"Night of the Soul: American Film Noir"
Studies in Popular Culture, V. 9, No. 1, 1986. pp. 61-83.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Rebecca House Stankowski
Technical Services Librarian
Purdue University Calumet
Every so often something happens in art, literature, and
cinema that leaves a lasting impression and influences much of
what comes after. Painting has seen impressionism and cubism;
realism and surrealism have pulled the novel in opposite
directions. And cinema has evolved through such artistic and
cultural developments as expressionism, auteurism, and film noir.
These trends always provide the basis for much discussion
and debate by those who find them troubling or titillating or
just plain dull. The American film noir movement of the 1940s
and 1950s provoked just as much analysis and discussion as any
other artistic phenomenon--perhaps more. This article not only
defines and describes that film movement; it also investigates
how people felt and what people thought about film noir as they
were living through it. By using original French film studies
(that have yet to be translated into English) and newspaper and
magazine criticism from the 1940s and 1950s, this paper explores
that attitudes about film noir that prevailed in the years
following World War II.
By the 1940s the American moviegoer could go to his
neighborhood theatres and see eight or 10 or 12 new films each
week. The usual evening's entertainment included a newsreel, a
cartoon, previews of coming attractions, and a double feature.
The films, which were produced by the mighty Hollywood studios,
varied widely in both quality and subject matter. In any given
week a musical, a western, a thriller, and a romance could (and
probably did) appear on American movie screens. Between 1940 and
1950 the American public was treated to such diverse
entertainment a Citizen Kane (1941), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942),
Going My Way (1944), Double Indemnity (1944), Miracle on 34th
Street (1947), Johnny Belinda (1948), Key Largo (1949), and
Harvey (1950). A rather eclectic group.
Along with all of this variety, however, an new trend was
developing. Throughout the 1940s and especially after World War
II, an increasing number of films appeared that were dark and
pessimistic in mood, theme, and subject. Most of these films
were about crime, often murder, and the harsh would of private
investigators, police detectives, and the criminals they seek.
These films centered on " a world of darkness and violence, with
a central figure whose motives are usually greed, lust, and
ambition, whose world is filled with fear."(1) The setting was
almost always an urban one, with rain-slicked city streets
reflecting neon signs in the night. The world presented in these
films was almost always totally corrupt and devoid of any human
sympathy. It was a world where "women with a past and men with
no future"(2) spent eternal nights in one-room walk-ups
surrounded by the sounds of shots and sirens, of screams and
sobs. These are the films that came to be know as films noirs.
The term "film noir" (black film) was derived from a series
of French translations of detective fiction in the 1930s. Marcel
Duhamel's Serie Noire included the works of Raymond Chandler and
James M. Cain as well as other "hard-boiled" authors. It was a
very popular series of books, and he term seemed appropriate for
the new hard-boiled films coming out of Hollywood. The term was
used for the first time in 1946 by Nino Frank in an article
entitle, "Un Nouveau Genre 'Policier': L'Aventure Criminelle," in
L'Ecran Francaise ("A New 'Police' Genre: The Criminal
Adventure," in The French Screen).(3) Even though the term was
coined in 1946, it was not until 1955 that a monograph was
published on the subject. This book also French; Panorama du
Film Noir Americain has yet to be translated. Nothing was
written on the subject in English until 1970. It seems rather
ironic that for many years the French were the only ones to take
an interest in this uniquely American phenomenon.
In the introduction to Panorama du Film Noir Americain the
authors explain the interest in this new trend in American films:
It was during the summer of 1946 that the
French people were first exposed to a new type of
American film. Over several weeks, from the middle
of July to the end of August, 5 films appeared on
Paris screens. They all had the same atmosphere
--unusual and cruel and tinged with a strange
eroticism--John Huston's The Maltese Falcon,
Otto Preminger's Laura, Edward Dmytryk's Farewell,
My Lovely {Murder, My Sweet in the United
States}, Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, and
Fritz Lang's Woman in the Window.
Long cut off from America, poorly informed about
Hollywood productions during the war, living with
memories of Wyler, Ford, and Capra, and ignorant of
the new Hollywood directors, the French critics
didn't appreciate the importance of these films at
first...But several months later Frank Tuttle's
This Gun For Hire, Robert Siodmak's The Killers,
Robert Montgomery's Lady in the Lake, Charles Vidor's
Gilda, and Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep forced the
idea of film noir upon the public. A new "series"
had appeared in the history of cinema.(4)
Although the individual elements that appear in film noir
are relatively easy to define, there is some disagreement as to
just which films fall into the classification of film noir and
which ones don't. In their 1955 monograph, Borde and Chaumeton
append a list of 80 films which are included in their discussion
of the subject (see Appendix I). Of those 80, only 22 are
categorized as being "true" noir, the others being in related
categories such as gangster, police procedurals, etc. Thirty
years later Stuart Kaminsky compiled a list of 121 "key" films
noirs (Appendix II).One can infer from his term "key" that there
are still other "fringe" titles. Although Kaminsky includes a
few films that were produced after the original 1955 list was
published, most of his "extra" films are from the same 1940-1955
era.
To confuse things further, some critics have added another
category---semi-noir, or film gris (gray film).(5) Films such as
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and The Postman Always Rings
Twice which involve crimes but not professional criminals have
been put into the film gris category. However, both of these
films have been included in the 1955 Borde-Chaumeton and 1985
Kaminsky lists. It is obvious that many films from this era
contain some elements of film noir, but perhaps not enough to be
classified as true films noirs. As Borde-Chaumeton noted:
It is an over-simplification to define
film noir in terms of unreality, eerieness,
eroticism, ambivalence, and violence. These
are all present in the series, but when
unreality is emphasized we have The Shanghai
Gesture; with eroticism we have Gilda...
Often the noir aspect of a film concerns only
one character, one scene, one set. The Set-Up
is a fine documentary on boxing; it becomes
film noir in the sequence where the fighter
is brutally beaten in a dead-end alley. Rope
is a psychological film in which only a
horrifying sadism links it with the noir
series. On the other hand, The Big Sleep,
This Gun For Hire, The Lady in the Lake, etc.,
appear to be typical "thrillers."(6)
Aside from the debates about the inclusion of specific films
in the noir series, there is an even greater argument about film
noir as a genre---is it or is it not? There are valid arguments
on both sides of the question. Stuart Kaminsky calls it "a genre
that really began around 1940."(7) Charles Higham says that film
noir is "a genre deeply rooted in the nineteenth century's vein
of grim romanticism....The visual mood was intensely romantic,
and its precise matching to the stories of fatal women and
desperate men gave Forties Film noir its completeness as a
genre."(8) However, there is some disagreement. Paul Schrader
is specific when he says:
Film noir is not a genre....It is not
defined, as are the western and gangster
genres, by conventions of setting and
conflict, but rather by the more subtle
qualities of tone and mood. It is a
film "noir," as opposed to the possible
variants of film gray and off white.
Film noir is also a specific period of
film history, like German Expressionism or
French New Wave.(9)
It seems reasonable to agree that American film noir is
indeed a movement rather than a genre. When taken as a whole
film noir contains none of those easily identifiable elements
that make up a genre---there is no standard group of characters,
settings, or iconography that appear in all--or even very many---
films noirs. While westerns have their Dodge City cowboys and
horror films have their subterranean monsters, film noir is
defined by the more elusive qualities of mood, style, and tone.
And it is just that elusiveness that allows each critic to form
his own personal definition of film noir and to include or
exclude various films at whim.
Since the film noir is not a genre itself, it is able to
encompass many different genres within its confines. Of course,
the detective/private investigator genre is well represented with
John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941) at the forefront. Also
included in this genre are Laura (1944), Farewell, My Lovely
(1944), The Big Sleep (1946), and Lady in the Lake (1947). The
gangster genre appears in, appropriately, The Gangster (1947),
Criss Cross (1949), and White Heat (1949). Westerns are
represented by Pursued (1947) and, at least to some critics, High
Noon (1952). Entries for the World War II/Nazi spy genre include
Ministry of Fear (1944), Cornered (1945), and Notorious (1946).
There are many gothic/suspense films noirs, including Gaslight
(1944), My Name is Julia Ross (1945), and The Spiral Staircase
(1946). And, oddly enough, many comedies of the 1940s, while not
true films noirs in and of themselves, contain some elements of
the movement. His Girl Friday (1940), Ball of Fire (1941), The
Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), and I Was a male War Bride
(1949) all have either stylistic or thematic similarities to film
noir. Then there is the William Powell-Myrna Loy Thin Man series
which stretched from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s. The series,
which is based on the hard-boiled novel by Dashiell Hammett, is
different in tone but is set in the same dark urban world of
crooks and gangsters which is often found in film noir.
If film noir can't be pigeonholed into a genre, are there
any limits that can be put on it? Obviously, the only relatively
stable criteria that can be used in a discussion of the movement
are dates. It is generally agreed that film noir began around
1940 and ended somewhere in the mid-1950s---although there is
debate surrounding this issue, also. Some critics take a narrow
view of the subject and will only include films from 1940-1949 in
their lists.(10) Others extend the period to 1958, citing Orson
Welles' Touch of Evil as the final "true" film noir made.(11)
And still other critics extend the period almost up to the
present, including such recent films as Chinatown (1974),
Farewell, My Lovely (1975), Taxi Driver (1976), and The Postman
Always Rings Twice (1981).(12) However, even this last group of
critics agree that "film noir, like shoulder pads, wedgies, and
zoot suits, was an essential part of the 1940s outlook, a
cinematic style forged in the fires of war, exile, and
disillusion, a melodramatic reflection for a world gone mad."(13)
From all that we've seen, therefore, it would seem pointless
to discuss film noir in terms of specific genres, directors,
actors, or storylines. Instead, any discussion should center on
the world and culture in which the movement appeared and thrived.
Paul Schrader accurately sums up the situation:
Film noir is an extremely unwieldy period....
A film of urban nightlife is not necessarily
a film noir, and a film noir need not necessarily
concern crime and corruption. Since film noir
is defined by tone rather than genre, it is almost
impossible to argue one critic's definition against
another's. How many noir elements does it take
to make a film noir noir?
Rather than haggle definitions, I would rather
attempt to reduce film noir to its primary colors..
those cultural and stylistic elements to which any
definition must return.(14)
Therefore, in defining film noir, one must use the time period,
and the mood, as criteria. Of course, this is easier said than
done.
Critics' definitions of the film noir movement are varied,
each having his own point of view. A simple definition state
that "film noir...is a series of crime films which appeared in
the forties and whose most representative examples are the
private eye films and their variations. To the genre of film
noir also belongs a special type of murder mystery film
represented by the films of the James Cain variety."(15) That's
very nice, but it really doesn't say very much. A more detailed
definition reads:
The tone and mood of film noir was overwhelm-
ingly black, hence its name. The main protagonist
of these films were usually people who were
suffering from an existential angst....Despair,
alienation, disillusionment, moral ambiguity,
pessimism, corruption, and psychoses carried
the day. The film noir portrayed a world
where people were not essentially good, but
deceitful and rotten. It was a world where
the opposite sex, especially women, were to
be distrusted.(16)
Speaking of women, there is also a feminist definition of film
noir:
Film noir is a male fantasy, as is most of our
art. Thus woman here as elsewhere is defined
by her sexuality; the dark lady has access to it
and the virgin does not. That men are not so
deterministically delineated in their cultural
and artistic portrayal is indicative of the
phallocentric cultural viewpoint: women
are defined in relation to men, and the
centrality of sexuality in this definition is
a key to understanding the position of
women in our culture.... Film noir...gives us
one of the few periods of film in which women
are active, not static symbols, are intelligent
and powerful, if destructively so, and derive
power, not weakness, from their sexuality.(17)
All of these definitions have some validity, It would be a
mistake, however, to focus too much attention on any one aspect
of the film noir movement. The roll of women in the movement---
femmes fatales or not---is just one aspect to be considered, as
is mood and visual style. It has been determined that many
disparate films are included in film noir and that they are
united into a cohesive body of work by a dark mood and visual
style that suggests claustrophobia, paranoia, and nihilism and by
an unremittingly pessimistic vision of despair, fear, and dread.
Robert Porfirio believes that his dark visual style and
pessimistic vision are evidence of "nothing less than an
existential attitude toward life," and that it is this attitude
which unifies the movement. Porfirio defines existentialism as
"an outlook which begins with a disoriented individual facing a
confused world that he cannot accept" and goes on to say that
existentialism's negative side "emphasizes life's meaninglessness
and man's alienation; its catch-words includes 'nothingness,'
'sickness,' 'loneliness,' and 'nausea.'"(18) While an
understanding of film noir doesn't hinge entirely upon an
existentialist definition---the technicalities of stylistics must
also be taken into consideration---it is definitely point to be
considered. It seems only fitting that some of the work of
French philosophers such as Camus and Sartre could provide a
definition for an American phenomenon which for many years was
recognized only by French critics.
This is not to suggest that the folks in Hollywood were
setting out to make "existential" films; as Porfiro points out,
"existentialism as a philosophical movement was largely unknown
in America until after World War II."(19) Hollywood was just
making (hopefully) popular movies as they had done for years, and
each new feature film was greeted by the American public and
critics as an individual entity to be judged on its own merits
(or lack thereof). The New York Times called Laura "a taut and
superior murder mystery." The Spiral Staircase was called "a
creepy melodrama," and the review went on to point out that "this
is a shocker, plain and simple, and whatever pretensions it has
to psychological drama may be considered merely as a concession
to a currently popular fancy."(20) Criss Cross was described as
"a tough, mildly exciting melodramas about gangsters and a dame
named Anna who 'gets into the blood' of a guy named Steve and
causes him no end of trouble."(21)
Even though no one knew that America was in the middle of a
film phenomenon, critics did notice the growing trend of crime
and gangster movies coming out of Hollywood. In his 1948 review
of Key Largo, Bosley Crowther commented on the large number of
recent crime pictures:
For one happy moment there last week, this
reviewer was on the verge of thinking he'd
seen the picture which must surely mark the end
of gangster films. That was the moment in Key
Largo when Humphrey Bogart fired several
screaming shots into the groveling body of
Edward G. Robinson, then turned, triumphantly,
a new man, to face the dawn.
Good enough. But it just so happens that
we saw this film in a preview a few days
before it opened...and the very next day after
that preview we saw the Roxy's The Street With
No Name. Crash went the beautiful illusion!
The mobsters were with us again!(22)
So the 1940s were faced with a new kind of Hollywood movie.
These films were not only filled with unprecedented violence and
despair, but they also looked different. Their distinct lighting
and filming techniques gave them a new visual style. Several
forces combined at this particular point in time to create a
distinct period of film history. The gangster film cycle of the
1930s, the American hard-boiled literary tradition, the German
Expressionism movement, and World War II all had a hand in
creating film noir.
The American gangster film first appeared in 1930 with
Mervyn LeRoy's Little Caesar. It was enormously popular and it
set the tone for the 1930s gangster film cycle that followed. In
1931 alone there appeared The Public Enemy, City Streets, Quick
Millions, Blonde Crazy, and Smart Money. Some critics believe
that these 1930s gangster films expressed "a world-wide mood of
hopelessness and pessimism... The rise of dictators around the
world, the economic collapse, and apprehension about the
approaching war had created a fatalistic attitude about the
prospects for the future and life in general."(23) This is
probably true. The typical film noir protagnonist certainly
dreads the future and only tries to survive the night. However,
during the Depression, movies were made to help people forget
their troubles and to keep spirits up. The early gangster films,
while showing the life of crime from the criminal's viewpoint,
were also socially conscious and the "bad guy" always got it in
the end. It was only in the later period of film noir that a
moral ambiguity and a feeling of hopelessness prevailed.
The French Serie Noire, which inspired the term "film noir,"
was comprised of he American hard-boiled mystery and detective
fiction of the 1930s. Authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond
Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, James M. Cain, Horace McCoy, John
O'Hara, and Cornell Woolrich created tough, hard-drinking,
cynical protagonists who lived out their meaningless lives in an
uncaring world. These authors, and others associated with Black
Mask, a pulp fiction magazine, took the traditional mystery and
hardened it by moving it to violent city streets peopled with
gangsters, crooked politicians, dangerous women, and murdering
thugs. As Raymond Chandler, perhaps the most hard-boiled of them
all, said:
Hammett took murder out of the Venetian vase and
dropped it into the alley... Hammett wrote at
first (and almost to the end) for people with a
sharp, aggressive attitude to life. They were
not afraid of the seamy side of things. They
lived there. Violence did not dismay them; it
was right down their street.... The realist in
murder writes of a world...where no man can walk
down a dark street in safety because law and
order are things we talk about but refrain from
practicing.(24)
When the movies of the 1940s turned dark, they turned to the
hard-boiled writers for ideas and inspiration. These writers had
already prepared the conventions of dark, wet city streets,
amoral "heroes," femmes fatales, sleazy gambling joints, two-bit
thugs, and frequent, often gratuitous, violence. Their style was
perfectly suited to film noir which depended on convention and
style for much of its impact. As Borde-Chaumeton noted in 1955:
The novel is able to go very far in gratuitous
violence and the accumulation of bodies. But
it is a freedom that is dream-like---in the
end one loses contact with reality and
everything is reduced to a simple exercise in
style. After the shock of the first works[of
Cain, Chandler, etc.] the overabundance of
death becomes a convention, neither better nor
worse than the narrations of pure deduction
which appeared before the war.(25)
A visual style that mirrors this violence is one of the
consistent threads that unites the many different films in the
noir movement. The existential themes of alienation, loneliness,
and fear are particularly well represented through the
expressionistic lighting and framing techniques that the Germans
perfected. The German Expressionists were master of chiaroscuro,
which was perfectly suited to the dark world of film noir. As in
German Expressionism, film noir favors the oblique and vertical
lines which tend to splinter the screen and cut characters off
from one another. Light enters the dark of film noir from odd
angles and in odd shapes, playing with the shadows of rainy
nights and unlit hallways. Film noir managed to meld the
mannered, controlled studio style with its own brand of realism
to form a unique visual quality. The consistent use of the deep
focus, wide-angle lenses, night-for- night photography, and low-
key lighting characterize the unique film noir visual style.
It is obvious that film noir had roots that can be traced
back to the 1920s and 1930s---to the early gangster films, the
hard-boiled school of writers, and the controlled pessimism of
German Expressionism. Near the end of the 1930s darker films,
like You Only Live Once (1937), began to appear, and most critics
agree that the first true films noirs debuted in 1940 or 1941
(Stranger on the Third Floor, The Maltese Falcon, The Shanghai
Gesture). What, then, was the effect of World War II on film
noir?
Though the war would eventually fuel the fires of film noir,
its immediate effect upon the movement was to slow it down. In
1955 Borde-Chaumeton wrote:
It is at the end of 1941 that World War II
overtook the United States, and quickly the
military effort mobilized all of the national
energies. Now, the film noir is, in large part,
antisocial. Even though a film noir has a
moral ending, its heroes remain ambivalent
toward evil. Sometimes the hero is a killer,
and the action takes place in a world that is
venal and weak. The existence of gangs, police
corruption, and the total power of money isn't
hidden. This is out of place in a world on fire,
where American soldiers represent a certain
type of order and values. There was an evident
paradox with official ideology. So, the film
noir was put in a sleep that would last five
years.(26)
That last statement isn't entirely true---while the heyday of
film noir occurred between 1947 and 1950, by 1944 noir entries
had begun to reappear. The classic Double Indemnity was released
in 1944, as were Laura and Murder, My Sweet. Cornered, Mildred
Pierce, Ministry of Fear, and Woman in the Window followed a year
later. However, it is true that in 1942 and 1943 there was
almost no activity in the noir movement, a situation that was
certainly caused by the war. There was a great surge of
patriotism during the war years and there was a natural
resistance to anything that was critical of American life.
America was indeed "on fire," rallying behind the flag and
supporting the war effort in a way that hasn't happened since.
Hollywood was sensitive to the times and produced films that
matched Americans' positive views of themselves and their
country. 1942 was the year for such films as Mrs. Miniver,
Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Pride of the Yankees, Holiday Inn, Now,
Voyager, and Woman of the Year. 1943 produced films that praised
heroism, faith, and personal strength--- Watch on the Rhine, Song
of Bernadette, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Madame Curie, This is the
Army, and Casablanca. Some critics include Casablanca on their
lists of noirs, and it does share some visual qualities (and
Humphrey Bogart) with the noir movement. However, it would seem
that its story of personal sacrifice for an important cause so
far removes it thematically from the noir series that it is
instead a positive statement about life in America--- and the
things she was fighting for.
As soon as the war was over, however, the film noir came
into full bloom. It seemed that it was all the more dark and
sardonic for having been repressed during the war years. Ever
since the Depression, disillusionment and fear had been building
in the American psyche; after the war, things didn't get much
better. Not only did many soldiers, housewives-turned-factory
workers, and small businessmen find disappointment in the
peacetime economy, but there was also the threat of the bomb and
the death of Franklin Roosevelt to worry about. It was in this
atmosphere of uncertainty, change, and vague, unnamed fear that
film noir was finally able to realize its darkest fantasies.
The films that appeared after the war gradually became more
corrupt, more claustrophobic, more hopeless. Many of these films
noirs center on the disillusionment of the returning serviceman.
Films like Cornered, Ride the Pink Horse, Dead Reckoning, and The
Blue Dahlia tell the story of a serviceman who come home to
discover that while he's been away his world has fallen apart---
his sweetheart/wife is unfaithful or dead; his business partner
has cheated him; his job has been given to someone else. The way
of life which he has been fighting to defend no longer exists.
The world he returns to is cold, violent, and uncaring. In his
review of The Blue Dahlia (1946), Bosley Crowther said:
To the present and expanding cycle of hard-
boiled and cynical films, Paramount has
contributed a honey of a rough-'em-up
romance which goes by the name of The Blue
Dahlia....Bones are being crushed with cold
abandon, teeth are being kicked in and
shocks are being blandly detonated at close
and regular intervals on the Paramount
screen....The rough stuff begins at the
start, when our hero returns from the Pacific
and finds his wife something less than
true....(27)
As the movement continued, the films noirs gradually shifted
their emphasis from private detectives and murder mysteries to
political corruption, mobsters in the streets, and police
procedurals. These films were less romantic that earlier ones
like Laura and Mildred Pierce and had a grittier, more realistic
visual style to match the less romantic themes. The city streets
became more desolate, the hotel rooms sleazier, the killers more
sadistic, the "heroes" more ambivalent. The titles of these
films reflect the darkening attitude---Force of Evil (1949), The
Dark Past (1948), Caught (1949), Cry of the City (1948), Act of
Violence (1949), They Live By Night (1949), and the wonderfully
lurid Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948). RKO's The Window
(1949) is typical of the period---a child who witnesses a murder
(a la Hitchcock's Rear Window) can't get anyone, not even the
police, to believe him. The entire film is filled with a feeling
of helplessness and fear as the child realizes that he must hide
or be killed. He is powerless to do anything to change his fate.
"Played out in dark rooms pulsating with the sound of the el,
long shadowed stairwells, alleys, and condemned buildings with
rotting timbers---The Window was a claustrophobic nightmare in
which not even the police would believe or help you."(28)
As film noir neared the end of its cycle, the films took on
a final, deeper turn toward total corruption, rampant psychoses,
overt sadism, and suicidal impulses. A total lack of human
sympathy and disregard for human life pervade these films. The
Big Heat (1953) exposes a totally corrupt police department and
includes a torture killing, a car bomb, and a disfigurement
(scalding coffee thrown in a girl's face). Detective Story
(1951) features Kirk Douglas as a police detective who takes it
upon himself to rid the world of all criminals---single-handedly.
At one point in the film he says of a prisoner, "I want to put
him in the electric chair where he belongs and pull the switch
myself." He finally commits suicide by stepping into the path of
a crazed gunman. Kirk Douglas is featured again in The Big
Carnival (1951) where almost everyone is corrupt and cynical and
there is no milk of human kindness to be found anywhere. Douglas
plays a reporter who arranges to keep a man trapped in a cave-in
for six days---just for a story. But Douglas is no worse that
the crowds of people who flock to the scene in order to get a
cheap thrill. When the trapped man dies Douglas is upset---
because his "human interest" story has been spoiled. That's the
ironic twist---there is absolutely no human interest in this
totally cynical film. This same brand of corruption and
depravity can be found in other late noir entries: Gun Crazy
(1949), Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), On Dangerous Ground
(1951), In a Lonely Place (1951), and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
(1950).
By the time these last films noirs were reaching the
theatres, however, they had begun to lose their popularity for
several reasons. In 1947 the House Committee on Un-American
Activities began its witch-hunts and the movie industry lost some
of its taste for controversial subjects and pessimistic, down-
beat themes. The hearings were also responsible for the
departure of a number of talents. But even more importantly,
television arrived. Of course, television had an impact on the
entire film industry, but film noir was especially affected. The
industry's answer to television was to create movies that were
big and colorful. In an attempt to give audiences something that
they couldn't get in their living rooms, the industry came up
with Cinemascope and Panavision and Technicolor and 3-D and
anything else they could think of. Color, of course, was the
anathema of the dark noir visual style. While a few films noirs
had been made in color (most notably Leave Her to Heaven in
1945), for the most part it is impossible to effectively show
dank, rain-washed streets and harsh, oblique shadows in glorious
Technicolor. And the idea of film noir in 3-D is mind-boggling.
But the most killing blow of all was the American people
themselves. By the mid-1950s Eisenhower was president,
prosperity had arrived, the bomb had not fallen on Cleveland (or
Tallahassee or Portland) and didn't seem likely to, and by and
large America had a pretty bourgeois view of itself. The kind of
national turmoil that gave rise to the initial films noirs
wouldn't reappear until the 1960s and the next unsettling period
in American history---Viet Nam.
Today the film noir has almost become cliché. Successive
generations of Americans have become familiar with the movement
through the late show. In one two-week period alone, Chicago
television stations broadcast Detective Story (1951), The
Desperate Hours (1955), Boomerang (1947), Key Largo (1948), The
Second Woman (1951), The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Big Sleep
(1946), This Gun for Hire (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), Loan
Shark (1952), Kiss of Death (1947), The Thief (1952), and
Crossfire (1947). And in 1981 Steve Martin and Carl Reiner
established the importance of film noir in the history of film by
producing a spoof of the movement called Dead Men Don't Wear
Plaid. This film used the gimmick of intercutting vintage 1940s
footage with new film of Martin and his co-star Rachel Ward for
comic effect. While Dead Men was a spoof of 1940s movies in
general, the noir movement was highlighted. Clips from This Gun
for Hire (Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake), White Heat (James
Cagney), Suspicion (Joan Fontaine and Cary Grant), and Johnny
Eager (Lana Turner and Robert Taylor) were included, as were all
of the hallmarks of film noir---an almost totally incomprehensive
plot, a tough, cynical hero whose motives are murky, and
dangerous femmes fatales.
Film noir is famous for its tangled plots which are told in
convoluted manners of flashbacks, narrations, and displaced time
sequences. In the New York Times review of Sorry, Wrong Number
(1948), Bosley Crowther complains that "the narrative structure
of the story and the involuted way in which it is told, with
flashbacks occurring within flashbacks and extraneities popping
here and there, cause it to be quite bewildering."(29) Manny
Farber, in his review of Murder, My Sweet (1945), said:
Murder, My Sweet . . . is by all odds
the most incomprehensible film in some
years. Some of the confusion comes from
the telling of the story in flashback,
from a police grilling of a private detec-
tive (Dick Powell), and from having a very
similar grilling involving the same people
occur within the flashback (to keep
straight on these confessions, watch for
the eye bandage the detective wears in
one of them)....But the mystery gets solved
just the same, by killing off everybody
but the detective, his sweetheart, and
the people who grill him in the first scene.
I think you could get at the underlying
thread of this film in the same way you
could in The Maltese Falcon ---by being
allowed to take the dialogue home with you
and study it at length.(30)
The plot of Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep (1946) is probably
the most confusing of all. Characters come and go without being
properly introduced and other people are continually doing things
that just don't make sense. When it premiered, Bosley Crowther
wrote:
If somebody had told us--the script writers,
preferably--just what it is that happened
in...The Big Sleep, we might be able to give
you a more explicit and favorable report on
this over-age melodrama....But it is with
only the foggiest notion of who does what
to whom---and we watched it with the closest
attention---that we must be frankly
disappointing about it.(31)
These involved and tangled plots serve several purposes in
film noir. Borde-Chaumeton felt that the confusion adds to the
feeling of anxiety in these films and contributes to the overall
atmosphere of dread and hopelessness. (32) This is true. But
this type of plot is also a convention of the movement. Film
noir doesn't set up to tell a neat story with a beginning and
then a middle and then an end. Rather, these films present a
stylized world where plot is secondary to tone and mood, where
disorientation and confusion are desired qualities.
The antihero protagonist is also a convention of film noir.
In the later, darker films he is either nearly psychotic (Kirk
Douglas in Detective Story), extremely violent (James Cagney in
White Heat), or just too much of a selfish son of a bitch to give
a damn about anybody else (Kirk Douglas again in The Big
Carnival). Humphrey Bogart, as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon,
provided the stereotype for the earlier noir private
investigators and police detectives. One is never sure just why
he does anything because he is a mass of contradictions.
All of the film noir detectives, private or otherwise, seem
to have an ambivalent attitude toward law and authority. "The
private eye moves with ease in that no-man's-land between the
world of law and crime... equally mistrusting the law, the
criminal, and his world."(33) The detective is often suspected
by the police and is also roughly treated by the underworld. One
wonders why he does what he does. As Barbara Deming said:
One can wonder at moments how many brains
this hero has, himself...If he is still
alive at the end of the film, he has
endured before the film is over many a
senseless beating...Again and again the
scene recurs in which, blackjacked, doped,
punched in the kidney, kicked in the temples,
he blacked out; and again and again he drags
himself to his feet, studies his battered
face in the mirror, and then, face set, he
returns for more.(34)
It seems as though these men are determined to tempt fate.
Why does Sam Spade insist upon provoking Wilmer (Elisha Cook,
Jr.) when he knows it will only cause him trouble? Why does he
insist upon continually taunting the police?
To a great extent, all the noir heroes are alienated men;
they seem to be strangers in an unfriendly world. This
explanation fits in nicely with an existential definition of film
noir. "The concept of alienation is crucial to most
existentialists from Kierkegaard to Sartre. For them, man stands
alone, alienated from any social or intellectual order, and is
therefore totally self-dependent."(35) It is an explanation that
reinforces the existential definition of film noir, that
attributes the same feelings of hopelessness and confusion which
pervade the movement to the movement's heroes.
However, the women in film noir aren't so lucky. No one
ever suggests that the female characters are in the throes of
existential angst or having doubts about the meaning of life and
the world. No, the women are just cold and frustrated and greedy
and ambitious and vicious and selfish and cruel and mean and
nasty. "In the dark melodramas of the Forties, woman came down
from her pedestal and she didn't stop when she reached ground.
She kept going---down, down, like Eurydice, to the depths of the
criminal world, the enfer of film noir---and then compelled her
lover to glance back and betray himself."(36) Who could be more
mean and nasty that Barbara Stanwyck in The Strange Love of
Martha Ivers when she breathlessly urges her old boyfriend (Van
Heflin) to murder her unconscious husband (Kirk Douglas): "Do it
now, Sam. He fell down the stairs and fractured his skull.
Everyone knows what a heavy drinker he was. It would be so
easy." Unless it's Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, double-
crossing the man (Fred MacMurray) who helped her kill her
husband. Or maybe Mary Astor, murdering and lying her way
through The Maltese Falcon. And then there's Joan Bennett, who
laughs in the face of her down-and-out former lover (Edward G.
Robinson) in Scarlet Street. These femmes fatales are usually
blamed for any trouble the hero gets into. Nobody's fools, these
spider women are out to get what they can out of life---usually
money and/or men with money. They use their sexuality to lure
the hero into desperate actions, actions that he isn't able to
control. As Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) says of Phyllis
Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) in Double Indemnity: "I knew I
had ahold of a red-hot poker, and now was the time to drop it
before it burned my hands off...But I knew that I couldn't walk
away from anything; the hook was too strong." After the hero has
served his purpose, the evil woman casually casts him aside,
sometimes shooting him for good measure. After he realizes that
he has been used, the noir male usually retaliates in some way---
by shooting her back (Double Indemnity), by sending her up the
river (The Maltese Falcon), or, oddly enough, by committing
suicide (Detective Story).
The American film noir movement lasted about fifteen years.
It occurred during a very prolific and creative period in
Hollywood history. Although many of the films noirs were low-
budget "B" pictures, when taken as a whole, the level of artistry
demonstrated in these films is relatively high. The movement
achieved respectability in 1945 when Billy Wilder's The Lost
Weekend won Academy Awards for best picture, best script, best
director, and best actor (Ray Milland). Some of the best films
noirs have been considered worthy enough to remake---Lawrence
Kasdan's Body Heat (1981) is no more than an update Double
Indemnity. And, as previously mentioned, the movement was
satirized in Dead Men Don't Were Plaid---a sure sign that film
noir has achieved a place in film history.
So, in the final analysis, what has film noir left us with?
It is certainly a collection of films that are still enjoyed
today. But these movies give us more than just simple
entertainment. The film noir movement produced a unique body of
work which provides not only cultural insights into a period of
American history but also stylistic and thematic inspiration for
modern film-makers. After 40 years, film noir is still very much
alive and well.
NOTES
(1)Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg, Hollywood in the
Forties (London: Zemmer, 1968), p. 19.
(2)Bernard F. Dick, Billy Wilder (Boston: Twayne, 1980), p.
43.
(3)Robert Ottoson, A Reference Guide to the American Film
Noir (1940-1958) (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1981), p. 217.
This reference can be found in many different sources.
(4)Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton, Panorama du Film
Noir Americain (1941-1953) (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1955),
pp.1-2. The original French reads:
C'est au course de l'ete 1946 que le public
francais eut la revelation d'un nouveau type de
film americain. En quelques semaines, de la
mi-juillet a la fin du mois d'aout, cinq films se
succederent sur les ecrans parisiens, qui avaient
en commun une atomosphere insolite et cruelle,
teintee d'un erotisme assez particulier: Le faucon
maltais de John Huston, Laura de de Billy Wilder
et La femme au portrait de Fritz Lang.
Longtemps coupee de l'Amerique, mal informee
de la production d'Hollywood pendant la guerre,
vivant dans le souvenir de Wyler, de Ford et de
Capra, ignorant jusqu'au nom des nouvelles
etoiles de la mise en scene, la critique francaise
ne vit pas toute l'ampleur de cette revelation....
Mais quelques mois plus tard, Le tueur a gages
de Frank Tuttle, Les Tueurs de Robert Siodmak,
La dame du lac de Robert Montgomery, Gilda de Charles
Vidor et Le grand sommeil de Howard Hawks imposaient
au public la notion de film noir. Une nouvelle
"serie" apparaissait dans l'histoire du cinema.
(5)Amir Assoud Karimi, Toward a Definition of the American
Film Noir (1941-1949), (New York: Arno, 1976), pp. 149, 156.
Although not commercially published until 1976, this was
originally a doctoral thesis (University of California at
Berkeley) in 1970, making it one of the first studies done of the
subject in English.
(6)Borde-Chaumeton, p. 3. The original French reads:
On simpliferait le probleme a l'exces, en
qualifiant le film noir d'onerique, d'insolite,
d'erotique, d'ambivalent et de cruel....Il y
a de tout cela dans le serie, mais c'est tantot
l'onerisme qui domine---et nous avons Shanghai;
tantotl'erotisme--et mous avons Gilda....Souvent
le cote noir d'un film ne tient qu'a un
personage, une secene, un decor. Nous avons gagne
ce soir est un bon documentaire sur la boxe; il
devient film noir dans la sequence du reglement de
compte, cet atroce passage a tabac au fond
d'une impasse. La corde est un film psychologique
que, seul, un sadisme assez envoutant rattache a
la serie noire, Par contre, La grande sommeil,
La tueur a gages, La dame du lac...paraissent
etre des "thrillers" typiques.
(7)Stuart M. Kaminsky, American film Genres, (Chicago:
Nelson Hall, 1985), p. 84.
(8)Higham, pp. 19, 21.
(9)Paul Schrader, "Notes on film noir," Film comment
(Spring, 1972), p. 8. This may be the clearest and most concise
article ever written on the subject.
(10)Karimi---as is evident from the title of his book.
(11)Ottoson, p. 1 and Schrader, p. 9.
(12)Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, Film Noir, (Woodstock,
N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1979). This encyclopedic work contains
synopses of the later titles.
(13)Tom Flinn, "Three Faces of Film Noir," in Kings of the
B's: Working within the Hollywood System, edited by Todd McCarthy
and Charles Flynn (New York: Dutton, 1975), p. 155.
(14)Schrader, pp. 8-9.
(15)Karimi, p. 155.
(16)Ottoson, p. 1.
(17)Janey Place, "Women in Film Noir," in Women in Film
Noir, edited by Ann Kaplan (London: British Film Institute,
1978), pp. 37-38. This work contains articles which give a
feminist view of film noir.
(18)Robert G. Porfirio, "No Way Out: Existential Motifs in
the Film noir." Sight and Sound (45:4, Autumn 1976), p. 213.
(19)Ibid, p. 213.
(20)At the Palace: "The Spiral Staircase," New York Times
(February 6, 1946), p. 29. A contemporary review of the film.
(21)"Burt Lancaster Same Old Tough Guy: Criss Cross," New
York Times, (March 9, 1946), p. 27. A contemporary review of the
film.
(22)Bosley Crowther, "Men Come and go, But Gangster---," New
York Times (July 18, 1948), Section II, p. 1.
(23)Karimi, p. 63.
(24)Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder, (New York:
Norton, 1968), pp. 530, 532. Chandler's short essay about his
craft was included at the end of a collection of his short
stories.
(25)Borde-Chaumeton, p. 20. The original French reads:
Le roman peut aller beaucoup plus loin dans
la gratuite de la violence et l'accumulation des
cadavres. Mais c'est une liberte qui a son
revers: on finit par perdre contact avec le
reel, et tout se reduit a un simple exercise de
style. Apres le choc des premieres oeuvres,
la surenchere de muertre est devenue une
convention, ni meilleure ni pire que celle de
recits de deduction pure, parus avant la guerre.
(26)Borde-Chaumeton, pp. 35-36. The original French reads:
C'est a la fin de 1941 qu'elle atteint les
Etats-Unis; et rapidement l'effort militaire mobilise
l'ensemble des energies nationales. Or le film nor
est, dans une large mesure, "anti-social." Meme s'il
comporte une fin morale, son heros reste ambivalent
devant le Mal; c'est parfois un tueur simplement;
l'action se confine dans un milieu venal et relate;
on ne cache ni l'existence des gangs, ni la
corruption de la police, ni la toute puissance
de l'argent. C'etait deplace dans un monde en
feu, ou les soldats americains defendaient un certain
type d'ordre et de valeurs. Il y avait antinomie
evidente avec l'ideoloie officielle. D'ou, cette
mise en sommeil qui dura cinq ans.
(27)Bosley Crowther, "The Blue Dahlia at Paramount," New
York Times (March 9, 1946), p. 27. A contemporary review of the
film.
(28)Andrew Dowdy, Films of the Fifties, (New York: Morrow,
1975), pp. 62-63.
(29)Bosley Crowther, "Double Indemnity," New York Times
(September 7, 1944), p. 21. A contemporary review of the film.
(30)Manny Farber, "Through Thick and Thin," The New Republic
(March 26, 1945), p. 422. A contemporary review of the film.
(31)Bosley, Crowther, "The Big Sleep," New York Times
(August 24, 1946), p. 6.
(32)Borde-Chaumeton, pp. 12-15.
(33)Karimi, p. 37.
(34)Barbara Deming, Running Away From Myself: A Dream
Portrait of American Drawn From the Films of the Forties (New
York: Grossman, 1969, p. 142.
(35)Porfirio, p. 215.
(36)Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of
Women in the Movies (New York: Holt, 1974), p. 189. "Enfer"
translates to "hell."
APPENDIX I
The original Borde-Chaumeton listing of films noirs in 1955:
CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX OF MAJOR SERIES
(Principal titles since 1940)
Films Noirs
1941 The Maltese Falcon
1942 This Gun For Hire
1943 Journey Into Fear
1944 Murder, My Sweet
1944 Ministry of Fear
1944 Phantom Lady
1944 The Mask of Dimitrios
1946 Lady in the Lake
1946 Notorious
1946 Gilda
1946 The Big Sleep
1946 Somewhere in the Night
1947 Lady From Shanghai
1947 Dead Reckoning
1947 Ride the Pink Horse
1947 Out of the Past
1947 Dark Passage
1948 Sorry, Wrong Number
1948 Chicago Deadline
1949 The Window
1951 Macao
CRIMINAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMAS
1940 Rebecca
1941 Suspicion
1942 Shadow of a Doubt
1942 King's Row
1944 Double Indemnity
1944 Woman in the Window
1944 Laura
1945 Hangover Square
1945 Spiral Staircase
1945 Conflict
1945 Leave Her to Heaven
1945 Love Letters
1946 The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
1946 The Postman Always Rings Twice
1946 The Locket
1947 The Paradine Case
1947 Born to Kill
1947 The Two Mrs. Carrolls
1948 Sleep, My Love
1948 Rope
1949 Under Capricorn
1949 Whirlpool
1949 House of Strangers
1950 Night and the City
1950 Gun Crazy (Deadly is the Female)
1951 Strangers on a Train
1952 The Sniper
1952 Angel Face
CRIMINAL COSTUME DRAMAS
1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
1944 Experiment Perilous
1944 Gaslight
1944 The Suspect
1945 Dragonwyck
1947 Ivy
1948 So Evil My Love
GANGSTER FILMS
1946 The Killers
1949 White Heat
1949 Criss Cross
1950 The Enforcer
1950 The Asphalt Jungle
1952 The Big Heat
POLICE PROCEDURALS
1947 Kiss of Death
1947 Crossfire
1948 He Walked By Night
1948 Street With No Name
1948 The Naked City
1949 Port of New York
1950 Where the Sidewalk Ends
1950 Panic in the Streets
1950 The Enforcer (see also Gangster films, above)
1952 The Big Heat (see also Gangster films, above)
SOCIAL ISSUES
1945 The Lost Weekend
1947 Nightmare Alley
1947 Crossfire (see also Police procedurals, above)
1949 Border Incident
1949 Thieves' Highway
1949 The Set-Up
1950 The Breaking Point
1950 The Lawless
1951 The Big Carnival (Ace in the Hole)
1953 The Wild One
APPENDIX II
A 1985 listing of films noirs compiled by Stuart Kaminsky
KEY FILMS NOIRS
1952 Affair in Trinidad
1948 All My Sons
1953 Angel Face
1957 Attack
1951 The Big Carnival (Ace in the Hole)
1947 The Big Clock
1953 The Big Heat
1946 The Big Sleep
1947 Body and Soul
1947 Boomerang
1949 Border Incident
1951 The Breaking Point
1947 Brute Force
1948 Call Northside 777
1949 Champion
1952 Clash by Night
1945 Confidential Agent
1945 Conflict
1948 Criss Cross
1946 The Dark Corner
1946 The Dark Mirror
1947 Dark Passage
1947 Dead Reckoning
1946 Detour
1950 D.O.A.
1952 Don't Bother to Knock
1944 Double Indemnity
1951 The Enforcer
1946 Fallen Angel
1949 The File on Thelma Jordan
1948 Force of Evil
1951 Fourteen Hours
1946 Gilda
1950 Gun Crazy
1944 Hangover Square
1948 He Walked By Night
1952 High Noon
1950 House of Strangers
1954 Human Desire
1947 I Walk Alone
1950 In a Lonely Place
1947 Ivy
1947 Johnny O'Clock
1948 Key Largo
1947 Kiss of Death
1947 Kiss the Blood Off My Hands
1947 The Lady From Shanghai
1946 Lady in the Lake
1944 Laura
1950 The Lawless
1946 The Locket
1944 The Lodger
1947 The Long Night
1945 Lost Weekend
1945 Love Letters
1956 The Man With the Golden Arm
1944 The Mask of Dimitrios
1944 Ministry of Fear
1944 Murder, My Sweet
1948 Naked City
1951 The Narrow Margin
1952 Niagara
1950 Night in the City
1947 Nightmare Alley
1953 99 River Street
1950 No Way Out
1946 Nocturne
1946 Notorious
1952 On Dangerous Ground
1954 On the Waterfront
1947 The Paradine Case
1944 Phantom Lady
1955 The Phoenix City Story
1953 Pickup on South Street
1948 Pitfall
1949 Port of New York
1946 The Postman Always Rings Twice
1950 Prowler
1947 Pursued
1954 The Pushover
1947 The Red House
1947 Ride the Pink Horse
1948 Roadhouse
1948 Rope
1942 Saboteur
1945 Scarlet Street
1948 The Secret Beyond the Door
1949 The Set-Up
1958 Side Street
1948 Sleep, My Love
1952 The Sniper
1946 So Dark the Night
1948 So Evil My Love
1946 Somewhere in the Night
1948 Sorry, Wrong Number
1945 The Spiral Staircase
1951 The Steel Helmet
1946 The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
1946 The Stranger
1951 Strangers On a Train
1953 Sudden Fear
1954 Suddenly
1959 Sunset Boulevard
1944 The Suspect
1947 They Live By Night
1949 Thieves' Highway
1947 T-Men
1949 Too Late For Tears
1958 Touch of Evil
1950 Union Station
1950 Where the Sidewalk Ends
1950 Whirlpool
1949 White Heat
1948 The Window
1944 Woman in the Window
1947 The Woman on the Beach