What is 'Noir'?
Excerpt from the book 'Film Noir' by Alain Silver and James Ursini
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All critics can agree that film noir`s roots are deep and diverse. On the literary side, noir drew heavily from the works of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction written by the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, David Goodis and Cornell Woolrich. Also influential were the writings of naturalist authors like Emile Zola and Ernest Hemingway, the latter being a particularly potent role model with his clipped and poetic prose style and pointed dialogue. It is no coincidence that the works of these writers were among the first adapted, beginning with Hammett`s The Maltese Falcon in 1941, Woolrich`s Phantom Lady (1944), Cain`s Double Indemnity (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946),
Chandler`s Farewell, My Lovely (as Murder, My Sweet, 1944) and The Big Sleep (1946), Hemingway`s The Killers (1946) and Goodis` Dark Passage (1947).
On the artistic side, German expressionism, with its chiaroscuro lighting, distorted camera angles and symbolic designs, was probably the single most important influence on the look of film noir. The silent films that followed Das Kabinett des Dr Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, 1919) from directors like Fritz Lang (Metropolis (1926), the Dr Mabuse series) and F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu (1922), Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, 1924)) were greatly admired in the American film industry, as becomes obvious when one looks at the Universal horror films of the early 1930s. It is natural that the values of expressionism would seep into this already dark movement, but there is an even greater reason for its influence, because many of the most prominent directors of film noir in the classic period – Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Edgar G. Ulmer, Max Ophüls, Jacques Tourneur and Jean Renoir – were émigrés from Europe. They had worked in Germany and France where expressionism and poetic realism had been the dominant artistic movements for over a decade. What could be more natural than to apply the techniques of those movements, particularly when faced with the psychologically perverse and often fatalistic stories of the hard-boiled writers, as they created the noir cycle?
On the philosophical level, the 1930s and early 1940s saw both existentialism and Freudian psychology make inroads beyond American literature and into mainstream newspapers and magazines. Existentialist novels such as Jean-Paul Sartre`s La Nausée (Nausea, 1938) were already on the shelves in the libraries of the intelligentsia. Psychology journals dealt extensively with Freud`s theories while more and more of the upper-middle class, which included the film community, were finding their way onto the couches of analysts. Both these theories helped promote a worldview that stressed the absurdity of existence along with the importance of the individual`s past in determining his or her actions, views which found a receptive audience in a country wracked first by economic depression and then by world war. Two of the most important themes of the noir movement, ‘the haunted past` and ‘the fatalistic nightmare,` draw directly from these two sources.
In a genre there are icons which reoccur and allow the viewer to identify an individual film as part of a type. With a movement a wider and richer assortment of indicators are in play. Film noir is much more than darkly lit crime films reeking of sex and violence, as perceived by contemporary reviewers. As a cycle of films, they rely as much, if not more, on the elements of style as they do on content. In terms of narrative, they gravitate more significantly around complex themes and not mere icons.
Themes
The Haunted Past. Noir protagonists are seldom creatures of the light. They are often escaping some past burden, sometimes a traumatic incident from their past (as in Detour or Touch of Evil) or sometimes a crime committed out of passion (as in Out of the Past, Criss Cross and Double Indemnity). Occasionally, they are simply fleeing their own demons created by ambiguous events buried in the past, as in In a Lonely Place. Whatever the source of the problem, these characters seek concealment in the dark alleys and dimly lit rooms that proliferate in the world of noir. The past to a noir protagonist is no fleeting phantom. It is real and tangible and menacing. In the noir world both past and present are inextricably bound, as it is in the novels of the great French writer Marcel Proust and the work of pulp romantic Raymond Chandler (who called Proust a ‘connoisseur of degenerates`). One cannot escape one`s past, no matter how much he or she might try. And only in confronting it can the noir protagonist hope for some kind of redemption, even if it is at the end of a gun.
The Fatalistic Nightmare. The noir world revolves around causality. Events are linked like an unbreakable chain and lead inevitably to a heavily foreshadowed conclusion. It is a deterministic universe in which psychology (In a Lonely Place, The Reckless Moment), chance (Detour, Double Indemnity) and even the structures of society (Touch of Evil, T-Men) can ultimately override whatever good intentions and high hopes the main characters may have.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4]
All critics can agree that film noir`s roots are deep and diverse. On the literary side, noir drew heavily from the works of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction written by the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, David Goodis and Cornell Woolrich. Also influential were the writings of naturalist authors like Emile Zola and Ernest Hemingway, the latter being a particularly potent role model with his clipped and poetic prose style and pointed dialogue. It is no coincidence that the works of these writers were among the first adapted, beginning with Hammett`s The Maltese Falcon in 1941, Woolrich`s Phantom Lady (1944), Cain`s Double Indemnity (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946),
Chandler`s Farewell, My Lovely (as Murder, My Sweet, 1944) and The Big Sleep (1946), Hemingway`s The Killers (1946) and Goodis` Dark Passage (1947).
On the artistic side, German expressionism, with its chiaroscuro lighting, distorted camera angles and symbolic designs, was probably the single most important influence on the look of film noir. The silent films that followed Das Kabinett des Dr Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, 1919) from directors like Fritz Lang (Metropolis (1926), the Dr Mabuse series) and F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu (1922), Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, 1924)) were greatly admired in the American film industry, as becomes obvious when one looks at the Universal horror films of the early 1930s. It is natural that the values of expressionism would seep into this already dark movement, but there is an even greater reason for its influence, because many of the most prominent directors of film noir in the classic period – Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Edgar G. Ulmer, Max Ophüls, Jacques Tourneur and Jean Renoir – were émigrés from Europe. They had worked in Germany and France where expressionism and poetic realism had been the dominant artistic movements for over a decade. What could be more natural than to apply the techniques of those movements, particularly when faced with the psychologically perverse and often fatalistic stories of the hard-boiled writers, as they created the noir cycle?
On the philosophical level, the 1930s and early 1940s saw both existentialism and Freudian psychology make inroads beyond American literature and into mainstream newspapers and magazines. Existentialist novels such as Jean-Paul Sartre`s La Nausée (Nausea, 1938) were already on the shelves in the libraries of the intelligentsia. Psychology journals dealt extensively with Freud`s theories while more and more of the upper-middle class, which included the film community, were finding their way onto the couches of analysts. Both these theories helped promote a worldview that stressed the absurdity of existence along with the importance of the individual`s past in determining his or her actions, views which found a receptive audience in a country wracked first by economic depression and then by world war. Two of the most important themes of the noir movement, ‘the haunted past` and ‘the fatalistic nightmare,` draw directly from these two sources.
In a genre there are icons which reoccur and allow the viewer to identify an individual film as part of a type. With a movement a wider and richer assortment of indicators are in play. Film noir is much more than darkly lit crime films reeking of sex and violence, as perceived by contemporary reviewers. As a cycle of films, they rely as much, if not more, on the elements of style as they do on content. In terms of narrative, they gravitate more significantly around complex themes and not mere icons.
Themes
The Haunted Past. Noir protagonists are seldom creatures of the light. They are often escaping some past burden, sometimes a traumatic incident from their past (as in Detour or Touch of Evil) or sometimes a crime committed out of passion (as in Out of the Past, Criss Cross and Double Indemnity). Occasionally, they are simply fleeing their own demons created by ambiguous events buried in the past, as in In a Lonely Place. Whatever the source of the problem, these characters seek concealment in the dark alleys and dimly lit rooms that proliferate in the world of noir. The past to a noir protagonist is no fleeting phantom. It is real and tangible and menacing. In the noir world both past and present are inextricably bound, as it is in the novels of the great French writer Marcel Proust and the work of pulp romantic Raymond Chandler (who called Proust a ‘connoisseur of degenerates`). One cannot escape one`s past, no matter how much he or she might try. And only in confronting it can the noir protagonist hope for some kind of redemption, even if it is at the end of a gun.
The Fatalistic Nightmare. The noir world revolves around causality. Events are linked like an unbreakable chain and lead inevitably to a heavily foreshadowed conclusion. It is a deterministic universe in which psychology (In a Lonely Place, The Reckless Moment), chance (Detour, Double Indemnity) and even the structures of society (Touch of Evil, T-Men) can ultimately override whatever good intentions and high hopes the main characters may have.
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Film Noir
Flexicover, 19.6 x 24.5 cm (7.7 x 9.6 in.), 192 pages
$ 19.99
$ 19.99
Classic noir flicks of the 1940s-50s, illustrated and examined
Still from 'Pépé le Moko' (1937)
The first poetic realist film, 'Pépé le Moko' has a delicate and menacing use of light and setting that set the standard for others to follow
Still from 'Pépé le Moko' (1937)
Whilst in Algiers' Casbah, Pépé (Jean Gabin) can easily elude the police. However, after meeting a Parisian tourist he longs for his freedom and to catch the boat home. In the final moments, having been lured out of the Casbah, Pépé must watch his boat sail away.
Still from 'La nuit de carrefour' (1932)
Some nice location filming enhances this adaptation of the Georges Simenon novel.