Film noir
Photograph by nlannon Flickr.
Vengeance (2002) and Thirst Documentary film (2009), Park Chan-wook of South Korea has been the most prominent director outside of the United States to work regularly in a noir mode in the new millennium. Debuting as a director with The Maltese Falcon (1941), John Huston followed with the major noirs Key Largo (1948) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950).
Sesame Street (1969–curr.) occasionally casts Kermit the Frog as a private eye; the sketches refer to some of the typical motifs of noir movies, in particular the voiceover. Such latter-day works in a noir mode are often referred to as neo-noirs.
Some of the strongest 1970s noirs, in fact, were unwinking remakes of the classics, neo mostly by default: the heartbreaking Thieves Like Us (1973), directed by Altman from the same source as Ray s They Live by Night, and Farewell, My Lovely (1975), the Chandler tale made classically as Murder, My Sweet, remade here with Robert Mitchum in his last notable noir role. The turn of the decade brought Scorsese s black-and-white Raging Bull (cowritten by Schrader); an acknowledged masterpiece—the American Film Institute ranks it as the greatest American film of the 1980s and the fourth greatest of all time—it is also a retreat, telling a story of a boxer s moral self-destruction that recalls in both theme and visual ambience noir dramas such as Body and Soul (1947) and Champion (1949). Among big-budget auteurs, Michael Mann has worked frequently in a neo-noir mode, with such films as Thief (1981) and Heat (1995) and the TV series Miami Vice (1984–89) and Crime Story (1986–88). Cartoons such as Garfield s Babes and Bullets (1989) and comic strip characters such as Tracer Bullet of Calvin and Hobbes have parodied both film noir and the kindred hardboiled tradition—one of the sources from which film noir sprang and which it now overshadows. In their original 1955 canon of film noir, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton identified twenty-two Hollywood movies released between 1941 and 1952 as core examples; they listed another fifty-nine American movies from the period as significantly related to the field of noir.
According to J. Neo-noirs as varied as The Element of Crime (surrealist); After Dark, My Sweet (retro); and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (self-reflexive) have employed the flashback/voiceover combination. Bold experiments in cinematic storytelling were sometimes attempted during the classic era: Lady in the Lake, for example, is shot entirely from the point of view of protagonist Philip Marlowe; the face of star (and director) Robert Montgomery is seen only in mirrors. Crime, usually murder, is an element of almost all film noirs; in addition to standard-issue greed, jealousy is frequently the criminal motivation.
Opinion is divided on the noir status of several of Alfred Hitchcock s thrillers from the era; at least four qualify by consensus: Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951), and The Wrong Man (1956). Orson Welles had notorious problems with financing, but his three film noirs were well budgeted: The Lady from Shanghai (1947) received top-level, prestige backing, while both The Stranger, his most conventional film, and Touch of Evil, an unmistakably personal work, were funded at levels lower but still commensurate with headlining releases. Before he was forced abroad for political reasons, director Jules Dassin made two classic noirs that also straddled the major/independent line: Brute Force (1947) and the influential documentary-style The Naked City were developed by producer Mark Hellinger, who had an inside/outside contract with Universal similar to Wanger s.). As noted above, however, most of the Hollywood films now considered classic noirs fall into the broad category of the B movie . Several directors associated with noir built now well-respected oeuvres largely at the B-movie/intermediate level. The television series Veronica Mars (2004–7) also brought a youth-oriented twist to film noir. In the post-classic era, the most significant trend in noir crossovers has involved science fiction.
Based on the novel by Raymond Chandler, it features one of Bogart s most famous characters, but in iconoclastic fashion: Philip Marlowe, the prototypical hardboiled detective, is replayed as a hapless misfit, almost laughably out of touch with contemporary mores and morality. Working mostly on A features, he made no fewer than eight movies now regarded as classic-era film noirs (a figure matched only by Lang and Mann). The Maltese Falcon | Shadow of a Doubt | Laura | Double Indemnity | Mildred Pierce | Detour The Big Sleep | The Killers | Notorious | Out of the Past | Force of Evil | The Naked City | White Heat The Asphalt Jungle | D.O.A.
Samuel Fuller s brutal, visually energetic films such as Pickup on South Street (1953) and Underworld U.S.A. Ripley, Plein soleil (Purple Noon in the U.S., more accurately rendered elsewhere as Blazing Sun or Full Sun; 1960); and director Don Siegel s version of The Killers (1964).
to reflect character ambivalence , while shots of characters in which they are lit from below conform to a convention of visual expression which associates shadows cast upward of the face with the unnatural and ominous . Film noirs tend to have unusually convoluted story lines, frequently involving flashbacks and other editing techniques that disrupt and sometimes obscure the narrative sequence. Burroughs novel. Perhaps no American neo-noirs better reflect the classic noir A-movie-with-a-B-movie-soul than those of director-writer Quentin Tarantino; The Coens most recent nod to the noir tradition is The Man Who Wasn t There (2001); a black-and-white crime melodrama set in 1949, it features a scene apparently staged to mirror the one from Out of the Past pictured above.
Just four others readily qualify as detective stories: Laura, The Killers, The Naked City, and Touch of Evil. Film noir is often associated with an urban setting, and a few cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, in particular—are the location of many of the classic films. French director Jean-Pierre Melville is widely recognized for his tragic, minimalist film noirs—Bob le flambeur (1955), from the classic period, was followed by Le Doulos (1962), Le deuxième souffle (1966), Le Samouraï (1967), and Le Cercle rouge (1970). Scholar Andrew Spicer argues that British film noir evidences a greater debt to French poetic realism than to the expressionistic American mode of noir. Elsewhere, Italian director Luchino Visconti adapted Cain s The Postman Always Rings Twice as Ossessione (1943), regarded both as one of the great noirs and a seminal film in the development of neorealism. Among the first major neo-noir films—the term often applied to movies that consciously refer back to the classic noir tradition—was the French Tirez sur le pianiste (1960), directed by François Truffaut from a novel by one of the gloomiest of American noir fiction writers, David Goodis. While it is hard to draw a line between some of the noir films of the early 1960s such as Blast of Silence (1961) and Cape Fear (1962) and the noirs of the late 1950s, new trends emerged in the post-classic era.
Of the twenty-three National Film Registry noirs, in only four does the star play a private eye: The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Out of the Past, and Kiss Me Deadly. A slew of now-renowned noir bad girls would follow, such as those played by Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946), Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Ava Gardner in The Killers (1946), and Jane Greer in Out of the Past (1947).
Murder by Contract (1958), directed by Irving Lerner, is a deadpan joke on noir, with a denouement as bleak as any of the movies it kids. Other seminal noir sleuths served larger institutions, such as Dana Andrews s police detective in Laura (1944), Edmond O Brien s insurance investigator in The Killers, and Edward G.
Not only were Chandler s novels turned into major noirs—Murder, My Sweet (1944; adapted from Farewell, My Lovely), The Big Sleep (1946), and Lady in the Lake (1947)—he was an important screenwriter in the genre as well, producing the scripts for Double Indemnity, The Blue Dahlia (1946), and Strangers on a Train (1951). The Fugitive (1963–67) brought classic noir themes and mood to television for an extended run. In a different vein, films began to appear that self-consciously acknowledged the conventions of classic film noir as historical archetypes to be revived, rejected, or reimagined.
The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972) centers on another implacable investigator and an amnesiac named Welles. It was in this way that accomplished noir actress Ida Lupino established herself as the sole female director in Hollywood during the late 1940s and much of the 1950s.
The question of what constitutes the set of noir s identifying characteristics is a fundamental source of controversy. R.
Among the leading Hollywood directors of noir during the current decade has been the British-born Christopher Nolan, with the acclaimed Memento (2000), the remake of Insomnia (2002), and his dark-toned superhero films, Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008). Director Sean Penn s The Pledge (2001), though adapted from a very self-reflexive novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, plays noir comparatively straight, to devastating effect. With ultra-violent films such as Sympathy for Mr. The commercial and critical success of Sternberg s silent Underworld in 1927 was largely responsible for spurring a trend of Hollywood gangster films. Italian neorealism of the 1940s, with its emphasis on quasi-documentary authenticity, was an acknowledged influence on trends that emerged in American noir.
Other well-known French films often classified as noir include Quai des Orfèvres (1947), Le Salaire de la peur (released in English-speaking countries as The Wages of Fear) (1953) and Les Diaboliques (1955), all directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot; Casque d or (1952) and Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), both directed by Jacques Becker; and Ascenseur pour l échafaud (1958), directed by Louis Malle. Cain (whose The Postman Always Rings Twice appeared five years later), and popularized in pulp magazines such as Black Mask.
| Gun Crazy | Sunset Boulevard | In a Lonely Place The Hitch-Hiker | Kiss Me Deadly | The Night of the Hunter | Sweet Smell of Success | Touch of Evil Some critics regard classic film noir as a cycle exclusive to the United States; Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, for example, argue, With the Western, film noir shares the distinction of being an indigenous American form . Lynch s Mulholland Drive (2001) continued in his characteristic vein, making the classic noir setting of Los Angeles the venue for a noir-inflected psychological jigsaw puzzle.
Burnett, whose first novel to be published was Little Caesar, in 1929. Many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression. The term film noir (French for black film ), The question of whether film noir qualifies as a distinct genre is a matter of ongoing debate among scholars. Film noirs encompass a range of plots—the central figure may be a private eye (The Big Sleep), a plainclothes policeman (The Big Heat), an aging boxer (The Set-Up), a hapless grifter (Night and the City), a law-abiding citizen lured into a life of crime (Gun Crazy), or simply a victim of circumstance (D.O.A.) Though the noir mode was originally identified among American productions, films now customarily described as noir have been made around the world.
a wholly American film style. During the classic period, there were many films produced outside the United States, particularly in France, that share elements of style, theme, and sensibility with American film noirs and may themselves be included in the genre s canon. It would be turned into a hit for Warner Bros.
While City Streets and other pre-WWII crime melodramas such as Fury (1936) and You Only Live Once (1937), both directed by Fritz Lang, are categorized as full-fledged noir in Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward s film noir encyclopedia, other critics tend to describe them as proto-noir or in similar terms. Most of the film noirs of the classic period were similarly low- and modestly budgeted features without major stars—B movies either literally or in spirit. Firesign Theatre s Nick Danger has trod the same not-so-mean streets, both on radio and in comedy albums.
False suspicions and accusations of crime are frequent plot elements, as are betrayals and double-crosses. The signal movie in this vein was Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder; setting the mold was Barbara Stanwyck s unforgettable femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson—an apparent nod to Marlene Dietrich, who had built her extraordinary career playing such characters for Sternberg.
In this production context, writers, directors, cinematographers, and other craftsmen were relatively free from typical big-picture constraints. The tropes of film noir have inspired parody since the mid-1940s. The questions of what defines film noir and what sort of category it is provoke continuing debate. Though film noir is often identified with a visual style, unconventional within a Hollywood context, that emphasizes low-key lighting and unbalanced compositions, A more analogous case is that of the screwball comedy, widely accepted by film historians as constituting a genre : the screwball is defined not by a fundamental attribute, but by a general disposition and a group of elements, some—but rarely and perhaps never all—of which are found in each of the genre s films. Film noir s aesthetics are deeply influenced by German Expressionism, an artistic movement of the 1910s and 1920s that involved theater, photography, painting, sculpture, and architecture, as well as cinema.
An ultra-low-budget Columbia Pictures production, it may qualify as the first intentional example of what is now called a neo-noir film; it was likely a source of inspiration for both Melville s Le Samouraï and Scorsese s Taxi Driver. In other media, the television series Sledge Hammer! (1986–88) lampoons noir, along with such topics as capital punishment, gun fetishism, and Dirty Harry. The Cheap Detective (1978), starring Peter Falk, is a broad spoof of several films, including the Bogart classics The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca.
Hollywood s classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. G.
In Jean-Luc Godard s Alphaville (1965), Lemmy Caution is the name of the old-school private eye in the city of tomorrow. (1961) earned him a unique reputation; his advocates praise him as primitive Ulmer s other noirs include Strange Illusion (1945), also for PRC; Blonde Ice (1948), distributed by tiny Film Classics; and Murder Is My Beat (1955), for Allied Artists. A number of low- and modestly budgeted noirs were made by independent, often actor-owned, companies contracting with one of the larger outfits for distribution.
The classic film noirs The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key (1942) were based on novels by Hammett; Cain s novels provided the basis for Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), and Slightly Scarlet (1956; adapted from Love s Lovely Counterfeit). Written by Robert Towne, it is set in 1930s Los Angeles, an accustomed noir locale nudged back some few years in a way that makes the pivotal loss of innocence in the story even crueler.
In one scene, the characters, seen through a confusion of angular shapes , thus appear caught in a tangible vortex or enclosed in a trap. Silver makes a case for how side light is used . Holm—heads in precisely the opposite direction, with tales of deception, seduction, and corruption exploiting bright, sun-baked settings, stereotypically the desert or open water, to searing effect.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962), directed by John Frankenheimer, Shock Corridor (1962), directed by Samuel Fuller, and Brainstorm (1965), directed by experienced noir character actor William Conrad, all treat the theme of mental dispossession within stylistic and tonal frameworks derived from classic film noir. Significant predecessors from the classic and early post-classic eras include The Lady from Shanghai; the Robert Ryan vehicle Inferno (1953); the French adaptation of Patricia Highsmith s The Talented Mr.
She does not appear in the best-known film she directed, The Hitch-Hiker (1953), developed by her company, The Filmakers, with support and distribution by RKO. Perhaps no director better displayed that spirit than the German-born Robert Siodmak, who had already made a score of films before his 1940 arrival in Hollywood. Ballard, has been described as a film noir in bruise tones . Film noir has been parodied many times, in many manners.
around a host of cartoon characters. Noir parodies come in darker tones as well. Mann s output exemplifies a primary strain of neo-noir, in which classic themes and tropes are revisited in a contemporary setting with an up-to-date visual style and rock- or hip hop–based musical soundtrack. Working generally with much smaller budgets, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have created one of the most extensive film oeuvres influenced by classic noir, with movies such as Blood Simple (1984) and Fargo (1996), considered by some a supreme work in the neo-noir mode.
K. Writer-director Rian Johnson s Brick (2005), featuring present-day high schoolers speaking a version of 1930s hardboiled argot, won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the Sundance Film Festival.
Robert Zemeckis s Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) develops a noir plot set in 1940s L.A. In 1945, Danny Kaye starred in what appears to be the first intentional film noir parody, Wonder Man.
For instance, critics tend to define the model film noir as having a tragic or bleak conclusion, The low-key lighting schemes of many classic film noirs are associated with stark light/dark contrasts and dramatic shadow patterning—a style known as chiaroscuro (a term adopted from Renaissance painting). Film noir is also known for its use of low-angle, wide-angle, and skewed, or Dutch, angle shots. Concerning films made either before or after the classic period, or outside of the United States at any time, consensus is even rarer. To support their categorization of certain movies as noirs and their rejection of others, many critics refer to a set of elements they see as marking examples of the mode.
The characteristic work of David Lynch combines film noir tropes with scenarios driven by disturbed characters such as the sociopathic criminal played by Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet (1986) and the delusionary protagonist of Lost Highway (1996). Movies of his such as 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) and Private Detective 62 (1933) are among the early Hollywood sound films arguably classifiable as noir—scholar Marc Vernet offers the latter as evidence that dating the initiation of film noir to 1940 or any other year is arbitrary . The Vienna-born but largely American-raised Josef von Sternberg was directing in Hollywood at the same time.
The Lost Weekend (1945), directed by Billy Wilder, yet another Vienna-born, Berlin-trained American auteur, tells the story of an alcoholic in a manner evocative of neorealism. The primary literary influence on film noir was the hardboiled school of American detective and crime fiction, led in its early years by such writers as Dashiell Hammett (whose first novel, Red Harvest, was published in 1929) and James M. There was more visual experimentation than in Hollywood filmmaking as a whole: the Expressionism now closely associated with noir and the semidocumentary style that later emerged represent two very different tendencies.
The iconic noir counterpart to the femme fatale, the private eye, came to the fore in movies such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), with Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, and Murder, My Sweet (1944), with Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe. Voiceover narration, sometimes used as a structuring device, came to be seen as a noir hallmark; while classic noir is generally associated with first-person narration (i.e., by the protagonist), Stephen Neale notes that third-person narration is common among noirs of the semidocumentary style.
Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography. In terms of content, enforcement of the Production Code ensured that no movie character could literally get away with murder or be seen sharing a bed with anyone but a spouse; within those bounds, however, many films now identified as noir feature plot elements and dialogue that were very risqué for the time. Thematically, film noirs were most exceptional for the relative frequency with which they centered on women of questionable virtue—a focus that had become rare in Hollywood films after the mid-1930s and the end of the pre-Code era.
A decade before the classic era, a story of Hammett s was the source for the gangster melodrama City Streets (1931), directed by Rouben Mamoulian and photographed by Lee Garmes, who worked regularly with Sternberg. Soylent Green (1973), the first major American example, portrays a dystopian, near-future world via a self-evidently noir detection plot; starring Charlton Heston (the lead in Touch of Evil), it also features classic noir standbys Joseph Cotten, Edward G.
Framing the entire primary narrative as a flashback is also a standard device. Robinson, and Whit Bissell.
David Cronenberg also mixes surrealism and noir in Naked Lunch (1991), inspired by the William S. Garrison Keillor s radio program A Prairie Home Companion features the recurring character Guy Noir, a hardboiled detective whose adventures always wander into farce (Guy also appears in the Altman-directed film based on Keillor s show).
David Slocum, protagonists assume the literal identities of dead men in nearly fifteen percent of all noir. Film noirs tend to revolve around heroes who are more flawed and morally questionable than the norm, often fall guys of one sort or another. Carl Reiner s black-and-white Dead Men Don t Wear Plaid (1982) appropriates clips of classic noirs for a farcical pastiche.
in 1931; the following year, Burnett was hired to write dialogue for Scarface, while Beast of the City was adapted from one of his stories. Serving as producer, writer, director, and top-billed performer, Hugo Haas made several such films, including Pickup (1951) and The Other Woman (1954).
The tendency was at its peak during the late 1980s and 1990s, with films such as Dead Calm (1989); After Dark, My Sweet; The Hot Spot; Delusion (1991); and Red Rock West, and TV s Miami Vice. Film noir is often described as essentially pessimistic. Film noir is often said to be defined by moral ambiguity , The tone of film noir is generally regarded as downbeat; some critics experience it as darker still— overwhelmingly black , according to Robert Ottoson. . Other devices of disorientation relatively common in film noir include shots of people reflected in one or more mirrors, shots through curved or frosted glass or other distorting objects (such as during the strangulation scene in Strangers on a Train), and special effects sequences of a sometimes bizarre nature.
In other common plots the protagonists are implicated in heists or con games, or in murderous conspiracies often involving adulterous affairs. These efforts typify what came to be known as neo-noir. A manifest affiliation with noir traditions—which, by its nature, allows different sorts of commentary on them to be inferred—can also provide the basis for explicit critiques of those traditions.
Night-for-night shooting, as opposed to the Hollywood norm of day-for-night, was often employed. In an analysis of the visual approach of Kiss Me Deadly, a late and self-consciously stylized example of classic noir, critic Alain Silver describes how cinematographic choices emphasize the story s themes and mood. Wedding a style and story both with many noir characteristics, released the month before Lang s M, City Streets has a claim to being the first major film noir. Raymond Chandler, who debuted as a novelist with The Big Sleep in 1939, soon became the most famous author of the hardboiled school.
Narrative structures sometimes involved convoluted flashbacks uncommon in non-noir commercial productions. The opportunities offered by the booming Hollywood film industry and, later, the threat of growing Nazi power led to the emigration of many important film artists working in Germany who had either been directly involved in the Expressionist movement or studied with its practitioners. By 1931, Curtiz had already been in Hollywood for half a decade, making as many as six films a year.
Robinson s government agent in The Stranger (1946). The prevalence of the private eye as a lead character declined in film noir of the 1950s, a period during which several critics describe the form as becoming more focused on extreme psychologies and more exaggerated in general. While the inceptive noir, Stranger on the Third Floor, was a B picture directed by a virtual unknown, many of the film noirs that have earned enduring fame were A-list productions by name-brand moviemakers. A crime investigation—by a private eye, a police detective (sometimes acting alone), or a concerned amateur—is the most prevalent, but far from dominant, basic plot.
The Twin Peaks cycle, both TV series (1990–91) and movie, Fire Walk with Me (1992), puts a detective plot through a succession of bizarre spasms. An A-level feature all the way, the movie s commercial success and seven Oscar nominations made it probably the most influential of the early noirs.
From the 1960s onward, many pictures have come out that share attributes with film noirs of the classic period, often treating noir conventions in a self-reflexive manner. In certain cases, the interrelationship with Hollywood noir is obvious: American-born director Jules Dassin moved to France in the early 1950s as a result of the Hollywood blacklist, and made one of the most famous French film noirs, Rififi (1955).
around the same time Woody Allen was paying affectionate, at points idolatrous homage to the classic mode with Play It Again, Sam (1972). The most acclaimed of the neo-noirs of the era was director Roman Polanski s 1974 Chinatown. Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations.
The characteristic protagonists of noir are described by many critics as alienated ; From historical commentators to neo-noir pictures to pop culture ephemera, the private eye and the femme fatale have been adopted as the quintessential film noir figures, though they do not appear in most movies now regarded as classic noir. Films of his such as Shanghai Express (1932) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935), with their hothouse eroticism and baroque visual style, specifically anticipate central elements of classic noir.
The movie was directed by Richard Fleischer, who two decades before had directed several strong B noirs, including Armored Car Robbery (1950) and The Narrow Margin (1952). The cynical and stylish perspective of classic film noir had a formative effect on the cyberpunk genre of science fiction that emerged in the early 1980s; the movie most directly influential on cyberpunk was Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott, which pays evocative homage to the classic noir mode Fincher s feature debut was Alien 3 (1992), which evoked the classic noir jail movie Brute Force. Cronenberg s Crash (1996), an adaptation of the speculative novel by J. In 1973, director Robert Altman flipped off noir piety with The Long Goodbye.
Where Polanski and Towne raised noir to a black apogee by turning rearward, director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader brought the noir attitude crashing into the present day with Taxi Driver (1976), a cackling, bloody-minded gloss on bicentennial America. Hill was already a central figure in 1970s noir of a more straightforward manner, having written the script for director Sam Peckinpah s The Getaway (1972), adapting a novel by pulp master Jim Thompson, as well as for two tough private eye films: an original screenplay for Hickey & Boggs (1972) and an adaptation of a novel by Ross Macdonald, the leading literary descendant of Hammett and Chandler, for The Drowning Pool (1975). In the eyes of many critics, the city is presented in noir as a labyrinth or maze . A substantial trend within latter-day noir—dubbed film soleil by critic D.
