Benjamin Barrier, Cambridge UK, November 1997
In the first section of this essay I deal with some of the stylistic and sociological issues in the classic Noir period of the 40s and 50s. I then take these ideas and apply the key Noir themes to three films of the last two decades. I try to make a case for the modern films being true Noir.
Defining Noir
Light
Before the Noir period of the 40s and 50s, Hollywood films were lit to give a very flat effect. The film stock of the 20s and 30s was not especially fast, camera lenses were not of a sufficient quality, and the Hollywood film audiences expected to be able to see what was going in a movie, and to see the stars they had paid to view. This led to the over-use of High-Key lighting for the actors, in which all facial shadows were eliminated, and full lighting of interior scenes. Cameras were essentially static in the 20s and 30s, so full lighting was easy to achieve as only one camera angle was used. Perhaps the advent of sound had an effect in the late 20s / early 30s, as this new technology possibly absorbed some technical attention.
The classic Noir lighting style is one of deep shadows and luminous pools of light. High-contrast and fast film allows a large range of monochrome colours to emerge from the celluloid.
Mise-en-Scène and Montage
The mise-en-scène in classic Noir makes a big break from the theatre influenced form of pre-40s Hollywood films. Shots are taken from odd, disconcerting angles. Off-centre composition complements the high-contrast lighting. Subversion and distortion of accepted cinematic rules are the order of the day.
Again, editing in classic Noir breaks with the tradition of pre-Noir Hollywood. A wider range of shots is available from the improved camera technology, and editing is used to enhance the disturbing, disorienting effects of the Noir genre. By the mid-50s, editing adds to the manic, eccentric feel of films such as Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955).
Private Investigator
The recurring male lead in a classic Noir is the “Private Dick”, most typically embodied in Bogart’s hard boiled Sam Spade of Houston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941). Variations on the private detective are common, such as the insurance investigator Walter Neff in Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) and rich playboy / investigator Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly. As befitting the era, there is not much scope for emotional weakness and variation in these male characters – the effect is purely existential in the classic Noir period. The male lead is drawn into moral ambiguity and possible corruption and has to find his way to resolve the situation and restore order. There is often very little feeling of a personal journey. The male lead does not learn, he imposes his order on a decaying world, sometimes to a less than satisfactory end.
The Femme Fatal and the Good Woman
The female characters in Noir often take the classic Freudian forms of Madonna and Whore. The femme fatal provides an odd mix of what seems positive in the 90s – a strong woman who attempts to control events – and negative – the evil force that leads the male character astray into moral depravity. The emergence of a femme fatal must have been a shock for the audiences of the 40s, who must have been used to the woman as mother and home-maker, or at worst a Mata Hari figure, half-mythical and unlikely to encounter the “Ordinary Joe” represented by the private detective. To counter this frightening apparition of the femme fatal, there is often a good woman to provide some kind of balance. Unfortunately for the male lead, this good woman is often unexciting when compared to the sexual possibilities of the femme fatal, so the good woman is rarely more than an incidental character.
War
The emergence of Film Noir coincided with the USA’s entrance onto the theatres of World War II, although it took the post-war French to name and elevate the genre. Wartime concentrates the life of the people. Experiences are given elevated status, as soon one might die. There is often an outpouring of artistic expression during war, and this may have influenced the “brat-packers” of 40s Hollywood. Life is to be experienced viscerally and to the full. Falling for (or being) a femme fatal would have been an exciting possibility for civilians living through a war economy.
Social order in terms of women in the workplace and the black market adds an edge to the era, and Film Noir expresses this in its own way. Everything has its price. Love is quick and easy. Morality is bent to suit the times, where killing is a fact of life. All this distorting influence can be detected in the perversity of Noir.
War also brings refugees. The impact of middle-European film people into Hollywood is evident in Noir.
Family and Economic Prosperity
The family hit hard times during World War II. The male breadwinner was off somewhere fighting the enemy, women found themselves doing man’s work with effectiveness and there was opportunity for adultery and promiscuity undreamed of before the war. What did the man of the time have to come back to after fighting their battles? 40s Noir reflected this sense of the family being under attack and male paranoia of their role being affected and reduced.
However, in the 50s the family seems to make a comeback. The US economy is booming, war technological advances improve the quality of life for families, and all is like a Doris Day / Rock Hudson movie. Like the Los Angeles of the Noir genre, the surface appearance is not indicative of the truth. The atom bomb, the threat of world communism, the paranoia that comes with being the strongest nation on earth and the king of the hill. All these influences subvert the glossy, clean image of the times and somehow Noir carries on seamlessly with these issues.
The character of Noir in the 40s and 50s reflect the very different mood of the two decades, which is remarkable – that a genre can reflect two entirely different American societies. But perhaps this is because the USA went from one extreme (war) to another (prosperous peace) very quickly. Noir is nothing if not the cinema of the extreme.
The Émigré
The influx of middle-European directors, as well as other film people, had a large influence on Hollywood films, well beyond the war. Elements of the German expressionist film and the craft learnt at the UFA studio in Berlin lent Noir an expressionist lighting style, and a number of directors willing to take risks and subvert the standard Hollywood style. Directors such as Wilder, Siodmak, Dymytryk and Lang formed a brat-pack type clique that became fashionable and enabled the Noir genre to flourish despite disappointing mass audiences in the USA. The brat-pack effect sustained the Noir film throughout the 40s, until the themes were taken and used by the 50s Noir directors.
The Communist and the Maverick
The subversion of the American way must have clearly sign-posted the Noir directors of the 40s for the McCarthy witch-hunt. The communist paranoia that was whipped up in the early 50s cut short the careers of many of the Noir’s earliest leaders, or at least forced them to continue under assumed names.
During the 50s, the paranoid Noir was taken on by Mavericks such as Orson Welles, Aldrich and Edgar G. Ulmer.
Actors
Noir produced a number of new stars as the genre required different qualities to previous Hollywood films. Stars like Robert Mitchum were required to reflect the anti-hero characters of the Noir genre.
Composers
Music played a part in the Noir style. A European sensibility was required for the more experimental nature of the genre. In particular, Miklos Rozsa provided many scores for Noir and noirish films, such as Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Carl Reiner’s pastiche / homage to Noir, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), and noirish films such as Powell and Pressburger’s The Spy in Black (1937)
Some form of Classical music seems to creep into many of the Noir films of the 40s and 50s. Schubert is heard in Double Indemnity and Kiss Me Deadly, the moll in Joseph H. Lewis’s The Big Combo (1955) is a lapsed concert pianist. Even the Al Roberts of Ulmer’s Detour (1945) bashes out ballet music. Perhaps this is an attempt to link Noir films with higher-art?
How Does Neo-Noir film reflect the features of classic Noir?
The modern Neo-Noir film often plunders the stylistic elements of classic Noir. For example, lighting and visual mood has been pretty successfully re-worked for colour films, such as Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and Burton’s Batman (1989). The private detective / “Ordinary Joe” character is reflected in films such as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, specifically the original 1982 version, Brannagh’s Dead Again (1991) and in Wolfgang Peterson’s Shattered (1991). The femme fatal appears in her traditional guise in Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct (1992), Dahl’s The Last Seduction (1993) and again in Shattered. It is easy to spot where these classic Noir motifs are being employed to produce the required fashionable effect.
More difficult to find is the underlying sense of decayed moral standards, and one character’s attempt to remain uncorrupted by the general depravity going on around them. This underlying sense of doom is not as easy to copy as moody lighting effects and providing stock characters.
The true Neo-Noir film not only plays with the cinematic conventions of classic Noir, but uses some of the underlying moods and character motivations to try and push out the boundaries of the classic Noir period. In particular, to reflect the moral confusion and loss of accepted conventional norms that have come to denote 80s and 90s society in Western industrial democracies.
In Shattered, the Tom Berenger character exhibits true existential panic as he discovers that through plastic surgery, he isn’t the man he thinks he is. Gretta Scacchi plays a particularly effective femme fatale as the woman who draws the male lead character into mental torture and identity confusion. Noir elements such as the opening scene of a winding Californian road at night play on the stock 50s Noir conventions.
Curtis Hanson’s LA Confidential (1997) provides three contrasting characters pitted against internal corruption of the LAPD. Only by compromising their own moral standards and forming a team do the three detectives manage to overcome the threat to moral policing. Each of the three have to work through their doubts about the others’ motivations before they can surmount the moral dangers. The seamy 50s LA locations and Kim Basinger’s prostitute/moll provide the play with 50s Noir conventions.
The original Blade Runner has obvious Noir themes. The Sam Spade voice-overs, the decaying Los Angeles, the shadow filled eternal night time look. The underlying theme deals with the Harrison Ford character’s existential doubt - in this case about whether he is a man or a robot, and about the validity of his memories. Somewhat ironically this theme is more evident in the 1993 Director’s Cut. This and the paranoia about the control exerted on society by the Tyrell Corporation give Blade Runner true Noir validity.
Conclusion
The Noir conventions of style are important in the original Noir genre as well as in Neo-Noir of the last two decades. The visual mood of a film inevitably affects the perception of the characters set against the dark and foreboding world of the Noir film. Style alone is not enough however to denote a true Noir.
The underlying morality and how characters deal with threats to this morality really gives Noir the edge. The combination of this and a sympathetically dark style provide the emotional impact of a really good Film Noir.
I would say that for me the study of Film Noir has made me more aware of the interaction between a character’s morality and motivation and the cinematic backdrop against which the story is played out. It seems to me that Noir provides a readily identifiable link between these two aspects of a well constructed movie.
Main References
- Notes on Film Noir, Paul Schrader (from course notes)
- Microsoft Cinemania 97 CD-ROM
- Sight & Sound, November 1997, BFI
- Film Noir and the Contemporary Thriller, Course Notes, Patrick Phillips
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