Sun 22 Feb 2009
No self-respecting mystery-oriented blog, especially one that also covers crime films, should be in existence very long without a discussion of Noir and “What’s a Noir Film?” breaking out.
It’s been touched on now and again here on Mystery*File, but while you may not have noticed, a lengthy conversation recently took place here, one that covered the subject more intensely than has ever happened before.
And, of all place, in the comments section of an old review I posted of Phantom Valley, a Durango Kid movie released by Columbia in 1948.
Here’s the last paragraph, in which I said of the leading lady:
“Virginia Hunter is very pretty and attractive, but she seems to have had only a short career in films. Her roles include at least one other Durango movie, several Three Stooges shorts, and a small part in the noir thriller He Walked by Night (1948). Mostly B-movies, looking down through the rest of the list, and often small uncredited parts at that, but she makes the most of this one.”
Since some interesting things were said, I’ll let those who commented take over from here:
MIKE GROST: “The IMDB says Virginia Hunter has tiny roles in Caught and The Reckless Moment, two films in the genre variously known as melodrama / romantic drama / Women’s films / soap opera. Both were directed by Max Ophuls. Ophuls is one of the most admired directors today, and his works are considered major classics. There are many books on him, including Max Ophuls in the Hollywood Studios (1996) by Lutz Bacher.
“I don’t remember Virginia Hunter in Caught at all. She must have had a very small part.”
WALKER MARTIN: “Mike, concerning Caught and The Reckless Moment, I agree with your use of the word ‘melodrama’ but I’m not so sure about the words ‘romantic drama/ Women’s films/soap opera.’ I viewed both these films about a year ago during my present habit of watching a film noir movie just about every night on dvd (these two films are on British PAL discs). They are definitely film noir with Caught starring James Mason and Robert Ryan and The Reckless Moment starring James Mason and Joan Bennett.
“Both films are listed in such basic film noir references as Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward and Film Noir Guide by Keaney. You are right about Max Ophuls being one of the great directors but I guess we have to agree to disagree about these movies being women’s films or soap opera.”
DAVID VINEYARD: “The Reckless Moment is based on a novel by Elizabeth Saxnay Holding, The Blank Wall (1947). The Brooklyn-born Holding was married to an Englishman, and author of several well received novels pioneering the field of psychological suspense. The film is clearly in the noir mode with iconic noir actress Joan Bennett in the lead as a woman being blackmailed by James Mason. Anthony Boucher and Raymond Chandler were both champions of Holding’s work with Boucher crediting her with virtually creating the modern novel of psychological suspense.
“Caught, while also clearly in the noir mode, is also clearly a modern gothic in it’s plot of a young woman (Barbara Bel Geddes) who discovers her husband (Robert Ryan) isn’t who she thought he was and falls for the doctor(James Mason) who suspects foul play, but her escape is complicated because she is pregnant by her husband. It’s based on the novel Wild Calender by Libbie Block.
“Both films are generally listed in most noir reference books, though they might fit in a sub-category from the usual crime, spy, and private eye fare we tend to think of as noir. Other films in this more romantic noir mood include Fallen Angel, Leave Her to Heaven, Angel Face, and No Man of Her Own (based on Cornell Woolrich’s I Married a Dead Man).
“Though they are both pre-noir (officially noir begins with 1946’s Murder My Sweet, though plenty of films before that have noirish elements)these more romantic and femme centered noirs were often a mix of elements from Rebecca and Mildred Pierce, though they often featured iconic noir actresses such as Bennett, Bel Geddes, and Barbara Stanwyck.
“And before everyone piles on to mention the countless films that came out before 1946 that clearly have noir elements, the date is not entirely arbitrary. The term was coined by the French and was not used or recognized as a specific genre before that date. I can think of any number of films before Murder My Sweet I would call noir too, but film historians point out that noir couldn’t technically exist until the term was coined, however many films we think of as noir may seem to fit the pattern.
“I lean to including the pre-noirs in the general accepted genre, but don’t stretch quite as far as some so called noir collections on DVD that frankly seem to be pushing the boundaries to any film that deals with a crime and makes use of shadows in their cinematography.
“A perfectly good example would be Scotland Yard Inspector with Cesar Romero, which is available in one of the Film Noir sets. The film is an entertaining British B mystery in the Peter Cheyney mode, but it isn’t noir by any means.
“Noir is more attitude than subject matter, and as the old line goes, you know it when you see it. Some of these definitions would include any film that was in black and white and wasn’t a comedy, musical, or western.”
WALKER MARTIN: “Yes, we can argue all day about what is film noir and what period constitutes the film noir years, etc. I often see critics saying 1941-1959 is the basic film noir era. However, I have seen movies prior to 1941 that I would call film noir and I’ve seen alot of movies after 1959 that are certainly film noir or neo-noir. To try and pin down the exact definition or period will drive us crazy.
“For instance one of my favorite reference books is Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference by Silver and Ward. Since 1979, I have been checking off the films as I view them, listing the date viewed and my grade concerning quality. Sometimes I scribble a comment such as ‘This is not film noir.’
“A couple nights ago was the most recent time that I wrote this comment. I finally found a poor print of Thunderbolt, a 1929 early sound movie starring George Bancroft and Fay Wray. Despite Silver and Ward listing it in the book, there is no evidence that this film is anything more than a crime/prison drama. Yet they see some type of pre-noir element that justifies inclusion in the encyclopedia.
“I’m pretty liberal in what I include as film noir and I have to be, otherwise I would drive myself mad. The main thing is I enjoy this type of movie.”
MIKE GROST: “I’ve never seen The Reckless Moment. It’s good news that it is at last out on DVD!
“It’s certainly true that Caught is widely viewed as a noir. But I’ve always been a bit skeptical. Films like Fallen Angel or Mildred Pierce have murder mysteries in them. Everyone agrees they are noir.
“But there is no crime or even violence in Caught. It’s about a woman and her romantic affairs.
“Caught does have some character types we associate with noir. Robert Ryan’s nasty millionaire shows the ‘alienation and obsession’ Alain Silver rightly associates with noir. And the film is often dark in mood.
Still, I think ‘noir’ is best restricted to films with actual crime elements. Maybe we can all agree that Caught is ‘noir-like’…
“I last saw Thunderbolt (Josef von Sternberg, 1929) in 1972. Thought then it was a masterpiece! This is another film that badly needs to get back in circulation. Sternberg was a giant of the cinema.
“Have no opinions about whether is is pre-noir. Was astonished back then by its rich use of sound. It seems like one of the most creative and emotionally laden of the early talkies.
“Hardly anyone in Hollywood used the term noir, even after the French coined it circa 1946. Silver and Ursini’s Film Noir Reader 2 presents strong evidence that Hollywood called such films ‘crime movies,’ and thought of them as a distinct genre. IMHO ‘film noir’ is a great catchy name for this genre, and better than simple ‘crime movies.’ But the genre pre-existed its name. Films like The Stranger on the Third Floor and This Gun for Hire, made long before 1946, sure seem like film noir to me.”
DAVID VINEYARD: “I agree about stretching the limits of noir to include films made before and after the general cut off points. Certainly some of the pre code films have noir elements, as do films like Lang’s You Only Live Once and Fury (though I think in all honestly both are really crime drama and social drama respectively).
“Even strict constructionists who insist on the 1946 date will admit (reluctantly) that if The Big Sleep had been released in 1945 before Murder My Sweet instead of delayed a year (the 1945 cut has been restored) it would be the first true noir, but then the French invented the term to refer to a type of film that clearly goes back at least to the thirties and which they imitated in films like Jour le Seve and La Bete Humane (which Lang remade as a noir with Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, and Broderick Crawford).
Anthony Mann’s westerns since under that definition a western couldn’t be noir, though there are certainly noirish elements in many of them (and directed by notable noir directors).
“And in relation to the article, if it’s based on Cornell Woolrich isn’t it film noir by definition? The Falcon Takes Over and Time to Kill from the Michael Shayne series based on Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely and The High Window both have noir elements just by the nature of the stories, but though they are superior B series entries I don’t think either one is really noir. What is and isn’t noir is likely to be argued for a long time.
“I would likely agree to limiting noir to crime films, though in the case of Caught the combination of the actors involved — especially Robert Ryan — the look of the film, and director Max Ophuls there is certainly a case to be made for calling it noir.
“Even within the strictest definition of the genre there are films as diverse as the nihilistic Detour, the docudrama style of He Walked By Night or Lineup, and the moody romance of Out of the Past that are noir icons, but have little in common other than crime and being filmed in black and white. I suspect in the case of noir the answer lies in the eye of the beholder within some general guidelines.”
LUTZ BACHER: “In Caught, Virginia Hunter plays ‘Lushola,’ the inebriated woman who keeps interrupting Lee and Quinada at the bar in the Nightclub scene. In Reckless Moment, she’s seen more briefly at the juke box in the hotel bar (the second bar scene, near the end), repeatedly saying ‘same song again.’”
Me, Steve, again. Thanks to all who commented, with a special tip of the cap to Lutz Bacher for the definitive answer to who Virginia Hunter played, and when, the question which began this entire conversation!
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:02 am
CAUGHT is definitely noir, in my opinion. I don’t think conventional “crime” is a necessity of the genre – that would be too easy, and why would we need a separate word to distinguish it? David Goodis’ THE BLONDE ON THE STREET CORNER is another good example – where is the crime? where is the mystery? Nowhere, but it has this overpowering mood of doom and desperation, of feeling “caught” and having no escape. These are some of the characteristics that make “Caught” a noir for me.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:15 am
I agree that crime does not have to be in a film for it to be considered film noir. I tend to think of film noir as not so much a genre but more of a style of film making. For instance if you look at REIGN OF TERROR, a 1949 movie also known as THE BLACK BOOK, the plot deals with the French Revolution. Doesn’t sound like a film noir movie but it is directed by Anthony Mann and the photographer is the great John Alton. Both of whom made many film noirs. The atmosphere and style of the movie is definitely film noir.
Or some westerns can be considered film noir, such as PURSUED(1947), which is a psychological western with the appropriate dark photography and atmosphere.
I’m sure there are viewers who would disagree and insist that such movies as CAUGHT, REIGN OF TERROR, AND PURSUED are not film noir. But they certainly have the film noir style, brooding atmosphere, and dark, shadowy photography. Not to mention the haunted and often doomed characters.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:44 am
“… the film noir style, brooding atmosphere, and dark, shadowy photography.”
Since the argument over the question of what’s noir and what isn’t is still an open question, we aren’t likely to come to any definitive answers here either.
Even if we were all to agree on a definition, then disagreements would still continue as to whether or not a given movie satisfies the definition or not.
But I like what you say, Walker, in describing film noir as a style, especially in terms of the dark, shadowy photography.
It just happens then that crime films lend themselves to that sort of film-making. And so do westerns, which is how the subject of “what is noir?” came up most recently on this blog.
See https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=750
Prose can be noir if it produces in the reader’s mind the same dark images that films do.
I say this since the word “noir” was used first to describe films, not prose.
I’m not so much inclined to include “doomed characters” in my idea of what noir is. “Haunted,” yes, but most noir films, whether crime movies or westerns or neither, do have happy endings, I think. Cullen suggests an “overpowering mood of doom and desperation, of feeling ‘caught’ and having no escape.” I don’t know about the movie Caught itself, not having seen it, but while the feeling of desperation plays a crucial role of the dark atmosphere of a noir film, I don’t think it often carries through all the way to the end.
I realize that happy endings were the by-product of movie codes and editors. There are many exceptions, but I think a steady diet of movies and books with downbeat and miserable endings for everyone involved describes a genre or movement that’s designed for extinction very quickly.
Viewers and readers come for entertainment, and doomed characters aren’t entertaining after a while. There has to be hope, and if hope is continuously withheld, then (realistically) the aforementioned viewers and readers are going to go elsewhere.
I’m talking about the 1940s and 50s, not people like us who are looking back on the phenomenon now. As for the current noir revival, that’s another matter altogether.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:20 am
Noir had its roots in German expressionist cinema, Warner’s social and gangster dramas, B programmers, the American hardboiled school of writing, and the cynicism of films and plays like Front Page, and oddly enough the screwball school of movies. I’ve always thought of it as more a mood and as Walker said a style, than a set of rules, an attitude more than type of film. I would agree that many westerns belong in the genre — certainly those made in the late forites and fifties — and I can even think of a handful of musicals that are borderline.
Certainly doom laden describes many noir characters, but not all of them, and the “happy” endings of noir vary a bit from traditional Hollywood happy endings in that the characters in noir always seem aware that happy everaftering is unlikely. Truth is there is a strong romanticism to the genre though it’s often expressed in a cynical manner ala the Philip Marlowe voice. Recast Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights as modern tales and they would be very close to noir. Rather than doom laden I would call noir fatalistic, and dark. The happy ending is always going to be tinged with the uncertainty of what went before. Noir heroes and heroines tend to be like the amnesiac hero of Graham Greene’s Ministry of Fear — they will never be the same once they know the truth; they can never again underestimate the simple value of being happy. They have lost their innocence, and in passing through the darkness they now carry it with them. Like the hero of Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man their lives are forever altered, and they can’t go back to life as it was. I’ve even heard it argued that It’s A Wonderful Life is a noir to the extent that no matter how happy the ending George Bailey can never go back to his life before that night (in David Thompson’s novel Suspects he ties many noir characters from fiction and film together through George Bailey and Bedford Falls).
For me the defintion of what makes noir is the final scene of Fritz Lang’s The Big Sleep. Glenn Ford has lost his wife to gansters and finally brought them and the corrupt city officials down thanks to the revenge of a bad girl(Gloria Grahame), who was horribly burned by a scalding pot of coffee thrown by hitman Lee Marvin, she not only helps Ford bring down the gang but saves his life by throwing hot coffee on Marvin. In the final scene cop Ford has gone back to work, and a call comes in. As he walks out of the office he turns to an officer manning the phones and says, “Keep the coffee hot.” It’s not a bad metaphor for noir film in general. Hot coffee doesn’t care who it burns and life doesn’t care who it happens to. All you can do is keep going, and keep the coffee hot.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:40 am
I agree with your post about this fascinating subject David, but in your last paragraph you mention Fritz Lang’s The Big Sleep. I’m sure you meant The Big Heat. Both of these films are great examples of film noir. There are so many levels and meanings to many film noir movies that it is possible to view them many times even if you know the plot and ending.
I have a friend that loves horror movies and when he started to praise the Warner Bros. fourth film noir box set, the one with 10 films, I thought maybe I had another film noir lover with whom I could discuss the films. However he soon admitted to being “burned out” because of the downbeat themes and wished that one character, instead of dying at the end, had instead turned into a giant squid like in a horror movie. Then my friend felt he could have laughed off the depressing aspects of the film. So he stopped watching the film noir movies in the box set and is taking a break.
I realize film noir can be very dark, depressing, and the characters very haunted and sometimes doom laden but as David says in the last sentence above, “All you can do is keep going, and keep the coffee hot.” This is life and we are kidding ourselves if we think it all just ends with each of us turning into a giant squid. Real life has far more darker surprises for us.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:17 am
It’s great to see that so many people in the mystery community enjoy Max Ophuls!
In addition to “Max Ophuls in the Hollywood Studios”, I would also recommend Lutz Bacher’s “The Mobile Mise-En-Scène: A Critical Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Long-Take Camera Movement in the Narrative Film” (1978). His books are really informative.
Max Ophuls’ final film “Lola Montès” was recently restored and re-released. Here is the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkqBkMvR6ak
And at the risk of SPOILERS, both Caught and Lola Montès have happy endings.
February 25th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Can’t believe I typed The Big Sleep for The Big Heat and didn’t catch it. Thanks for noticing Walker. And I should mention Heat is based on the novel by William McGivern whose other noir book to film contributions include The Odds Against Tomorrow and Rogue Cop.
In regard to happy endings, it isn’t that all noir has downbeat endings so much that the end of the film doesn’t resolve all the conflicts presented in the film. The hero wins out and even gets the girl in many noirs, but as in life that doesn’t mean you can go back to life the way it was before the trouble came. The theme of noir often seems to be simply that happiness is an illusion, and there is a dark undercurrent we either don’t see or don’t admit to even in happy normal lives.
I often think that Hemingway foreshadowed the noir idea in The Sun Also Rises when at the end Lady Brett tells Jake Barnes whe wishes things had been different and they would have had a happy life together, and Barnes cynically says: “Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so.” It’s that noir ambience that at any given time chaos is waiting to intrude on the happy little ordered world we have tried to impose around us.
Graham Greene and Eric Ambler credit the birth of the modern spy novel to a moment in John Buchan’s 1910 novel The Power House when the hero, Edward Leithen, recognises he is in as deadly danger in the middle of crowded Piccadilly Circus as he would be on the African veldt or some other exotic and wild place. The line Buchan uses could be a methphor for noir — “how thin the veneer of civilization …”
In noir, even when the conflict has been resolved the protagonist is left with the uneasy recognition that the “veneer of civilization” is one more illusion.
February 26th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Vow!
I think, though, that the term “noir” was first meant to describe prose, not film, in the French critics’ vocabulary. I’m not entirely sure about this and can’t check at the moment (my kids are getting restless), but the use of the term started already in the thirties and it was used to describe films like, Le Jour se Leve.
James Naremore discusses many of the usual and some of the unusual arguments about what’s noir in his book MORE THAN NIGHT, which I recommend to anyone who’s interested in the topic.
February 26th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
There is an article on Wikipedia that goes into the historical usage of the term “film noir” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nino_Frank , going back to the 1930s as you say, Juri, but I see no references to “Roman Noir” there.
Somewhat related to this, however is Gallimard’s “Série noire” imprint of books, which was founded in 1945 by Marcel Duhamel.
There is a lot of information about this books at http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9rie_noire , but since I am no longer fluent in French, most of it is beyond what I can easily follow.
The names Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Horace McCoy, William Burnett, Ed McBain, Chester Himes, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Lou Cameron and Jim Thompson are quite easy to make out, however!
February 26th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Once again, thanks to all who’ve left comments. A special thanks to David’s perspective on “happy endings” in noir films. He put his finger precisely on a point that has always bothered me.
The use of the phrase “doomed characters” in noir films has never rung true to me, since most of the characters survive. But if you think about it, as David suggests, there has to be a lot of scar tissue left behind, even as “The End” and the closing credits come up on the screen.
The “happy endings” mask this aspect of noir cinema. The characters survive, but their attitudes toward life most surely do not. I think that most of the audience for these films in the 1940s and 50s instinctively knew that, too.
And I knew it, and yet I didn’t. Instinctively it’s there, but I’d never formulated the idea in my mind so well before. It’s obviously a key to understanding — and appreciating — noir films all the more.
I’m grateful for all of the discussion that got us to this point — very well done!
March 3rd, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Okay, I just took Naremore’s book from the shelf. After the intro, there’s a chapter called “The History of an Idea”. I was wrong: the French critics didn’t use the term “noir” to describe written word and the use of the word didn’t really start until 1946, when Nino Frank and others noticed that some of the new American films resembles films like Pépé le Moko or Le jour se lève.
However, there had been constant use of “noir” in other circles, which have lot to do with the film-related use of the term. Naremore points out that it was mainly the French Surrealists who were interested in the thematics of the American crime melodrama. They had used “noir” before. For example, André Breton, the surrealist boss, edited a book called Anthologie d’humour noir in 1940. Marcel Duhamel, who edited Serie Noire starting from 1946, had been a surrealist himself and he liked to note that the Surrealists liked to watch American crime films already in the 1920’s.
“Noir” was also used in France by the right- wing politicians and media to criticize the left-wing art and politics. It was something dirty and dark. After the war, the left-wing artists and writers (what the Surrealists essentially were) started to use the term in a more positive way.
Okay, I’ll have to go eat now (had to struggle our boy to sleep just five minutes ago). This was pretty inconsistent, but I’m sure there’s still more to this “what is noir” issue.
March 4th, 2009 at 12:02 am
Thanks to Juri for clearing up some points about the use of the term noir. Certainly ‘black humor’ has been around since Greek drama (probably since Gilgamesh). There are elements of it in Shakespeare and Webster and on through the Newgate Callender to Dickens and the gothics. Black humor shows up in horror, crime, comedy, tragedy, and even the detective story, and it was certainly represented in silent films.
Some critics have tried to break noir down intro periods just because that’s the nature of critics, and generally they use the term Proto-Noir (no, I don’t much like it either) which refers to films like The Maltese Falcon, High Sierra, and many Warners crime dramas: Film Noir which most begin with Murder My Sweet in 1946 and usually end in 1959: Post Noir, which includes films like Mirage: and, Neo Noir which most critcs would date from the Cohen Brothers Blood Simple. With certain reservations I’ve got no real problem with that since it recognises there is a certain loseness in the definition of terms. I know many would argue noir is noir, and others think any crime film is noir, but if we have to have definitions this seems as good as any.
Still true purists argue, with some justification, that noir can only exist from 1946 on because the post war cynicism, Red Scares, 50’s ambience, and disillusion are key to what is meant by film noir. This argues less that noir is a film genre than a social movement, and certainly there is a subtle difference between the Depression era desolation of High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon and the cynical disillusion, paranoia, and existentialism of Detour, Out of the Past, or On Dangerous Ground. Something happened and that something was WWII. The ‘black’ films before the war come out of a different social milieu than those after, they represent a different set of social problems and concerns, and while they have many common themes, the six years between Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Philip Marlowe in Murder My Sweet changed everything. Just for an experiment (and a not bad film festival) watch Falcon and Across the Pacific (both directed by John Huston) from before the War, and then view Key Largo and Asphalt Jungle from the post war period by the same director. The difference in mood, character, and ambience is pretty startling, and you’ll start to see why film noir isn’t just about crime, doom, and smart ass private eyes. Film noir was born out of the fires of WWII and can’t be separated from them, just as the War is the real difference between the hardboiled era of Hammett and Black Mask, and that of Spillane and Mike Hammer.
And milestones like these aren’t unique to noir. Hollywood westerns before John Ford’s Stagecoach and after are two very different things as are crime films before and after Public Enemy or comedy before and after Ernst Lubitch. A lot of things taste like chicken, but it doesn’t men they are poultry.
March 4th, 2009 at 4:16 am
But did the Greeks and Shakespeare use the term “black humour”? I don’t know when that term originated or got into widespread use.
March 4th, 2009 at 4:26 am
BTW, the Wiki article on Nino Frank has quotes on some French films from the 1930’s, stating that they were called films noirs. It seems to me that the journals quoted were right-wing – Action Francaise most certainly was – and that the use of the term wasn’t exactly positive.
We shouldn’t probably look very hard at Frank’s descriptions: what do The Maltese Falcon, Laura, Murder My Sweet and The Woman in the Window have in common? (Was there still another one? Double Indemnity?) Many of them are screwballish (cf. noirish) and Laura isn’t exactly hardboiled.
As for the style being born out WWII, I do think that’s a bit simplistic. The same styles had been in use in Germany decades before and it had creeped into Hollywood already before the war, which is documented in James Whale’s horror films or Fritz Lang’s earlier Hollywood films or even Son of Frankenstein. The style was very evident in horror/mystery B films, like the Sherlock Holmes flicks of the mid-fourties.
One could take a look at Rick Altman’s book on film genres and his analysis on how genres are produced via producers, advertising, critics, essayists, audiences, fan magazines and such. I don’t think anyone in Hollywood was making “noir” – it came only later when they were asked about it and were it not for the French left-wing Surrealists and writers, I don’t think we’d be discussing this thing. (Mind you, Robert Aldrich said about Kiss Me Deadly that it’s a action-filled thriller, and nothing more. Only when he heard that the French thought it was noir at its darkest, he changed his views about his own film. This is documented in Naremore’s book.)
March 4th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Juri hits on a major impact on the noir school which was the German Expressionist silent and early talkie films of directors like Fritz Lang (Hitchcock worked as an art director for Lang in Germany and met his wife, Alma Reville, who also worked for Lang, there), Joe May, and others — many who ended up in Hollywood fleeing the spread of fascism in Europe. Lang, certainly a major noir director, is probably the most famous of these, though Billy Wilder, who was notable in screwball comedy and noir, is equally important and also came out of German film making (mostly as a writer). The heavy influx of European artists from the early thirties on heavily influenced the genre. And too, many of the French directors like Jules Dassin, Jean Negluesco, and Max Ophuls ended up in Hollywood, having made their dark films back home before being forced to leave. They brought with them a European sensibility that is one of the keys to noir films.
One distinction should be made however. Long before noir the hardboiled school of fiction had a tremendous impact on Hollywood, and because many noir elements are also elements of the hardboiled genre there is a natural confusion that arises. Films out of the hardboiled school ranging from the Torchy Blaine films based on Fred Nebel’s Kennedy and McBride (Kennedy underwent a sex change and became Glenda Farrel and eventually Jane Wyman), the Lloyd Nolan Michael Shayne films, the Thin Man films, and even adaptations of Race Williams and Dan Turner to film (they exist, but they are difficult to find) were staples in the pre war era. Films like Private Detective 62, Sleeper’s East (remade as Sleeper’s West), Quiet Please, Murder!, and Big Brown Eyes featured hard boiled private eyes with many of the familiar elements of film noir, but they aren’t noir and come out of a different sensibility. The pre war private eye, gangster, and cop may have much in common with noir heroes, but they are coming from a different world view (society is not the enemy in noir films, but fate is). Films like Mr. Lucky have many noir touches, but don’t really belong to the genre save as films pointing towards the emerging genre. Mr. Lucky ends with the very unnoirish idea that romance and patriotism can save the hero from himself and the world from the threat of evil(in Sam Fuller’s Pickup on South Street Richard Widmark’s character does the right thing yet remains unredeemed and unredeemable) much as Casablanca suggests sacrifice and nobility can save the world. In noir nothing can save you. Mere innocence is no defense nor is simple toughness, and goodness can’t guarantee safety or happiness.
In regard to Laura, the elements that make it proto noir are it’s director, the (at first) doomed romance between the hero and heroine, the perverse natures of the characters played by Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, and Judith Anderson, and the nature of the hero Dana Andrews, whose Mark McPherson is a cop who talks and acts like a hardboiled private eye. All of these are noir elements, still I don’t think Laura is properly noir anymore than The Maltese Falcon is. They come very close, but they aren’t true film noir anymore than Wellman’s Public Enemy, Hawks Scarface, or Walsh’s High Sierra. The noirish elements of those films come out of German Expressism, hardboiled fiction, and Depression era cynicism and fear and social critisism, but they aren’t true film noir however black they may be. Roy Earle (High Sierra) dies redeemed by love and humanity — a very un noir idea. Robert Mitchum dies for similar reasons in Out of The Past, but it’s not redemption, only recognition that he and Jane Greer don’t deserve to live among decent human beings.
And as Juri and others have pointed out the noir film makers didn’t think in terms of noir anymore than Aldrich was thinking of ‘New Wave’ when he made Kiss Me Deadly. But they were conscious of making a different kind of film with bleaker, more existential, paranoid, and perverse characters than in the average crime film. The plot of the play and early film of The Racket is almost exactly the same as the remake with Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan, and yet the first two are only crime drama and the second is noir, and the difference lies in the approach of the director and screenwriter to the look and theme of the film. Jon Tuska in The Detective in Hollywood rightly points out that The Maltese Falcon Spade is not a noir hero and the film is not noir because convention required in the end Bogart be a hero. In true film noir the world is viewed from a narrow perspective of nightmare, distrust, and ultimately dispair. Even when order is restored the damage has been done and we are aware chaos and violence are the wolves always at the door. In the dark films before noir there are unhappy endings and lost men, but for the most part there is a sense that there is hope (in I Am a Fugitive From a Chaingang society condems Paul Muni’s character, but given the chance he could redeem himself — something no noir hero can do). In noir hope is an illusion and once lost can’t be restored. Robin Wood in Hollywood Films of the Forties divided noir into ‘blacks’ and ‘grays’. Blacks are films like Detour and Out of the Past Where it is always night and the world is a place of dark shadows, and in grays a certain rude humor is present as a defense against this darkness (The Big Clock is a ‘gray’).
The reason Cornell Woolrich is so identified with the genre is exactly that. In the end all you can do is voice the same concern of the heroine of his story “Papa Benjamin” (done on Karloff’s Thriller with John Ireland) in the stories last line: “Stay close to me boys, I don’t want to go home in the dark.”
In noir films nothing and no one can save you from the dark; not brains (Mystery Street), brawn (On Dangerous Ground), courage (The Racket), love (Gun Crazy), religion (I Confess), innocence (The Wrong Man), childhood (The Window), good intentions (The Big Heat), dreams (The Asphalt Jungle), duty (T-Men), cleverness (Nightmare Alley), quiet suburban domesticity (Reckless Moment and Shadow of a Doubt), or escape (The Killers). Sooner or later William Conrad and Charles McGraw are going to show up in a diner asking where you live. The wrong person is going to stop at your little gas station and recognise your face (Out of the Past), the lie you based you hopes on will collapse (No Man of Her Own), a chance involvement with an innocent will propel you to doom (Raw Deal), the too easy money comes with a deadly hook (His Kind of Woman), a chance encounter on a train will shatter your perfect future (Strangers on a Train), the wrong man will get in your taxi (Side Steet), and once he falls you can never put Humpty Dumpty together again (The Wrong Man). Someone is always going to open Pandora’s Box, and hope won’t be in it this time (Kiss Me Deadly). Even in bright daylight on an idyllic mountain lake a twisted mind can plunge you into despair (Leave Her to Heaven). And in the end we all go home alone in the dark. In Dead Reconing we have that famous parachute opening, but it comes too late to save us. Even if you get the girl (and it’s Grace Kelly) there will still come that moment at 2:00 in the morning when no matter how big the crowd surrounding you, you will be alone. Toughness, honesty, faithfulness, innocence,nobility, they aren’t enough … in film noir the thing you can’t escape is fate, and yourself.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:48 am
I basically agree with what David says in Comment #15 though I probably have a larger view of what constitutes film noir. For instance I think of The Maltese Falcon and Laura as being film noir. But then again I agree that High Sierra, Public Enemy, and Scarface are crime films, not film noir. Every viewer has their own idea of what film noir is. It’s a very subjective subject and hard to pin down with certain rules and requirements. An example of subjective would be the Edgar Wallace Mystery Theater episodes that the BRITISH FILM NOIR GUIDE lists as having film noir elements. I’ve seen several of the episodes lately thanks to ebay and ioffer.com and I see the series as more of a crime and mystery drama, not film noir at all except for maybe a few episodes.
Also David mentions how when it is 2:00 am in the morning, you are alone with your fate. This is why for the last couple of years, I have been watching a film noir or crime, mystery movie most nights at midnight. It’s usually 2:00 am or beyond when I call it quits. Instead of counting sheep, I review the film noir elements in the movie that I’ve just viewed. Some film buffs have told me they think it is depressing to watch so many dark, shadowy, films with haunted and sometimes doomed characters. I don’t see it as depressing because this is life, fate, our common destiny. Nobody gets out of life alive. As Albert Camus said, “…men die and they are unhappy.”
I do watch other types of film like comedies, musicals, westerns, SF, horror, dramas. But these can be viewed during the day or early evening. I cannot imagine myself watching film noir in the bright day light or during a sunny summer day! Film noir and the dark questions the movies sometime raise, are meant to be seen late at night, under the proper conditons and atmosphere. Otherwise you do not get the full impact.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say why I don’t think some films embraced as noir really belong there, then saw it off behind me by trying to define what noir is. But first the films that I don’t think really are noir despite having noir elements.
I’ve already explained why I don’t think The Maltese Falcon is noir — Spade is hardly alienated, doomed, obsessed or the victim of mysterious forces. He’s in control of himself and the situation, and the closest he comes to a touch of noir is a pang of regret at sending Brigid up the river for killing Archer. The only bad nights Spade is going to have is getting Miles Archer’s widow off his neck. Laura is a bit more problematic, because the sleuth is briefly obsessed, but in the end he isn’t a noir protagonist either. Clifton Webb’s villain is alienated and obsessed, but in noir it’s the hero and not the villain that counts. I Wake Up Screaming would be noir if Laird Cregar’s cop was the hero, but the hero and heroine are pr man Victor Mature and showgirl Betty Grable and if you remove the murder plot the two would be perfectly served in a musical (in fact, they were). Johnny Eager is a slick MGM take on a Warner’s gangster movie, but again the hero, Robert Taylor isn’t a noir hero (his buddy Van Heflin is though, but that doesn’t count). There is nothing in Johnny Eager’s character different than the general run of gangsters in a hundred similar films. All of these films use the shadows and high contrast lighting of noir, but then so does the swashbuckler The Sea Hawk. They all have noir elements, but they lack the core elements that define noir. For that matter I would put Hitchcock’s Shadow of Doubt as only borderline noir (Teresa Wright is neither alienated, obsessed, nor beset by mysterious forces — she’s Nancy Drew caught in an adult mystery). Shanghai Gesture is an old fashioned German Expressionist melodrama, and not a noir though a contributor to the genre. An argument can be made however for You Only Live Once, Street of Chance, Mask of Dimitrios, The Stranger on the Third Floor, and Journey Into Fear. Ill give them their points, and only point out that two of them are spy films and by that nature share elements with noir and the two spy films are directed by Noir director Jean Negulescu and Orson Welles (though credited to Norman Foster). The elements of distrust, paranoia, and betrayl common to most spy films are noirish to begin with.
But then what is noir? We’ve beat around the noir bush and come up with some general ideas — as Walker points out it is a style — but it isn’t just a style or every moody horror film would be noir, so I’m going to try to break down some key elements that I think define noir.
First of all noir is defined by the protagonist, and the noir protagonist has some distinct characteristics. As often as not he’s a veteran who is having a tough time adjusting to the peace time world, but veteran or not he is always alienated in some way. In noir this means he is lost in a darkness he carries inside of him, but which is expressed by the world outside of him. He is inevitably an urban figure, usually in an urban setting (but even in a rural setting — On Dangerous Ground, Un Roi Sans Divertisement — the hero is an urban figure). Above all he is opposed by a “mysterious force” a situation or antagonist beyond his control which leaves him with a sense of fear, powerlessness, and isolation. He is faced with forces of chaos he can’t control and sometimes is even attracted to. The noir hero is at the mercy of forces he can’t control and can only hope to survive.
The second factor key to most — but not all — noir is obsession. The noir protagonist is invaribly obsessed — with the truth, revenge, a woman, power, money, or an impossible dream. He carries that obsession to the point it nearly (or does) destroy him (these definitions all define the female protagonists of noir as well). He is set apart by the obsession, and though he recognises the power it has over him he can’t escape. That inability to escape from one’s fate is another key element of noir. You can run from everything but yourself.
Noir style is also important. High contrast lighting gives objects a certain sinister feel. Taffic lights, street lights, rain soaked streets, narrow alleys, dark stairwells in cheap apartments,abandoned buildings, fire escapes, the sewers beneath the city, darkened warehouses — all these places and things take on a character of their own. The freighter where the final scene of Anthony Mann’s T-Men takes place, the bridge girders Arturo De Cordova flees onto in The Naked City, the tunnels beneath Union Station, the sewers of LA in He Walked by Night, the refinery in White Heat and Follow Me Quietly, the merry-go-round in Strangers on a Train, the office stairwell in Mirage’s blackout, the bleak snowbound countryside in On Dangerous Ground and Murder is My Beat, the baseball stadium in Experiment in Terror, the inner works of the Big Clock, the elaborate garden in Night Has 1000 Eyes, the claustraphobic corridors of the train in Narrow Margin, and the carnival fireworks of The Bribe are all as much characters in the film as any human. They are familiar and alien at the same time.
In Film Noir (Overlook Press, 1979), Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward write Noir “consistently evokes the dark side of the American persona … a stylised vision of itself, a true cultural reflection of the mental dysfunction of a nation uncertain of transtion.” They put the classical noir period between the end of WWII and the end of the Korean Conflict when the country is in transition from the war and the influx of returning veterans adjusting to civilian life — and setting off the baby boom.
Among the other staples of noir is the femme fatale. She is hardly new to literature (lest we forget Delilah or Madame De Winter), but the noir protagonist is unquiely unable to resist or recognise her (Sam Spade on the other hand, not only recognises her, but plays her and ultimately disposes of her). To this sexual confusion is added an atmosphere of violence, paranoia, and threat. The hero is vulnerable and beset by grotesque characters that seem to come out of a horror film at times (in The Big Clock Charles Laughton is shot in closeup with a wide angle lens that further distorts his already magnificently ugly features). Many of the characters in noir would be at home in Paris Grand Guignol or Dicken’s novels.
Certain visual cues are important, high contrast lighting, shadows, disorienting angles, and the sudden threat of ordinary and even benign objects (in The Big Combo policeman Cornell Wilde is tortured by gangster Richard Conte with Brian Donlevy’s hearing aid). There is often a dream scene or a brief use of nightmare imagry, and frequently flashbacks that disrupt the narrative flow. Along with the grotesque there are frequently suggestions of perversion — twisted sexuality just beneath the surface (in The Glass Key William Bendix’s Jeff virtually seduces Alan Ladd as he beats him, calling him “Baby”), Cliton Webb’s aesthete villain in The Dark Corner is either asexual or homosexual (homosexuality is inevitably presented as perversion in noir, but then so are most forms of heterosexuality). The femme fatale in noir often seems to feed on and desire humiliation, and take a perverse pleasure in destruction like some strange incarnation of Kali or a Dyonisian bachcanalle. It’s the old fear of female sexuality sharpened to a knife point.
The films are also marked by a sort of hyper accutity of the senses. Blacks are deeper, light areas brigter, edges more defined. In Phantom Lady when Elisha Cook Jr.s’ hophead drummer plays a solo it rises in cresendo into a near sexual climax. The interior of the big clock in The Big Clock looks like an alien spaceship. When Philip Marlowe falls into a black pool it swallows him and the viewer. The sharpness of edges in noir is one of the most important visual cues, one that becomes startilingly clear if seen on the big screen or on todays HDTV’s with superior digital DVD or Blu Ray.
One last key element of many noir’s is narration. This can vary from the poetic hardboiled voice of Dick Powell’s Marlowe, Tom Brown’s doomed drifter, Chill Wills embodiment of Chicago in The City That Never Sleeps, or the dry barritone of Reed Hadley emotionlessly keeping us informed in the docu-noirs. The narration is at it’s most effective in Sunset Boulevard when William Holden’s Joe narrates from his own murder scene. The narration allows us inside the head of characters in ways that dialogue can’t always. At the same time it reminds us we are all to some extent trapped in our own mind.
Not all of these elements are in every noir film, but enough of them predominate that they can be used to define the genre. There are always going to be films that are on the edge one way or another, and because of its nature I’m not sure noir can be defined precisely, but I’ll name seven key factors I think are vital.
1. Alienation.
2. Obsession
3. Visual Style
4. Destructive Sexuality
5. Grotesque characters
6. Narration
7. Sylised violence
Any four of those elements in one film and I think you have to grant it is noir, but three or less is problematic, and unless the psychological elements apply to the protagonist it probably isn’t noir. And one last rule that will certainly be controversial — I don’t think you can really claim it is the Hollywood noir school if it is made before at least 1944, though it may be an immediate precursor of the genre (This Gun For Hire, Street of Chance, Journey Into Fear, Citizen Kane …). I don’t think true noir exists without the catalyst of WWII and the returning veteran. Like the atomic genie, the war let loose a new twist in the American psyche as defined as Hemingway’s Lost Generation, and it is out of that and many tropes of popular literature and film that film noir arrises, as clearly as the detective story comes into focus with Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes in ways it had not in the period from 1841 in Poe’s Rue Morgue until Holmes. Many of the elements are there, but until the right moment they don’t become a distinct form.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Lately I’ve been reading and rereading film noir definitions and just about everybody has a different interpretation of what film noir means. Some are very inclusive and consider many of the crime/mystery films in the 40’s and 50’s to be noir. Others are very strict and exclude all sorts of movies with noir elements because of something missing in the film or some rule that was ignored, etc.
In the beginning when Nino Frank and others in France in 1946 first started to talk about film noir they included The Maltese Falcon and Laura. David Vineyard and others exclude these two films for many of the reasons outlined above in Comment 17.
I don’t believe we can ever come to a consensus about what constitutes film noir. All I do know is that all the major film noir reference books do include such films like Laura. I’m talking about the major books like Film Noir, an Encyclopedic Reference by Silver and Ward and The Film Noir Guide by Kearney, among others.
In fact if you apply the 7 key factors listed above, I even see most of them definitely being in Laura. David and others will disagree. I therefore think the meaning of film noir is a personal and subjective topic that everybody must figure out for themselves. When I view Laura and The Maltese Falcon(I’ve seen each movie over a half dozen times), I see film noir, no doubt about it. Others see nothing more than an excellent crime/mystery drama.
Having said this, is it possible for anyone to really objectively and honestly prove that I am wrong about the film noir elements in these movies or that David Vineyard is wrong? I really don’t believe so.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
[…] by Steve under Mystery movies Part One of this ongoing discussion appeared here. This comment left by David Vineyard this morning was #17 for that post, and I’ve deemed it […]
March 7th, 2009 at 5:07 am
I’ve suggested a definition for noir at other venues on the ‘Net. As it happens, I write a column on hard-boiled and noir crime fiction for MYSTERICAL-E. In one of my earliest columns, I gave my suggested definitions for “hard-boiled” and “noir.” In a subsequent column, I talked about film noir.
With Steve’s permission, rather than go into a long dissertation here, I’ll simply post the links to those articles.
The early definitional column can be found here:
http://www.mystericale.com/index.php?issue=064&body=file&file=like_em_tough.htm
The column on film noir can be found here:
http://www.mystericale.com/index.php?issue=071&body=file&file=like_em_tough.htm
My views on the subject are pretty much summed up in those two pieces.
JIM DOHERTY