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What is 'Noir'?

Excerpt from the book 'Film Noir' by Alain Silver and James Ursini

How did a cycle of the American cinema become one of the most influential movements in film history? During its classic period, which lasted from 1941 to 1958, noir films were derided by critics of the time.

Lloyd Shearer, for example, writing a Sunday supplement piece for The New York Times (‘Crime Certainly Does Pay,` 5 August 1945) mocked the trends in ‘crime films` that were ‘homicidal,` ‘lusty` and filled with ‘gut-and-gore crime.` In fact the top echelon of the major studios – Paramount, Twentieth Century-Fox, MGM and Warner Bros. – usually relegated their ‘crime films` to B-units and released them on the bottom half of double bills.

The other majors – RKO, Universal, United Artists and Columbia – along with poverty-row companies like Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), pumped them out shamelessly. There were, of course, prestigious exceptions, Academy Award nominees like The Maltese Falcon (1941, Warner Bros.), Laura (1944, Twentieth Century-Fox) and Double Indemnity (1944, Paramount); but even mainstream honours did not save these films from widespread disparagement by the critical community.

In fact Shearer`s main target in his article is Double Indemnity.

How then, with such critical opprobrium heaped upon them and such industry disdain for their market value, did they become valorised as ‘film noir`?

How did they become a major influence on two subsequent generations of film-makers, including but not limited to Roman Polanski, Francis Ford Coppola, François Truffaut, Martin Scorsese, Claude Chabrol, Lawrence Kasdan, Luc Besson, Quentin Tarantino, Takeshi Kitano, David Fincher, Bertrand Tavernier, Stephen Frears, Spike Lee, Bryan Singer and Neil Jordan? Why, in fact, has this movement, called ‘neo-noir`, carried on unabated for over three decades?

 A term coined by Todd Erickson and first discussed at length in the second edition of Film Noir, An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style (1987), neo-noir began with films like Polanski`s Chinatown (1974), Coppola`s The Conversation (1974), Scorsese`s Taxi Driver (1976) and Kasdan`s Body Heat (1981). It continues up to the present through films like Jordan`s Mona Lisa (1986), Tarantino`s Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), Fincher`s Seven (1995), Singer`s The Usual Suspects (1995) and Frears` The Grifters (1990) and Dirty Pretty Things (2003).

Why have the actual French words ‘film noir` been incorporated into modern English dictionaries and become part of the lexicon of any self-respecting young film-maker?

The answer lies in the richness and complexity of the movement. The term ‘film noir` itself was coined by the French, always astute critics and avid fans of American culture from Alexis de Tocqueville through Charles Baudelaire to the young turks at Cahiers du cinéma.

 Still from 'M' (1931)

Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre, right) leads Elsie Beckmann (Inge Landgut) to her death. He is the archetypal film killer, a mixture of guilt and innocence, who says at some point, "I always feel that somebody is following me... It is myself... Following me."

It began to appear in French film criticism almost immediately after the conclusion of World War Two. Under Nazi occupation the French had been deprived of American movies for almost five years; and when they finally began to watch them in late 1945, they noticed a darkening not only of mood but of subject matter. Reviewers Nino Frank and Jean-Pierre Chartier wrote about these films in 1946. In 1955, long before film noir was discussed in any English-language book or article, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton wrote the first full-length study of the subject, Panorama du film noir américain. The young critic-film-makers at the French film periodical Cahiers du cinéma – Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Eric Rohmer, to name a few – took up the cause in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They began to examine the work of noir directors like Nicholas Ray, Robert Aldrich, Fritz Lang, Jacques Tourneur, Robert Siodmak and Anthony Mann.

 On the set of 'Attack!' (1956)

Director Robert Aldrich holds a copy of 'Panorama du film noir', the first book about film noir.

 Americans did not catch up with the French in their perception and appreciation of noir until a new generation of film enthusiasts entered film schools in the late 1960s. As they rebelled against the canon of American film history promoted by critics like Arthur Knight and Lewis Jacobs, these film students found inspiration in neglected noir classics such as the films featured in this book: Double Indemnity, Out of the Past (1947), T-Men (1948), Detour (1945), Criss Cross (1949), Gun Crazy (1950), Touch of Evil (1958), In a Lonely Place (1950), The Reckless Moment (1949) and Kiss Me Deadly (1955).

 Still from 'Quai des brumes', (1938)

The French poetic realist films of the 1930s mixed romantic crime thrillers with fatalism in low-life, fog-shrouded settings. Here deserter Jean (Jean Gabin) tries to save Nelly (Michèle Morgan) from a life of crime.

 The publication of several essays in English on noir, most importantly Raymond Durgnat`s ‘Paint It Black: The Family Tree of Film Noir` (Cinema 6/7, August 1970) and Paul Schrader`s ‘Notes on Film Noir` (Film Comment 8, Spring 1972), followed in the early 1970s. Still, when the first comprehensive survey of film noir in English, Film Noir, An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, first appeared in 1979, the term ‘film noir` was still mostly unknown outside of film school circles. Finally, with the added impact of a burgeoning neo-noir movement in the 1980s, the mainstream press took up the term. By the time the Terminator blasted through a nightclub called Tech Noir in 1984, the debate over what constitutes film noir was in full swing.

Cont...On Film Noir...Page Three

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