Film noir

Listen to this article
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Film noirs
)
"Film Noir" redirects here. For the album, see Film Noir (album).
Film noir
Two silhouetted figures in The Big Combo (1955). The film's cinematographer, John Alton, is sometimes credited as the creator of many of film noir's stylized images.
Years activeearly 1920s – late 1950s
LocationUnited States
Influences
Influenced

Film noir (

German Expressionist cinematography. Many of the prototypical stories and attitudes expressed in classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Great Depression.[1]

The term film noir, French for 'black film' (literal) or 'dark film' (closer meaning),[2] was first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, but was unrecognized by most American film industry professionals of that era.[3] Frank is believed to have been inspired by the French literary publishing imprint Série noire, founded in 1945.

Cinema historians and critics defined the category retrospectively. Before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic films noir[a] were referred to as "melodramas". Whether film noir qualifies as a distinct genre or whether it should be considered a filmmaking style is a matter of ongoing and heavy debate among film scholars.

Film noir encompasses a range of plots; common archetypical protagonists include a private investigator (

grifter (Night and the City), a law-abiding citizen lured into a life of crime (Gun Crazy), a femme fatale (Gilda) or simply a victim of circumstance (D.O.A.). Although film noir was originally associated with American productions, the term has been used to describe films from around the world. Many films released from the 1960s onward share attributes with films noir of the classical period, and often treat its conventions self-referentially. Latter-day works are typically referred to as neo-noir. The clichés of film noir have inspired parody since the mid-1940s.[4]

Definition

The Stranger, full film

The question of what defines film noir, and what sort of category it is, provoke continuing debate.[5] "We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel ..."—this set of attributes constitutes the first of many attempts to define film noir made by French critics Raymond Borde [fr] and Étienne Chaumeton in their 1955 book Panorama du film noir américain 1941–1953 (A Panorama of American Film Noir), the original and seminal extended treatment of the subject.[6] They emphasize that not every noir film embodies all five attributes in equal measure—one might be more dreamlike; another, particularly brutal.[7] The authors' caveats and repeated efforts at alternative definition have been echoed in subsequent scholarship, but in the words of cinema historian Mark Bould, film noir remains an "elusive phenomenon."[8]

Though film noir is often identified with a visual style that emphasizes

gangster film to the police procedural to the gothic romance to the social problem picture—any example of which from the 1940s and 1950s, now seen as noir's classical era, was likely to be described as a melodrama at the time.[11]

It is night, always. The hero enters a labyrinth on a quest. He is alone and off balance. He may be desperate, in flight, or coldly calculating, imagining he is the pursuer rather than the pursued.

A woman invariably joins him at a critical juncture, when he is most vulnerable. [Her] eventual betrayal of him (or herself) is as ambiguous as her feelings about him.

Nicholas Christopher, Somewhere in the Night (1997)[12]

While many critics refer to film noir as a genre itself, others argue that it can be no such thing.[13] Foster Hirsch defines a genre as determined by "conventions of narrative structure, characterization, theme, and visual design." Hirsch, as one who has taken the position that film noir is a genre, argues that these elements are present "in abundance." Hirsch notes that there are unifying features of tone, visual style and narrative sufficient to classify noir as a distinct genre.[14]

Others argue that film noir is not a genre. It is often associated with an urban setting, but many classic noirs take place in small towns, suburbia, rural areas, or on the open road; setting is not a determinant, as with the Western. Similarly, while the private eye and the femme fatale are stock character types conventionally identified with noir, the majority of films in the genre feature neither. Nor does film noir rely on anything as evident as the monstrous or supernatural elements of the horror film, the speculative leaps of the science fiction film, or the song-and-dance routines of the musical.[15]

An analogous case is that of the

screwball comedy, widely accepted by film historians as constituting a "genre": screwball is defined not by a fundamental attribute, but by a general disposition and a group of elements, some—but rarely and perhaps never all—of which are found in each of the genre's films.[16] Because of the diversity of noir (much greater than that of the screwball comedy), certain scholars in the field, such as film historian Thomas Schatz, treat it as not a genre but a "style".[17] Alain Silver, the most widely published American critic specializing in film noir studies, refers to film noir as a "cycle"[18] and a "phenomenon",[19] even as he argues that it has—like certain genres—a consistent set of visual and thematic codes.[20] Screenwriter Eric R. Williams labels both film noir and screwball comedy a "pathway" in his screenwriters taxonomy; explaining that a pathway has two parts: 1) the way the audience connects with the protagonist and 2) the trajectory the audience expects the story to follow.[21] Other critics treat film noir as a "mood,"[22] a "series",[23] or simply a chosen set of films they regard as belonging to the noir "canon."[24] There is no consensus on the matter.[25]

Background

Cinematic sources

Marlene Dietrich, an actress frequently called upon to play a femme fatale.

The aesthetics of film noir were influenced by

mise-en-scène) with them to Hollywood, where they made some of the most famous classic noirs.[27]

By 1931, Curtiz had already been in Hollywood for half a decade, making as many as six films a year. Movies of his such as

Universal horror pictures such as Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1932)—the former photographed and the latter directed by the Berlin-trained Karl Freund—and The Black Cat (1934), directed by Austrian émigré Edgar G. Ulmer.[29] The Universal horror film that comes closest to noir, in story and sensibility, is The Invisible Man (1933), directed by Englishman James Whale and photographed by American Arthur Edeson. Edeson later photographed The Maltese Falcon (1941), widely regarded as the first major film noir of the classic era.[30]

voiceover narrative structure are echoed in dozens of classic films noir.[35]

The Lost Weekend (1945), directed by Billy Wilder, another Vienna-born, Berlin-trained American auteur, tells the story of an alcoholic in a manner evocative of neorealism.[36] It also exemplifies the problem of classification: one of the first American films to be described as a film noir, it has largely disappeared from considerations of the field.[37] Director Jules Dassin of The Naked City (1948) pointed to the neorealists as inspiring his use of location photography with non-professional extras. This semidocumentary approach characterized a substantial number of noirs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Along with neorealism, the style had an American precedent cited by Dassin, in director Henry Hathaway's The House on 92nd Street (1945), which demonstrated the parallel influence of the cinematic newsreel.[38]

Literary sources

Magazine cover with illustration of a terrified-looking, red-haired young woman gagged and bound to a post. She is wearing a low-cut, arm-bearing yellow top and a red skirt. In front of her, a man with a large scar on his cheek and a furious expression heats a branding iron over a gas stove. In the background, a man wearing a trenchcoat and fedora and holding a revolver enters through a doorway. The text includes the tagline "Smashing Detective Stories" and the cover story's title, "Finger Man".
The October 1934 issue of Black Mask featured the first appearance of the detective character whom Raymond Chandler developed into the famous Philip Marlowe.[39]

The primary literary influence on film noir was the hardboiled school of American detective and crime fiction, led in its early years by such writers as Dashiell Hammett (whose first novel, Red Harvest, was published in 1929) and James M. Cain (whose The Postman Always Rings Twice appeared five years later), and popularized in pulp magazines such as Black Mask. The classic film noirs The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Glass Key (1942) were based on novels by Hammett; Cain's novels provided the basis for Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), and Slightly Scarlet (1956; adapted from Love's Lovely Counterfeit). A decade before the classic era, a story by Hammett was the source for the gangster melodrama City Streets (1931), directed by Rouben Mamoulian and photographed by Lee Garmes, who worked regularly with Sternberg. Released the month before Lang's M, City Streets has a claim to being the first major film noir; both its style and story had many noir characteristics.[40]

Raymond Chandler, who debuted as a novelist with The Big Sleep in 1939, soon became the most famous author of the hardboiled school. Not only were Chandler's novels turned into major noirs—Murder, My Sweet (1944; adapted from Farewell, My Lovely), The Big Sleep (1946), and Lady in the Lake (1947)—he was an important screenwriter in the genre as well, producing the scripts for Double Indemnity, The Blue Dahlia (1946), and Strangers on a Train (1951). Where Chandler, like Hammett, centered most of his novels and stories on the character of the private eye, Cain featured less heroic protagonists and focused more on psychological exposition than on crime solving;[41] the Cain approach has come to be identified with a subset of the hardboiled genre dubbed "noir fiction". For much of the 1940s, one of the most prolific and successful authors of this often downbeat brand of suspense tale was Cornell Woolrich (sometimes under the pseudonym George Hopley or William Irish). No writer's published work provided the basis for more noir films of the classic period than Woolrich's: thirteen in all, including Black Angel (1946), Deadline at Dawn (1946), and Fear in the Night (1947).[42]

Another crucial literary source for film noir was

W. R. Burnett, whose first novel to be published was Little Caesar, in 1929. It was turned into a hit for Warner Bros. in 1931; the following year, Burnett was hired to write dialogue for Scarface, while The Beast of the City (1932) was adapted from one of his stories. At least one important reference work identifies the latter as a film noir despite its early date.[43] Burnett's characteristic narrative approach fell somewhere between that of the quintessential hardboiled writers and their noir fiction compatriots—his protagonists were often heroic in their own way, which happened to be that of the gangster. During the classic era, his work, either as author or screenwriter, was the basis for seven films now widely regarded as noir, including three of the most famous: High Sierra (1941), This Gun for Hire (1942), and The Asphalt Jungle (1950).[44]

Classic period

Overview

The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the classic period of American film noir. While City Streets and other pre-WWII crime melodramas such as Fury (1936) and You Only Live Once (1937), both directed by Fritz Lang, are categorized as full-fledged noir in Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's film noir encyclopedia, other critics tend to describe them as "proto-noir" or in similar terms.[45]

The film now most commonly cited as the first "true" film noir is

RKO, US$56,000 (equivalent to $1,217,900 in 2023), almost a third of its total cost.[47] Variety magazine found Ingster's work: "...too studied and when original, lacks the flare [sic] to hold attention. It's a film too arty for average audiences, and too humdrum for others."[48] Stranger on the Third Floor was not recognized as the beginning of a trend, let alone a new genre, for many decades.[46]

Whoever went to the movies with any regularity during 1946 was caught in the midst of Hollywood's profound postwar affection for morbid drama. From January through December deep shadows, clutching hands, exploding revolvers, sadistic villains and heroines tormented with deeply rooted diseases of the mind flashed across the screen in a panting display of psychoneurosis, unsublimated sex and murder most foul.

Donald Marshman, Life (August 25, 1947)[49]

Most film noirs of the classic period were similarly low- and modestly-budgeted features without major stars—

Production Code ensured that no film character could literally get away with murder or be seen sharing a bed with anyone but a spouse; within those bounds, however, many films now identified as noir feature plot elements and dialogue that were very risqué for the time.[50]

voiceover narration, dramatically shadowed photography, and a fatalistic mood leavened with provocative banter. Pictured are noir icons Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer
.

Thematically, films noir were most exceptional for the relative frequency with which they centered on portrayals of women of questionable virtue—a focus that had become rare in Hollywood films after the mid-1930s and the end of the pre-Code era. The signal film in this vein was Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder; setting the mold was Barbara Stanwyck's femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson—an apparent nod to Marlene Dietrich, who had built her extraordinary career playing such characters for Sternberg. An A-level feature, the film's commercial success and seven Oscar nominations made it probably the most influential of the early noirs.[51] A slew of now-renowned noir "bad girls" followed, such as those played by Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946), Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Ava Gardner in The Killers (1946), and Jane Greer in Out of the Past (1947). The iconic noir counterpart to the femme fatale, the private eye, came to the fore in films such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), with Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, and Murder, My Sweet (1944), with Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe.

The prevalence of the private eye as a lead character declined in film noir of the 1950s, a period during which several critics describe the form as becoming more focused on extreme psychologies and more exaggerated in general.[52] A prime example is Kiss Me Deadly (1955); based on a novel by Mickey Spillane, the best-selling of all the hardboiled authors, here the protagonist is a private eye, Mike Hammer. As described by Paul Schrader, "Robert Aldrich's teasing direction carries noir to its sleaziest and most perversely erotic. Hammer overturns the underworld in search of the 'great whatsit' [which] turns out to be—joke of jokes—an exploding atomic bomb."[53] Orson Welles's baroquely styled Touch of Evil (1958) is frequently cited as the last noir of the classic period.[54] Some scholars believe film noir never really ended, but continued to transform even as the characteristic noir visual style began to seem dated and changing production conditions led Hollywood in different directions—in this view, post-1950s films in the noir tradition are seen as part of a continuity with classic noir.[55] A majority of critics, however, regard comparable films made outside the classic era to be something other than genuine film noir. They regard true film noir as belonging to a temporally and geographically limited cycle or period, treating subsequent films that evoke the classics as fundamentally different due to general shifts in filmmaking style and latter-day awareness of noir as a historical source for allusion.[56] These later films are often called neo-noir.

Directors and the business of noir

Black-and-white image of a man and woman, both with downcast expressions, sitting side by side in the front seat of a convertible. The man, on the right, grips the steering wheel. He wears a jacket and a pullover shirt. The woman wears a checkered outfit. Behind them, in the night, the road is empty, with a two widely separated lights way off in the distance.
A scene from In a Lonely Place (1950), directed by Nicholas Ray and based on a novel by noir fiction writer Dorothy B. Hughes. Two of noir's defining actors, Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart, portray star-crossed lovers in the film.

While the inceptive noir, Stranger on the Third Floor, was a B picture directed by a virtual unknown, many of the films noir still remembered were A-list productions by well-known film makers. Debuting as a director with

Angel Face (1952). A half-decade after Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend, Billy Wilder made Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Ace in the Hole (1951), noirs that were not so much crime dramas as satires on Hollywood and the news media respectively. In a Lonely Place (1950) was Nicholas Ray's breakthrough; his other noirs include his debut, They Live by Night (1948) and On Dangerous Ground (1952), noted for their unusually sympathetic treatment of characters alienated from the social mainstream.[59]

Rita Hayworth in the trailer for The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Orson Welles had notorious problems with financing but his three film noirs were well-budgeted:

Universal and Lang's Diana Productions, of which the film's co-star, Joan Bennett, was the second biggest shareholder. Lang, Bennett and her husband, the Universal veteran and Diana production head Walter Wanger, made Secret Beyond the Door (1948) in similar fashion.[62]

Before leaving the United States while subject to the

The Big Clock (1948), Night Has a Thousand Eyes
(1948)).

Most of the Hollywood films considered to be classic noirs fall into the category of the B movie.

Dragnet series, which debuted on radio in 1949 and television in 1951.[69]

Movie poster with a border of diagonal black and white bands. On the upper right is a tagline: "He went searching for love ... but fate forced a DETOUR to Revelry ... Violence ... Mystery!" The image is a collage of stills: a man playing the clarinet; a smiling man and woman in evening dress; the same man, with a horrified expression, holding the body of another man with a bloody head injury; the body of a woman, asleep or dead, splayed out over the end of a bed, a telephone beside her; leaning against either side of a lamppost, the same man a third time, wearing a green suit and tie and holding a cigarette, and a woman wearing a knee-length red dress and black pumps, smoking. Credits at the bottom feature the names of three actors: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, and Claudia Drake.
Detour (1945) cost $117,000 to make when the biggest Hollywood studios spent around $600,000 on the average feature. Produced at small PRC, however, the film was 30 percent over budget.[70]

Several directors associated with noir built well-respected oeuvres largely at the B-movie/intermediate level.

Joseph H. Lewis directed noirs as diverse as Gun Crazy (1950) and The Big Combo (1955). The former—whose screenplay was written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, disguised by a front—features a bank hold-up sequence shown in an unbroken take of over three minutes that was influential.[73] The Big Combo was shot by John Alton and took the shadowy noir style to its outer limits.[74] The most distinctive films of Phil Karlson (The Phenix City Story [1955] and The Brothers Rico [1957]) tell stories of vice organized on a monstrous scale.[75] The work of other directors in this tier of the industry, such as Felix E. Feist (The Devil Thumbs a Ride [1947], Tomorrow Is Another Day [1951]), has become obscure. Edgar G. Ulmer spent most of his Hollywood career working at B studios and once in a while on projects that achieved intermediate status; for the most part, on unmistakable Bs. In 1945, while at PRC, he directed a noir cult classic, Detour.[76] Ulmer's other noirs include Strange Illusion (1945), also for PRC; Ruthless (1948), for Eagle-Lion, which had acquired PRC the previous year and Murder Is My Beat
(1955), for Allied Artists.

A number of low- and modestly-budgeted noirs were made by independent, often actor-owned, companies contracting with larger studios for distribution. Serving as producer, writer, director and top-billed performer,

D.O.A. (1950), directed by Rudolph Maté and Sweet Smell of Success (1957), directed by Alexander Mackendrick. One was an independent distributed by MGM, the industry leader: Force of Evil (1948), directed by Abraham Polonsky and starring John Garfield, both of whom were blacklisted in the 1950s.[78] Independent production usually meant restricted circumstances but Sweet Smell of Success, despite the plans of the production team, was clearly not made on the cheap, though like many other cherished A-budget noirs, it might be said to have a B-movie soul.[79]

Perhaps no director better displayed that spirit than the German-born

Criss Cross (1949), with Lancaster again the lead, exemplifies how Siodmak brought the virtues of the B-movie to the A noir. In addition to the relatively looser constraints on character and message at lower budgets, the nature of B production lent itself to the noir style for economic reasons: dim lighting saved on electricity and helped cloak cheap sets (mist and smoke also served the cause). Night shooting was often compelled by hurried production schedules. Plots with obscure motivations and intriguingly elliptical transitions were sometimes the consequence of hastily written scripts. There was not always enough time or money to shoot every scene. In Criss Cross, Siodmak achieved these effects, wrapping them around Yvonne De Carlo, who played the most understandable of femme fatales; Dan Duryea, in one of his many charismatic villain roles; and Lancaster as an ordinary laborer turned armed robber, doomed by a romantic obsession.[81]

Classic-era film noirs in the National Film Registry
1940–49
1950–58

Outside the United States

"Générique" ("Nuit sur les Champs-Élysées")
The moody, evocative music improvised by jazz trumpeter
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958) is regarded as one of the definitive noir scores.[82]
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Some critics regard classic film noir as a cycle exclusive to the United States; Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, for example, argue, "With the Western, film noir shares the distinction of being an indigenous American form ... a wholly American film style."

Le Jour se lève (1939), directed by Marcel Carné.[85] In addition, Mexico experienced a vibrant film noir period from roughly 1946 to 1952, which was around the same time film noir was blossoming in the United States.[86]

During the classic period, there were many films produced in Europe, particularly in France, that share elements of style, theme, and sensibility with American films noir and may themselves be included in the genre's canon. In certain cases, the interrelationship with Hollywood noir is obvious: American-born director

Le Cercle rouge (1970).[87] In the 1960s, Greek films noir "The Secret of the Red Mantle"[88] and "The Fear" allowed audience for an anti-ableist reading which challenged stereotypes of disability. .[89]

Black-and-white image of two men facing the left of frame, walking in front of a brick wall. A bold series of vertically striped shadows covers the entire image. The middle-aged man to the right wears a white fedora, a medium-dark suit, and an open-collared white shirt. In front of him, to the left of the image, a younger, taller man wears a cream-toned suit, a white beret and shirt, and a light striped tie. Each man holds a pistol in his right hand.
Stray Dog (1949), directed and cowritten by Akira Kurosawa, contains many cinematographic and narrative elements associated with classic American film noir.

Scholar Andrew Spicer argues that British film noir evidences a greater debt to French poetic realism than to the expressionistic American mode of noir.

20th Century-Fox's British subsidiary. The most famous of classic British noirs is director Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), from a screenplay by Graham Greene. Set in Vienna immediately after World War II, it also stars two American actors, Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, who had appeared together in Citizen Kane.[91]

Elsewhere, Italian director

La ciudad perdida (The Lost City) was adapted into film in 1960.[95]

Among the first major

El Aura (2005; Argentina). Others simply share narrative elements and a version of the hardboiled sensibility associated with classic noir, such as Castle of Sand (1974; Japan), Insomnia (1997; Norway), Croupier (1998; UK), and Blind Shaft (2003; China).[97]

Neo-noir and echoes of the classic mode

See also: Neo-noir

The neo-noir film genre developed mid-way into the Cold War. This cinematological trend reflected much of the cynicism and the possibility of nuclear annihilation of the era. This new genre introduced innovations that were not available to earlier noir films. The violence was also more potent.[98]

1960s and 1970s

While it is hard to draw a line between some of the noir films of the early 1960s such as Blast of Silence (1961) and Cape Fear (1962) and the noirs of the late 1950s, new trends emerged in the post-classic era. The Manchurian Candidate (1962), directed by John Frankenheimer, Shock Corridor (1963), directed by Samuel Fuller, and Brainstorm (1965), directed by experienced noir character actor William Conrad, all treat the theme of mental dispossession within stylistic and tonal frameworks derived from classic film noir.[99] The Manchurian Candidate examined the situation of American prisoners of war (POWs) during the Korean War. Incidents that occurred during the war as well as those post-war functioned as an inspiration for a "Cold War Noir" subgenre.[100][101] The television series The Fugitive (1963–67) brought classic noir themes and mood to the small screen for an extended run.[99]

Black-and-white image of a man seen from mid-chest up, wearing a fedora and a jacket with a houndstooth-like pattern. He holds a cigarette between the middle and index fingers of his left hand and strokes his upper lip with his thumb. He stands in front of what appears to be a mirrored doorway.
As car thief Michel Poiccard, a.k.a. Laszlo Kovacs, Jean-Paul Belmondo in À bout de souffle (Breathless; 1960). Poiccard reveres and styles himself after Humphrey Bogart's screen persona. Here he imitates a characteristic Bogart gesture, one of the film's motifs.[102]

In a different vein, films began to appear that self-consciously acknowledged the conventions of classic film noir as historical

À bout de souffle (Breathless; 1960), which pays its literal respects to Bogart and his crime films while brandishing a bold new style for a new day.[105] In the United States, Arthur Penn (1965's Mickey One, drawing inspiration from Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste and other French New Wave films), John Boorman (1967's Point Blank, similarly caught up, though in the Nouvelle vague's deeper waters), and Alan J. Pakula (1971's Klute) directed films that knowingly related themselves to the original films noir, inviting audiences in on the game.[106]

A manifest affiliation with noir traditions—which, by its nature, allows different sorts of commentary on them to be inferred—can also provide the basis for explicit critiques of those traditions. In 1973, director

Play It Again, Sam (1972). The "blaxploitation" film Shaft (1971), wherein Richard Roundtree plays the titular African-American private eye, John Shaft
, takes conventions from classic noir.

The most acclaimed of the neo-noirs of the era was director

Walter Hill wrote and directed The Driver, a chase film as might have been imagined by Jean-Pierre Melville in an especially abstract mood.[111]

Hill was already a central figure in 1970s noir of a more straightforward manner, having written the script for director Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway (1972), adapting a novel by pulp master Jim Thompson, as well as for two tough private eye films: an original screenplay for Hickey & Boggs (1972) and an adaptation of a novel by Ross Macdonald, the leading literary descendant of Hammett and Chandler, for The Drowning Pool (1975). Some of the strongest 1970s noirs, in fact, were unwinking remakes of the classics, "neo" mostly by default: the heartbreaking Thieves Like Us (1974), directed by Altman from the same source as Ray's They Live by Night, and Farewell, My Lovely (1975), the Chandler tale made classically as Murder, My Sweet, remade here with Robert Mitchum in his last notable noir role.[112] Detective series, prevalent on American television during the period, updated the hardboiled tradition in different ways, but the show conjuring the most noir tone was a horror crossover touched with shaggy, Long Goodbye-style humor: Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974–75), featuring a Chicago newspaper reporter investigating strange, usually supernatural occurrences.[113]

1980s and 1990s

A blonde woman wearing a white jacket, top, and short skirt, her face half in shadow, sitting in an arm chair with her legs crossed. She holds a cigarette to her mouth with her right hand, and raises a lighter with her left. Behind her is dark furniture and the corner of the room, walled with white brick. From between the furniture and walls, unseen, floor-level lights cast a bluish glow over the scene.
Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell, archetypal modern femme fatale, in Basic Instinct (1992). Her diabolic nature is underscored by an "extra-lurid visual code", as in the notorious interrogation scene.[114]

The turn of the decade brought Scorsese's black-and-white Raging Bull (1980, cowritten by Schrader). An acknowledged masterpiece—in 2007 the American Film Institute ranked it as the greatest American film of the 1980s and the fourth greatest of all time—it tells the story of a boxer's moral self-destruction that recalls in both theme and visual ambiance noir dramas such as Body and Soul (1947) and Champion (1949).[115] From 1981, Body Heat, written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, invokes a different set of classic noir elements, this time in a humid, erotically charged Florida setting. Its success confirmed the commercial viability of neo-noir at a time when the major Hollywood studios were becoming increasingly risk averse. The mainstreaming of neo-noir is evident in such films as Black Widow (1987), Shattered (1991), and Final Analysis (1992).[116] Few neo-noirs have made more money or more wittily updated the tradition of the noir double entendre than Basic Instinct (1992), directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Joe Eszterhas.[117] The film also demonstrates how neo-noir's polychrome palette can reproduce many of the expressionistic effects of classic black-and-white noir.[114]

Like Chinatown, its more complex predecessor, Curtis Hanson's Oscar-winning L.A. Confidential (1997), based on the James Ellroy novel, demonstrates the opposite tendency—the deliberately retro film noir; its tale of corrupt cops and femmes fatale is seemingly lifted straight from a film of 1953, the year in which it is set.[118] Director David Fincher followed the immensely successful neo-noir Seven (1995) with a film that developed into a cult favorite after its original, disappointing release: Fight Club (1999), a sui generis mix of noir aesthetic, perverse comedy, speculative content, and satiric intent.[119]

"Dub Driving"
Angelo Badalamenti has scored most of David Lynch's noir-related work. His work on this track typifies a "modern noir" style, which the director explicitly sought for Lost Highway (1997).[120]
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Working generally with much smaller budgets, brothers

Joel and Ethan Coen have created one of the most extensive oeuvres influenced by classic noir, with films such as Blood Simple (1984)[121] and Fargo (1996), the latter considered by some a supreme work in the neo-noir mode.[122] The Coens cross noir with other generic traditions in the gangster drama Miller's Crossing (1990)—loosely based on the Dashiell Hammett novels Red Harvest and The Glass Key—and the comedy The Big Lebowski (1998), a tribute to Chandler and an homage to Altman's version of The Long Goodbye.[123] The characteristic work of David Lynch combines film noir tropes with scenarios driven by disturbed characters such as the sociopathic criminal played by Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet (1986) and the delusionary protagonist of Lost Highway (1997). The Twin Peaks cycle, both the TV series (1990–91) and a film, Fire Walk with Me (1992), puts a detective plot through a succession of bizarre spasms. David Cronenberg also mixes surrealism and noir in Naked Lunch (1991), inspired by William S. Burroughs' novel
.

Perhaps no American neo-noirs better reflect the classic noir B movie spirit than those of director-writer

Out of Sight (1998), from the novel by Elmore Leonard.[125] Several films by director-writer David Mamet involve noir elements: House of Games (1987), Homicide (1991),[126] The Spanish Prisoner (1997), and Heist (2001).[127] On television, Moonlighting (1985–89) paid homage to classic noir while demonstrating an unusual appreciation of the sense of humor often found in the original cycle.[125] Between 1983 and 1989, Mickey Spillane's hardboiled private eye Mike Hammer was played with wry gusto by Stacy Keach in a series and several stand-alone television films (an unsuccessful revival followed in 1997–98). The British miniseries The Singing Detective (1986), written by Dennis Potter, tells the story of a mystery writer named Philip Marlow; widely considered one of the finest neo-noirs in any medium, some critics rank it among the greatest television productions of all time.[128]

Neon-noir

Among big-budget auteurs,

Crime Story (1986–88). Mann's output exemplifies a primary strain of neo-noir, or as it is affectionately called, "neon noir",[129][130] in which classic themes and tropes are revisited in a contemporary setting with an up-to-date visual style and rock- or hip hop-based musical soundtrack.[131]

Neo-noir film borrows from and reflects many of the characteristics of the film noir: the presence of crime and violence, complex characters and plot-lines, mystery, and moral ambivalence, all of which come into play in the neon-noir sub-genre. But more than just exhibiting the superficial traits of the genre, neon-noir emphasizes the socio-critique of film noir, recalling the specific socio-cultural dimensions of the interwar years when noirs first became prominent; a time of global existential crisis, depression and the mass movement of the rural population to cities. Long shots or montages of cityscapes, often portrayed as dark and menacing, are suggestive of what Dueck referred to as a ‘bleak societal perspective’,

global capitalism and consumerism. Other characteristics include the use of highly stylized lighting techniques such chiaroscuro, and neon signs and brightly lit buildings that provide a sense of alienation and entrapment
.

Accentuating the use of artificial and neon lighting in the films-noir of the '40s and '50s, neon-noir films accentuate this aesthetic with electrifying color and manipulated light in order to highlight their socio-cultural critiques and their references to contemporary and pop culture. In doing so, neon-noir films present the themes of urban decay, consumerist decadence and capitalism,

race and violence
in the contemporary culture, not only in America, but the globalized world at large.

Neon-noirs seek to bring the contemporary noir, somewhat diluted under the umbrella of neo-noir, back to the exploration of culture: class, race, gender, patriarchy, and capitalism. Neon-noirs present an existential exploration of society in a hyper-technological and globalized world. Illustrating society as decadent and consumerist, and identity as confused and anxious, neon-noirs reposition the contemporary noir in the setting of urban decay, often featuring scenes set in underground city haunts: brothels, nightclubs, casinos, strip bars, pawnshops, laundromats.

Neon-noirs were popularized in the '70s and '80s by films such as

Coen Brothers' debut Blood Simple (1984).[134][135] More currently, films such as Harmony Korine’s highly provocative Spring Breakers (2012),[136] and Danny Boyle’s Trance (2013) have been especially noted for their neon-infused rendering of film noir; while Trance was celebrated for ‘shak(ing) the ingredients (of the noir) like colored sand in a jar’, Spring Breakers notoriously produced a slew of criticism[137] referring to its ‘fever-dream’ aesthetic and ‘neon-caked explosion of excess’ (Kohn).[138] Another neon-noir endowed with the 'fever-dream' aesthetic is The Persian Connection, expressly linked to Lynchian aesthetics as a neon-drenched contemporary noir.[139]

Neon-noir can be seen as a response to the over-use of the term neo-noir. While the term neo-noir functions to bring noir into the contemporary landscape, it has often been criticized for its dilution of the noir genre. Author Robert Arnett commented on its "amorphous" reach: "any film featuring a detective or crime qualifies".[140] The neon-noir, more specifically, seeks to revive noir sensibilities in a more targeted manner of reference, focalizing socio-cultural commentary and a hyper-stylized aesthetic.

2000s and 2010s

The Coen brothers make reference to the noir tradition again with The Man Who Wasn't There (2001); a black-and-white crime melodrama set in 1949; it features a scene apparently staged to mirror one from Out of the Past. Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001) continued in his characteristic vein, making the classic noir setting of Los Angeles the venue for a noir-inflected psychological jigsaw puzzle. British-born director Christopher Nolan's black-and-white debut, Following (1998), was an overt homage to classic noir. During the new century's first decade, he was one of the leading Hollywood directors of neo-noir with the acclaimed Memento (2000) and the remake of Insomnia (2002).[141]

Director Sean Penn's The Pledge (2001), though adapted from a very self-reflexive novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, plays noir comparatively straight, to devastating effect[neutrality is disputed].[142] Screenwriter David Ayer updated the classic noir bad-cop tale, typified by Shield for Murder (1954) and Rogue Cop (1954), with his scripts for Training Day (2001) and, adapting a story by James Ellroy, Dark Blue (2002); he later wrote and directed the even darker Harsh Times (2006). Michael Mann's Collateral (2004) features a performance by Tom Cruise as an assassin in the lineage of Le Samouraï. The torments of The Machinist (2004), directed by Brad Anderson, evoke both Fight Club and Memento.[143] In 2005, Shane Black directed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, basing his screenplay in part on a crime novel by Brett Halliday, who published his first stories back in the 1920s. The film plays with an awareness not only of classic noir but also of neo-noir reflexivity itself.[144]

With ultra-violent films such as

Village Voice poll.[149] Writer-director Rian Johnson's Brick (2005), featuring present-day high schoolers speaking a version of 1930s hardboiled argot, won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the Sundance Film Festival. The television series Veronica Mars (2004–07) and the movie Veronica Mars (2014) also brought a youth-oriented twist to film noir. Examples of this sort of generic crossover have been dubbed "teen noir".[150][151]

Neo-noir films released in the 2010s include Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil (2010), Fred Cavaye’s Point Blank (2010), Na Hong-jin’s The Yellow Sea (2010), Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011),[152] Claire Denis' Bastards (2013)[153][154] and Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler (2014).

2020s

The Science Channel broadcast the 2021 science documentary series Killers of the Cosmos in a format it describes as "space noir." In the series, actor Aidan Gillen in animated form serves as the host of the series while portraying a private investigator who takes on "cases" in which he "hunts down" lethal threats to humanity posed by the cosmos. The animated sequences combine the characteristics of film noir with those of a pulp fiction graphic novel set in the mid-20th century, and they link conventional live-action documentary segments in which experts describe the potentially deadly phenomena.[155][156][157][158]

Science fiction noir

See also: Tech noir
A man with close-cropped hair wearing a brown jacket sits at a counter, holding a pair of chopsticks poised over a rice bowl. Rain cascades down beside him as if from the edge of an awning. In the foreground is a teapot, several bottles, and other dining accessories. Steam or smoke rises from an unseen source. In the background, two standing men look down at the central figure. The goateed man on the left wears a dark snap-brim hat, a black coat with upturned collar, and a gold-trimmed vest. The man on the right, partly obscured by the steam, is wearing a constabulary-style uniform, featuring large wrap-around shades and a hat or helmet with a glossy, stiff brim. There is a bluish cast to the entire image.
Harrison Ford as detective Rick Deckard in Blade Runner (1982). Like many classic noirs, the film is set in a version of Los Angeles where it constantly rains.[159] The steam in the foreground is a familiar noir trope, while the "bluish-smoky exterior" updates the black-and-white mode.[160]

In the post-classic era, a significant trend in noir crossovers has involved science fiction. In Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965), Lemmy Caution is the name of the old-school private eye in the city of tomorrow. The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972) centers on another implacable investigator and an amnesiac named Welles. Soylent Green (1973), the first major American example, portrays a dystopian, near-future world via a noir detection plot; starring Charlton Heston (the lead in Touch of Evil), it also features classic noir standbys Joseph Cotten, Edward G. Robinson, and Whit Bissell. The film was directed by Richard Fleischer, who two decades before had directed several strong B noirs, including Armored Car Robbery (1950) and The Narrow Margin (1952).[161]

The cynical and stylized perspective of classic film noir had a formative effect on the cyberpunk genre of science fiction that emerged in the early 1980s; the film most directly influential on cyberpunk was Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott, which pays evocative homage to the classic noir mode[162] (Scott subsequently directed the poignant 1987 noir crime melodrama Someone to Watch Over Me). Scholar Jamaluddin Bin Aziz has observed how "the shadow of Philip Marlowe lingers on" in such other "future noir" films as 12 Monkeys (1995), Dark City (1998) and Minority Report (2002).[163] Fincher's feature debut was Alien 3 (1992), which evoked the classic noir jail film Brute Force.

David Cronenberg's

Noir (2001)[165] and Cowboy Bebop (1998).[167]

The 2015 film Ex Machina puts an understated film noir spin on the Frankenstein mythos, with the sentient android Ava as a potential femme fatale, her creator Nathan embodying the abusive husband or father trope, and her would-be rescuer Caleb as a "clueless drifter" enthralled by Ava.[168]

Parodies

Film noir has been parodied many times in many manners. In 1945, Danny Kaye starred in what appears to be the first intentional film noir parody, Wonder Man.[169] That same year, Deanna Durbin was the singing lead in the comedic noir Lady on a Train, which makes fun of Woolrich-brand wistful miserablism. Bob Hope inaugurated the private-eye noir parody with My Favorite Brunette (1947), playing a baby-photographer who is mistaken for an ironfisted detective.[169] In 1947 as well, The Bowery Boys appeared in Hard Boiled Mahoney, which had a similar mistaken-identity plot; they spoofed the genre once more in Private Eyes (1953). Two RKO productions starring Robert Mitchum take film noir over the border into self-parody: The Big Steal (1949), directed by Don Siegel, and His Kind of Woman (1951).[b] The "Girl Hunt" ballet in Vincente Minnelli's The Band Wagon (1953) is a ten-minute distillation of—and play on—noir in dance.[170] The Cheap Detective (1978), starring Peter Falk, is a broad spoof of several films, including the Bogart classics The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. Carl Reiner's black-and-white Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982) appropriates clips of classic noirs for a farcical pastiche, while his Fatal Instinct (1993) sends up noir classic (Double Indemnity) and neo-noir (Basic Instinct). Robert Zemeckis's Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) develops a noir plot set in 1940s Los Angeles around a host of cartoon characters.[171]

Head and right hand of a man, shot from a slightly low angle. The man, whose hair is in a Mohawk, looks down at the camera with an odd smile. A spot of blood is on his upper left cheek, and a three-inch line of blood runs from his lower left cheek to his jaw. With his blood-drenched thumb and index finger, he makes the shape of a pistol, pointed at the side of his head.
"Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man." Robert De Niro as neo-noir antihero Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976)

Noir parodies come in darker tones as well.

pastiche and a gross exaggeration of classic noir.[174] Adapted by director Robinson Devor from a novel by Charles Willeford, The Woman Chaser (1999) sends up not just the noir mode but the entire Hollywood filmmaking process, with each shot seemingly staged as the visual equivalent of an acerbic Marlowe wisecrack.[175]

In other media, the television series

Tracer Bullet of Calvin and Hobbes have parodied both film noir and the kindred hardboiled tradition—one of the sources from which film noir sprang and which it now overshadows.[176] It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia parodied the noir genre in its season 14 episode "The Janitor Always Mops Twice."[177][178]

Identifying characteristics

A man, seen from mid-chest up, hangs by his hands from the edge of an apparently tall structure, gazing down in fear. He is wearing a dark suit and an orange tie with a clip. In the distance behind him is a cityscape at night or in the early morning. There is a bluish cast to the background.
Some consider Vertigo (1958) a noir on the basis of plot and tone and various motifs, but it has a modernist graphic design typical of the 1950s and a more modern set design,[179] which would remove it from the category of film noir. Others say the combination of color and the specificity of director Alfred Hitchcock's vision exclude it from the category.[180]

In their original 1955 canon of film noir, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton identified twenty-two Hollywood films released between 1941 and 1952 as core examples; they listed another fifty-nine American films from the period as significantly related to the field of noir.[181] A half-century later, film historians and critics had come to agree on a canon of approximately three hundred films from 1940 to 1958.[182] There remain, however, many differences of opinion over whether other films of the era, among them a number of well-known ones, qualify as films noir or not. For instance, The Night of the Hunter (1955), starring Robert Mitchum in an acclaimed performance, is treated as a film noir by some critics, but not by others.[183] Some critics include Suspicion (1941), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, in their catalogues of noir; others ignore it.[184] Concerning films made either before or after the classic period, or outside of the United States at any time, consensus is even rarer.

To support their categorization of certain films as noirs and their rejection of others, many critics refer to a set of elements they see as marking examples of the mode. The question of what constitutes the set of noir's identifying characteristics is a fundamental source of controversy. For instance, critics tend to define the model film noir as having a tragic or bleak conclusion,

denouements is ambivalent.[186] Some critics perceive classic noir's hallmark as a distinctive visual style. Others, observing that there is actually considerable stylistic variety among noirs, instead emphasize plot and character type. Still others focus on mood and attitude. No survey of classic noir's identifying characteristics can therefore be considered definitive. In the 1990s and 2000s, critics have increasingly turned their attention to that diverse field of films called neo-noir; once again, there is even less consensus about the defining attributes of such films made outside the classic period.[187]
Roger Ebert offered "A Guide to Film Noir", writing that "Film noir is...

  1. A French term meaning 'black film', or film of the night, inspired by the Series Noir, a line of cheap paperbacks that translated hard-boiled American crime authors and found a popular audience in France
  2. A movie which at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending.
  3. Locations that reek of the night, of shadows, of alleys, of the back doors of fancy places, of apartment buildings with a high turnover rate, of taxi drivers and bartenders who have seen it all.
  4. Cigarettes. Everyone in film noir is always smoking, as if to say, 'On top of everything else, I've been assigned to get through three packs today. The best smoking movie of all time is Out of the Past, in which Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas smoke furiously at each other. At one point, Mitchum enters a room, Douglas extends a pack and says 'Cigarette?' and Mitchum, holding up his hand, says, 'Smoking.'
  5. Women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa.
  6. For women: low necklines, floppy hats, mascara, lipstick, dressing rooms, boudoirs, calling the doorman by his first name, high heels, red dresses, elbowlength gloves, mixing drinks, having gangsters as boyfriends, having soft spots for alcoholic private eyes, wanting a lot of someone else's women, sprawling dead on the floor with every limb meticulously arranged and every hair in place.
  7. For men: fedoras, suits and ties, shabby residential hotels with a neon sign blinking through the window, buying yourself a drink out of the office bottle, cars with running boards, all-night diners, protecting kids who shouldn't be playing with the big guys, being on first-name terms with homicide cops, knowing a lot of people whose descriptions end in 'ies,' such as bookies, newsies, junkies, alkys, jockeys and cabbies.
  8. Movies either shot in black-and-white, or feeling like they were.
  9. Relationships in which love is only the final flop card in the poker game of death.
  10. The most American film genre, because no other society could have created a world so full of doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic."[188]

Visual style

The low-key lighting schemes of many classic films noir are associated with stark light/dark contrasts and dramatic shadow patterning—a style known as chiaroscuro (a term adopted from Renaissance painting).[c] The shadows of Venetian blinds or banister rods, cast upon an actor, a wall, or an entire set, are an iconic visual in noir and had already become a cliché well before the neo-noir era. Characters' faces may be partially or wholly obscured by darkness—a relative rarity in conventional Hollywood filmmaking. While black-and-white cinematography is considered by many to be one of the essential attributes of classic noir, the color films Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and Niagara (1953) are routinely included in noir filmographies, while Slightly Scarlet (1956), Party Girl (1958), and Vertigo (1958) are classified as noir by varying numbers of critics.[189]

Film noir is also known for its use of

day-for-night, was often employed.[190] From the mid-1940s forward, location shooting became increasingly frequent in noir.[191]

In an analysis of the visual approach of Kiss Me Deadly, a late and self-consciously stylized example of classic noir, critic Alain Silver describes how cinematographic choices emphasize the story's themes and mood. In one scene, the characters, seen through a "confusion of angular shapes", thus appear "caught in a tangible vortex or enclosed in a trap." Silver makes a case for how "side light is used ... to reflect character ambivalence", while shots of characters in which they are lit from below "conform to a convention of visual expression which associates shadows cast upward of the face with the unnatural and ominous".[192]

Structure and narrational devices

A man and a woman, seen in profile, starring intensely at each other. The man, on the left, is considerably taller. He wears a brown pin-striped suit, holds a key in one hand and grips the woman's arm with the other. She is wearing a pale green top. Lit from below and to the side, they cast bold, angled shadows on the wall behind them.
Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster were two of the most prolific stars of classic noir. The complex structure of Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) involves a real-time framing story, multiple narrators, and flashbacks within flashbacks.[193]

Films noir tend to have unusually convoluted story lines, frequently involving

flashbacks and other editing techniques that disrupt and sometimes obscure the narrative sequence. Framing the entire primary narrative as a flashback is also a standard device. Voiceover narration, sometimes used as a structuring device, came to be seen as a noir hallmark; while classic noir is generally associated with first-person narration (i.e., by the protagonist), Stephen Neale notes that third-person narration is common among noirs of the semidocumentary style.[194]
Neo-noirs as varied as The Element of Crime (surrealist), After Dark, My Sweet (retro), and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (meta) have employed the flashback/voiceover combination.

Bold experiments in cinematic storytelling were sometimes attempted during the classic era: Lady in the Lake, for example, is shot entirely from the

point of view of protagonist Philip Marlowe; the face of star (and director) Robert Montgomery is seen only in mirrors.[195] The Chase (1946) takes oneirism and fatalism as the basis for its fantastical narrative system, redolent of certain horror stories, but with little precedent in the context of a putatively realistic genre. In their different ways, both Sunset Boulevard and D.O.A. are tales told by dead men. Latter-day noir has been in the forefront of structural experimentation in popular cinema, as exemplified by such films as Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, and Memento.[196]

Plots, characters, and settings

Crime, usually murder, is an element of almost all films noir; in addition to standard-issue greed, jealousy is frequently the criminal motivation. A crime investigation—by a private eye, a police detective (sometimes acting alone), or a concerned amateur—is the most prevalent, but far from dominant, basic plot. In other common plots the protagonists are implicated in

con games, or in murderous conspiracies often involving adulterous affairs. False suspicions and accusations of crime are frequent plot elements, as are betrayals and double-crosses. According to J. David Slocum, "protagonists assume the literal identities of dead men in nearly fifteen percent of all noir."[197] Amnesia is fairly epidemic—"noir's version of the common cold", in the words of film historian Lee Server.[198]

Black-and-white film poster with an image of a young man and woman holding each other. They are surrounded by an abstract, whirlpool-like image; the central arc of the thick black line that define it encircles their head. Both are wearing white shirts and look forward with tense expressions; his right arm cradles her back, and in his hand he holds a revolver. The stars' names—Teresa Wright and Robert Mitchum—feature at the top of the whirlpool; the title and remainder of the credits are below.
By the late 1940s, the noir trend was leaving its mark on other genres. A prime example is the Western Pursued (1947), filled with psychosexual tensions and behavioral explanations derived from Freudian theory.[199]

Films noir tend to revolve around heroes who are more flawed and morally questionable than the norm, often

claims adjusters, and down-and-out writers. Among characters of every stripe, cigarette smoking is rampant.[202] From historical commentators to neo-noir pictures to pop culture ephemera, the private eye and the femme fatale have been adopted as the quintessential film noir figures, though they do not appear in most films now regarded as classic noir. Of the twenty-six National Film Registry noirs, in only four does the star play a private eye: The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Out of the Past, and Kiss Me Deadly. Just four others readily qualify as detective stories: Laura, The Killers, The Naked City, and Touch of Evil. There is usually an element of drug or alcohol use, particularly as part of the detective's method to solving the crime, as an example the character of Mike Hammer in the 1955 film Kiss Me Deadly who walks into a bar saying "Give me a double bourbon, and leave the bottle". Chaumeton and Borde have argued that film noir grew out of the "literature of drugs and alcohol".[203]

Film noir is often associated with an urban setting, and a few cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, in particular—are the location of many of the classic films. In the eyes of many critics, the city is presented in noir as a "labyrinth" or "maze".[204] Bars, lounges, nightclubs, and gambling dens are frequently the scene of action. The climaxes of a substantial number of film noirs take place in visually complex, often industrial settings, such as refineries, factories, trainyards, power plants—most famously the explosive conclusion of White Heat, set at a chemical plant.[205] In the popular (and, frequently enough, critical) imagination, in noir it is always night and it always raining.[206]

A substantial trend within latter-day noir—dubbed "film soleil" by critic

Plein soleil (Purple Noon in the United States, more accurately rendered elsewhere as Blazing Sun or Full Sun; 1960); and director Don Siegel's version of The Killers (1964). The tendency was at its peak during the late 1980s and 1990s, with films such as Dead Calm (1989), After Dark, My Sweet (1990), The Hot Spot (1990), Delusion (1991), Red Rock West (1993) and the television series Miami Vice.[207]

Worldview, morality, and tone

Black-and-white image of a man and a woman, seen from mid-chest up, their faces in profile, gazing into each other's eyes. He embraces her in a dip with his right arm and holds her right hand to his chest with his left hand. He wears a pin-striped suit and a dark tie. She wears a white top. On the left, the background is black; on the right, it is lighter, with a series of diagonal shadows descending from the upper corner.
"You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how far you can go."
"A lot depends on who's in the saddle."
Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep.

Film noir is often described as essentially pessimistic.[208] The noir stories that are regarded as most characteristic tell of people trapped in unwanted situations (which, in general, they did not cause but are responsible for exacerbating), striving against random, uncaring fate, and are frequently doomed. The films are seen as depicting a world that is inherently corrupt.[209] Classic film noir has been associated by many critics with the American social landscape of the era—in particular, with a sense of heightened anxiety and alienation that is said to have followed World War II. In author Nicholas Christopher's opinion, "it is as if the war, and the social eruptions in its aftermath, unleashed demons that had been bottled up in the national psyche."[210] Films noir, especially those of the 1950s and the height of the Red Scare, are often said to reflect cultural paranoia; Kiss Me Deadly is the noir most frequently marshaled as evidence for this claim.[211]

Film noir is often said to be defined by "moral ambiguity",

Production Code obliged almost all classic noirs to see that steadfast virtue was ultimately rewarded and vice, in the absence of shame and redemption, severely punished (however dramatically incredible the final rendering of mandatory justice might be). A substantial number of latter-day noirs flout such conventions: vice emerges triumphant in films as varied as the grim Chinatown and the ribald Hot Spot.[213]

The tone of film noir is generally regarded as downbeat; some critics experience it as darker still—"overwhelmingly black", according to Robert Ottoson.[214] Influential critic (and filmmaker) Paul Schrader wrote in a seminal 1972 essay that "film noir is defined by tone", a tone he seems to perceive as "hopeless".[215] In describing the adaptation of Double Indemnity, noir analyst Foster Hirsch describes the "requisite hopeless tone" achieved by the filmmakers, which appears to characterize his view of noir as a whole.[216] On the other hand, definitive film noirs such as The Big Sleep, The Lady from Shanghai, Scarlet Street and Double Indemnity itself are famed for their hardboiled repartee, often imbued with sexual innuendo and self-reflexive humor.[217]

Music

The music of film noir was typically orchestral, per the Hollywood norm, but often with added dissonance.[218] Many of the prime composers, like the directors and cameramen, were European émigrés, e.g., Max Steiner (The Big Sleep, Mildred Pierce), Miklós Rózsa (Double Indemnity, The Killers, Criss Cross), and Franz Waxman (Fury, Sunset Boulevard, Night and the City). Double Indemnity is a seminal score, initially disliked by Paramount's music director for its harshness but strongly endorsed by director Billy Wilder and studio chief Buddy DeSylva.[219] There is a widespread popular impression that "sleazy" jazz saxophone and pizzicato bass constitute the sound of noir, but those characteristics arose much later, as in the late-1950s music of Henry Mancini for Touch of Evil and television's Peter Gunn. Bernard Herrmann's score for Taxi Driver makes heavy use of saxophone.[citation needed]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The plural forms of film noir in English include films noirs (derived from the French), films noir, and film noirs. Merriam-Webster, which acknowledges all three styles as acceptable, favors film noirs,[220] while the Oxford English Dictionary lists only films noirs.[221]
  2. ^ His Kind of Woman was originally directed by John Farrow, then largely reshot under Richard Fleischer after studio owner Howard Hughes demanded rewrites. Only Farrow was credited.[222]
  3. ^ In Academic Dictionary of Arts (2005), Rakesh Chopra notes that the high-contrast film lighting schemes commonly referred to as "chiaroscuro" are more specifically representative of tenebrism, whose first great exponent was the Italian painter Caravaggio (p. 73). See also Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 16.

Citations

  1. ^ "Film Noir". American Cinema. Annenberg Learner. Archived from the original on 2021-04-18. Retrieved 2021-04-18.
  2. ^ See, e.g., Biesen (2005), p. 1; Hirsch (2001), p. 9; Lyons (2001), p. 2; Silver and Ward (1992), p. 1; Schatz (1981), p. 112. Outside the field of film noir scholarship, "dark film" is also offered on occasion; see, e.g., Block, Bruce A., The Visual Story: Seeing the Structure of Film, TV, and New Media (2001), p. 94; Klarer, Mario, An Introduction to Literary Studies (1999), p. 59.
  3. ^ Naremore (2008), pp. 4, 15–16, 18, 41; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 4–5, 22, 255.
  4. ^ Foteini Vlachou, Nandia (6 September 2016). "Parody and the noir". I Know Where I'm Going. Archived from the original on 27 November 2020. Retrieved 19 November 2020.
  5. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 3.
  6. ^ Borde and Chaumeton (2002), p. 2.
  7. ^ Borde and Chaumeton (2002), pp. 2–3.
  8. ^ Bould (2005), p. 13.
  9. ^ See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4; Bould (2005), p. 12; Place and Peterson (1974).
  10. ^ See, e.g., Naremore (2008), p. 167–68; Irwin (2006), p. 210.
  11. ^ Neale (2000), p. 166; Vernet (1993), p. 2; Naremore (2008), pp. 17, 122, 124, 140; Bould (2005), p. 19.
  12. OCLC 36330881
    .
  13. ^ For overview of debate, see, e.g., Bould (2005), pp. 13–23; Telotte (1989), pp. 9–10. For description of noir as a genre, see, e.g., Bould (2005), p. 2; Hirsch (2001), pp. 71–72; Tuska (1984), p. xxiii. For the opposing viewpoint, see, e.g., Neale (2000), p. 164; Ottoson (1981), p. 2; Schrader (1972); Durgnat (1970).
  14. ^ Conrad, Mark T. (2006). The Philosophy of Film Noir. University Press of Kentucky.
  15. ^ Ottoson (1981), pp. 2–3.
  16. ^ See Dancyger and Rush (2002), p. 68, for a detailed comparison of screwball comedy and film noir.
  17. ^ Schatz (1981), pp. 111–15.
  18. ^ Silver (1996), pp. 4, 6 passim. See also Bould (2005), pp. 3, 4; Hirsch (2001), p. 11.
  19. ^ Silver (1996), pp. 3, 6 passim. See also Place and Peterson (1974).
  20. ^ Silver (1996), pp. 7–10.
  21. OCLC 993983488. Archived
    from the original on 2020-06-15. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
  22. ^ See, e.g., Jones (2009).
  23. ^ See, e.g., Borde and Chaumeton (2002), pp. 1–7 passim.
  24. ^ See, e.g., Telotte (1989), pp. 10–11, 15 passim.
  25. ^ For survey of the lexical variety, see Naremore (2008), pp. 9, 311–12 n. 1.
  26. ^ Bould (2005), pp. 24–33.
  27. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 9–11.
  28. ^ Vernet (1993), p. 15.
  29. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 11–13.
  30. ^ Davis (2004), p. 194. See also Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 133; Ottoson (1981), pp. 110–111. Vernet (1993) notes that the techniques now associated with Expressionism were evident in the American cinema from the mid-1910s (pp. 9–12).
  31. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 6.
  32. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 6–9; Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 323–24.
  33. ^ Spicer (2007), pp. 26, 28; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 13–15; Bould (2005), pp. 33–40.
  34. ^ McGarry (1980), p. 139.
  35. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 20; Schatz (1981), pp. 116–22; Ottoson (1981), p. 2.
  36. ^ Biesen (2005), p. 207.
  37. ^ Naremore (2008), pp. 13–14.
  38. ^ Krutnik, Neale, and Neve (2008), pp. 147–148; Macek and Silver (1980), p. 135.
  39. ^ Widdicombe (2001), pp. 37–39, 59–60, 118–19; Doherty, Jim. "Carmady". Thrilling Detective Web Site. Archived from the original on 2010-01-04. Retrieved 2010-02-25.
  40. ^ See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 6; Macek (1980), pp. 59–60.
  41. ^ Irwin (2006), pp. 71, 95–96.
  42. ^ Irwin (2006), pp. 123–24, 129–30.
  43. ^ White (1980), p. 17.
  44. ^ Irwin (2006), pp. 97–98, 188–89.
  45. ^ Silver and Ward (1992), p. 333, as well as entries on individual films, pp. 59–60, 109–10, 320–21. For description of City Streets as "proto-noir", see Turan (2008). For description of Fury as "proto-noir", see Machura, Stefan, and Peter Robson, Law and Film (2001), p. 13. For description of You Only Live Once as "pre-noir", see Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 9.
  46. ^ a b See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 19; Irwin (2006), p. 210; Lyons (2000), p. 36; Porfirio (1980), p. 269.
  47. ^ Biesen (2005), p. 33.
  48. ^ Variety (1940).
  49. ^ Marshman (1947), pp. 100–1.
  50. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4, 19–26, 28–33; Hirsch (2001), pp. 1–21; Schatz (1981), pp. 111–16.
  51. ^ See, e.g., Naremore (2008), pp. 81, 319 n. 13; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 86–88.
  52. ^ See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 30; Hirsch (2001), pp. 12, 202; Schrader (1972), pp. 59–61 [in Silver and Ursini].
  53. ^ Schrader (1972), p. 61.
  54. ^ See, e.g., Silver (1996), p. 11; Ottoson (1981), pp. 182–183; Schrader (1972), p. 61.
  55. ^ See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 19–53.
  56. ^ See, e.g., Hirsch (2001), pp. 10, 202–7; Silver and Ward (1992), p. 6 (though they phrase their position more ambiguously on p. 398); Ottoson (1981), p. 1.
  57. ^ See, e.g., entries on individual films in Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 34, 190–92; Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 214–15; 253–54, 269–70, 318–19.
  58. ^ Biesen (2005), p. 162.
  59. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 188, 202–3.
  60. ^ For overview of Welles's noirs, see, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 210–11. For specific production circumstances, see Brady, Frank, Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles (1989), pp. 395–404, 378–81, 496–512.
  61. ^ Bernstein (1995).
  62. ^ McGilligan (1997), pp. 314–17.
  63. ^ Schatz (1998), pp. 354–58.
  64. ^ See, e.g., Schatz (1981), pp. 103, 112.
  65. ^ See, e.g., entries on individual films in Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 97–98, 125–26, 311–12.
  66. ^ See Naremore (2008), pp. 140–55, on "B Pictures versus Intermediates".
  67. ^ Ottoson (1981), p. 132.
  68. ^ Naremore (2008), p. 173.
  69. ^ Hayde (2001), pp. 3–4, 15–21, 37.
  70. ^ Erickson (2004), p. 26.
  71. ^ Sarris (1985), p. 93.
  72. ^ Thomson (1998), p. 269.
  73. ^ Naremore (2008), pp. 128, 150–51; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 97–99.
  74. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 59–60.
  75. ^ Clarens (1980), pp. 245–47.
  76. ^ See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 83–85; Ottoson (1981), pp. 60–61.
  77. ^ Muller (1998), pp. 176–77.
  78. ^ Krutnik, Neale, and Neve (2008), pp. 259–60, 262–63.
  79. ^ See Mackendrick (2006), pp. 119–20.
  80. ^ See, e.g., Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 338–39. Ottoson (1981) also lists two period pieces directed by Siodmak (The Suspect [1944] and The Spiral Staircase [1946]) (pp. 173–74, 164–65). Silver and Ward list nine classic-era film noirs by Lang, plus two from the 1930s (pp. 338, 396). Ottoson lists eight (excluding Beyond a Reasonable Doubt [1956]), plus the same two from the 1930s (passim). Silver and Ward list seven by Mann (p. 338). Ottoson also lists Reign of Terror (a.k.a. The Black Book; 1949), set during the French Revolution, for a total of eight (passim). See also Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 241.
  81. ^ Clarens (1980), pp. 200–2; Walker (1992), pp. 139–45; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 77–79.
  82. ^ Butler (2002), p. 12.
  83. ^ Silver and Ward (1992), p. 1.
  84. ^ See Palmer (2004), pp. 267–68, for a representative discussion of film noir as an international phenomenon.
  85. ^ Spicer (2007), pp. 5–6, 26, 28, 59; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 14–15.
  86. ^ Jones, Kristin (2015-07-21). "A Series on Mexican Noir Films Illuminates a Dark Genre". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2018-04-26. Retrieved 2018-04-30.
  87. ^ Spicer (2007), pp. 32–39, 43; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 255–61.
  88. S2CID 146184141
    .
  89. S2CID 225451304. Archived
    from the original on 2022-01-20. Retrieved 2022-06-06.
  90. ^ Spicer (2007), p. 9.
  91. ^ Spicer (2007), pp. 16, 91–94, 96, 100; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 144, 249–55; Lyons (2000), p. 74, 81, 114–15.
  92. ^ Spicer (2007), pp. 13, 28, 241; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 264, 266.
  93. ^ Spicer (2007), pp. 19 n. 36, 28.
  94. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 266–68.
  95. ^ García López (2015), pp. 46–53.
  96. ^ Spicer (2007), p. 241; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 257.
  97. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 253, 255, 263–64, 266, 267, 270–74; Abbas (1997), p. 34.
  98. ^ Schwartz, Ronald (2005). "Neo-Noir The New Film Noir Style from Psycho to Collateral" (PDF). The Scarecrow Press Inc. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-11-04. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  99. ^ a b Ursini (1995), pp. 284–86; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 278.
  100. ^ Sautner, Mark. "Cold War Noir and the Other Films about Korean War POWs". Archived from the original on 2013-02-18. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  101. ^ Conway, Marianne B. "Korean War Film Noir: the POW Movies". Archived from the original on 2013-02-17. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  102. ^ Appel (1974), p. 4.
  103. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 41.
  104. ^ See, e.g., Variety (1955). For a latter-day analysis of the film's self-consciousness, see Naremore (2008), pp. 151–55. See also Kolker (2000), p. 364.
  105. ^ Greene (1999), p. 161.
  106. ^ For Mickey One, see Kolker (2000), pp. 21–22, 26–30. For Point Blank, see Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 36, 38, 41, 257. For Klute, see Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 114–15.
  107. ^ Kolker (2000), pp. 344, 363–73; Naremore (2008), pp. 203–5; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 36, 39, 130–33.
  108. ^ Kolker (2000), p. 364; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 132.
  109. ^ Ross, Graeme (March 11, 2019). "10 best neo-noir films of all time: From Chinatown to LA Confidential". independent.co.uk. The Independent. Archived from the original on January 22, 2018. Retrieved August 27, 2017.
  110. ^ Kolker (2000), pp. 207–44; Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 282–83; Naremore (1998), pp. 34–37, 192.
  111. ^ Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 398–99.
  112. ^ For Thieves Like Us, see Kolker (2000), pp. 358–63. For Farewell, My Lovely, see Kirgo (1980), pp. 101–2.
  113. ^ Ursini (1995), p. 287.
  114. ^ a b Williams (2005), p. 229.
  115. ^ For AFI ranking, see "AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies—10th Anniversary Edition". American Film Institute. 2007. Archived from the original on 2012-06-04. Retrieved 2012-04-19. For kinship to classic noir boxing films, see Muller (1998), pp. 26–27.
  116. ^ Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 400–1, 408.
  117. ^ See, e.g., Grothe, Mardy, Viva la Repartee: Clever Comebacks and Witty Retorts from History's Great Wits & Wordsmiths (2005), p. 84.
  118. ^ Naremore (2008), p. 275; Wager (2005), p. 83; Hanson (2008), p. 141.
  119. ^ Wager (2005), p. 101–14.
  120. ^ Lynch and Rodley (2005), p. 241.
  121. ^ Kael, Pauline (February 17, 1985). "The Current Cinema: PLAIN AND SIMPLE". The New Yorker. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
  122. ^ Hirsch (1999), pp. 245–47; Maslin (1996).
  123. ^ For Miller's Crossing, see Martin (1997), p. 157; Naremore (2008), p. 214–15; Barra, Allen (2005-02-28). "From 'Red Harvest' to 'Deadwood'". Salon. Archived from the original on 2010-03-30. Retrieved 2009-09-29. For The Big Lebowski, see Tyree and Walters (2007), pp. 40, 43–44, 48, 51, 65, 111; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 237.
  124. ^ James (2000), pp. xviii–xix.
  125. ^ a b Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 279.
  126. ^ a b "Noir and Neonoir|The Criterion Collection". Archived from the original on 2020-02-15. Retrieved 2020-02-15.
  127. ^ See, e.g., Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 398, 402, 407, 412.
  128. ^ Creeber, (2007), p. 3. The Singing Detective is the sole TV production cited in Corliss, Richard; Richard Schickel (2005-05-23). "All-Time 100 Movies". Time.com. Archived from the original on 2010-03-12. Retrieved 2009-09-29.
  129. ^ "NEON-NOIR — Movie List on MUBI". Archived from the original on 2020-01-28. Retrieved 2020-01-28.
  130. ^ "Neon Noir (series trailer) on Cinefamily Archive's Vimeo channel". Archived from the original on 2020-07-31. Retrieved 2020-01-30.
  131. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 44, 47, 279–80.
  132. ^ Dueck, Cheryl. (November 2016) 'Secret Police in Style: The Aesthetics of Remembering Socialism'. A Journal of Germanic Studies, Volume 52:4
  133. ^ "10 Visually Stunning Movies with Neon Lighting|Scene360". Archived from the original on 2020-07-31. Retrieved 2020-01-30.
  134. ^ "Neonoir – The Criterion Channel". Archived from the original on 2021-07-01. Retrieved 2021-07-02.
  135. ^ "Neonoir – Criterion Channel teaser – criterioncollection on YouTube". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-07-02. Retrieved 2021-07-02.
  136. ^ "5 Neon-Noir Movies to Watch After Blade Runner 2049|That Moment In". 3 November 2017. Archived from the original on 2020-07-31. Retrieved 2020-01-30.
  137. ^ Rosen, Christopher (22 March 2013). "'Spring Breakers' Is A 'Fever Dream'; Or, The Most Common Description Of Harmony Korine's New Film". HuffPost. Archived from the original on 2016-04-09.
  138. ^ Kohn, Eric.'From 'Trance' to 'Spring Breakers,' Is This the Golden Age of Film Noir?'. March 23, 2016. Indiewire Online Archived 2022-06-10 at the Wayback Machine
  139. ^ "Reza Sixo Safai on his Film "The Persian Connection" — American Iranian Council". 10 July 2017. Archived from the original on 2020-02-01. Retrieved 2020-01-30.
  140. Journal of Popular Film and Television
     : 123
  141. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 49, 51, 53, 235.
  142. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 50.
  143. ^ Hibbs, Thomas (2004-12-03). "Bale Imitation". National Review Online. Archived from the original on 2009-03-22. Retrieved 2010-02-11.
  144. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 107–109.
  145. ^ Macaulay, Scott (2009-05-19). "Cinema with Bite: On the Films of Park Chan-wook". Film in Focus. Archived from the original on 2009-08-25. Retrieved 2009-09-29. Accomando, Beth (2009-08-20). "Thirst". KPBS.org. Archived from the original on 2009-10-05. Retrieved 2009-09-29.
  146. ^ "Neo Noir Movies at the Box Office". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on 2010-08-17. Retrieved 2010-09-15.
  147. ^ Naremore (2008), pp. 256, 295–96
  148. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 52.
  149. ^ "2008 Film Poll Results". Village Voice. 2008-12-30. Archived from the original on 2009-09-01. Retrieved 2009-09-29.
  150. ^ Naremore (2008), p. 299
  151. ^ Hughes, Sarah (2006-03-26). "Humphrey Bogart's Back—But This Time Round He's at High School". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2017-08-31. Retrieved 2010-10-10.
  152. ^ Puckett, Terek (2014-05-03). "The 20 Best Neo-Noir Films Of The 2000s". Tasteofcinema.com. Archived from the original on 2022-06-02.
  153. ^ Nelson, Max. "Review: Bastards". Film Comment (September/October 2013). Archived from the original on 2017-11-28. Retrieved 2017-06-03.
  154. Sight & Sound. Archived
    from the original on 2017-11-17. Retrieved 2017-06-03.
  155. ^ Kanter, Jake (2020-11-20). "'Game Of Thrones' Star Aidan Gillen To Front Genre-Bending Discovery Cosmology Series 'Killers Of The Cosmos'". Deadline. Archived from the original on 2021-10-31. Retrieved 2021-10-31.
  156. ^ "Killer of the Cosmos : Programs : Science Channel : Discovery Press Web". press.discovery.com. Archived from the original on 2021-10-30. Retrieved 2021-10-31.
  157. ^ "When Outer Space Meets Film Noir". Discovery. Archived from the original on 2021-10-30. Retrieved 2021-10-31.
  158. ^ Killers of the Cosmos | TVmaze, 24 October 2021, archived from the original on 2021-10-30, retrieved 2021-10-31
  159. ^ Hunter (1982), p. 197.
  160. ^ Kennedy (1982), p. 65.
  161. ^ Downs (2002), pp. 171, 173.
  162. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 242.
  163. ^ Aziz (2005), section "Future Noir and Postmodernism: The Irony Begins". Ballinger and Graydon note "future noir" synonyms: "'cyber noir' but predominantly 'tech noir'" (p. 242).
  164. ^ Dougherty, Robin (1997-03-21). "Sleek Chrome + Bruised Thighs". Salon. Archived from the original on 2011-01-23. Retrieved 2009-09-29.
  165. ^ a b Dargis (2004); Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 234.
  166. ^ Cammila Collar (2014). "The Animatrix: A Detective Story (2003)". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2014-11-29. Retrieved 2014-03-26.
  167. ^ Jeffries, L. B. (2010-01-19). "The Film Noir Roots of Cowboy Bebop". PopMatters. Retrieved 2012-01-25.
  168. ^ Matt Zoller Seitz (2015-04-09). "Ex Machina". rogerebert.com. Archived from the original on 2015-04-12. Retrieved 2015-06-03.
  169. ^ a b Silver and Ward (1992), p. 332.
  170. ^ Richardson (1992), p. 120.
  171. ^ Springer, Katherine (2013-06-23). "Touch Of Noir: Top 5 Film Noir Parodies". FilmFracture. Archived from the original on 2018-04-26. Retrieved 2018-04-25.
  172. ^ Naremore (2008), p. 158.
  173. ^ See, e.g., Kolker (2000), pp. 238–41.
  174. ^ Silver and Ward (1992), p. 419.
  175. ^ Holden (1999).
  176. ^ Irwin (2006), p. xii.
  177. ^ Harley, Nick (2019-10-31). "Always Sunny Season 14 Episode 6 Review: The Janitor Always Mops Twice". Den of Geek. Archived from the original on 2023-02-03. Retrieved 2023-02-03.
  178. ^ "Charlie is his own film noir hero in tonight's killer It's Always Sunny pastiche". The A.V. Club. 2019-10-31. Archived from the original on 2023-02-03. Retrieved 2023-02-03.
  179. ^ Rennie, Paul (2008-09-29). "Vertigo: Disorientation in orange". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2023-09-01. Retrieved 2018-04-25.
  180. ^ Bould (2005), p. 18.
  181. ^ Borde and Chaumeton (2002), pp. 161–63.
  182. ^ Silver and Ward (1992) list 315 classic films noir (passim), and Tuska (1984) lists 320 (passim). Later works are much more inclusive: Paul Duncan, The Pocket Essential Film Noir (2003), lists 647 (pp. 46–84). The title of Michael F. Keaney's Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940–1959 (2003) is self-explanatory.
  183. ^ Treated as noir: Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 34; Hirsch (2001), pp. 59, 163–64, 168. Excluded from canon: Silver and Ward (1992), p. 330. Ignored: Bould (2005); Christopher (1998); Ottoson (1981).
  184. ^ Included: Bould (2005), p. 126; Ottoson (1981), p. 174. Ignored: Ballinger and Graydon (2007); Hirsch (2001); Christopher (1998). Also see Silver and Ward (1992): ignored in 1980; included in 1988 (pp. 392, 396).
  185. ^ See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4; Christopher (1998), p. 8.
  186. ^ See, e.g., Ray (1985), p. 159.
  187. ^ Williams (2005), pp. 34–37.
  188. Chicago Sun Times. Archived
    from the original on September 1, 2023. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
  189. ^ See Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 31, on general issue. Christopher (1998) and Silver and Ward (1992), for instance, include Slightly Scarlet and Party Girl, but not Vertigo, in their filmographies. By contrast, Hirsch (2001) describes Vertigo as among those Hitchcock films that are "richly, demonstrably noir" (p. 139) and ignores both Slightly Scarlet and Party Girl; Bould (2005) similarly includes Vertigo in his filmography, but not the other two. Ottoson (1981) includes none of the three in his canon.
  190. ^ Place and Peterson (1974), p. 67.
  191. ^ Hirsch (2001), p. 67.
  192. ^ Silver (1995), pp. 219, 222.
  193. ^ Telotte (1989), pp. 74–87.
  194. ^ Neale (2000), pp. 166–67 n. 5.
  195. ^ Telotte (1989), p. 106.
  196. ^ Rombes, Nicholas, New Punk Cinema (2005), pp. 131–36.
  197. ^ Slocum (2001), p. 160.
  198. ^ Server (2006), p. 149.
  199. ^ Ottoson (1981), p. 143.
  200. ^ See, e.g., Naremore (2008), p. 25; Lyons (2000), p. 10.
  201. ^ Silver and Ward (1992), p. 6.
  202. ^ See, e.g., Hirsch (2001), pp. 128, 150, 160, 213; Christopher (1998), pp. 4, 32, 75, 83, 116, 118, 128, 155.
  203. ^ Abrams, Jerold J. (2006). The Philosophy of Film Noir. University Press of Kentucky.
  204. ^ See, e.g., Hirsch (2001), p. 17; Christopher (1998), p. 17; Telotte (1989), p. 148.
  205. ^ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 217–18; Hirsch (2001), p. 64.
  206. ^ Bould (2005), p. 18, on the critical establishment of this iconography, as well as p. 35; Hirsch (2001), p. 213; Christopher (1998), p. 7.
  207. ^ Holm (2005), pp. 13–25 passim.
  208. ^ See, e.g., Naremore (2008), p. 37, on the development of this viewpoint, and p. 103, on contributors to Silver and Ward encyclopedia; Ottoson (1981), p. 1.
  209. ^ See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4; Christopher (1998), pp. 7–8.
  210. ^ Christopher (1998), p. 37.
  211. ^ See, e.g., Muller (1998), p. 81, on analyses of the film; Silver and Ward (1992), p. 2.
  212. ^ See, e.g., Naremore (2008), p. 163, on critical claims of moral ambiguity; Lyons (2000), pp. 14, 32.
  213. ^ See Skoble (2006), pp. 41–48, for a survey of noir morality.
  214. ^ Ottoson (1981), p. 1.
  215. ^ Schrader (1972), p. 54 [in Silver and Ursini]. For characterization of definitive tone as "hopeless", see pp. 53 ("the tone more hopeless") and 57 ("a fatalistic, hopeless mood").
  216. ^ Hirsch (2001), p. 7. Hirsch subsequently states, "In character types, mood [emphasis added], themes, and visual composition, Double Indemnity offer[s] a lexicon of noir stylistics" (p. 8).
  217. ^ Sanders (2006), p. 100.
  218. ISBN 9781107476493
    .
  219. ISBN 0-85936-209-4
    .
  220. Merriam-Webster Online. Archived
    from the original on 2023-09-01. Retrieved 2009-02-10. Inflected Form(s): plural film noirs \-'nwär(z)\ or films noir or films noirs \-'nwär\
  221. ^ OED Third Edition, September 2016
  222. ^ Server (2002), pp. 182–98, 209–16; Downs (2002), p. 171; Ottoson (1981), pp. 82–83.

Sources

Suggested reading

Suggested listening

  • Murder is My Beat: Classic Film Noir Themes and Scenes (1997, Rhino Movie Music) – 18-track audio CD
  • Maltese Falcons, Third Men & Touches of Evil-The Sound of Film Noir 1941–1950 (2019, Jasmine Records [UK]) – 42-track audio CD
  • Film Noir: Six Classic Soundtracks (2016, Real Gone Jazz [UK]) – 57 tracks on 4 audio CDs

External links

Listen to this article (1 hour and 5 minutes)
Spoken Wikipedia icon
Audio help · More spoken articles
)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Film_noir&oldid=1218833402"