed the influence of Italian neo-realism, the most important European cinematic movement to have emerged during the war, which emphasized the importance of taking the camera out onto the streets and depicting the lives of ordinary people. Thematically, films noir during this phase were preoccupied with the transition from war to peace, depicting numerous troubled veterans experiencing the traumatic difficulties of readjustment to civilian life after the profound disruption of active service. Politically, film noir displayed both left- and right-wing orientations, but the development of a left-leaning critique of American capitalism was truncated by the anti-Communist campaign led by Republican senator Joseph McCarthy, conducted through the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). This led, in October 1947, to the imprisonment of the "Hollywood Ten" (which included three important noir personnel: director Edward Dmytryk, writer-producer Adrian Scott, and scriptwriter Albert Maltz) and the implementation of a blacklist of unemployable artists that numbered over 200 and went unchallenged until 1960. The blacklist had a profound effect on film noir, ending or inhibiting many careers or pushing some (Jules Dassin, Cy Endfield, and Joseph Losey) into exile.

After 1952, film noir went into a longer period of fragmentation, which ended in 1959. The expressionism of the earlier periods had disappeared, and this period was dominated by more brutal and violent crime films preoccupied with the threat of underworld "corporations" taking over American life, as in the cycle of city exposé films - beginning with The Captive City (1952) - that depicted the supposedly ubiquitous threat of organized crime syndicates. These thrillers were mainly second features, conventionally lit and shot, made either by small companies or the more costconscious majors: Columbia, RKO, Universal, and United Artists acting as a distribution agency. There were significant exceptions: Robert Aldrich’s terrifying Kiss Me Deadly (1955), with its threat of nuclear destruction; Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958), a baroque expressionist masterpiece; and Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), a rare color noir that was a probing study of guilt and obsession.

Although Odds Against Tomorrow, released in 1959, is the conventional watershed that marks the end of film noir’s "classic" phase, the date is an arbitrary and convenient fiction. As the chronology shows, films noir were produced, sporadically, throughout the 1960s. The 3rd Voice (1960), Angel’s Flight (1965), and In Cold Blood (1967) are unmistakably noir, as is the work of Samuel Fuller: Underworld U.S.A. (1961), Shock Corridor (1963), and The Naked Kiss (1964). These films formed part of an "underground" culture, including roman noir authors Patricia Highsmith, Chester Himes, Jim Thompson, and Charles Willeford, who retained noir as a critical mode even if their authors were isolated figures, lacking a cultural climate that could make their work influential. The major energies of noir screen production went into the making of television series, including Johnny Staccato (1959-60), Peter Gunn (1959-61), and The Fugitive (1963-67), which drew heavily on the existentialist sensibility of hard-boiled writer David Goodis.

Although these films are often lumped under the general label of neo-noir, films noir released in this period (1960-67) may best be termed "late noirs" - ones that could have been made before 1959 - in order to differentiate them from neo-noirs that may be dated from the release of Point Blank in 1967. Neo-noirs are ones that selfconsciously allude to classic noir, either implicitly or explicitly, building on what is now recognized and accepted as a distinct body of films. In Point Blank, director John Boorman, drawing on the French New Wave, explicitly and self-consciously revised the noir tradition in a contemporary idiom, adapting Donald E. Westlake’s hard-boiled novel as the basis for a brutal revenge drama shot in 40 mm color Panavision that uses repetitions, doublings, and elliptical editing to create a story that hesitates between dream and reality in order to explore the ambiguities of desire, memory, and identity. Boorman’s film was the beginning of what may be termed the neo-modernist phase of film noir (1967–80) that formed part of the "Hollywood Renaissance," in which a new generation of filmmakers, profoundly influenced by recent developments in European cinema, attempted to transform American cinema. Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973), an acerbic updating of Chandler; Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974); Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975); and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) all engaged in a critique not only of American society but also of noir myths such as the honorable, resourceful private eye. The characteristic protagonist of the neo-modernist noirs is alienated and dysfunctional, adrift in a world where he has lost his bearings. In a separate development, the work of black hard-boiled author Chester Himes finally reached the screen in If He Hollers Let Him Go! (1968) and Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970). Shaft (1971) launched a cycle of "blaxploitation" films that also used the noir crime thriller to open up a space in which the black experience, suppressed in the overwhelmingly white orientation of classical noir, could find an expressive voice and explore the deep-seated racism in American society.

The release of Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat in 1981 marked a new phase of neo-noir in which noir conventions were embraced rather than critiqued. Kasdan’s film, a loose remake of Double Indemnity, evoked the mood and atmosphere of classical noir through its use of chiaroscuro lighting, a jazz score, and the archetypal story of the victim-hero seduced by a femme fatale, who, unlike her predecessors, is successful. The Postman Always Rings Twice, released in the same year, was the first of a fairly constant line of remakes of noir classics. Released a year later, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner was a highly influential "future noir," a complex melding of the conventions of science fiction and film noir, and was the forerunner of the hybridization that is so characteristic of many neo-noirs.

Gradually, neo-noir has established itself as an important contemporary genre within a restabilized, expanding Hollywood cinema. Neo-noirs are now a staple of cinema exhibition, cable television programming, and video/DVD rental. Their production is no longer characterized, as it was in the neo-modernist period, by sporadic releases, but by a continuous stream of new films. The noir "look" has become part of a knowing postmodern culture, with modern cineliterate audiences attuned to the multiple allusions of neo-noirs such as Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) or Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997), an example of a "retro-noir" set during the classic period. Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000), with its reverse chronology and amnesiac self-deluding narrator, is an example of the extreme use of narratological devices that characterizes many neonoirs. Many neo-noirs are also stylistically extreme, using hypermobile camerawork, rapid zooms, shock cuts, and ultrafast montage sequences to create an intense, disruptive, often overwhelming sensory experience that makes them very different from classic noir. A more recent development is the frequent adaptation of graphic novels. Sin City (2005) exemplifies this trend, with director Robert Rodriguez striving for a strict fidelity to the particular noir look of Frank Miller’s original comic book creations.

Three other developments characterize the postmodern phase of film noir. The first is an extension of the focus on the city to embrace "country noir" set amidst the wide-open spaces of redneck America. Country noirs, such as the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple. (1984), Peter Medak’s Romeo Is Bleeding (1993), or John Dahl’s Red Rock West (1996), are antipastoral, the countryside a site of corruption, betrayal, and murderous hatreds. The panoramic shots, often startlingly beautiful, serve only as an ironic backdrop to the sordid dramas that unfold. The second was a renewed and more wide-ranging development of African American noir that revealed the complexity and heterogeneity of the black experience, beginning with Bill Duke’s A Rage in Harlem (1991) and Deep Cover (1992) and including Carl Franklin’s One False Move (1992) and Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) and Spike Lee’s Clockers (1995). Kathryn Bigelow’s Blue Steel (1990) and Tamra Davis’s Guncrazy (1992), a radical remake of the famous Joseph H. Lewis noir Gun Crazy (aka Deadly Is the Female, 1950), exemplify the third development as important feminist interventions into the overwhelmingly masculine world of film noir." ^[2]

So... What Makes It Noir?

"Film noir: there’s really no other film genre like it. It’s a genre characterized by long, dark shadows, both physical and psychological, that menace every frame. The characters in these films tend to be quick-witted, sharp and street smart and as cynical as they come, and everyone’s working an angle on everyone else.

Film noir is a genre that’s immersive on every level. The locations in these films, whether they’re detectives’ offices, the mansions of the powerful and connected, police stations or city streets and alleys, are usually mostly draped in darkness. The plots are much the same, with complexity being the norm and no one really being truly good. Film noir is too grounded a genre for those types of characters; there’s a touch of evil in everyone, and film noir explores it in detail. That exploration is engrossing when these films are well executed.

Film noir had its golden age in the 1940s and 1950s. In that era, filmmakers worked under restrictions that forced them to favor the suggestive rather than the explicit. What makes some film noir movies so memorable is that, even though they were made in this era, they managed to take risks. They were usually dark, brooding, violent and oftentimes quite sexy, even compared to modern films made in a much more permissive environment.

What the term "film noir" actually means as a genre, however, is a topic of debate. Viewers, critics and others sometimes differ significantly in their opinions as to what defines a true noir film from one that merely incorporates some of the enduring stylistic elements of this genre." ^[8]

"Film noir is unique in film history as being the only genre that was also a style. Components of the style existed in the silent era, notably in the German films of the 1920s, but Orson Welles brought them together in Citizen Kane (1941). Its combination of chiaroscuro, depth of focus, oblique camera angles, a disjointed and fragmented narrative, all supporting an appropriately gloomy world view, initiated the style. It suited the new genre of film noir perfectly and was used in hundreds of crime films throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Thus, popular usage of the term film noir as any urban crime film of the era is understandable, if not entirely accurate.

Lacking a generic framework, critics have frequently defined film noir in terms of a particular look or visual style. To further complicate matters, the style, which proved to be detachable, was in the 1940s and 1950s applied across the entire spectrum to Hollywood genres, a fact which has created the chief stumbling block in defining film noir. Nevertheless, the nature of the style has proven much less controversial than the genre.

The visual style of noir narrative structure is a recurrent theme throughout the development of the genre and in the particular expressiveness it attains in the hands of notable noir filmmakers, usually in collaboration with their cameramen:

"The other structural elements of noir narrative that established its genre status include:

• A denial by its main characters of conventional social and domestic happiness through unattainability or refusal.
• An assertion of individuality as defined by the killing (although not necessarily murder) of someone (including oneself) in defiance of modern social mores and the law.
• The iconic representation of the above-mentioned features by a definitive star of the screen or through a striking performance by a less recognized screen star or actor.

The conventions of the film noir ensconced in its narrative structure, which make it distinctive yet are not exclusive to the noir, include the following:

"However, these stylistic conventions are clearly used in other types of film, and many films that are frequently referred to as films noir do not exhibit these features. Similar problems occur if noir is defined through its particular, and unusually complex, narrative devices including voice-overs, multiple narrators, flashbacks, and ellipses that break with the Hollywood convention of straightforward causality and lead to ambiguous or inconclusive endings. Such devices characterize many noirs but are by no means the majority. Most noirs take place in dark, nighttime cities, their streets damp with rain that reflects the flashing neon signs where the alienated, often psychologically disturbed, male antihero encounters a deceitful femme fatale leading to his doom. However, there are too many exceptions to make these features conclusive criteria. Some commentators have sought to unify film noir through its prevailing mood or tone - its characteristically dark, malign, morally ambivalent, and unstable universe, where existence is understood to be meaningless and absurd. This description fits some examples (the darkest) but also fails to encompass the full range of films noir, many of which have upbeat endings in which the forces of law and order or romantic love are triumphant. Overall, attempting to define film noir as a set of "essential" formal component - stylistic, narratological, or thematic - tends to be reductive or even misleading." ^[2]

"This gripping era of filmmaking is perhaps more passionately and extensively discussed than any other, particularly with regard to which films are actually considered to be film noir. Because of the era’s widely encompassing denotation and a frequently subjective nature based more on tone and mood than setting, the classification of the films is sometime more a matter of personal opinion than irrefutable fact. Not every film with looming shadows on the wall, light filtering through window blinds, flashing neon signs, and stark shots staring down spiral staircases is film noir. Nor is every film that contains a double-crossing female, a relentless detective, or a luckless, misguided family man. But most noirs contain some, if not all, of these elements.

Perhaps more than any other quality, however, it is the feeling that makes the film noir what it is - the atmosphere of hopelessness, the ambience of doom, the aura of pessimism and cynicism, greed and distrust. (Interestingly, as difficult as film noir is to define, one can glean an understanding of the period by examining the titles of the films themselves. A number of words are used repeatedly in film noir titles - examined collectively, they provide a simplistic, yet revealing and accurate reflection of the era’s overall tone, including "fear," "dark," "night," "kill," "big," "city," "crime," "guilty," "strange," "lady," "kiss," "street," and "cry." Another effective indicator of the spirit of film noir comes from those features with one-word titles, such as Desperate, Cornered, Pitfall, Conflict, Tension, Nightmare, Framed, Possessed, Convicted, and Caught." ^[5]

"On the most superficial level, however, there are some elements that a viewer can look for that really help to define this genre. If you’re considering watching a film and want to know if it’s really noir before you watch, here are some of the conventions to look for.

The Fashion: Film noir fashion is iconic. It still influences fashion today and, if one wants to invoke the fashion, there are some very established trends they can follow.

The women - at least the leads - are very stylish in almost all cases. They are graceful, elegant and, at the same time, distractingly alluring. The women’s wardrobe in these films was usually put together to look like something the audience would wear, but was a very stylish version of that. There are some exceptions, however, and some femme fatales are all evening gowns and opera gloves, giving them an air of wealth, sophistication and the exotic.

The men, particularly the protagonists, tend toward fedoras, raincoats, and suits and ties. Their clothing tends to suit their needs. A snub-nosed .38 can easily be carried in the hip pocket of a long, loose raincoat without imprinting. Their clothing, however, sometimes serves as a reminder of their natures as well. In the right lighting, those fedoras cast dark shadows across a character’s face, reminding the audience that there’s a bit of darkness to contend with in the world in which the film takes place, even - or particularly - in the protagonist’s case.

The Attitude: Don’t trust anyone in a film noir. They’re usually all hard characters and they’re either figuring out what you’re trying to get out of them or what they can get out of you, sometimes both. There are sometimes innocents in these films, but they are usually exceptional compared to the rest of the characters. Expect a lot of cynicism, hard drinks, unfiltered cigarettes and harsh words. These folks talk tough, act tough and they are tough. Sometimes they might have a heart of gold - or just a conscious - but most of the people in these films do not come off as people to trifle with, and they live up to their attitudes in their actions.

The Settings: Look for the non-glamorous parts of the city. Look for the shadowy docks, the dark alleyways and the businesses that serve as front operations for criminals. Look for these places at night, because that’s when the players in these films will be there. If it’s not nighttime, it’ll most likely be raining and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a sunny day. Wherever you end up in a noir film, there will always be a sense of dread, an oppressive darkness and a sinister atmosphere.

The Plot: Greed, murder, revenge, deception; these are all hallmarks of film noir. The stories are sometimes so complex that it may take more than one viewing to figure out exactly how someone was set up, double-crossed or ended up at the bottom of a river. These are mature stories for a mature audience. In addition to your love of style, bring your brain to the viewing and pay close attention, as you’ll miss the subtleties of the plot otherwise.

Great Dialogue: Some of the best dialogue around is to be found in film noir. The characters tend to use a lot of tough, underworld slang and, despite their hard-boiled, street-smart natures, are typically quite adept at witty conversation. Oftentimes, the best moments in film noir happen when the leads dialogue among themselves, or with colorful side characters." ^[8]

The Man in Noir

"He can be vicious or violent, as likely to slap a dame’s face as kiss her. Or a dauntless protector of the law, nabbing hoods with a combination of instinct, fortitude, and grit. He might be vulnerable and gullible, apt to succumb to the whims of a conniving cutie at the drop of the proverbial hat. He can be inexorably hardened by life’s unforeseen knocks, brimming with cynicism, suspicion, and doubt. Or overcome with desperate disillusionment, caught up in circumstances beyond his control and urgently seeking a way out of a seemingly hopeless plight.

More so than his feminine counterpart, this man represents every type of persona, occupying all social and economic strata, and spanning the occupational gamut from the vilest petty criminal to the most upstanding judge. He is an indefatigable gumshoe in The Big Sleep (1946), a carnival sharpshooter in Gun Crazy (1949), an unscrupulous newspaper photographer in Shakedown (1950), a hard-working truck driver in Desperate (1947), a prize-fighter in The Set-Up (1949), a priest in Edge of Doom (1950). He pumps gas in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), sells insurance in Double Indemnity (1944), drives a taxicab in 99 River Street (1953), writes short stories in Danger Signal (1945), picks pockets in Pickup on South Street (1953). He is an endless number of syndicate chiefs, assistant district attorneys, private dicks, gun-toting henchmen, and prison inmates.

From Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade to Johnny Rocco and Cody Jarrett, the film noir male is a unique, fascinating, and infinitely watchable being, displaying a wide range of emotions, behaviors, and motivations. Some of the films from the era depict men who are almost mindlessly violent, such as Neville Brand’s Chester in D.O.A. (1950), whose sole enjoyment in life seems to be derived from inflicting pain on others. Other films noirs contain flawed authority figures, as in The Glass Key (1942), in which Senator Ralph Henry (Moroni Olsen) conceals his role in his son’s death; Guilty Bystander (1950), which features alcoholic ex-cop Max Thursday (Zachary Scott); or Detective Story (1951), where lawman Jim McLeod (Kirk Douglas) is ruled by an inflexible moral code that costs him his marriage and, ultimately, his life. Some focus on hapless males whose lives are turned upside down because of their unquenchable desire for a woman, such as insurance agent John Forbes (Dick Powell) in Pitfall (1948), garage mechanic Dan Brady (Mickey Rooney) in Quicksand (1950), or Mike Lambert (Glenn Ford), the unemployed engineer in Framed (1947). Then there are films in which ruthless, powerful crime bosses rule with a steel will and an iron fist, including the brutal Mr. Brown (Richard Conte) in The Big Combo (1955) and Neil Eichelberger (Ed Begley) in The Turning Point (1952), who sacrifices a building of innocent people in the pursuit of his personal objectives. And on the right side of the law, film noir offers numerous portraits of courageous officers, from undercover agents such as Lawrence Trumble (William Bendix) in Macao (1952), to beat cops including Rocky Barnes (Mark Stevens) in Between Midnight and Dawn (1950). From the most imposing gumshoe to the meekest elevator operator, each man in film noir plays a role in weaving the fabric of this dim and murky universe." ^[5]

The femme noir

"Some of the best film roles for actresses are to be found in film noir. The characters are oftentimes tough as nails and don’t need anyone to save them, allowing good actresses to avoid clichéd roles. The women are oftentimes just as smart and capable as the men, in fact, and just as often they’re smarter and more capable, as many the victim of a femme fatale could reveal. They can also be sympathetic and in need of help without for a minute being helpless. In short, they’re just as human as the main characters. They’re not devices that allow the male protagonist to advance the story but, quite often, have stories that are just as interesting as the men’s and characters that are just profoundly dark and cynical. To top it all off, they usually have a style that’s all their own. When they sit down at a private detective’s desk, they’re no less cool than the fedora-wearing, chain-smoking and hard-drinking man across from them, and that makes them a joy to watch." ^[8]

"In addition, most films noirs offer portraits of complex female characters who, to some degree, are fundamental to the development of the plot. Some exist as champions for the male protagonists, as in Phantom Lady (1944), where the relentless determination of Ella Raines’ Carol lifts the protagonist from his state of inevitable doom and results in the exposure of the man who framed him for murder. In other noir films, the female is portrayed as an innocent victim, caught up in circumstances beyond her control, such as Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell) in They Live by Night (1948), who falls in love with a naive petty criminal. Then there are the femmes who are gutsy but sincere, as in High Sierra (1941), where Ida Lupino’s Marie is hard-boiled and implacable, but also possesses a deep sense of compassion and a propensity for true love." ^[6]

"The femme fatale is a staple of film noir movies. This character, in fact, is a staple of many movie genres, but she is unique in her film noir depictions. These characters usually aren’t heroes in the classic era film noir pieces. In fact, they’re villains, but they just happen to be highly desirable villains. These women are the perfect antidote to the bland, doormat female characters that appeared in many other films of the era. When these women are in trouble, they figure out a way to get out of it. When these women need money, they’d rather run right over a man to get it than be supported by him. When they do have a man who supports them, love need not be a part of the occasion.

To really be a femme fatale, however, there has to be something dangerous about the woman. She’s usually a manipulator and is running an angle on the protagonist. If the protagonist knows she is working him for something, he’s usually misguided as to what she wants and whatever she’s up to is usually worse than he thought. Sometimes, she does want a man to do the heavy lifting for her. In The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Cora needs someone to help her get rid of an inconvenient husband, with murder being the method of choice. These women are oftentimes trying to set up a murder or to get a bit of money - or both - and take some poor sap along for the ride. A femme fatale has to be attractive enough to be distracting. She’s not an action hero girl or a gun moll. She’s a different type of danger and she knows how to distract the men around her so that they don’t realize just how dangerous she really is.

For a lot of femme fatales, getting found out is the ultimate danger. They thrive on no one suspecting them or, if they are suspected, on being able to use their looks and charm to string people along. In the older films, these women would sometimes play the protagonist by implying that they really wanted to be with him and, once he helped them take care of whatever business they needed done, they’d be all his. The Postman Always Rings Twice is a prime example of this. In this way, the femme fatale is able to use assumptions about women and the traditional role of women at the time to deceive the male characters. They have no idea what she’s really up to, of course, thought the audience might suspect it, and that make the femme fatale character even more compelling." ^[8]

"Finally, there is the assortment of film noir females who use their wiles to get their way, as often as not at the expense of their male counterparts. The mystical French figure of la belle dame sans merci - the beautiful woman without mercy - is personified by the femmes in these productions. In firstrate, often shocking performances, an array of talented actresses - from such prominent stars as Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner, to lesser known actresses including Peggie Castle, Hope Emerson and Helen Walker - portrayed the dark side of the female; women who, in turn, could be avaricious, selfish, possessive, slovenly, calculating, masochistic and callous. While usually possessing a keen intelligence and shrewd cunning, these were women totally lacking in morals, bent on satisfying their own lustful, mercenary or violent desires, utterly aware of their unique feminine tools, and willing to capitalize on them whenever necessary." ^[6]

Film Noir and the City

"The city landscape envisioned as a requisite setting for the film noir symbolizes the conflict of all cities in their collection of different groups of people with competing influences and interests. But much more than this, the noir city individuates human motivations and passions, the very display of which serve as a morality tale of the course modern man has taken in his developed society with its institutions, values, and enticements. Within this urban world, the individual is alternately lost and at home, a refugee from others; as a lone human spirit, the person exercises his or her will to be heard among all the other cries, making that paradoxical claim of all noir characters for whom the city has been a modifying existential experience: to be one among none." ^[1]

"Although a tiny proportion of the films do have small-town or rural settings, classical film noir is quintessentially an urban cycle. A list of selected titles from the classical period of film noir clearly emphasizes this city focus, either by the use of the word city in the title (e.g. Dark City, The Naked City, City of Shadows, City for Conquest, Cry of the City, Night and the City, The Sleeping City, While the City Sleeps, City That Never Sleeps, Edge of the City), or by naming actual cities in the title (e.g. The Phenix City Story, New York Confidential, Port of New York, The Killer That Stalked New York, Chicago Deadline, Chicago Confidential, Kansas City Confidential), or by employing the term or the notion of the street (e.g. The Naked Street, Scarlet Street, Mystery Street, Street of Chance, The Street with No Name, One Way Street, Panic in the Streets, Side Street, Pickup on South Street, Where the Sidewalk Ends, 711 Ocean Drive, 99 River Street, Sunset Blvd, The House on 92nd Street), or sometimes even by a metaphorical reference to the brutal savagery inherent in urban life (e.g. The Asphalt Jungle, The Human Jungle, The Steel Jungle).

For some viewers the most obvious expression of the urban world of noir is to be found in the subgenre of the semidocumentary film made popular in postwar years by commercially successful movies such as The Naked City (1948). These films were shot on actual locations rather than on studio back-lots, and there is no doubt that they had a more authentic city feel than earlier studio-bound examples of noir. Semidocumentary film noirs tended to portray (rather than any furtive private transgressions) cities riven by public crimes, especially by political corruption, as in TThe Captive City (1952), The Phenix City Story (1955), The Big Heat (1953), The Racket (1951), or Street with No Name (1948).

Their protagonists are frequently members of various law enforcement bodies,a feature which has led some critics to consider them as being different ideologically from the radicalism of much film noir portraying "heroes" who are, in the main, downtrodden victims. Instead of lonely tenement rooms, these semidocumentaries feature locations appropriate for gangsters and organized crime, such as nightclubs, gambling joints, boxing rings, and arenas, along with other metonyms of city life such as boarding houses. The Killing and The Harder They Fall (both 1956) are late classical noirs that share with these semidocumentaries a setting in the urban worlds of sport and gambling. Racetracks, for example, feature in many noir films because (with their large deposits of cash) they obviously link in well with crime stories and heist plots.

Far more representative, however, than the semidocumentary treatment of the noir city is a distorted, expressionistic portrayal of it as an existential site of alienation. This aspect of the nature of the city, pessimistic in tone, is reflected in its often solitary inhabitants. The typical city dwellers of such stories are existential heroes, loners alienated in and by the city, which is impersonal and isolating. They are observed scurrying furtively beneath the street lights and along the alleyways and wet streets. They are revealed sitting alone in a darkened room, fearful and lonely. These protagonists seem so different from the heroes of more traditional Hollywood films, who occupy sunny urban landscapes, but there are sometimes hints that the shadowy city of sin and crime is present all along, lying below the shiny surface of those movies, if only the protagonists could see it. Even in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), for instance, the noirish Pottersville exists as a nightmare town below the surface of Bedford Falls.

First and foremost as a locus classicus of the genre is the very city in which Hollywood is located and where the studios that produced film noir operated: Los Angeles. There is no doubt that the stringent minimizing of production expenses imposed by the comparatively low budgets of most films today categorized as noir had an influence in this regard. Plainly, the films’ stories were usually set in Los Angeles to save money on travel to plot locations (a policy practiced even more stringently during World War II because of government restrictions). They tended to emphasize the darker and seamier side of a city that was otherwise stereotyped by boosters of its development as sunny and prosperous. In its early years, Los Angeles was dubbed "Los Diablos" (i.e., a devilish rather than an angelic city) by more cynical newspaper writers throughout the United States, and the city certainly seems more diabolic than angelic, as it is generally portrayed in film noir.

For most people both within and outside the United States, New York is the apotheosis of the American city, with its Manhattan skyline being the most iconic image of that urban landscape. Unsurprisingly, it is (apart from Los Angeles) the most common setting for noir movie stories. New York is frequently shown in generalized terms: skyscrapers and so on, often employing stock footage, with the actors only seen recognizably on sound sets in their Los Angeles studios. It was rare for budgets to allow for production in actual New York locations until the creation of a fashion for authenticity first engendered by the popularity of The Naked City.

Director Jules Dassin was determined to make The Naked City the first film to be shot entirely on location. His hankering for complete geographical authenticity is clear from the film’s opening scene: an aerial camera aboard a helicopter or plane approaches the tip of Manhattan in a shot anticipating the famous credit sequence of West Side Story (1961). Producer Mark Hellinger introduces the film The Naked City in voice-over, emphasizing that it is not a studio-bound movie but that all its scenes will be played out on real streets and in the buildings of the actual city. This (he says) is "the city as it is . . . [at] one o’clock in the morning on a hot summer night." The "pulse" of the city, which never stops beating, is then shown by a montage of night workers doing their graveyard shifts: cleaners, newspaper printers, and so on. After the film’s climax high on the superstructure of a bridge, his closing voice-over famously explains that "there are eight million stories in the naked city: this has been one of them."

With its harbor edged by busy piers, its hills and its tightly packed downtown streets, San Francisco more resembles in appearance New York than it does its fellow Californian city Los Angeles. Its picturesquely precipitous streets, its congested downtown neighborhoods, and the exoticism of its Chinatown have all encouraged noir filmmakers to use the city as a symbol of mystery, duplicity, and confusion. This can be seen in the most bewildering section of Out of the Past (1947), where the Robert Mitchum character feels framed in a convoluted trap in which he is the fall guy, or even more dramatically in the kaleidoscopic concluding scenes of The Lady from Shanghai (1948). Most elaborately of all, San Francisco is used as a hypnotically ensnaring environment in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958)." ^[4]

Legacy

"Many genres borrow from film noir, but there’s nothing like true film noir. The darkness, cynicism and, at the same time, realism, that characterizes these films makes them something unique. The classic era of film noir was one where censorship and the Red Scare dominated the way most films were made. Some stories were essentially forbidden, but film noir manages to break down barriers and tell those stories anyway. Crime, murder, sex; they’re all on bold display in these movies.

Moving to the modern era of neo-noir, we see something wonderful happen. An appreciation for the filmmaking techniques of the past, with all their haunting shadows and darkened urban landscapes, gave us some of the best films in any genre. From Reservoir Dogs to Oldboy, film noir has left its mark on how films look and feel, even if the audience isn’t aware of how much those modern films have been influenced by classic film noir.

This genre has endured because it has something unique to offer. It’s sophisticated, yet accessible. It’s complex, but it still draws on emotions that anyone can relate to. It can be maddening, with all the twists and turns in the plots of these films, but it rewards the viewer for persisting in watching and, perhaps, even watching the same film more than once." ^[8]

American Film Noir Filmography

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American pre-noir

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American classic noir (1940-1960)

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American post-noir (1961-1975)

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American neo noir (1976-)

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British Noir Filmography

British pre-noir

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British classic noir

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British neo noir

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French noir Filmography

French classic noir

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French neo noir

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German noir Filmography

German classic noir

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German neo noir

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Italian noir Filmography

Italian classic noir

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Italian neo noir

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Resources

• [1] Andrew Dickos, Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir (University Press of Kentucky, 2002)) pp 6-8
• [2] Andrew Spicer, Historical Dictionary of Film Noir (Scarecrow Press, 2010) pp xxxix-xli, xliii-xlvii
• [3] Arthur Lyons, Death On The Cheap: The Lost B Movies Of Film Noir (Da Capo Press, 2000) pp 1-2, 7
• [4] Geoff Mayer & Brian McDonnell, Encyclopedia of Film Noir (Greenwood, 2007) pp 47-56
• [5] Karen Burroughs Hannsberry, Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir (McFarland & Company, 2003) pp 2-3
• [6] Karen Burroughs Hannsberry, Femme Noir: Bad Girls of Film (McFarland & Company, 2009) pp 1, 8-11
• [7] Paul Duncan, Film Noir: Films of Trust and Betrayal (Pocket Essentials, 2006) pp 17-20
• [8] Stephen Hoover, Dark Movies: The Essential Film Noir (Stephen Hoover, 2014) pp 1-5, 205
• [9] William Park, What is Film Noir? (Bucknell University Press, 2013) pp 55