In Search of: The Definition of FILM NOIR

In the search from a definition of Noir films, I've come across several sites. I'll continually update this as I get more. I will attempt to make it clear when stuff is original (my opinion) or from another site (by demarking it with the URL.)

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http://www.duke.edu/~iszeman/lec2.html

Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton, "Towards a Definition of Film Noir"

What is Noir?

First used in France to describe the British Gothic novel.

Next usage: Série Noir--the title for a collection of translated American hard-boiled detective stories.

Transference of the term to film noir is natural, since many film noir are based on hard-boiled detective stories.

Classic Noir Period
From Maltese Falcon (1941) to Touch of Evil (1956)

Borde and Chaumeton

(1) Series vs. Genre

Series: "a group of motion pictures from one country sharing certain traits (style, atmosphere, subject matter ) strongly enough to make them unequivocally and to give them, over time, an unmistakable character."

Genre: (from Bordwell and Thompson) (97) "a set of 'rules' for narrative construction that both filmmaker and audience know."

(2) Auteur Theory

Briefly raised. "By convention we will deem films to be created by their directors. This is a convention because one can never know with regard to an American productions whether the director is really the ultimate creator of the work."

To put this another way: Who is the author of a film? What does the answer to this question imply for interpreting films?

(3) Noir

"The noir film is black for us, that is, specifically for the Western and American moviegoers of the 1950s. It exists in response to a certain mood at large in this particular time and place."

For Borde and Chaumeton, what is definitive of the série noir is a "unique expressive attitude."

"Noir film is a film of death."

(4) The Private Detective

"The private detective is mid-way between lawful society and the underworld, walking on the brink, sometimes unscrupulous but putting only himself at risk, fulfilling the requirements of his own code and of the genre as well" (21)

(5) Film Noir vs. Other Films

Pre-war American "adventure films":
- a logical development of action
- clear distinction between good and evil
- well-defined characters, sharp motives
- "showy" violence
- beautiful heroine, honest hero

Post-war Noir:
- likable killers and corrupt cops
- good and evil become indistinguishable
- "Robbers become ordinary guys"
- victim as guilty as the criminal
- heroine is "depraved, murderous, doped-up or drunk"
- action confused, motives unclear.

"All the films of this cycle create a similar emotional effect: that state of tension instilled in the spectator when the psychological reference points are removed. The aim of film noir was to create a specific alienation."

The Noir Sensibility

Representation of crime
Power and dominance
Bleak, melancholic, an atmosphere of disillusionment and pessimism; paranoia and suspicion
Eroticism-eroticized violence
Anxiety
Protagonists: "cynical, tarnished, obsessive, brooding, menacing, sinister, sardonic"-loners struggling to survive.
Dark lighting-takes place in the city, often at night
foul play, murder
moral ambivalence (confusion of good and evil)
corrupt officials (police, DAs, etc.)
private detectives as heroes
sympathetic crooks
combination of realistic sequences with bizarre themes
unusual characters
femme fatale-"duplicitous, predatory, tough-sweet, and desperate women"
disorientation, loneliness, entrapment

Types of Noir

classic detective films: Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Out of the Past
non-detective films: The Third Man, D.O.A.
melodramatic noirs: Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, Gilda, Citizen Kane
"menaced women noirs": Laura, Rebecca, Suspicion, Notorious
crime films: The Asphalt Jungle, The Big Hear, Kiss Me Deadly, Touch of Evil
westerns: High Noon, The Gunfighter
dramatic films: Sunset Boulevard, The Lost Weekend

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http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue02/infocus/filmnoir.htm

10 Shades of Noir
Film Noir: An Introduction

Dark rooms with light slicing through venetian blinds, alleys cluttered with garbage, abandoned warehouses where dust hangs in the air, rain-slickened streets with water still running in the gutters, dark detective offices overlooking busy streets: this is the stuff of film noir--that most magnificent of film forms--a perfect blend of form and content, where the desperation and hopelessness of the situations is reflected in the visual style, which drenches the world in shadows and only occasional bursts of sunlight. Film noir, occasionally acerbic, usually cynical, and often enthralling, gave us characters trying to elude some mysterious past that continues to haunt them, hunting them down with a fatalism that taunts and teases before delivering the final, definitive blow.

Unlike other forms of cinema, the film noir has no paraphernalia that it can truly call its own. Unlike the western, with cattle drives, lonely towns on the prairie, homesteading farmers, Winchester rifles, and Colt 45s, the film noir borrows its paraphernalia from other forms, usually from the crime and detective genres, but often overlapping into thrillers, horror, and even science fiction (as in the great "what's it" box from Kiss Me Deadly). The visual style echoes German expressionism, painting shafts of light that temporarily illuminate small chunks of an ominous and overbearing universe that limits a person's chances to slim and none. For as Paul Schrader said in his influential "Notes on Film Noir" essay, "No character can speak authoritatively from a space which is continually being cut into ribbons of light."

Out of the Past, for example, is one of the archetypal noirs, giving us a protagonist who has tried to escape his past (he betrayed a partner by running away with his girlfriend), but fate won't let him escape. He inhabits a world that constantly pulls people back into a morass of existence that is bound to suffocate them. Jeff (played by Robert Mitchum) is a seemingly good guy, but one bad turn has made his life a hell that he can never completely escape. Kirk Douglas plays the racketeer who needs to use Jeff and he does so by planting one of the great femmes fatales, Jane Greer, within Jeff's easy reach. And she consumes him.

The femme fatale would play a crucial role in the film noir, whether in the guise of Jane Greer in Out of the Past, Rita Hayworth in Lady From Shanghai, Veronica Lake in The Blue Dahlia, Joan Bennett in Scarlet Street, Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy, Gloria Grahame in Human Desire, Lizbeth Scott in Dead Reckoning, Ava Gardner in The Killers, or Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. These women were black widows who slowly drew in the heroes with come-hither looks and breathless voices. Communicating a danger of sex that is worthy of the '90s AIDS epidemic, the femme fatale knew how to use men to get whatever she wanted, whether it was just a little murder between lovers (as in Double Indemnity) or a wild, on-the-run lifestyle (as in Gun Crazy). The femme fatale was always there to help pull the hero down. And in the case of Mildred Pierce, we even get a femme fatale in the form of a daughter who threatens to destroy her mother's life.

Heroes in the film noir world would forever struggle to survive. Some of the heroes learned to play by the rules of film noir and survived by exposing corruption, such as Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep and Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet. But more often than not, they were the saps destroyed by love (Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity and Edward G. Robinson in Scarlet Street), a past transgression (Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past), or overly ambitious goals (Richard Widmark in Night and the City and Sterling Hayden in The Killing).

Titles like Pitfall, Nightmare, Kiss of Death, and Edge of Doom describe what you'll find in film noir. And titles like Night and the City, Side Street, Hell's Island and The Asphalt Jungle convey the terrain. But maybe it's titles such as The Big Heat and The Big Sleep that most simply convey the film noir essence--an overpowering force that can't be avoided.

Film noir first appeared in the early '40s in movies such as Stranger on the Third Floor (often cited as the first full-fledged noir) and This Gun For Hire. While soldiers went to war, film noir exposed a darker side of life, balancing the optimism of Hollywood musicals and comedies by supplying seedy, two-bit criminals and doom-laden atmospheres. While Hollywood strove to help keep public morale high, film noir gave us a peek into the alleys and backrooms of a world filled with corruption. And film noir remained an important form in Hollywood until the late '50s. Films such as Touch of Evil (1958) closed out the cycle. By then, the crime and detective genres were playing out their dramas in bright lights, with movies such as The Lineup containing noir elements but not the iconography of darkened streets and chiaroscuro lighting. (Post-'50s noirs such as Farewell, My Lovely and Body Heat are nostalgia first and noirs second.)