Film NoirAn Introduction

The Classic period• With the ‘Western’ noir is an indigenous American

form.• Presents a vision of society • A reflection of its preoccupations• Literally “black film” – full of dark images – reflecting a dark mood in American society - a black slate on which culture could inscribe its ills - in the process, a catharsis to relieve them

Creates visceral unease in audiences• Plots turn on deadly violence or sexual obsession.• Characters include private eyes, desperate

women & petty criminals.• Shadowy forms moving across a lonely street.• Sound of tyres creeping over wet asphalt.• Translated into sociological paranoia & guilt.• Its emergence coincides with these sentiments

after World War ll, the Holocaust & fear of the atomic bomb.

• Shot at, alone, facing death, a dark world.

Antecedents• Helped to shaped rough beast that is film noir as it

slouched towards Los Angeles to be born• Thrived there from 1941 (The Maltese Falcon) to

1958 (Touch of Evil)• Identified by French film critics• Derived from hard-boiled stories of “Black Mask”

magazine• Gangster films of the 1930s. Grounded in social

verisimilitude projecting machine guns & fast cars• Figures assailed by twists of fate in an irrational

universe (the soldier returned from combat)

Spectre of the Bomb• Inspiration for deep paranoia in noir after WWll• An unstable universe reflecting cultural sense of

upheaval and apprehension

Influx of foreign directors • Helped refine noirs distinctive visual style• German Expressionism – oddly angled shots, low-

key lighting, a chiaroscuro frame of light & shadowy mazes, foregrounded objects, glinting highlights bouncing off mirrors, wet surfaces

Existential motifs • Alienation, obsession, paranoia, entrapment, doom • Existential belief in “benign indifference” of the

material world• “At any street corner, the absurd may strike you in

the face.” Camus• Characters experience existential despair based on

the consequences of choosing and free will • Fate becomes fatality• Awareness of their condition is truly existential • E.g. Ollie in The Killers

Genre Identity • Contempory films• Usually urban• Mostly American in setting• Consistent visual style keyed to recurring

narrative patterns & character emotions• Suggestive of alienation or obsession• A doomed protagonist, a dangerous women• Adrift in a corrupt, maze-like world• Settings that close in trapping characters &

creating sense of claustrophobia

Two key character motifs1. Alienation – isolated by choices & fate, seems

more alienated because once idealistic / romantic2. Darkness – a metaphor for the protagonists mind,

fills the mirror or the past. Events conspire to crush hopes or destroy ethical constraints

Femme Fatale• “I did it for the money and a woman. I didn’t get the

money. I didn’t get the woman.” • Freudian in its sexuality. • Symbolises sexual release & psychological reunion

with happier, less complicated times. A fantasy escape from the present and its troubles

• Tragic flaw of idealising a woman destroys man• Fatal inability to perceive dishonesty of women

undermines his ability to make rational decisions• Entrapped in spider woman’s web, leads to

existential realisations

Private Detective• Knight on a quest to unravel the mystery• A lone wolf hunting the truth in a dark and

dangerous corrupt world• Follows own code, duty to the client • Symbolically enters a claustrophobic labyrinth to

battle the Minotaur• Isolated and lonely existence, will not find

happiness as s/he would no longer be a noir anti-hero (Brendon in Brick, Veronica in Veronica Mars)

• Mirrors our own inevitable isolation, we are born alone and will die alone