The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.
Above: Detour
“The Americans made [film noir] and then the French invented it.”
—Marc Vernet
In a world of uncertainty, where the lines between good and bad are routinely blurred and peril lurks behind every hesitant corner, film noir had—and still has—a spellbinding way of cutting through the banalities of ordinary existence. Noir tarnishes the superficial sheen of domestic stability, peace and prosperity, and the naïve, sanguine euphoria of one’s best-laid plans. It revels in a realm of desperation, despair, and dread, leading audiences down long, lonely streets and engineering an entertaining and engaging descent into humanity’s dark side.
While there remains some question about what defines film noir, and even more debate concerning whether or not the form is a genre or a movement (or something of the two or something else altogether), there is a general consensus about its origins. Translated as “black film” or “dark film,” the phrase “film noir” was first used by Italian-born French film critic Nino Frank in 1946. It was a retroactive designation, submitted only after many emblematic titles had already been released, and it took time before the term was accepted and widely applied as a matter of popular and critical discourse. The expression as it became most famously directed, as suggested in the above quote from writer Marc Vernet, arose as French audiences enjoyed the onslaught of backlogged American movies previously withheld during World War II. Viewers were struck by the sinister assessment of America expressed on screen, and this, coupled with certain innate social traits of the time, spurred unique interpretations of what was being depicted. As author Mark Bould points out, quoting film noir scholar James Naremore, “the growing Americanism in postwar French culture and nostalgia for their pre-war cinema predisposed the French to discover or invent American film noir, and because of their affiliations with either surrealism or existentialism these early critics constructed it in particular ways.”
Above: The Naked City
The trend was eventually picked up in America, as others recognized a singular form of cinema with distinctive subject matter and a style that was often intoxicating and brutal. But was it a whole new genre, or something fleeting, something purely of its time? Textbooks have grappled with this compound classification, including in their historical analysis films that pre-date the classic period of film noir but evince many of its fundamental features, “proto-noirs” like City Streets (1931) and You Only Live Once (1937). Furthermore, what Vernet and others perceived in these American productions had its roots in French cinema, particularly works of poetic realism, which likewise told stories occupied by doomed characters, moody atmospheres, and a rather bleak worldview. There was also an indebtedness to German Expressionism, an artistic movement that transferred seamlessly to cinema—and to noir films especially—displaying a penchant for discriminating illumination and psychological density. Then there was the influence of 1940s Italian neorealism, with its documentary-like presentation of life on the streets, an aspect of film noir perhaps best evinced in Jules Dassin’s The Naked City (1948). Away from the cinema, film noir as a phrase and style derived from American hardboiled crime fiction, written during the Great Depression by authors such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain, all of whom would have their work translated years later into model film noir features: The Blue Dahlia (1946), The Glass Key (1942), and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), to name a few.
Above: The Maltese Falcon
One picture commonly cited as the first “true” film noir is Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), produced at RKO and directed by Boris Ingster. More popularly, though, John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon, actually the second film adaptation of Hammett’s 1929 book, is held as a standard-bearer for later noir films, with its sarcasm, its air of opaque mystery, and with Humphrey Bogart as private eye Sam Spade. From there, however, it gets more complicated. Canonizing the classics of film noir in 1955, authors Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton identified 22 Hollywood films released between 1941 and 1952 as essential examples, while decades later, in subsequent studies, this number grew to nearly three hundred films released from 1940 to 1958. Film noir, at least in its later examination, was thus in constant flux, identified more by temperament and form than by the strictures typically used to identify a genre. Paul Schrader, who would employ various noir characteristics in his own films as writer (Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese in 1976) and director (American Gigolo, 1980), argues film noir is not a genre because it is “not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict but rather by more subtle qualities of tone and mood.” It is also distinguished, he adds, by “a specific period of film history, like German Expressionism or the French New Wave.”
Although a definitive classification is variable, the customary features of film noir are generally more apparent. These are films which, to varying degrees, often deal with issues of sadistic violence, neurosis, and a deep-seated sense of ambiguity, conveyed in a way that is pessimistic yet enticing. Film noir frequently involves an ordinary “everyman” who succumbs to temptation or simple happenstance, a seemingly inevitable outcome in a world of menace, anxiety, suspicion, and futility. Marked by this patent fatalism, film noir delivers a sense of entrapment, as jaded protagonists become caught in a sometimes-convoluted web of conspiracy and scandal. In noir there are broad character types, usually male and embodied by actors such as Bogart, Robert Ryan, and Richard Widmark: private investigators, police officers, prizefighters, newspaper reporters, and swindlers. These are flawed, sometimes morally dubious antiheroes suffering a penetrating feeling of alienation and habitually donning fedoras, ties, and trench coats, three of noir’s many iconic signifiers. And more often than not, these men are confronted by the ostensibly dishonorable femme fatale, characters realized by the likes of Veronica Lake and Joan Bennett, women who used their feminine wiles and sexual allure to manipulate weak-willed men and hasten all manner of betrayal and duplicity. While noir could take such characterizations to the generalized extreme, there was something of a real-world impetus for such types, as men were returning home from war disillusioned and confused, feeling out of place in a world that had changed without them, while the women, now used to necessary independence and authority, held sway over their own livelihood. There was, therefore, a conjoined existential crisis, motivated by anguish, compulsion, obsession, and a pervasive vulnerability evolving from the prospect that anyone could fall victim to anything at any time.
Above: Pickup on South Street
Film noir is also defined by bold experimentation in terms of both storytelling and visual inventiveness. Noir storylines were often elliptical, their non-linear structures twisting and turning and often initiated by foreboding flashbacks or punctuated by caustic dialogue and brooding voice-over narration. Many relied heavily on the subjective, sometimes quirky rendering of the protagonist’s perspective; in Lady in the Lake (1947), star/director Robert Montgomery shoots the film from the point of view of its central detective, and in films like Sunset Boulevard (1950) and D.O.A. (1949), the narratives are told by murdered men. The noir landscape, though frequently confined to urban settings in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, could also shift into rural and suburban surroundings, which only served to accentuate the notion of inescapability. And into the 1950s, a broader, universal sense of danger reflected the Cold War tensions of the time, in films like Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and Pickup on South Street (1953). Stylistically, film noir boasted a conspicuous use of low- and wide-angle shots, skewed vantage points, reflective surfaces like mirrors or wet asphalt, and low-key, chiaroscuro lighting scattered by the shadows of Venetian blinds, mingled with swirling cigarette smoke, or pulsating with the glow of neon lights. Set in bars, seedy hotel rooms, and low-rent apartments, noir expressed a severely claustrophobic mise en scène.
Above: T-Men
That many films noir were considered B-movies was significant, as lower budgets equaled lower risks and more opportunity to creatively commission technological developments like synchronized sound, mobile lighting equipment, and cheaper black and white film stock increasingly sensitive to light (essential for noir’s nighttime shoots). A comparably moderate status within the industry, in terms of studio prestige and resulting box office obligation, also allowed for the integration of controversial content, subverting or at least challenging the Motion Picture Production Code’s censure of sex and violence and general morality. Indeed, many of America’s greatest directors were attracted to film noir for these very reasons. While some were assigned to the various projects and others actively sought out the material, among those lending their talents to the form and elevating its potential were Otto Preminger (Laura, 1944), Nicholas Ray (They Live by Night, 1948), Henry Hathaway (The Dark Corner, 1946) Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy, 1950), John Farrow (The Big Clock, 1948), and Anthony Mann (T-Men, 1947, and Raw Deal, 1948), whose noir work benefited greatly from the prototypical imagery of cinematographer John Alton.
The influence of film noir expanded far and wide, both during its heyday and in the years and decades that followed. This included, not surprisingly, French productions from directors such as Henri-Georges Clouzot, François Truffaut, and Jean-Pierre Melville, as well as Japanese directors like Akira Kurosawa (Stray Dog, 1949), and British filmmakers like Carol Reed, whose The Third Man (1949) starred Orson Welles, writer, director, and star of Citizen Kane (1941), a film that had integrated a number of noir’s peculiar qualities. Diverse genres also began assimilating traditional noir elements, from melodramas like Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and westerns like the string of pictures Mann made with James Stewart in the 1950s, to sci-fi “tech-noirs” like Blade Runner (1982). So-called “neo-noirs” also emerged in subsequent years, self-consciously alluding to traditional noir devices and amplifying the content and tone (Point Blank, 1967;The Long Goodbye, 1973; Body Heat, 1981). Meanwhile, films like Chinatown (1974) and L.A. Confidential (1997) kept intact the traditional era and milieu of film noir, while Fargo (1996) renewed the noir in terms of time period (present-day) and setting (frigid and snow-covered).
“Film noir,” writes Bould, “like the femme fatal, is an elusive phenomenon: a projection of desire, always just out of reach.” A comprehensive style, a precise genre, or a contained spatiotemporal movement: whatever film noir is, it remains one of the most enduring forms of American cinema. Simply put by André De Toth, director of Pitfall (1948) and Crime Wave (1954), “film noir is reality.”
Above: Chinatown
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Above: Double Indemnity
Above: Touch of Evil
RECOMMENDED READING
Above: The Blue Dahlia
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