"Film Noir" - What Is It?

In 1946, as France slowly returned to normal after WWII, five American films that shared a dark, hard-edged look, and a strong feeling of alienation, were shown for the first time in Parisian theaters. Although each film ("The Maltese Falcon", "Laura", "Murder, My Sweet", "Double Indemnity", and "The Woman in the Window") had a number of traits in common (style, atmosphere, and general subject matter), they didn't seem to fit into any specific film genre. Along with other American films that quickly followed, they seemed to be part of a unique new series marked by cynicism, violence, crime and/or death, unclear motives, and morally ambivalent characters. The French critics began categorizing these haunting new American films as Film Noir (literally, "Black Film" or "Dark Film").

While it is generally agreed that the "classic period" of Film Noir began with "The Maltese Falcon" in 1941, and ended with Orson Welles' film "Touch of Evil" in 1958, there is little agreement on anything else to do with this series-movement-genre.

Most films classified as Film Noir share a visual motif that uses strong directional lighting and deep shadows (derived from the German expressionist films, although "Citizen Kane" is often cited as the prototype), but there are notable exceptions such as Billy Wilder's "Ace in the Hole" (1951). While black and white film, contemporary urban settings, night scenes, water (rain and/or wet streets), romantic narration, and stories developed in a complex chronological order are commonly used in Films Noir, once again there are notable exceptions. For instance, although the science fiction movie "Blade Runner" (1982) was set in the future and filmed in color, it encompassed all of the classic elements of Film Noir in both plot and visual style. (The director, Ridley Scott, felt that the style of "Citizen Kane" most closely approached the look he wanted.) Nevertheless, the key elements that link all Films Noir together seem to be the moral ambiguity of the plot and the characters, and an underlying sense of pessimism, fatality and alienation.

One of the best descriptions of a generic Film Noir scene was given by Joel Greenberg and Charles Higham in their book Hollywood in the Forties:

A dark street in the early morning hours, splashed with a sudden downpour. Lamps form haloes in the murk. In a walk-up room, filled with the intermittent flashing of a neon sign from across the street, a man is waiting to murder or be murdered . . . shadow upon shadow upon shadow . . . every shot in glistening low-key, so that rain always glittered across windows or windscreens like quicksilver, furs shone with a faint halo, faces were barred deeply with those shadows that usually symbolized some imprisonment of body or soul.

A number of excellent neo- Films Noir have been made since the "classic period", and in 2001 the Coen Brothers introduced a fine example entitled "The Man Who Wasn't There" This black and white film, set in 1949, uses modern techniques to recreate the style and tone of the traditional Film Noir. Roger Deakins, the Director of Photography for that movie, admits that, "In everything you do, you're influenced by the past."

The "classic period" of Film Noir was an extremely important one in American film history, and these popular films continue to be shown regularly.

"What's past is prologue." Shakespeare's "The Tempest", II, i, 261

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