|
FILM NOIR Part 2: Film noir is dead! Long live film noir!
The titles are pungent and concise: Criss Cross, D.O.A., Raw Deal, Ruthless, Caught, Shadow of a Doubt, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Murder, My Sweet, The Big Carnival, The Big Heat, White Heat, Force of Evil, Touch of Evil, Possessed, Pursued, and Desperate. They reflect the language of film noir. Waste no words, pull no punches, get to the point. Even the longer titles say a lot in a few words: The Woman in the Window, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Won't Believe Me, and The Man Who Cheated Himself. These are titles that tell a story. Kiss the Blood Off My Hands has to be one of the best movie titles of all time.
|
|
|
|
|
I love film noir. Noir for me is like one of those “appallingly seductive women of deceitfully angelic appearance” that decorate most of them. Besides the women, what is it that lures me to noir? The crisp dialogue? (“There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff.”) The noir look? (Also crisp and contrasty. A tamed, Americanized version of German Expressionism.) An interesting story? (The noir narrative of Cain, Chandler, Hammett, et al.)
But I think what most attracts me—and many others—to film noir is its clever ability to entertain without the usual sugar coating—no sappy sentimentality, no typical happy ending. Noir exposed the dark underbelly of life and showed us that people of character—flawed as they might be—often live there. And even their most banal chatter sounds better than most people's deep thoughts.
The truth shall set you free, but it also can be painful. One of the essential ingredients of genuine film noir—as opposed to the watered down, diluted version that has the look but not the toughness—is the brutal truth. And ambiguity. No pat answers. Life isn't so simple in a good noir. At the fadeout it's not obvious how things might continue. We just saw an interesting tale, but the true ending is up in the air. It is the human struggle against Fate.
“Emigres from the German cinema would exert an even greater influence when they arrived truly en masse during the political turbulence of the next decade, but one of the most significant films of the 'Twenties which prepared the way for film noir was F.W. Murnau's first American film, SUNRISE (Fox, 1927), which contained, albeit somewhat stylized, many of the ingredients which had distinguished his German films...”
- Jon Tuska, in Dark Cinema: American film noir in Cultural Perspective
| |
 |
One of the most successful film noir imitators, L.A. Confidential proves the enduring popularity of noir characteristics and style. (Art.com poster)
Order this film poster in our POSTER SHOP in association with Art.com |
|
|
|
|
Unlike the conventional detective or crime story, a film noir narrative revolves around why there was a crime and not who committed it. In fact, we usually know who committed the murder early on. The mystery is why. The perpetrator is almost irrelevant—but his motivation is not. The theme of a true noir is always a moral dilemma brought about by someone who is either misleading himself, being mislead by others, or both. Noir attempts to delve into that. But not all films noirs deal with a crime or a criminal.
Another reason why noir earns my respect: most films noirs were low-budget B films, but many rose above this and attained a level of quality that too many so-called A pictures failed to reach. Of the B film, noir masters, probably Edgar Ulmer and Robert Siodmak were two of the best at pulling that off. Not to take anything away from the bigger names. Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, 1944) and Otto Preminger (Laura, 1944) did well with their bigger budgets.
Where did this phenomenon come from? Film noir did not just pop up like a mushroom out of nowhere. It arose when and where it did (in the USA of the 1940s and '50s.) because it was the time and the place. Certain conditions fell into place to spawn film noir. World War II was a key element. The advent of gangsters and racketeering in the 1920s and '30s was another. These two major elements brought about a new cynicism and an end to Pollyanna attitudes—a mood reflected in noir's dark look. Technical developments were also important: faster film stock (to film those dark scenes) and more mobile camera dollies made it possible for the camera to capture scenes that would have been difficult or impossible earlier.
“This is one of the most significant similarities between American film noir and German Expressionist cinema: not only did it have many of the same directors and writers and cinematographers in common, but it was also a response of sorts to a national crisis.”
- Jon Tuska, in Dark Cinema: American film noir in Cultural Perspective
Another important element—a vital one—was the preponderance of German-trained emigré filmmakers in Hollywood prior to 1940. They not only brought their film techniques—the moving camera, angled shots, unique low-key lighting, and shiny wet surfaces, they brought their different Weltanschauung or world view—which happened to correspond to what was going on in their adopted land.
The demise of noir was also related to certain conditions. Time ran out for noir just as it did for many of the characters in noir. The style was abandoned as color became the norm, and B-films—a key noir breeding ground—became a thing of the past. Noir was fading to black.
Ah, but, you ask, hasn't film noir continued in works such as Chinatown (1974), Body Heat (1981), and L.A. Confidential (1997)? Yes and no. There are actually two critical differences between noirs that came out of the “classic” period of the 1940s and '50s, and the later versions.
The most obvious difference is color. This is not a superficial matter. The noir look and mood depended very much on the unique nuances of black-and-white cinematography. The very name noir would seem to preclude color. But the most important difference has nothing to do with color or black-and-white. It has to do with intent. The directors and writers who made the original films noirs were not even aware that they were creating something that would come to be called noir! How could they? The term was not even invented until 1946, and was hardly discussed in English at all until the 1960s. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, filmmakers were increasingly aware of the existence of film noir. And this conscious awareness, more than any other one factor, is what makes these films a very different animal than their forebears.
Of course, times have changed. The filmviewer of today is certainly not the filmviewer of the 1940s. The once-subtle sex and violence of the original creations have become the lurid, jolting excesses of Quentin Tarantino and the Pulp Fiction (1994) school. The filmgoers of the 1940s would have had a heart attack if they could have seen such raw violence and mayhem on the screen. And somehow today, when all those guns start popping and the blood packs start gushing brilliant red, I miss the black and white images of classic film noir.
What's a film noir? On the next page, our top noir picks...
2 > Film noir 3
Copyright © 1997-2005 Hyde Flippo
|
