FILM NOIR

FILM NOIR
Presented by
Dr Ian Ellis-Jones
Film Historian, Archivist and Researcher
Legal Practitioner, Educator and Trainer
Minister of Religion, Consultant and Author
Wellness Instructor and Practitioner

Dedicated to
noir aficionados
everywhere!

What the F**k is ‘Film Noir’?

Film Noir
‘First
we dream,
then we die.’
- Cornell Woolrich
(1903-1968)
[the ‘Father of Noir Fiction’].

Film Noir
‘I killed him for
money and for a
woman. I didn’t get
the money and I
didn’t get the
woman.’
- Fred MacMurray [as Walter
Neff], in Double Indemnity
(Paramount, 1944).

Film Noir
‘The world’s full of skeptics.
I know. I’m one myself.’
‘We’ve been struck out.’
‘Whichever way you turn,
fate sticks out a foot to trip you.’
‘Fate or some mysterious force
can put the finger on you
or me for no reason at all.’
- from Detour (PRC, 1945).

Film Noir
‘You know, there's something
about this which is like, well, it's
like you're expectin' a letter that
you're just crazy to get, and you
hang around the front door for
fear you might not hear him
ring. You never realize that he
always rings twice ... The truth
is, you always hear him ring the
second time, even if you're way
out in the back yard."
– John Garfield [as Frank Chambers], in
The Postman Always Rings Twice
(MGM, 1946).

Film Noir
‘I feel all dead
inside. I’m backed
up in a dark corner
and I don’t know
who’s hitting me.’
– Mark Stevens [as Bradford Galt],
in The Dark Corner (2oth, 1946).

Film Noir
Ecclesiastes 7:26 …
‘I find more bitter than
death, the woman whose
heart is snares and nets,
and he who falls beneath
her spell … has need of
God's mercy.’
– as quoted in Born to Kill
(RKO, 1947).

Film Noir
--‘She can't be all bad. No
one is.’
--‘Well, she comes
the closest.’
--‘I think we deserve a
break.’
--‘We deserve each other.’
- Out of the Past
(RKO, 1947).

Film Noir
‘Doing the right
thing never works
out. I know. In this
world you turn the
other cheek and
you get hit with
a lug wrench.’
- from Impact (UA, 1949).

Film Noir
Obadiah 1:3-4 [KJV] …
3 The pride of thine heart hath
deceived thee, thou that dwellest
in the clefts of the rock, whose
habitation is high; that saith in his
heart, Who shall bring me down
to the ground?
4 Though thou exalt thyself as the
eagle, and though thou set thy
nest among the stars, thence will I
bring thee down, saith the LORD.
- quoted in Ruthless (EL, 1948).

Film Noir
‘A shrine of death and beauty
is the sky drowned in blood.
The sun gives up its breath.
Don’t be afraid, my sweet, to
die, for beauty is still more
beautiful in death.’
– Charles Baudelaire,
Flowers of Evil, quoted in
Lured (UA, 1947).

Film Noir
‘Love, when you get fear into
it, it’s not love anymore. It’s
hate.’
‘Stealing a man’s wife, that’s
nothing. But stealing his car,
that’s larceny.’
– James M. Cain,
The Postman
Always Rings Twice.

Film Noir
‘… film noir must be and shall
always remain something of an
enigma. The classification
of films has always been a tenuous
business and with film noir, which
is perhaps the most slippery of all
categories, complications of this
type reach a level of almost baffling
complexity. Still there is something
very important about the idea of
film noir, whether or not we are
able to pin it down.’
- Spencer Selby, quoted in S Neale,
Genre and Hollywood (London: Routledge,
2000), p 176.

Film Noir
The noir vision of life …
A person’s life consists of
a tightly knit pattern of
largely incomprehensible
events so dependent on
multiple coincidence that
some seemingly sadistic
power---beyond blind
chance---must be in ‘control.’

Film Noir
The ‘dark film’ ...
 the word noir is French for ‘black’ …
 also … ‘of the night’
 1945: Gallimard---under the
editorship of Marcel Duhamel---
started publishing its translations of
British and American crime novels in
the Série Noire.
 1946: echoing the Gallimard label,
the French critics Nino Frank and
Jean-Pierre Chartier wrote the
two earliest essays identifying a
departure in film-making ...
the American ‘film noir’ ...

Film Noir
The ‘dark film’ ...
French film critic
Nino Frank first
coined the term in
1946* ...
• However, the term was not widely used in
America, Britain or Australia until the 1970s.
• It was not until 1984 that the term was
applied to mystery fiction.

Film Noir
 1945: Lloyd Shearer, New
York Times article (‘Crime
Certainly Does Pay’, 5 Aug
1945) …
 identified Double Identity (1944) as
the beginning of …
 ‘a trend in Hollywood toward the
wholesale production of lusty, hard-
boiled, gut-and-gore crime stories, all
fashioned on a theme with a
combination of plausibly motivated
murder and studded with high-
powered Freudian implication.’
 1946: Jean-Pierre Chartier,
French critic …
 ‘Americans also make noir films.’

Film Noir
 Early 1940s ...
 France occupied by the Nazis ...
making it enemy territory
forbidden to receive Hollywood
product.
 By end of WWII ...
 a half-decade backlog of American
movies
hit French viewers in one rush ...

Film Noir
The French
noticed that
America’s movies
had grown
‘darker’ in the
1940s ... not just
visually, but
also in terms of
theme and
content.

Film Noir
 Hollywood cinematic releases of
1945 included ...
 Edgar G Ulmer's Detour
 Michael Curtiz's Mildred Pierce
 three films noirs directed by Fritz
Lang ...
 Ministry of Fear
 Scarlet Street
 The Woman in the Window.
 In 1946 ...
 David Goodis published the first of
his crime novels, Dark Passage
 Delmar Daves began filming it.

Film Noir
 In the spring and summer months of 1946
alone, Hollywood released ...
 The Blue Dahlia (George Marshall)
 The Dark Corner (Henry Hathaway)
 The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay
Garnett)
 Gilda (Charles Vidor)
 The Killers (Robert Siodmak)
 The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks).
 In the same year Gallimard brought out
French translations of two of Horace
McCoy's novels ...
 the first American novels to be included in the Série
Noire.

Film Noir
1956: Director Robert Aldrich
holds a copy of Panorama du film
noir, the first book about film noir.

Is film noir a distinct genre?

Film Noir
The question of whether
film noir qualifies as a
distinct genre is …
a matter of ongoing
debate among scholars …

Film Noir
One view …
Film noir is not
so much a genre
but rather the
mood, style,
point-of-view or
tone of a film …

Film Noir
… …
 A noir film may be a …
 melodrama (‘potboiler’)
 murder mystery
 crime drama
 thriller
 suspense picture
 horror movie
 musical
 western
 comedy spoof
 SF movie … or
 a combination of one or
more of the above … or
 something else altogether!

Film Noir
 Writer Jon Tuska refers
to a sub-category film
gris (or ‘grey film’) …
that is, a film noir with a
happy denouement …
 noir is a question of
degree rather than kind
…
films may be described
in terms of how noir
they are …

Film Noir
 Other terms exist …
 e.g. neo-noir, noirish,
noir-inspired, noir-lite …
 Some films are said to have
a ‘noir veneer’ …
 and have also been termed
‘pseudo-noirs’ …
 However, all labels are a bit
‘sus’.

Film Noir
The ‘duck test’
Attributed to
James Whitcomb Riley
... … … … …
‘When I see a bird that
walks like a duck and
swims like a duck and
quacks like a duck, I call
that bird a duck.’

Film Noir
‘Film noir is best understood as a
bundle of generic characteristics,
rather than as a single paradigm, as
can arguably define the Western,
the detective film, the coming of age
film, or the biblical epic.
Characteristics central to some films
do not appear in others at all. …’
– William Luhr, Film Noir
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), p 67.

Film Noir
One thing is
[fairly] clear … the
term ‘film noir’ is
used to refer to a
distinct
historical period
of film history …

Film Noir
… in particular, the
decade of film-making
after World War II …
… even though the
actual noir period was
longer than that …
… and may never have
ended.

The historical, cultural, sociological,
literary and cinematic origins
of film noir …

Film Noir
 The historical, cultural,
sociological, literary and
cinematic origins of film
noir …
 fear, despair and loneliness
at the core of modern
American life …
 increasing industrialisation
 increasing urbanisation
 the Great Depression of the
1930s …
 helplessness
 powerlessness …

Film Noir
noir …
 World War II and the
‘postwar malaise’ …
 America’s bleak
underside …
 social frustration and
disappointment
 widespread industrial
strife and racketeering
 political corruption and
corporate power/greed
 race riots and racial
prejudice (Jews, African
Americans) …

Film Noir
 The historical, cultural, sociological,
literary and cinematic origins of film
noir …
 World War II and the ‘postwar
malaise’ (cont’d) …
 America’s bleak underside …
 rehabilitation of ex-servicemen …
• war neurosis … mental illness … alcoholism … insanity
… suicide … euthanasia
 juvenile delinquency
 sickening photographic evidence of the
Holocaust
 the A-bomb, the ‘Red Scare’ and the
‘chilly’ Cold War …
• fear and anxiety
• threat of nuclear annihilation …

Film Noir
noir …
 gender development …
 women with …
 new-found independence
 better job-earning power at
home
… during WWII
 ‘modernity’ …

Film Noir
 precursors in …
the ‘gangster flicks’ of the 1930s

Film Noir
 precursors in …
 French poetic realist films of the
1930s …
 a gritty fatalistic French cycle of films
• poetic conventionalisation … combined with
realistic topics and milieus

Film Noir
noir …
 German Expressionism …
 an artistic movement of the 1910s
and 1920s … expressionistic and
conventionalized style … where the
aesthetics are marked by
distortions and exaggerations …
 photography
 painting
 sculpture
 architecture
 theatre and cinema …

Film Noir
noir …
 German Expressionism
(cont’d) …
 expressionist visual
techniques …
 pioneered in Germany during the
1920s
 redeployed in 1940s Hollywood
by refugee filmmakers fleeing
Hitler …
• e.g. Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder,
Robert Siodmak, Edward
Dmytryk and Fred Zinnemann
… all of whom are strongly
associated with the noir style.

Film Noir
sociological, literary
and cinematic origins
of film noir …
 the hardboiled school of
crime fiction [crime novels and
‘pulp fiction’] of the 1930s …
 Dashiell Hammett, James M
Cain, Cornell Woolrich
(‘Father of Noir Fiction’),
Raymond Chandler, W R
Burnett, Black Mask and other
pulp magazines
 existentialism and nihilism …

Film Noir
cinematic origins of film noir …
 left-wing politics …
 many early noir directors from
Europe … fleeing fascism …
 leftist views
 Freudian psychiatry …
 wider awareness of
psychoanalysis
 interest in dreams,
hypnosis, hypnotic
trances and black-out
states.

Film Noir
cinematic origins of film noir …
 Italian neorealism
(Neorealismo) …
 a national film movement …
 came about at the end of World
War II …
• with the fall of Benito Mussolini's
government
 characterised by stories set amongst
• the poor and the working class
 filmed on location … frequently
using nonprofessional actors.

Film Noir
Classification:
 Proto-noir/1900s-1920s
 Proto-noir/1930s
 Classic film noir/1940s
 Classic film noir/1950s
 Classic era noir-comedy crossovers
 Classic era noir-Western crossovers
 Classic era noir-SF crossovers
 Classic era miscellaneous crossovers
 Post-classic noir/1960s … 1970s … 1980s … 1990s … 2000s
… 2010s
 Psycho-noir …

Film Noir
 Post-classic noir-comedy crossovers, noir-Western
crossovers, noir-SF crossovers, miscellaneous
crossovers
 Post-classic noir TV series
 Proto-noir/foreign
 Classic film noir/foreign
 Post-classic noir/foreign
 Psycho-noir/foreign
 Post-classic crossovers/foreign
 Post-classic noir TV/foreign.

The two main ‘styles’
of film noir …

Film Noir
Two main ‘styles’ of film noir …
 The first style …
 emerged in the early 1940s---although there
were precursors in the 1930s … and even earlier
 fueled by writers like …
 James M Cain, Dashiell Hammett and
Raymond Chandler---all members of the
hardboiled school of crime fiction
 characterised by:
 a cynical, often witty tone
 anti-heroes
 dangerous women---the femme fatale
 assorted criminal elements …

Film Noir
Two main ‘styles’ of film
noir …
 The first style (cont’d) …
 In creating this range of film
noirs, Hollywood drew on the
work both of:
 earlier writers … especially, of
course, Dashiell Hammett and
Raymond Chandler, and
 the late 1940s-early 1950s
novelists … who were writing crime
fiction that very often had no role for
the private eye, including...

Film Noir
Two main ‘styles’ of film noir
The first style (cont’d) …
• W R Burnett, David Goodis,
Dorothy B Hughes, William
Lindsay Gresham, Horace
McCoy & William P McGivern ...
• all of whom produced novels that
had as their protagonists ...
• violent, self-deceived men,
criminals, crooked cops, killers,
and psychotics.

Film Noir
 The first style (cont’d) …
 complex plots …
 emphasising betrayal and moral
ambiguity
 photographed in a remarkable visual
style combining:
 glossy production values
 atmospheric emphasis on light and shadow
 films such as The Maltese Falcon,
The Big Sleep, Mildred Pierce, The
Blue Dahlia and Double Indemnity.

Film Noir
• Too Smart People (MGM, 1946)
was director Jules Dassin's last
film before embarking on a series
of influential classic noir and
crime films ...
• it's the first of his crime films, and
• shows his interest in developing the
genre ...
• in particular, the ‘second style’ of film
noir [Post-WWII: see infra].

Film Noir
 The second style …
 emerged after World War II
 the glossy sophistication of 1940s noir
fell out of fashion
 audiences clamoured for a more gritty
realism
 a ‘new’ style of noir …
 as influenced by Italian neorealism as
American crime fiction
 photographed in a grainier way
 more direct
 more brutal
 even less sympathetic to its characters.

Film Noir
 The second style (cont’d) …
 The Naked City (1948), directed by
Jules Dassin, was among the
first to turn the tide. …
• The sophisticated gumshoe, slinky
gun moll, and glossy production
values were gone …
• This film …
• felt more like something you might read
in a particularly lurid ‘true detective’
magazine
• was a benchmark for naturalism in
noir.

The ‘prototypical’ film noir plot …

Film Noir
Two main ‘styles’ of
film noir …
 The second style
(cont’d) …
 The Big Heat (1953),
directed by Fritz Lang,
and starring Glenn Ford
and Gloria Grahame,
was considered at the time
to reach a new low in
violence (e.g. boiling
coffee thrown in the face).
 The film struck a new
note of realism in crime
films.

Film Noir
 The ‘prototypical’ film noir
plot …
 includes … an alienated
man … ‘one man against the
world’ … usually involved in
detective work or fighting
crime, and a femme fatale
or ‘scary woman’ …
However, not all film noirs
feature a detective plot …

Film Noir
 The ‘prototypical’ film
noir plot …
The ‘prototypical’ noir
‘hero’ (or anti-hero) is
working their way
through a mystery of
some sort …
where the mystery
usually involves a crime
of some kind …

Film Noir
 The ‘prototypical’
film noir plot …
The crime allow the
plot structure to
unfold in front of the
viewer …
the audience quite
literally takes the
same journey as
the ‘hero’.

Film Noir
 Film noir encompasses 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)
 a victim of circumstance (Detour,
Impact and DOA).

Film Noir
Common noir plot types …
 The ‘clock race’ story---the
protagonist runs an unbearable
and usually unwinnable
marathon against the forces of
time and death.
 The ‘waking nightmare’
story---the protagonist comes to
after a blackout or wakes from a
dream … then finds objective
fragments from his bad dream …
and slowly becomes convinced
that he did something horrible
while ‘out’ of himself.

Film Noir
Common noir plot types (cont’d) …
 The ‘annihilation’ story---the
protagonist (a man) finds the one
‘right’ woman … the woman suddenly
vanishes as if the universe has
swallowed her up … and the man not
only can find no trace of her, he can’t
establish that she ever existed.
 The ‘imminent death’ story---the
protagonist knows that s/he will soon
die in a particularly awful way and at
a particular moment.

Film Noir
 The ‘Big’ ___
 The Big Bluff (1955)
 The Big Boodle (1957)
 The Big Caper (1957)
 The Big Chase (1954)
 The Big Clock (1948)
 The Big Combo (1955)
 The Big Fix (1947)
 The Big Frame (1952)
 The Big Heat (1953) …

Film Noir
 The ‘Big’ ___ (cont’d) …
 The Big Knife (1955)
 The Big Night (1951)
 The Big Operator (1959)
 The Big Punch (1948)
 The Big Shot (1942)
 The Big Sleep (1946)
 The Big Steal (1949)
 The Big Tip Off (1955)
 etc

Defining characteristics
and features …

Film Noir
Defining characteristics and
features …
 ‘dark’ themes … often presented with
an ‘investigative narrative
structure’ and use of flashbacks and
voiceover …
 generally ‘downbeat’ tone …
pessimistic … unsparing vision …
 ‘overwhelmingly black’ (Robert
Ottoson)
 ‘film noir is defined by tone … [one
which is] hopeless’
(Paul Schrader)
 psychological concerns …
 protagonists often have pronounced
psychoses …

Film Noir
Defining characteristics and features …
‘dark’ themes …
 death
 crime, murder and cruelty
 revenge and vendetta
 drugs and prostitution
 jealousy, lust, passion, adultery
 betrayal
 greed, money, robbery, scams
 dirty cops and political chicanery
 rich but broken families
 obsession and other mental issues
 amnesia---film noir’s favourite ‘disease’
 power …

Film Noir
and features …
 existential angst … even despair
 male archetype/protagonist …
 an outsider or ‘loser’ …
• sense of alienation and
loneliness
• shifting roles
 trapped in unwanted situations
• ill-fated relationship with
society
• often the victim of
entrapment
 sense of …
 powerlessness
 purposelessness
 injustice
 impending doom and
foreboding …

Film Noir
Defining characteristics and
features …
 fatalism and determinism …
 the protagonist (generally an anti-hero)-
--a hapless pawn of fate---fights an
inner battle between doing what is
‘right’ and doing what is ‘wrong’ …
 his decisions are made in reaction to the
haphazard state of affairs in which
he finds himself
 ultimately succumbs to what is ‘wrong’
…
• there may or may not be a
redemptive focus (‘noir sensibility’)
and a ‘happy’ ending …

Film Noir
and features …
 life is cheap …
 money is hard to come by, except
by crime
 fate is uncaring, random and
arbitrary
 we cannot escape the past …
 the past always catches up with us
 evil is everywhere …
 the world is inherently corrupt
 you can’t trust anybody!
 betrayal and double-cross,
even triple-cross …

Film Noir
 a type of ‘justice’ or karma is almost
always present …
 we generally reap what we sow …
 cf. Detour (1945) … one of the blackest film
noirs ever produced during the classic film noir
period …

Film Noir
The Hollywood
Production Code did
not allow murderers to get
away with their crimes …
 So, director Edgar G
Ulmer got through the
censors by having Al
Roberts (played by
Tom Neal) picked up
by a police car at the
very end of the movie …
• after foreseeing his
arrest in the earlier
narration.

Film Noir
Defining
characteristics and
features …
 moral relativism and
moral ambiguity …
no absolute moral
standards …
 no characters are truly
‘innocent’ ...
 no one, not even the
detective, can be
considered ‘moral’ …

Film Noir
and features …
 moral relativism and moral
ambiguity …
 strong undercurrent of moral
conflict …
 ‘transgressions’ … infidelity
… sexual innuendo … passion!
 unstable characterisation of
the ‘heroine’ …
• female sexuality/duplicity
[white faces/sheath dresses]
plays off male anxieties
 violence is a way of life … even
de rigueur.

Film Noir
However, the
boundaries of film
noir are quite
‘porous’ at the
margins … and a film
noir may take any one
of a number of
different ‘plot types.’

The ‘look’, ‘feel’
and ‘sound’ of noir …

Film Noir
 The ‘look’, ‘feel’ and
‘sound’ of noir …
‘The films were made by
hard-bitten men who
knew city life inside out:
they have the flavour of
a neat Scotch-on-the-
rocks.’
– Charles Higham and Joe
Greenberg, Hollywood in the
Forties (New York: A S Barnes & Co;
London: Tantivy Press, 1968), p 36.

Film Noir
The ‘look’, ‘feel’ and ‘sound’ of
noir …
 visual, stylistic ‘sparseness’ …
dense, rarified visual ‘vocabulary’
 ‘DARK’ … ‘BLACK’ …
dark settings …
 very strong single-source
lighting …
• devoid of light … or with filtered
light … or with slashes of light
• often high contrast
documentary-style of realism
expressionist visual style …

Film Noir
noir …
 ‘DARK’ … ‘BLACK’ (cont’d) …
an overall aesthetic of nocturnal,
subterranean unreality …
 ‘mood’---one of melodramatic
doom and foreboding
 ‘atmosphere’---one of moral
ambiguity
extremely strong graphic elements
generally black-and-white film
(cf Niagara) …

Film Noir
The ‘look’, ‘feel’ and ‘sound’
of noir … ‘visual earmarks’:
 low-key lighting …
 low lighting …
 sometimes used in low-budget films
to hide defects in the set quality
 chiaroscuro ('light-dark’) effects
• shade and light play against
each other … night exteriors AND
dim interiors
• stark and high contrasts
• long, sharply-defined shadows
… often finely filigreed
• hard, unfiltered side-light and
rim light …
 often reveals only a portion of
a face >>> dramatic tension
• frames bathed in inky
blackness … or luminescence
…

Two silhouetted figures in
The Big Combo (1955)
• low-key lighting schemes …
producing stark light/dark contrasts
(chiaroscuro) …
and dramatic and ominous shadow patterning

Film
Noir
 colour
... … …
 creamy
pastels
 deep
focus …

Film Noir
The ‘look’, ‘feel’ and
 strong, ‘punchy’
filmmaking style …

Film Noir
 odd angles … especially
low angles (but
occasionally also high
angles), wide angles and
canted angles (eg the
‘dutch angle’) …
 extreme---and often tilted--
-camera angles … PLUS use
of the moving camera
 expressionist distortion
 claustrophobic and
unbalanced compositions

Film Noir
 people … especially femmes
fatales … tend to face the
camera when talking to
people behind them
much given to close-ups …

•Cinematic flourishes
include …
•deep-focus camera work …
The Third Man

• disorienting
visual schemes …

• jarring editing or juxtaposition of elements …

• skewed and canted camera angles …

• unbalanced or moody compositions …
The Fifth Horseman is Fear
Double Indemnity

… but it is the light that is primarily responsible
for the characteristic mood …

Film Noir
The Dark Corner (2oth, 1946) …
• Henry Hathaway, director
• Joseph MacDonald,
cinematographer ...
• he ably lighted a number of estimable noirs
(eg Street With No Name, Call
Northside 777, Pickup on South
Street)
• his work in The Dark Corner surpasses
itself ...
• When Lucille Ball and Mark
Stevens embrace, MacDonald
turns a two-shot into a four-
shot ...
• by placing them in front of a fireplace
mirror ...
• we see Ball’s face in the foreground,
Stevens’ in reflection ...

Film Noir
 heavy use of flashbacks,
voiceovers and narration …
 often a mix of narrative
flashback and linear
narrative
 some noirs (eg Double
Indemnity and Detour)
are told entirely in
flashback …
 an ‘investigative
narrative structure’ …
and the nature of
narration itself …
• are often used as a
frame device …

Film Noir
 use of flashbacks, voiceovers
and narration (cont’d) …
 rejection of ‘classical
narrative’ …
 many points of view struggle
within the text to gain
hegemony …
• frequently the male vs.
female
actions provoke reactions
until a ‘resolution’ of sorts is
arrived at …

Film Noir
The ‘look’, ‘feel’ and ‘sound’ of noir
…
 use of flashbacks,
voiceovers and narration
(cont’d) …
 flashbacks and
voiceovers …
• put the audience and
the narrator on a more
equal footing …
 the process of
story telling is
foregrounded …
• ‘subjective
camera’ …

Film Noir
noir …
 the representation of the
protagonist's subjectivity
...
 perceptions (both accurate and
deluded)
 state of mind
 desires
 obsessions
 anxieties
 dreams ...

Film Noir
Fritz Lang's explanation
of his subjective camera work ...
‘You show the protagonist so
that the audience can put
themselves under the skin of
the man’ ...
... by showing things
'wherever possible, from the
viewpoint of the protagonist' ...
the film gives the audience visual
and psychological access to his
nightmarish experiences.

Film Noir
The ‘look’,
‘feel’ and
‘sound’ of
noir …
use of clever
‘gimmicks’
and special
effects to
enhance
realism …

Film Noir
 music …
 often progressive jazz, romantic
jazz, blues or swing
 sultry songs … sung in small, smoky
nightclubs …

Film Noir
The ‘look’, ‘feel’ and ‘sound’ of noir
• black humour (or dry, sarcastic wit and
repartee) and hard-bitten poetry …
• to underscore the darkness of the on-screen action
• noir iconography---lots (!) of cigarette
smoke, big ‘black’ automobiles, guns,
trench coats and trilby hats

Film Noir
• landscape and environment …
• integral aspects of many classic
film noirs … especially the grim
urban landscape
• important in conveying crucial
noir elements (eg suspense,
dread)…
• the cobblestone streets of
Vienna (The Third Man)
• the seedy underworld of
London (Night and the City,
Wanted for Murder and
Lured)
• the sprawling metropolis of Los
Angeles (Double Indemnity,
Sunset Boulevard) …

Film Noir
• landscape and environment
…
• the concrete jungle of Manhattan
(Scarlet Street, The Naked City
and Pickup on South Street)
• the sinuous slopes of San
Francisco (Out of the Past, The
Lady from Shanghai, DOA,
Dark Passage and The Maltese
Falcon)
• these environments …
• literally set the stage for the
players
• breathe aesthetic life into the
films.

Film Noir
 The ‘locale’ of noir
EITHER
the crime-ridden city
OR
the small-town ‘gas
station’/diner/motel

Film Noir
Other noir settings include …
• city streets and bridges
• police stations … especially precinct
station backrooms
• prisons and lockups
• rundown movie and burlesque theatres
• cheap dance halls
• drug dens
• seedy private hotels, apartment
houses and boarding houses
• mansions
• cafes and restaurants
• bars and nightclubs
• trains and railway stations
• dams, reservoirs, canals, towers
• wharves, docks, ships
• warehouses and factories
• racetracks …

Film Noir
 ‘Dark’ themes---murder,
obsession, revenge, betrayal, lust,
passion, greed, mental issues, etc
 usually set in a criminal milieu …
 exploring the consequences of a criminal
act
 the individual in an otherwise hostile
universe
 … meeting his inescapable, tragic end
(cf Greek or Shakespearean tragedy)
 an action genre
 often low-budget ‘B’ films
 often very complicated, multi-
layered ‘dark’ plots ...
 many twists-and-turns and ‘shadowy corners’
 many misleading developments
 sometimes quite convoluted and confusing …

Film Noir
 The Maltese Falcon (WB,
1941) …
 ‘Names, murders, and
intrigues turn up so quickly
that it is extremely difficult
to understand exactly what is
happening …’
 ‘… that is where the film’s
main flaw occurs.’
- Alan G Barbour, Humphrey Bogart
(New York: Galahad Books, 1973), p 80.

Film Noir
The Big Sleep (WB, 1946) …
• During filming, the storyline became so
complicated and convoluted that …
• ‘the film’s stars complained that they didn’t
know what the whole thing was about,
either’
- Alan G Barbour, Humphrey Bogart (New York:
Galahad Books, 1973), p 102.
• Even the screenwriters---William
Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules
Furthmann---were forced to consult
Raymond Chandler for advice …
• Chandler was as confused by the plot as the
screenwriters. …

Film Noir
The Big Sleep (WB, 1946) (cont’d) …
• When originally prepared for release
in 1945, the film featured a long
exposition scene featuring police
detective Bernie Ohls (Regis
Toomey) explaining the more
obscure plot details.
• This expository scene was ultimately
sacrificed … along with several others
… in favor of building up Lauren
Bacall's part …
• as a result of the re-shooting, re-
casting and re-editing of the 1945
version of the film …

Film Noir
 The Big Sleep (WB,
1946) (cont’d) …
 The end result was one of the
most famously baffling film
noirs of all time …
 ‘… an incredibly complex
detective thriller that
absolutely defies
comprehension in a single
screening’
- Alan G Barbour, Humphrey
Bogart (New York: Galahad Books,
1973), p 102.

‘Prototypical’ noir characters ...

Film Noir
Noir Characters include …
 Detectives
 Police officers---licensed
to torture and kill
 Murderers
 Gangs
 Serial killers
 Interrogators
 Drug dealers
 Businessmen
 Scammers
 Racketeers
 Drifters
 Jealous Husbands
 Bored Wives
 Twin Sisters---one good,
one evil
 Nymphomaniacs
 Prostitutes
 Mentally Disturbed War Veterans
 Victims of all different kinds…

Film Noir
‘Prototypical’ noir
characters [clichés] ...
 the cynical, laconic,
snappy, brash (but not
foolhardy) and courageous
private detective …
 who hides a softer, weaker
heart behind his gruff
exterior, and
 who maintains his own code
of ethics which he adheres to
faithfully …
 the sociopathic cop …
 the clever, shrewd, slick
and dangerous (even
lethal) villain …

Film Noir
‘Prototypical’ noir characters
...
 the sexy, seductive, erotic, self-
indulgent, clever, powerful,
manipulative, chameleon-like,
dangerous (even deadly), but
irresistible femme fatale ...
 sometimes a sexual predator who
tempts and weakens a male protagonist--
-her victim
 sometimes she actually imitates male
aggression and appropriates male
power …

Film Noir
 ‘Prototypical’ noir
characters ... the femme
fatale ...
 ‘On the poster or pulp
cover she perhaps holds
only a cocktail glass and
a smouldering cigarette,
or she might hold a gun
and might by the end of
the narrative have
pulled the trigger.’
– Lee Horsley.

Film Noir
‘Prototypical’ noir characters ...
 the cynical, hard-hearted, disillusioned male
character (eg Robert Mitchum, Fred MacMurray,
Humphrey Bogart, Victor Mature) …
 who encounters a beautiful but promiscuous, amoral,
double-dealing and seductive femme fatale …
 e.g. Veronica Lake, Mary Astor, Jane Greer, Barbara
Stanwyck, Lana Turner
 commonly the ‘viewpoint’ character telling the story in
flashback …
 who may turn out himself to be the murderer!

Film Noir
‘We are brought close to the mind of a protagonist
whose position vis a vis other characters is not fixed.
Treacherous confusions of his role and the movement of
the protagonist from one role to another constitute key
structural elements in noir narrative. The victim might,
for example, become the aggressor; the hunter might
turn into the hunted or vice versa; the investigator
might double as either the victim or the perpetrator.
Whereas the traditional mystery story, with its stable
triangle of detective, victim and murderer, is reasonably
certain to have the detective as the protagonist, noir is a
deliberate violation of this convention.’
– Lee Horsley.

Film Noir
‘Prototypical’ noir characters …
 The ‘child’ character …
 the secret holder of crucial
information
 often plays an important function in the
plot.

Film Noir
The
great
‘noir’
writers

Film Noir
 The great ‘noir’ writers …
Cornel Woolrich (1903-1968)
(the ‘Father of Noir Fiction’):
The Phantom Lady (1942, as William
Irish), The Night Has a Thousand Eyes
(1945, as George Hopley), The Black
Angel (1946)---all made into successful
films.
Other films based on his writings
include: The Leopard Man (1943), Fear
in the Night (1947), The Window (1949),
No Man of Her Own (1950), Rear
Window (1954; TV movie 1998),
Nightmare (1956), The Bride Wore Black
(1968), Mississippi Mermaid (1969),
She’s No Angel (TV movie 2001),
Original Sin (2001). …

Film Noir
 The great ‘noir’ writers
…
cont’d …
 prolific mystery writer …
 also Hollywood screenwriter
 reinvented suspense fiction for
the 20th century …
 his novels embodied in an extreme
form the noir sense of
helplessness and paranoia …
 for 4 decades, 100s of his stories
appeared in popular American pulp
magazines …

Film Noir
cont’d …
 film directors---as varied as
Alfred Hitchcock,
François Truffaut and
Michael Cristofer---
memorably translated his
work into classic films …
e.g. Rear Window (1954),
The Bride Wore Black
(1968), Mississippi
Mermaid (1969), Original
Sin (2001).

Film Noir
… Cornel Woolrich (1903-1968)
cont’d …
 the single most adapted writer for films of the classic
noir period …
 1942-49: Eleven Woolrich novels or stories were made into
films …
 the protagonists of which include …
• a man hypnotised into thinking he is a murderer (Fear
in the Night)
• a mind-reader who predicts his own death (Night Has a
Thousand Eyes)
• alcoholics
• amnesiacs
• hunted men
• fall guys
• innumerable effeminate men.

Film Noir
Cornel Woolrich (1903-1968) cont’d …
 The word ‘black’ appears in his
book titles a number of times
 You will also see ‘dead’, ‘lady’ and ‘night’ in his titles.

Film Noir
Cornel Woolrich (1903-1968) …
‘Woolrich’s life was as twisted and
compelling as his work, and that’s
saying something.’ – Time.
‘He was the Poe of the twentieth
century and the poet of its shadows. He
was the Hitchcock of the written word.’
– Francis M Nevins.
‘Cornell Woolrich’s novels and short
stories define the essence of noir
nihilism.’ – Marilyn Stasio, New
York Times Book Review.

Film Noir
Cornel Woolrich (1903-1968) …
‘Along with Raymond Chandler, Cornell
Woolrich practically invented the genre of
noir.’ – Newsday.
‘Woolrich was a master of the form.’ – Tom
Nolan, Wall Street Journal.
‘Possibly the finest mystery writer of the
twentieth century.’ – The Encyclopedia
of Mystery and Detection.
‘At his best, Woolrich projects a powerful
atmosphere of fear, shock, and violence, and
usually his stories end with a whiplash of
surprise, with fate often intervening and
playing the role of deus ex machina. …’ –
Ellery Queen.

Film Noir
cont’d …
‘Woolrichian suspense stories typically
end not with the dissolution of terror
but with its omnipresence. For
Woolrich’s world is controlled by
powers that delight in destroying us.
They are not reachable by human
goodness, their ways are not our ways,
and against them we are helpless.’
- Francis M Nevins, Jr.

Film Noir
 The great ‘noir’
writers …
Dashiell Hammett
(1894-1961): The Maltese
Falcon (1930), The Glass
Key (1931), The Thin
Man (1934)---all made
into successful films.

Film Noir
Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) …
 worked as a Pinkerton detective
 The Maltese Falcon … and its main
character Sam Spade …
 had a great impact on the mystery and suspense
genre
 have come to define noir in the minds of many
 Sam Spade …
 a manipulator of the action
 takes on the roles of … detective … victim and
morally ambiguous character
 all the conventions found in the mystery
genre come into play … but Hammett
changed all the rules …
 sexual obsession and the femme fatale …
 also become part of noir fiction in The Maltese
Falcon.

Film Noir
writers …
Dashiell Hammett
(1894-1961) …
‘He is so hard-boiled
you could roll him on
the White House Lawn.’
– Dorothy Parker.

Film Noir
(cont’d) …
Raymond Chandler (1888-
1959): The Big Sleep (1939),
Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The
Lady in the Lake (1943)---all
made into successful films.
His screenplays include: Double
Indemnity (1944), The Blue
Dahlia (1946), Strangers on a
Train (1951).

Film Noir
writers (cont’d) …
Raymond Chandler
(1888-1959) …
‘It was a triumph of style
that he was able to transform
a limited type of fiction into
something having universal
appeal … .”
– Frank MacShane.

Film Noir
writers (cont’d) …
James M Cain (1892-
1977): The Postman
Always Rings Twice
(1934), Mildred Pierce
(1941), Double Indemnity
(1943) (first published in
Liberty Magazine, 1936)---
both made into successful
films.

Film Noir
(cont’d) …
James M Cain (1892-1977) …
‘It is no accident that movies based
on three [Cain novels] helped to
define the genre known as film
noir.’ – New York Review of
Books.
‘Nobody has quite pulled if off the
way Cain does, not Hemingway,
not even Raymond Chandler.’
– Tom Wolfe.

Film Noir
(cont’d) …
James M Cain (1892-1977)
…
his ‘prototypical’ motif---
the protagonist gets away
with the crime he
committed … but gets
nailed for the one he
didn’t.

Film Noir
(cont’d) …
James M Cain (1892-1977) …
 Cain’s roman noir The
Postman Always Rings
Twice (1934) …
 was acknowledged by Albert
Camus (1913-1960) as the model
for his novel L'Étranger (The
Stranger or The Outsider)
(1942).

Film Noir
Some famous
‘noir’
directors---
and some of
their films …

Film Noir
 Some famous ‘noir’ directors---and some of their films …
John Huston: The Maltese Falcon (1941), Across the Pacific (1942), The
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The Asphalt Jungle
(1950), The African Queen (1951), Beat the Devil (1953)
Fred Zinnemann: Act of Violence (1948)
Howard Hawks: Scarface (1932), The Big Sleep (1946)
Alfred Hitchcock: Suspicion (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Spellbound
(1945), Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951), The Wrong Man (1956)
Otto Preminger: Laura (1944), Fallen Angel (1945), Whirlpool (1949), Where
the Sidewalk Ends (1950), Angel Face (1952)
Billy Wilder: Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), Sunset
Boulevard (1950), Ace in the Hole (1951)
Orson Welles: Citizen Kane (1941), Journey into Fear (1943), The Stranger
(1946), Tomorrow is Forever (1946), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), The
Third Man (1949), Mr Arkadin (1955), Touch of Evil (1958) …

Film Noir
 Some famous ‘noir’ directors---and some of their films (cont’d) …
Anatole Litvak: City for Conquest (1940), Out of the Fog (1941), Sorry, Wrong
Number (1948)
Fritz Lang: M (1931), Moontide (1942) [uncredited], Hangmen Also Die (1943),
Ministry of Fear (1944), The Woman in the Window (1945), Scarlet Street
(1945), Clash by Night (1952), The Big Heat (1953), The Blue Gardenia (1953),
Human Desire (1954)
Henry Hathaway: The Dark Corner (1946), Kiss of Death (1947), Call
Northside 777 (1948), Fourteen Hours (1951), Niagara (1953)
Richard Fleischer: Trapped (1949), The Clay Pigeon (1949), Armored Car
Robbery (1950), The Narrow Margin (1952), Compulsion (1959)
Robert Siodmak: Phantom Lady (1943), Christmas Holiday (1944), The
Suspect (1945), The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945), The Spiral Staircase
(1945), The Dark Mirror (1946), The Killers (1946), Cry of the City (1948), Criss
Cross (1948), The File on Thelma Jordon (1950) …

Film Noir
Andre de Toth: Dark Waters (1944), The Pitfall (1948)
Nicholas Ray: They Live by Night (1948), Knock on Any Door (1949), A
Woman’s Secret (1949), In a Lonely Place (1950), Born to be Bad (1950), On
Dangerous Ground (1952), Party Girl (1958)
Edward Dmytryk: Cornered (1945), Murder, My Sweet (1945), Crossfire
(1947)
Raoul Walsh: They Drive by Night (1940), High Sierra (1941), Pursued (1947),
The Man I Love (1947), White Heat (1949)
Jules Dassin: Two Smart People (1946), Brute Force (1947), The Naked City
(1948), Thieves’ Highway (1949), Night and the City (1950), Rififi (1955)
Edgar G Ulmer: Detour (1946), Strange Illusion (1947), Ruthless (1948)
Anthony Mann: Strange Impersonation (1946), T-Men (1947), Desperate
(1947), Raw Deal (1948)
Stanley Kubrick: The Killing (1956), Killer’s Kiss (1956) …

Film Noir
John Farrow: Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948), The Big Clock (1948), Where
Danger Lives (1950)
Michael Curtiz: Casablanca (1943), Mildred Pierce (1945)
Joseph Lewis: Gun Crazy (1950), The Big Combo (1955)
Robert Wise: Born to Kill (1947), The Set-Up (1949), Odds Against Tomorrow
(1959)
Charles Vidor: Gilda (1946)
Robert Rossen: Body and Soul (1947), All the King’s Men (1949)
William Wyler: The Letter (1940), Desperate Hours (1955)
Douglas Sirk: Lured (1947), Shockproof (1949)
Jacques Tournier: Out of the Past (1947), Berlin Express (1948), Nightfall (1956)
Mark Robson: Champion (1949), Edge of Doom (1950), The Harder They Fall
(1956)
Samuel Fuller: Pickup on South Street (1953), Underworld USA (1961), Shock
Corridor (1963), The Naked Kiss (1964).

Film Noir
 Some famous ‘non-noir’ directors who
directed some classic ‘noir’ films …
Tay Garnett: The Postman Always Rings
Twice (1946)
James V Kern: The Second Woman (1951)
Arthur Lubin: Impact (1949)
Ida Lupino: The Hitch-Hiker (1953)---the
only ‘true’ film noir ever directed by a woman
George Marshall: The Black Dahlia (1946)
David Miller: Sudden Fear (1952)
Vincente Minnelli: Undercurrent (1946).

Decline and ‘demise’ of film noir
… and the emergence of neo-noir

Film Noir
 Decline and ‘demise’ of film noir
… …
 Post-World War II socio-historical
and cultural developments …
 suburbanisation …
 returned ex-servicemen abandoned
urban life for the new invention---‘the
suburbs’
 working women went back to the
kitchen
 the Baby Boom began its 10-15 year surge
 television …
 forced film noir out to suburbia to
compete with ‘pulp’ crime on TV …
• noir was effectively dead as a film
genre by 1955
 the femme fatale disappeared too …
 until a new era of social unease, the
1970s, with the much greater gender
challenge of feminism, saw film noir’s
first true revival (‘neo-noir’) …

Film Noir
 Neo-noir …
 often ‘retro’ (eg set in
1940s or 50s)
 usually filmed in colour
 generally more violent
than classic film noir
 more ‘in-your-face’
 very fast-paced …
 quick changes in
scene speeding up the
pace
 more ‘noisy’ and ‘sexy’
 very coarse language

Film Noir
Copyright © 2012
Ian Ellis-Jones
(ABN 49 839 909 268).
All Rights Reserved.
Some images courtesy Google Images.
Not all of the images, information and data
in this PowerPoint presentation are in the public domain.
That which is not in the public domain remains
the property of the relevant copyright owners.
All rights reserved.

FILM NOIR

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