Difference between revisions of "Film Noir" - New World Encyclopedia

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[[Image:bigcombo.jpg|thumb|right|300px|This still from ''[[The Big Combo]]'' (1955) demonstrates the visual style of film noir at its most extreme. [[John Alton]], the film's [[cinematography|cinematographer]], created many of the iconic images of film noir.]]
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[[Image:NosferatuShadow.jpg|thumb|270px|Colorized version of the shadow of the vampire seen climbing stairs in the famous film Nosferatu (1922).]]  
  
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'''Film noir''' is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish [[cinema of the United States|Hollywood]] crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in [[German Expressionism|German Expressionist]] cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the [[Great Depression|Depression]].  
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'''Film noir''' is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish [[cinema of the United States|Hollywood]] crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in [[German Expressionism|German Expressionist]] cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of [[crime fiction]] that emerged in the [[United States]] during the [[Great Depression|Depression]].  
  
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The term ''film noir'' (French for "black film"), was first applied to Hollywood movies by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, though was unknown to most American film industry professionals of the era. Cinema historians and critics defined the canon of film noir in retrospect; many of those involved in the making of the classic noirs later professed to be unaware of having created a distinctive type of film.
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The term ''film noir'' (French for "black film"), was first applied to [[Hollywood]] movies by French critic [[Nino Frank]] in 1946. Many of those involved in the making of the classic noirs later professed to be unaware of having created a distinctive type of film.
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Though film noirs were not known to be especially uplifting or spiritually redeeming, they did serve a moral purpose in that they brought to light the ambiguity of good and evil as well as how the underlying presence of temptation can disturb one's fair intentions, even those related to the pursuit of justice.
  
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Though film noirs were not known to be especially uplifting or spiritually redeeming, they did serve a moral purpose in that they brought to light the ambiquity of good and evil as well as how the underlying presence of temptation can disturb our affairs, even those related to our pursuit of justice.
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==Definition==
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Film noir embraced a variety of genres, from the gangster film to the police procedural to the so-called "social problem picture," and evidence of a variety of visual approaches, from Hollywood mainstream to ''outré'' (outside). While many critics refer to film noir as a genre in itself, others argue that it is more of a stylistic approach that can be applied to any genre.
  
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==Noir—What is it?==
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The history of film noir criticism has seen fundamental questions become matters of controversy unusually intense for such a field. Where aesthetic debates tend to concentrate on the quality and meaning of specific artworks and the intentions and influences of their creators, in film noir, the debates are regularly much broader.  
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[[Image:PulpUSPoster2.jpg|thumb|right|175px|The ''[[New York Times]]'' described how the "moods and tensions" in the British private-eye parody ''Pulp'' came "out of the collective depths of the film ''noir''"—the phrase's first appearance in the paper. It was February 1973.<ref>Greenspun (1973), p. 32.</ref>]]
 
  
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Film noirs embrace a variety of genres, from the gangster film to the police procedural to the so-called "social problem picture," and evidence a variety of visual approaches, from Hollywood mainstream to outré. While many critics refer to film noir as a genre in itself, others argue that it is more of a stylistic approach that can be applied to any genre. [[Alain Silver]], the most widely published American critic specializing in film noir studies, refers to the style as a "cycle" and a "phenomenon" that uses a consistent set of visual and thematic codes. Other critics treat film noir as a "mood," a "movement," or a "series," or simply address a chosen set of movies from the "period."
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Outside of the classic period, it becomes harder to classify movies as noir. In order to decide which films are noir (and which are not), many critics refer to a set of elements they see as marking examples of the mode. For instance, some critics insist that a true film noir must have a bleak conclusion, though many acknowledged classics of the genre have clearly happy endings. Other common elements of the tradition have a female representing the ''femme fatale'' character, snappy dialog, an urban setting, low-lighting, crime, and characters holding a pessimistic worldview.
  
 
==The prehistory of noir==
 
==The prehistory of noir==
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Film noir draws from sources not only in cinema but from other artistic forms as well. The low-key lighting schemes commonly linked with film noir is in the tradition of [[chiaroscuro]] and tenebrism, techniques using high contrasts of light and dark developed by fifteenth and sixteenth century painters associated with [[Mannerism]] and the [[Baroque]].
  
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Film noir draws from sources not only in cinema but from other artistic forms as well. The [[low-key lighting]] schemes commonly linked with film noirs are in the tradition of chiaroscuro and tenebrism, techniques using high contrasts of light and dark developed by 15th- and 16th-century painters associated with [[Mannerism]] and the [[Baroque]].  
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Another important cinematic antecedent to classic noir was 1930s French poetic realism, with its romantic, fatalistic attitude and celebration of doomed heroes. [[Italian neorealism]] is yet another acknowledged influence on certain trends in noir, with its emphasis on quasi-documentary authenticity. However, aesthetics of Film noir was most deeply influenced by [[German Expressionism]], a cinematic movement of the 1910s and 1920s, closely related to contemporary developments in [[theater]], [[photography]], [[painting]], [[sculpture]], and [[architecture]]. The opportunities offered by the booming Hollywood film industry and, later, the threat of growing [[Nazism|Nazi]] power led to the emigration of many important film artists working in [[Germany]] who had been directly involved in the Expressionist movement. Directors such as [[Fritz Lang]], [[Robert Siodmak]], and [[Michael Curtiz]] brought dramatic lighting techniques and a psychologically expressive approach with them to Hollywood, where they would make some of the most famous of classic noir films. Lang's 1931 masterwork, the German film, ''M,'' is among the first major crime films of the "sound era" to join a characteristically "noirish" visual style with a noir-type plot, one in which the protagonist is a criminal, as are his most successful pursuers. ''M'' was also the occasion for the first star performance by [[Peter Lorre]], who would go on to act in several formative American noir films of the classic era.
  
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Another important cinematic antecedent to classic noir was 1930s French [[poetic realism]], with its romantic, fatalistic attitude and celebration of doomed heroes. [[Italian neorealism]] is yet another acknowledged influence on certain trends in noir, with its emphasis on quasi-documentary authenticity. However, Film noir's aesthetics were most deeply influenced by [[German Expressionism]], a cinematic movement of the 1910s and 1920s closely related to contemporaneous developments in theater, photography, painting, sculpture, and architecture. The opportunities offered by the booming Hollywood film industry and, later, the threat of growing [[Nazism|Nazi]] power led to the emigration of many important film artists working in [[Germany]] who had either been directly involved in the Expressionist movement or studied with its practitioners. Directors such as [[Fritz Lang]], [[Robert Siodmak]], and [[Michael Curtiz]] brought dramatic lighting techniques and a psychologically expressive approach to [[mise-en-scène]] with them to Hollywood, where they would make some of the most famous of classic noirs. Lang's 1931 masterwork, the German ''[[M (1931 film)|M]]'', is among the first major crime films of the "sound era" to join a characteristically noirish visual style with a noir-type plot, one in which the [[protagonist]] is a criminal (as are his most successful pursuers). ''M'' was also the occasion for the first star performance by [[Peter Lorre]], who would go on to act in several formative American noirs of the classic era.
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By 1931, director Michael Curtiz had already been in Hollywood for half a decade, making as many as six films a year. Movies of his, such as ''20,000 Years in Sing Sing'' (1932) and ''Private Detective 62'' (1933) are among the early Hollywood sound films arguably classifiable as noir. Giving movie-makers particularly free stylistic rein were [[Universal Studios|Universal]] horror pictures such as ''Dracula'' (1931), ''The Mummy'' (1932), and ''The Black Cat'' (1934). The Universal horror film that comes closest to noir, both in story and sensibility, however, is ''The Invisible Man'' (1933), directed by Englishman [[James Whale]] and shot by American [[Carl Laemmle, Jr.]]
  
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[[Image:MarleneSmokes2.jpg|thumb|200px|right|The "original" [[femme fatale]], [[Marlene Dietrich]], complete with noir-regulation cigarette, in a publicity shot for [[Josef von Sternberg]]'s mordant melodrama ''[[Der blaue Engel]]'' (''The Blue Angel''; 1930).]]
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Regarding movies not themselves considered film noir, perhaps none had a greater effect on the development of the genre than America's own ''Citizen Kane'' (1941), the landmark motion picture directed by [[Orson Welles]]. Its Sternbergian visual intricacy and complex, voiceover-driven narrative structure have been echoed in dozens of classic film noirs.
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By 1931, director Michael Curtiz had already been in Hollywood for half a decade, making as many as six films a year. Movies of his such as ''20,000 Years in Sing Sing'' (1932) and ''Private Detective 62'' (1933) are among the early Hollywood sound films arguably classifiable as noir. Giving Expressionist-affiliated moviemakers particularly free stylistic rein were [[Universal Studios|Universal]] horror pictures such as ''Dracula'' (1931), ''The Mummy'' (1932) and ''The Black Cat'' (1934). The Universal horror that comes closest to noir, both in story and sensibility, however, is ''The Invisible Man'' (1933), directed by Englishman [[James Whale]] and shot by American [[Carl Laemmle Jr.]]
 
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Regarding movies not themselves considered film noirs, perhaps none had a greater effect on the development of the genre than America's own ''[[Citizen Kane]]'' (1941), the landmark motion picture directed by [[Orson Welles]]. Its Sternbergian visual intricacy and complex, voiceover-driven narrative structure have been echoed in dozens of classic film noirs.
 
  
 
===Early literary influences===
 
===Early literary influences===
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[[Image:BlackMask1934Oct.jpg|thumb|right|200px|The October 1934 issue of ''Black Mask'' magazine featured the first appearance of the detective character whom [[Raymond Chandler]] would develop into the famous Philip Marlowe.<ref>See Jim Doherty's essay on [http://www.thrillingdetective.com/carmady.html Carmady] at the ''Thrilling Detective'' website for a detailed analysis of the private eye character who appears in "The Finger Man."</ref>]]
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The primary literary movement to have influenced 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 noir films, ''[[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). A decade before the classic era, a story of Hammett's was the source for the gangster melodrama ''City Streets'' (1931), directed by [[Rouben Mamoulian]] and photographed by Lee Garmes, who worked regularly with Sternberg. Wedding a style and story both with many noir characteristics, released the month before Lang's ''M,'' ''City Streets'' has a claim to being the first major film noir.
  
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The primary literary movement to have influenced 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). A decade before the classic era, a story of Hammett's was the source for the gangster melodrama ''City Streets'' (1931), directed by [[Rouben Mamoulian]] and photographed by Lee Garmes, who worked regularly with Sternberg. Wedding a style and story both with many noir characteristics, released the month before Lang's ''M'', ''City Streets'' has a claim to being the first major film noir.
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[[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 noir films—''Murder, My Sweet'' (1944; adapted from ''Farewell, My Lovely''), ''The Big Sleep'' (1946), and ''Lady in the Lake'' (1947)—but 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. For much of the 1940s, one of the most prolific and successful authors of this often downbeat brand of suspense tale was [[Cornell Woolrich]]. No writer's published work provided the basis for more film noirs of the classic period than Woolrich's—thirteen in all—including ''Black Angel'' (1946), ''Deadline at Dawn'' (1946), and ''Fear in the Night'' (1947).
  
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[[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. For much of the 1940s, one of the most prolific and successful authors of this often downbeat brand of suspense tale was [[Cornell Woolrich]]. No writer's published work provided the basis for more film noirs of the classic period than Woolrich's: thirteen in all, including ''Black Angel'' (1946), ''Deadline at Dawn'' (1946), and ''Fear in the Night'' (1947).
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A crucial literary source for film noir, now often overlooked, was [[William R. Burnett|W.R. Burnett]], whose first novel published was ''Little Caesar,'' in 1929. It would be adapted into the hit for [[Warner Bros.]] in 1931; the following year, Burnett was hired to write dialog for ''Scarface'' while ''Beast of the City'' was adapted from one of his stories. Some critics regard these latter two movies as film noir despite their early date. 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 way, a way just happening to be that of the gangster. During the classic era, his work, either as author or screenwriter, was the basis for seven movies now widely regarded as film noir, including three of the most famous: ''High Sierra'' (1941), ''This Gun for Hire'' (1942), and ''The Asphalt Jungle'' (1950).
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A crucial literary source for film noir, now often overlooked, was [[William R. Burnett|W. R. Burnett]], whose first novel to be published was ''Little Caesar'', in 1929. It would be adapted into the hit for [[Warner Bros.]] in 1931; the following year, Burnett was hired to write dialogue for ''Scarface'', while ''Beast of the City'' was adapted from one of his stories. Some critics regard these latter two movies as film noirs, despite their early date. 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 way, a way just happening to be that of the gangster. During the classic era, his work, either as author or screenwriter, was the basis for seven movies now widely regarded as film noirs, including three of the most famous: ''High Sierra'' (1941), ''This Gun for Hire'' (1942), and ''The Asphalt Jungle'' (1950).
 
  
 
==The classic period==
 
==The classic period==
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[[Image:Outofthepastcar.jpg|right|250px|thumb|One of the quintessential film noirs, ''[[Out of the Past]]'' (1947) features many of the genre's hallmarks: a cynical private detective as the protagonist, a sexy [[femme fatale]], multiple [[Flashback (literary technique)|flashback]]s with [[voiceover]] narration, dramatic [[chiaroscuro]] photography, and a [[fatalism|fatalistic]] mood leavened with provocative banter. The film stars [[Robert Mitchum]], one of the foremost male icons of film noir.]]
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The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. The movie most commonly cited as the first "true" film noir is [[Boris Ingster]]'s ''Stranger on the Third Floor'' (1940). While ''City Streets'' and other pre-[[World War II|WWII]] crime melodramas such as ''Fury'' (1936) and ''You Only Live Once'' (1937), both directed by Fritz Lang, are considered full-fledged noir by some critics, most categorize them as "proto-noir" or in similar terms.
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The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. The movie most commonly cited as the first "true" film noir is ''[[Stranger on the Third Floor]]'' (1940). While ''City Streets'' and other pre-WWII crime melodramas such as ''[[Fury (1936 film)|Fury]]'' (1936) and ''[[You Only Live Once]]'' (1937), both directed by Fritz Lang, are considered full-fledged noir by some critics, most categorize them as "proto-noir" or in similar terms.
 
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Orson Welles's ''[[Touch of Evil]]'' (1958) is frequently cited as the last noir of the classic period. 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. A majority of critics, however, regard comparable movies made outside the classic era to be something other than genuine film noirs. 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 moviemaking style and latter-day awareness of noir as a historical source for [[allusion]].
 
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Most of the film noirs of the classic period were low- and modestly budgeted features without major stars ([[B-movies]] either literally or in spirit), in which writers, directors, cinematographers, and other craftsmen found themselves relatively free from the typical big-picture constraints. While enforcement of the [[Production Code]] ensured that no movie character could literally get away with murder, at the B level of noir especially, one could come awful close. Thematically, film noirs as a group were most exceptional for the relative frequency with which they centered on women of questionable virtue—a focus very rare in Hollywood films after the mid-1930s and the end of the [[pre-Code]] era.The signal movie in this vein was ''[[Double Indemnity (film)|Double Indemnity]]'', directed by Billy Wilder; setting the mold was [[Barbara Stanwyck]]'s unforgettable [[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 all the way, the movie's commercial success and seven [[Academy Award|Oscar]] nominations made it probably the most influential of the early noirs; in particular, it led to a spate of what later became known as "[[bad girl movies]]."
 
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Conventional A films, however emotionally tortuous, were ultimately expected to convey positive, reassuring messages; in terms of style, invisible camerawork and [[continuity editing|editing]] techniques, flattering soft lighting schemes, and deluxely trimmed sets were the rule. The makers of film noir turned all this on its head, creating sophisticated, sometimes bleak dramas tinged with mistrust, cynicism, and a sense of the [[Absurdism|absurd]], in settings that were frequently either real-life urban or budget-saving minimalist, with often strikingly expressionist lighting and unsettling techniques such as wildly skewed camera angles and convoluted flashbacks. The noir style gradually influenced the mainstream—even beyond Hollywood.
 
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===Thirty-five notable American film noirs of the classic period===
 
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'''(with directors and significant noir performers—''supporting players in italics'')'''{{fn|1}}
 
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====1940–1949====
 
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*''[[Stranger on the Third Floor]]'' (1940) d. Boris Ingster, w/ [[Peter Lorre]], ''[[Elisha Cook Jr.]]''
 
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*''[[High Sierra (film)|High Sierra]]'' (1941) d. [[Raoul Walsh]], w/ [[Ida Lupino]], [[Humphrey Bogart]], ''[[Arthur Kennedy (actor)|Arthur Kennedy]]''
 
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*''[[The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)|The Maltese Falcon]]'' (1941) d. [[John Huston]], w/ Bogart, ''Lorre, [[Sydney Greenstreet]], Cook'' (costarring [[Mary Astor]])
 
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*''[[Shadow of a Doubt]]'' (1943) d. [[Alfred Hitchcock]], w/ [[Joseph Cotten]]
 
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*''[[Laura (1944 film)|Laura]]'' (1944) d. [[Otto Preminger]], w/ [[Gene Tierney]], [[Dana Andrews]], [[Clifton Webb]]
 
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*''[[Double Indemnity (film)|Double Indemnity]]'' (1944) d. [[Billy Wilder]], w/ [[Fred MacMurray]], [[Barbara Stanwyck]], [[Edward G. Robinson]]
 
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*''[[The Lost Weekend]]'' (1945) d. Wilder, w/ [[Ray Milland]]
 
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*''[[Mildred Pierce (film)|Mildred Pierce]]'' (1945) d. [[Michael Curtiz]], w/ [[Joan Crawford]], [[Zachary Scott]], ''[[Bruce Bennett]]''
 
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*''[[Detour (1945 film)|Detour]]'' (1945) d. [[Edgar G. Ulmer]], w/ ''[[Tim Ryan (actor)|Tim Ryan]], [[Esther Howard]], [[Don Brodie]]'' (starring [[Tom Neal]] and [[Ann Savage]])
 
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*''[[The Big Sleep (1946 film)|The Big Sleep]]'' (1946) d. [[Howard Hawks]], w/ Bogart, [[Lauren Bacall]], ''[[Dorothy Malone]], Cook''
 
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*''[[Gilda]]'' (1946) d. [[Charles Vidor]], w/ [[Rita Hayworth]], [[Glenn Ford]], ''[[George Macready]], [[Joseph Calleia]]''
 
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*''[[The Killers (1946 film)|The Killers]]'' (1946) d. [[Robert Siodmak]], w/ [[Burt Lancaster]], [[Ava Gardner]], [[Edmond O'Brien]], ''[[Albert Dekker]], [[Sam Levene]], [[Charles McGraw]], [[William Conrad]], [[Jeff Corey]]''
 
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*''[[Notorious (1946 film)|Notorious]]'' (1946) d. Hitchcock, w/ [[Claude Rains]] (starring [[Cary Grant]] and [[Ingrid Bergman]])
 
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*''[[The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946 film)|The Postman Always Rings Twice]]'' (1946) d. [[Tay Garnett]], w/ [[Lana Turner]], [[John Garfield]], ''[[Audrey Totter]]''
 
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*''[[The Stranger (1946 film)|The Stranger]]'' (1946) d. [[Orson Welles]], w/ Robinson, [[Loretta Young]], Welles, ''Erskine Sanford''
 
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*''[[Dark Passage (1947 film)|Dark Passage]]'' (1947) d. [[Delmer Daves]], w/ Bogart, Bacall, ''Bennett''
 
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*''[[The Lady from Shanghai]]'' (1947) d. Welles, w/ Hayworth, Welles, ''[[Everett Sloane]], [[Ted de Corsia]], Sanford''
 
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*''[[Out of the Past]]'' (1947) d. [[Jacques Tourneur]], w/ Mitchum, [[Jane Greer]], [[Kirk Douglas]], ''[[Rhonda Fleming]], [[Richard Webb (actor)|Richard Webb]], [[Steve Brodie (actor)|Steve Brodie]]''
 
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*''[[Key Largo (film)|Key Largo]]'' (1948) d. Huston, w/ Bogart, Robinson, Bacall, ''[[Claire Trevor]], [[Thomas Gomez]]''
 
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*''[[White Heat]]'' (1949) d. Walsh, w/ [[James Cagney]], O'Brien, ''[[Steve Cochran]], [[Fred Clark]]'' (costarring [[Virginia Mayo]])
 
  
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====1950–1958====
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[[Image:Double indemnity screenshot 8.jpg|thumb|250px|Rita Hayworth and Fred MacMurray in ''Double Indemnity'']]
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*''[[The Asphalt Jungle]]'' (1950) d. Huston, w/ [[Sterling Hayden]], ''[[Barry Kelley]], [[Ray Teal]]''
 
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*''[[D.O.A. (1950 film)|D.O.A.]]'' (1950) d. [[Rudolph Maté]], w/ O'Brien, ''[[Luther Adler]]''
 
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*''[[In a Lonely Place]]'' (1950) d. [[Nicholas Ray]], w/ Bogart, [[Gloria Grahame]], ''[[Frank Lovejoy]], Carl Benton Reid, [[Art Smith]], Jeff Donnell''
 
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*''[[Night and the City]]'' (1950) d. [[Jules Dassin]], w/ [[Richard Widmark]], [[Gene Tierney]], ''[[Mike Mazurki]]'' [see "[[Film noir#Film noir outside the United States|Film noir outside the United States]]" below for its status as an American noir]
 
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*''[[Sunset Boulevard (1950 film)|Sunset Boulevard]]'' (1950) d. Wilder, w/ [[William Holden]], ''Clark, Jack Webb'' (costarring [[Gloria Swanson]])
 
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*''[[Ace in the Hole (1951 film)|Ace in the Hole]]'' (1951) d. Wilder, w/ Douglas, [[Jan Sterling]], ''[[Robert Arthur (radio announcer)|Robert Arthur]], [[Frank Cady]], [[Richard Benedict]], Teal, Lewis Martin, [[Timothy Carey]]''
 
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*''[[Strangers on a Train (film)|Strangers on a Train]]'' (1951) d. Hitchcock, w/ [[Farley Granger]], [[Ruth Roman]], ''[[Kasey Rogers]], [[John Doucette]]'' (costarring [[Robert Hudson Walker|Robert Walker]])
 
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*''[[Pickup on South Street]]'' (1953) d. [[Samuel Fuller]], w/ Widmark, ''[[Richard Kiley]], [[Milburn Stone]]''
 
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*''[[The Big Heat]]'' (1953) d. [[Fritz Lang]], w/ Ford, Grahame, ''[[Lee Marvin]], [[Carolyn Jones]], Doucette''
 
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*''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'' (1955) d. [[Robert Aldrich]], w/  ''Dekker, [[Paul Stewart (actor)|Paul Stewart]], Marian Carr, [[Jack Elam]], Helton'' (starring [[Ralph Meeker]])
 
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*''[[The Night of the Hunter (film)|The Night of the Hunter]]'' (1955) d. [[Charles Laughton]], w/ Mitchum, [[Shelley Winters]] (costarring [[Lillian Gish]])
 
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*''[[The Killing]]'' (1956) d. [[Stanley Kubrick]], w/ Hayden, [[Coleen Gray]], [[Vince Edwards]], ''[[Jay C. Flippen]], Cook, [[Marie Windsor]], de Corsia, Carey, [[Joe Turkel]], [[Jay Adler]]''
 
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*''[[The Wrong Man]]'' (1956) d. Hitchcock, w/ [[Henry Fonda]], ''[[Harold J. Stone]]'' (costarring [[Vera Miles]])
 
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*''[[Sweet Smell of Success]]'' (1957) d. [[Alexander Mackendrick]], w/ Lancaster, [[Tony Curtis]], ''Levene, Donnell, Jay Adler''
 
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*''[[Touch of Evil]]'' (1958) d. Welles, w/ [[Charlton Heston]], [[Janet Leigh]], Welles, ''Calleia, [[Ray Collins (actor)|Ray Collins]]''
 
  
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==Film noir outside the United States==
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Orson Welles's ''Touch of Evil'' (1958) is frequently cited as the last noir of the classic period. Some scholars believe film noir never really ended, but has 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 made in the noir tradition are seen as part of a continuity of classic noir. A majority of critics, however, regard comparable movies 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 movie-making style and latter-day awareness of noir as a historical source for allusion.
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Some critics regard classic film noir as a cycle exclusive to the United States; e.g., Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward: "With the Western, film noir shares the distinction of being an indigenous American form...a wholly American film style."<ref>Silver and Ward (1992), p. 1.</ref> Others, however, regard noir as an international phenomenon.<ref>See Palmer (2004), pp. 267–268, for a representative discussion of film noir as an international phenomenon.</ref>
 
  
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[[Image:MoreauAscenseur.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[Jeanne Moreau]] in [[Louis Malle]]'s ''[[Ascenseur pour l'échafaud]]'' (''Elevator to the Gallows''; 1958). The film features one of the most acclaimed of all noir [[Film score|scores]], composed and performed by jazz musician [[Miles Davis]].]]
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Most of the film noir of the classic period were modestly budgeted features without major stars, also known as B-movies (either literally or in spirit), in which writers, directors, cinematographers, and other craftsmen were relatively free from the typical big-picture constraints. While enforcement of the [[Production Code]] ensured that no movie character could literally get away with murder, at the B level of noir one could come awful close. Thematically, noir films as a group were most exceptional for the relative frequency with which they centered on women of questionable virtue—a focus very rare in Hollywood films after the mid-1930s and the end of the pre-Code era. The signal movie in this vein was ''Double Indemnity,'' directed by Billy Wilder and starring [[Barbara Stanwyck]] as the unforgettable femme fatale. An A-level feature in all ways, the movie's commercial success and seven [[Academy Award|Oscar]] nominations made it probably the most influential of the early noir films.  
  
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During the classic period, there were many films produced outside the United States, particularly in France, that share elements of style, theme, and sensibility with American film noirs and may themselves be included in the genre's canon. In certain cases, the interrelationship with Hollywood noir is obvious: Other well-known French films often classified as noir include ''[[Quai des Orfèvres]]'' (1947), ''[[Le Salaire de la peur]]'' (1953)  and ''[[Les Diaboliques (film)|Les Diaboliques]]'' (1955), all directed by [[Henri-Georges Clouzot]]; ''[[Casque d'or]]'' (1952) and ''[[Touchez pas au grisbi]]'' (1954), both directed by [[Jacques Becker]]; and ''[[Ascenseur pour l'échafaud]]'' (1958), directed by [[Louis Malle]]. French director [[Jean-Pierre Melville]] is widely recognized for his tragic, minimalist film noirs—''Quand tu liras cette lettre'' (1953) and ''[[Bob le flambeur]]'' (1955), from the classic period, were followed by ''[[Le Doulos]]'' (1962), ''[[Le Samouraï]]'' (1967), and ''[[Le Cercle rouge]]'' (1970).  
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Conventional "A" films, however emotionally tortuous, were ultimately expected to convey positive, reassuring messages. And in terms of style, invisible camerawork and editing techniques, flattering soft lighting schemes, and deluxely trimmed sets were the standard for these features. The makers of film noir turned all this on its head, creating sophisticated, sometimes bleak dramas tinged with mistrust, cynicism, and a sense of the absurd, in settings that were frequently either real-life urban or budget-saving minimalist, with often strikingly expressionist lighting and unsettling techniques such as wildly skewed camera angles and convoluted flashbacks. The noir style gradually influenced the mainstream, even beyond [[Hollywood]].
  
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A number of thrillers produced in Great Britain during the classic period are also frequently referred to as film noirs, including ''[[Contraband (film)|Contraband]]'' (1940) and ''[[The Small Back Room]]'' (1949), directed by [[Michael Powell (director)|Michael Powell]] and [[Emeric Pressburger]]; ''Brighton Rock'' (1947), directed by [[John Boulting]]; ''[[They Made Me a Fugitive]]'' (1947), directed by [[Alberto Cavalcanti]]; and ''[[Cast a Dark Shadow]]'' (1955), directed by [[Lewis Gilbert]]. [[Terence Fisher]] directed several low-budget thrillers in a noir mode for [[Hammer Film Productions]], including ''The Last Page'' (aka ''Man Bait''; 1952), ''[[Stolen Face]]'' (1952), and ''Murder by Proxy'' (aka ''Blackout''; 1954). The most famous of classic British noirs is director [[Carol Reed]]'s ''[[The Third Man]]'' (1949), like ''Brighton Rock'' based on a [[Graham Greene]] novel. Set in Vienna immediately after World War II, it stars [[Joseph Cotten]] and [[Orson Welles]], both prominent American actors who starred in U.S. film noirs; despite being a completely British production, the movie is sometimes discussed as if it is a classic Hollywood noir.
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===Thirty-five notable American films in the noir classic period===
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(with directors and significant noir performers—''supporting players in italics'')
  
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Elsewhere, Italian director [[Luchino Visconti]] adapted Cain's ''The Postman Always Rings Twice'' as ''[[Ossessione]]'' (1943), regarded both as one of the great noirs and a seminal film in the development of neorealism. Noir crime films and melodramas have been produced in many countries in the post-classic area, some of them quintessentially self-aware neo-noirs—for example, ''[[The Conformist (film)|Il Conformista]]'' (1969; Italy), ''[[The American Friend|Der Amerikanische Freund]]'' (1977; Germany), ''[[The Element of Crime]]'' (1984; Denmark), ''[[As Tears Go By]]'' (1988; Hong Kong)—others simply sharing narrative elements and a version of the hardboiled sensibility associated with classic noir—''[[Yoshitaro Nomura|The Castle of Sand]]'' (1974; Japan), ''[[Insomnia (1997 film)|Insomnia]]'' (1997; Norway), ''[[Croupier (film)|Croupier]]'' (1998; UK), ''[[Blind Shaft]]'' (2003; China).
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*''Stranger on the Third Floor'' (1940) d. Boris Ingster, with Peter Lorre, ''Elisha Cook Jr.''
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*''High Sierra'' (1941) d. Raoul Walsh, with Ida Lupino, [[Humphrey Bogart]], ''Arthur Kennedy''
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*''The Maltese Falcon'' (1941) d. [[John Huston]], with Bogart, ''Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Cook''
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*''Shadow of a Doubt'' (1943) d. [[Alfred Hitchcock]], with Joseph Cotten
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*''Laura'' (1944) d. Otto Preminger, with Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb
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*''Double Indemnity'' (1944) d. Billy Wilder, with Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson
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*''The Lost Weekend'' (1945) d. Wilder, with Ray Milland
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*''Mildred Pierce'' (1945) d. Michael Curtiz, with [[Joan Crawford]], Zachary Scott, ''Bruce Bennett''
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*''Detour'' (1945) d. Edgar G. Ulmer, with ''Tim Ryan, Esther Howard, Don Brodie'' (starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage)
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*''The Big Sleep'' (1946) d. Howard Hawks, with Bogart, [[Lauren Bacall]], ''Dorothy Malone''
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*''Gilda'' (1946) d. Charles Vidor, with [[Rita Hayworth]], [[Glenn Ford]], ''George Macready, Joseph Calleia''
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*''The Killers'' (1946) d. Robert Siodmak, with [[Burt Lancaster]], [[Ava Gardner]], Edmond O'Brien, ''Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, Charles McGraw, William Conrad, Jeff Corey''
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*''Notorious'' (1946) d. Hitchcock, with Claude Rains (starring [[Cary Grant]] and [[Ingrid Bergman]])
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*''The Postman Always Rings Twice'' (1946) d. Tay Garnett, with [[Lana Turner]], John Garfield, ''Audrey Totter''
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*''The Stranger'' (1946) d. [[Orson Welles]], with Robinson, Loretta Young, ''Erskine Sanford''
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*''Dark Passage'' (1947) d. Delmer Daves, with Bogart, Bacall, ''Bennett''
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*''The Lady from Shanghai'' (1947) d. Welles, with Hayworth, Welles, ''Everett Sloane, Ted de Corsia, Sanford''
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*''Out of the Past'' (1947) d. Jacques Tourneur, with Mitchum, Jane Greer, [[Kirk Douglas]], ''Rhonda Fleming, Richard Webb, Steve Brodie''
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*''Key Largo'' (1948) d. Huston, with Bogart, Robinson, Bacall, ''Claire Trevor, Thomas Gomez''
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*''White Heat'' (1949) d. Walsh, with [[James Cagney]], O'Brien, ''Steve Cochran, Fred Clark'' (costarring Virginia Mayo)
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*''The Asphalt Jungle'' (1950) d. Huston, with Sterling Hayden, ''Barry Kelley, Ray Teal''
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*''D.O.A.'' (1950) d. Rudolph Maté, with O'Brien, ''Luther Adler''
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*''In a Lonely Place'' (1950) d. Nicholas Ray, with Bogart, Gloria Grahame, ''Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith, Jeff Donnell''
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*''Night and the City'' (1950) d. Jules Dassin, with Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, ''Mike Mazurki''
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*''Sunset Boulevard'' (1950) d. Wilder, with William Holden, ''Clark, Jack Webb'' (costarring Gloria Swanson)
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*''Ace in the Hole'' (1951) d. Wilder, with Douglas, Jan Sterling, ''Robert Arthur, Frank Cady, Richard Benedict, Teal, Lewis Martin, Timothy Carey''
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*''Strangers on a Train'' (1951) d. Hitchcock, with Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, ''Kasey Rogers, John Doucette'' (costarring Robert Walker)
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*''Pickup on South Street'' (1953) d. Samuel Fuller, with Widmark, ''Richard Kiley, Milburn Stone''
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*''The Big Heat'' (1953) d. Fritz Lang, with Ford, Grahame, ''Lee Marvin, Carolyn Jones, Doucette''
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*''Kiss Me Deadly'' (1955) d. Robert Aldrich, with  ''Dekker, Paul Stewart, Marian Carr, Jack Elam, Helton'' (starring Ralph Meeker)
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*''The Night of the Hunter'' (1955) d. Charles Laughton, with Mitchum, [[Shelley Winters]] (costarring Lillian Gish)
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*''The Killing'' (1956) d. [[Stanley Kubrick]], with Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, ''Jay C. Flippen, Cook, Marie Windsor, de Corsia, Carey, Joe Turkel, Jay Adler''
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*''The Wrong Man'' (1956) d. Hitchcock, with [[Henry Fonda]], ''Harold J. Stone'' (costarring Vera Miles)
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*''Sweet Smell of Success'' (1957) d. Alexander Mackendrick, with Lancaster, [[Tony Curtis]], ''Levene, Donnell, Jay Adler''
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*''Touch of Evil'' (1958) d. Welles, with [[Charlton Heston]], Janet Leigh, Welles, ''Calleia, Ray Collins''
  
 
==Neo-noir and echoes of the classic mode==
 
==Neo-noir and echoes of the classic mode==
 
===The 1960s and 1970s===
 
===The 1960s and 1970s===
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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 film)|Cape Fear]]'' (1962) and the noirs of the late 1950s, new trends emerged in the post-classic era. ''[[The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)|The Manchurian Candidate]]'' (1962), directed by [[John Frankenheimer]], ''[[Shock Corridor]]'' (1962), directed by Samuel Fuller, and ''[[Brainstorm (1965 film)|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.  
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New trends emerged in the post-classic era. ''The Manchurian Candidate'' (1962), directed by [[John Frankenheimer]], ''Shock Corridor'' (1962), 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.
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In a different vein, filmmakers such as [[Arthur Penn]], [[John Boorman]], and [[Alan J. Pakula]] directed movies that knowingly related themselves to the original film noir, inviting audiences in on the game. Conscious acknowledgment of the classic era's conventions, as historical [[archetype]]s to be revived, rejected, or re-imagined, is what puts the "neo" in neo-noir, according to many critics. The first broadly popular [[crime drama]] of an unmistakable neo-noir nature was not a movie, but the TV series ''Peter Gunn'' (1958–61), created by [[Blake Edwards]].
  
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In a different vein, filmmakers such as [[Arthur Penn]] (''Mickey One'' [1964], clearly drawing inspiration from Truffaut's ''Tirez sur la pianiste'' and other [[French New Wave]] films), [[John Boorman]] (''[[Point Blank (film)|Point Blank]]'' [1967], similarly caught up, though in the ''Nouvelle vague'''s deeper waters), and [[Alan J. Pakula]] (''[[Klute]]'' [1971]) directed movies that knowingly related themselves to the original film noirs, inviting audiences in on the game. Conscious acknowledgment of the classic era's conventions, as historical [[archetypes]] to be revived, rejected, or reimagined, is what puts the "neo" in neo-noir, according to many critics. Though several late classic noirs, ''Kiss Me Deadly'' in particular, were entirely self-knowing and post-traditional in conception, none that were top- or midbudgeted (like [[Robert Aldrich|Aldrich]]'s masterpiece) tipped its hand in a way noticeable to most audiences of the time. The first broadly popular crime drama of an unmistakabe neo-noir nature was not a movie, but the TV series ''[[Peter Gunn]]'' (1958–61), created by [[Blake Edwards]].
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A manifest affiliation with noir traditions can also provide the basis for explicit critiques of those traditions. The first major film of this type was French director [[Jean-Luc Godard]]'s ''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. In 1973, director [[Robert Altman]], who had worked on ''Peter Gunn,'' showed his disrespect for noir piety with ''The Long Goodbye''.
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[[Image:1BelmondoDoesBogey.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Neo-noir/Take 1: As car thief Michel Poiccard, aka Laszlo Kovacs, [[Jean-Paul Belmondo]] does his best [[Humphrey Bogart|Bogey]] in ''[[À bout de souffle]]'' (''Breathless''; 1960), written and directed by [[Jean-Luc Godard]] from a story by [[François Truffaut]].]]
 
  
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A manifest affiliation with noir traditions—which, by its nature, allows for different sorts of commentary on them to be inferred—can also provide the basis for explicit critiques of those traditions. The first major film to work this angle (that might be thought of as the most "neo" of "neo") was French director [[Jean-Luc Godard]]'s ''[[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. In 1973, director [[Robert Altman]], who had worked on ''Peter Gunn'', flipped off noir piety with ''[[The Long Goodbye (film)|The Long Goodbye]]''. Based on the novel by Raymond Chandler, it features one of Bogart's most famous characters, but in [[iconoclasm|iconoclastic]] fashion: Philip Marlowe, the prototypical hardboiled detective, is replayed as a hapless misfit, almost laughably out of touch with contemporary [[mores]] and morality. Where Altman's subversion of the film noir mythos was so irreverent as to anger many contemporary critics, around the same time Woody Allen was paying affectionate, at points idolatrous homage to the classic mode with ''[[Play It Again, Sam]]'' (1972).
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The most acclaimed of the neo-noirs of the era was director [[Roman Polanski]]'s 1974 ''Chinatown''. Written by [[Robert Towne]], it is set in 1930s [[Los Angeles]], an accustomed noir locale nudged back some few years in a way that makes the pivotal loss of innocence in the story even crueler. Where Polanski and Towne raised noir to a black apogee by turning rearward, director [[Martin Scorsese]] and screenwriter [[Paul Schrader]] brought the noir attitude crashing into the present day with ''Taxi Driver'' (1976), a cackling, bloody-minded gloss on bicentennial America.  
  
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The most acclaimed of the neo-noirs of the era was director [[Roman Polanski]]'s 1974 ''[[Chinatown (film)|Chinatown]]''. Written by [[Robert Towne]], it is set in 1930s Los Angeles, an accustomed noir locale nudged back some few years in a way that makes the pivotal loss of innocence in the story even crueler. Where Polanski and Towne raised noir to a black apogee by turning rearward, director [[Martin Scorsese]] and screenwriter [[Paul Schrader]] brought the noir attitude crashing into the present day with ''[[Taxi Driver]]'' (1976), a cackling, bloody-minded gloss on bicentennial America. In 1978, [[Walter Hill]] wrote and directed the ''[[The Driver]]'', a chase movie as might have been imagined by Jean-Pierre Melville in an especially abstract mood. 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 film)|The Getaway]]'' (1972), adapting a novel by pulp master [[Jim Thompson (writer)|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 (film)|The Drowning Pool]]'' (1975). Some of the strongest 1970s noirs, in fact, were unwinking remakes of the classics, "neo" mostly be default: Altman's heartbreaking ''[[Thieves Like Us (film)|Thieves Like Us]]'' (1973), based on the same source as Ray's ''They Live by Night'', and ''[[Farewell, My Lovely#The movie versions: A survey|Farewell, My Lovely]]'' (1975), the Chandler tale made classically as ''Murder, My Sweet'', remade here with Robert Mitchum in his last notable noir role. 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.
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Some of the strongest 1970s noirs were remakes of the classics, thus "neo" mostly by default. Altman's heartbreaking ''Thieves Like Us'' (1973) and ''Farewell, My Lovely'' (1975), are notable examples. 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 the horror crossover, ''Kolchak: The Night Stalker'' (1974–75), featuring a Chicago newspaper reporter investigating strange, usually supernatural occurrences.
  
 
===The 1980s through the present===
 
===The 1980s through the present===
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[[Image:StoneSmoking.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Neo-noir/Take 2: [[Sharon Stone]] as Catherine Tramell, a femme fatale for the 1990s—and the ages—in the smash box-office hit ''[[Basic Instinct]]'' (1992). She is seen here under interrogation, preparing to open up.]]
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The turn of the decade brought Scorsese's black-and-white ''Raging Bull'' (co-written by Schrader) was an acknowledged masterpiece that is often voted as the greatest film of the 1980s in critics' polls. The film 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). From 1981, the popular ''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. Such mainstreaming of neo-noir is evident in films such as ''Black Widow'' (1987), ''Shattered'' (1991), and ''Final Analysis'' (1992). Few neo-noir films 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.  
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The turn of the decade brought Scorsese's black-and-white ''[[Raging Bull]]'' (cowritten by Schrader); an acknowledged masterpiece—often voted the greatest film of the 1980s in critics' polls—it is also a retreat, telling a story of a boxer's moral self-destruction that recalls in both theme and visual ambience noir dramas such as ''[[Body and Soul (1947 film)|Body and Soul]]'' (1947) and ''[[Champion (1949 film)|Champion]]'' (1949). From 1981, the popular ''[[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 film)|Black Widow]]'' (1987), ''[[Shattered (film)|Shattered]]'' (1991), and ''[[Final Analysis]]'' (1992). 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]]. Over the past twenty-five years, the big-budget auteur to work most frequently in a neo-noir mode has been [[Michael Mann (film director)|Michael Mann]], with the films ''[[Thief (film)|Thief]]'' (1981), ''[[Heat (film)|Heat]]'' (1995), and ''[[Collateral (film)|Collateral]]'' (2004), and the 1980s TV series ''[[Miami Vice]]'' and ''[[Crime Story (TV series)|Crime Story]]''. Mann's output exemplifies a primary strain of neo-noir, in which classic themes and tropes are revisited in a contemporary setting with an up-to-date visual style and [[Rock music|rock]]- or [[Hip hop music|hip hop]]–based musical [[soundtrack]]. Like ''Chinatown'', its more complex predecessor, [[Curtis Hanson]]'s Oscar-winning ''[[L.A. Confidential (film)|L.A. Confidential]]'' (1997), based on the [[James Ellroy]] novel, demonstrates an opposite tendency—the deliberately retro film noir; its tale of corrupt cops and femme fatales is seemingly lifted straight from a movie of 1953, the year in which it is set.
 
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Working generally with much smaller budgets, brothers [[Joel and Ethan Coen]] have created one of the most substantial film oeuvres influenced by classic noir, with movies such as ''[[Blood Simple]]'' (1984) and ''[[Fargo (film)|Fargo]]'' (1996), considered by some a supreme work in the neo-noir mode. The Coens' most recent nod to the noir tradition is ''[[The Man Who Wasn't There]]'' (2001); a black-and-white crime melodrama set in 1949, it features a scene apparently staged to mirror the one from ''Out of the Past'' pictured above. The Coens cross noir with other generic lines 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''.
 
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Perhaps no contemporary films better reflect the classic noir A-movie-with-a-B-movie-soul  than those of director-writer [[Quentin Tarantino]]; neo-noirs of his such as ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'' (1992) and ''[[Pulp Fiction (film)|Pulp Fiction]]'' (1994) display a relentlessly self-reflexive, sometimes tongue-in-cheek sensibility, similar to the work of the New Wave directors and the Coens. Other movies from the era readily identifiable as neo-noir (some retro, some more au courant) include director [[John Dahl]]'s ''[[Kill Me Again]]'' (1989), ''[[Red Rock West]]'' (1992), and ''[[The Last Seduction]]'' (1993); four adaptations of novels by Jim Thompson—''[[The Kill-Off]]'' (1989), ''[[After Dark, My Sweet]]'' (1990), ''[[The Grifters (film)|The Grifters]]'' (1990), and the remake of ''[[The Getaway (1994 film)|The Getaway]]'' (1994); and many more, including adaptations of the work of other major noir fiction writers: ''[[The Hot Spot]]'' (1990), from ''Hell Hath No Fury'', by [[Charles Williams (U.S. author)|Charles Williams]]; ''[[Miami Blues]]'' (1990), from the novel by [[Charles Willeford]]; and ''[[Out of Sight]]'' (1998), from the novel by [[Elmore Leonard]]. On television, the series ''[[Moonlighting]]'' (1985–89) paid homage to classic noir while demonstrating an unusual appreciation of the sense of humor often found in the original cycle. Between 1983 and 1989, [[Mickey Spillane]]'s hardboiled private eye Mike Hammer was played with wry gusto by [[Stacy Keach]] in a [[Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer|series]] and several stand-alone TV movies (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 cite it as the greatest television production of all time.
 
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[[Image:BrickScreenshot.jpg|thumb|250px|Neo-noir/Take 3: [[Joseph Gordon-Levitt]] in ''[[Brick (film)|Brick]]'' (2005). The movie's characters, most of them high-school students, speak as if they learned English from Hammett and Chandler.]]
 
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Among the leading Hollywood directors of noir during the current decade has been the British-born [[Christopher Nolan]], with the fantastically twisted ''[[Memento (film)|Memento]]'' (2000), the remake of ''[[Insomnia (2002 film)|Insomnia]]'' (2002), and ''[[Batman Begins]]'' (2005), his dark-toned take on the superhero. ''[[Harsh Times]]'' (2006) is written and directed by [[David Ayer]], also the screenwriter for ''[[Training Day]]'' (2001) and, adapting a story by hardboiled fiction author [[James Ellroy]], ''[[Dark Blue]]'' (2002). The latter two update the classic noir bad-cop tale, typified by ''Shield for Murder'' (1954) and ''Rogue Cop'' (1954). 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, making it a model neo²-noir. Director [[Sean Penn]]'s ''[[The Pledge (film)|The Pledge]]'' (2001), though adapted from a very self-reflexive novel by [[Friedrich Dürrenmatt]], plays noir comparatively straight, to devastating effect. The most commercially successful of recent neo-noirs is ''[[Sin City (film)|Sin City]]'' (2005), directed by [[Robert Rodriguez]] in extravagantly stylized black and white with the odd bit of color. The film is based on a series of comic books created by [[Frank Miller (comics)|Frank Miller]] (credited as the movie's codirector), which are in turn openly indebted to the works of Spillane and other pulp mystery authors. Similarly, [[graphic novels]] provide the basis for ''[[Road to Perdition]]'' (2002), directed by [[Sam Mendes]], and ''[[A History of Violence (film)|A History of Violence]]'' (2005), directed by [[David Cronenberg]]; the latter, according to many critics, is the neo-noir of the decade. Writer-director [[Rian Johnson]]'s ''[[Brick (film)|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]]'' (2004–7) also brought a youth-oriented twist to film noir.
 
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====Psycho-noir====
 
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[[Image:Blue velvet scene isabella rossellini.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Perversion in suburbia: Night club chanteuse Dorothy Vallens, played by [[Isabella Rossellini]], sings the title song in [[David Lynch]]’s ''[[Blue Velvet]]'' (1986).]]
 
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The work of [[David Lynch]]—particularly ''[[Blue Velvet]]'' (1986), ''[[Lost Highway]]'' (1996), ''[[Mulholland Drive (film)|Mulholland Drive]]'' (2001), and the ''Twin Peaks'' cycle, both [[Twin Peaks|TV series]] (1990–91) and movie, ''[[Fire Walk With Me]]'' (1992)—shows the influence of film noir filtered through a uniquely individualistic vision. Featuring delusionary or sociopathic protagonists (or, in the case of ''Blue Velvet'', a scene-devouring antagonist; in the ''Twin Peaks'' cycle, bizarro spasms at every turn), Lynch's most characteristic work has come to be grouped with others sharing similarly skewed centers of interest as "psycho-noir." Two of the earliest examples after ''Blue Velvet'' are literary adaptations directed by David Cronenberg, ''[[Naked Lunch (film)|Naked Lunch]]'' (1991) and ''[[Crash (1996 film)|Crash]]'' (1996).
 
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Director [[David Fincher]] followed the noir science fiction of ''[[Alien³]]'' (1992) and the immensely successful neo-noir ''[[Se7en (film)|Se7en]]'' (1995) with a film that earns much greater regard today than it did on original release, the psycho-noir ''[[Fight Club (film)|Fight Club]]'' (1999). Nolan's ''Memento'', as well as his debut feature, the British ''[[Following]]'' (1998), may both be classified as psycho-noir. During the new millennium, [[Park Chan-wook]] of South Korea has been the most prominent director to work regularly in a psycho-noir mode—a current of noir that can be traced back through ''Taxi Driver'', through ''Brainstorm'', through ''White Heat'', all the way to ''Stranger on the Third Floor'' and further still, to Fritz Lang's original ''M''.
 
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===Science fiction noir===
 
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[[Image:BladeRunnerSS.jpg|thumb|250px|Night and the city: [[Harrison Ford]] as detective Rick Deckard in ''[[Blade Runner]]'' (1982). It may be 2019, but this is the world of noir, so it's ''still'' raining in Los Angeles.]]
 
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In the post-classic era, the most significant trend in noir crossovers has involved [[science fiction]]. In Jean-Luc Godard's ''[[Alphaville (film)|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 self-evidently 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 movie 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).
 
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The cynical and stylish perspective of classic film noir had a formative effect on the [[cyberpunk]] genre of science fiction that emerged in the early 1980s; the movie most directly influential on cyberpunk was ''[[Blade Runner]]'' (1982), directed by [[Ridley Scott]], which pays clear and evocative homage to the classic noir mode (Scott would subsequently direct the poignant noir crime melodrama ''Someone to Watch Over Me'' [1987]). Scholar Jamaluddin Bin Aziz has observed how "the shadow of Philip Marlowe lingers on" in such other "future noir" films as ''[[Twelve Monkeys]]'' (1995), ''[[Dark City (1998 film)|Dark City]]'' (1998), and ''[[Minority Report (film)|Minority Report]]'' (2002).<ref>Aziz (2005), section "Future Noir and Postmodernism : The Irony Begins."</ref> The hero is the target of investigation in ''[[Gattaca]]'' (1997), which fuses film noir motifs with a scenario indebted to ''[[Brave New World]]''. ''[[The Thirteenth Floor]]'' (1999), like ''Blade Runner'', is an explicit homage to classic noir, in this case involving speculations about [[virtual reality]]. Science fiction, noir, and [[animation]] are brought together in the Japanese films ''[[Ghost in the Shell (film)|Ghost in the Shell]]'' (1995) and ''[[Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence]]'' (2004), both directed by [[Mamoru Oshii]], and the short ''[[A Detective Story]]'' (2003), set in the [[The Animatrix|''Matrix'' universe]].
 
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−
==Noir—So what ''is'' it?==
 
−
 
 
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The history of film noir criticism has seen fundamental questions become matters of controversy unusually intense for such a field. Where aesthetic debates tend to concentrate on the quality and meaning of specific artworks and the intentions and influences of their creators, in film noir, the debates are regularly much broader. Four large questions may be identified, two of them addressed at the beginning of this article:
 
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[[Image:VertigoHangSS.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Still up in the air: Some consider ''[[Vertigo (film)|Vertigo]]'' (1958) a noir on the basis of plot and tone and various motifs. Others say the combination of color and the specificity of director [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s vision exclude it from the category.]]
 
−
* What defines film noir?
 
−
* What sort of category is it?
 
−
A third question applies at a more specific level, but is sweeping:
 
−
* What movies qualify as film noirs?
 
−
This article refers to movies from the classic period as "film noir" if there is a critical consensus supporting that designation. That consensus is almost never complete and is in many cases provisional: ''The Lost Weekend'' and ''The Night of the Hunter'', for instance, were seldom considered as film noirs a quarter-century ago; today, a growing number of critics refer to ''Suspicion'' (1941), directed by Hitchcock, and ''Casablanca'' (1942), directed by Curtiz, as film noirs. Outside of the classic period, consensus is much rarer—movies are considered as noir herein if a substantial number of critics have discussed them as such. In order to decide which films are noir (and which are not), many critics refer to a set of elements they see as marking examples of the mode. This leads to a fourth major point of controversy in the field, one that overlaps with all those noted above:
 
−
* What are the identifying characteristics of film noirs?
 
−
For instance, some critics insist that a film noir, to be authentic, must have a bleak conclusion (e.g., ''Criss Cross'' or ''D.O.A.''), but many acknowledged classics of the genre have clearly happy endings (e.g., ''Stranger on the Third Floor,'' ''The Big Sleep,'' ''Dark Passage,'' and ''The Dark Corner''), while the tone of many other noir [[denouement]]s is ambivalent, in a variety of ways. The ambition of this section, then, can be no more than modest: it is an attempt to survey those characteristics most often cited by critics as representative of classic film noirs. As diverse as that set of movies is, the diversity of films from outside the classic period that have been discussed as noir is so great that any similar survey would be impractical; however, those classic noir identifying marks often referenced in neo-noirs—however frequently or seldom they actually appeared in the original films—are noted as are certain signal trends of the latter-day mode.{{fn|2}}
 
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−
===Characteristics of classic film noir===
 
−
====Visual style====
 
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[[Image:JackBlinds.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Forget it, Jake. It's...the blinds. Private eye Jake Gittes, performed by [[Jack Nicholson]], undergoes some old-school shadowcasting in ''[[Chinatown (film)|Chinatown]]'' (1974).]]
 
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Film noirs tended to use low-key lighting schemes producing stark light/dark [[contrast (vision)|contrasts]] and dramatic shadow patterning. The shadows of Venetian blinds or banister rods, cast upon an actor, a wall, or an entire set, are an iconic visual in film 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 moviemaking. While black-and-white cinematography is considered by many to be one of the essential attributes of classic noir, color films such as ''[[Leave Her to Heaven]]'' (1945), ''[[Niagara (1953 film)|Niagara]]'' (1953), ''Slightly Scarlet'', and ''[[Vertigo (film)|Vertigo]]'' (1958) are regarded as noir by varying numbers of critics.
 
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Film noir is also known for its use of [[Dutch angle]]s, [[low-angle shot]]s, and [[wide-angle lens]]es. Other devices of disorientation relatively common in film noir include shots of people reflected in one or more mirrors, shots through curved or frosted glass or other distorting objects (such as during the strangulation scene in ''Strangers on a Train''), and special effects sequences of a sometimes bizarre nature. Beginning in the late 1940s, [[location shooting]]—often involving [[night-for-night]] sequences—became increasingly frequent in noir.
 
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−
In an analysis of the visual approach of ''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'' (1955), 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 "[s]ide 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."<ref>Silver (1995), pp. 219, 222.</ref>
 
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−
====Structure and narrational devices====
 
−
Film noirs tend to have unusually convoluted story lines, frequently involving [[Flashback (literary technique)|flashbacks]], [[flashforward]]s, and other techniques that disrupt and sometimes obscure the [[narrative]] sequence. Voiceover narration—most characteristically by the protagonist, less frequently by a secondary character or by an unseen, omniscient narrator—is sometimes used as a structuring device. Both flashbacks and voiceover narration are today often used in movies looking to quickly establish their neo-noir bona fides. Bold experiments in cinematic storytelling were sometimes attempted in noir: ''Lady in the Lake'', for example, is shot entirely from the [[Point of view shot|point of view]] of protagonist Philip Marlowe; the face of star (and director) [[Robert Montgomery (actor)|Robert Montgomery]] is seen only in mirrors. ''[[The Chase (1946 film)|The Chase]]'' (1946) takes [[daydream|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'' and ''Memento''.
 
−
 
 
−
====Plots, characters, and settings====
 
−
Crime, usually murder, is an element of almost all film noirs; 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 [[heist film|heists]] or [[confidence trick|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. [[Amnesia]] is far more common in film noir than in real life, and cigarette smoking can seem virtually mandatory.
 
−
[[Image:PursuedPoster.jpg|thumb|right|225px|''[[Pursued]]'' (1947): A [[Western (genre)|Western]] adopting noir style, or a film noir set in the [[American Old West#The Wild West 1865-1889|Wild West]]?]]
 
−
Film noirs tend to revolve around heroes who are more flawed and morally questionable than the norm, often [[fall guy]]s of one sort or another. The characteristic heroes of noir are described by many critics as "[[Social alienation|alienated]]"; in the words of Silver and Ward, "filled with [[existentialism|existential]] bitterness."<ref>Silver and Ward (1992), p. 6.</ref> Certain archetypal characters appear in many film noirs—hardboiled detectives, femmes fatales, corrupt policemen, jealous husbands, intrepid [[claims adjuster]]s, and down-and-out writers. As can be observed in many movies of an overtly neo-noir nature, the private eye and the femme fatale are the character types with which film noir has come to be most identified, but only a minority of movies now regarded as classic noir feature either. For example, of the "[[Film noir#Thirty-five notable American film noirs of the classic period|Thirty-five notable American films noir of the classic period]]" listed above, 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 five others readily qualify as detective stories: ''Laura'', ''The Killers'', ''The Stranger'', ''The Big Heat'', and ''Touch of Evil''.
 
−
 
 
−
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." 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''. In the popular (and, frequently enough, critical) imagination, in noir it is always night and it always rains. A substantial trend within latter-day noir—dubbed "film soleil" by critic D. K. Holm—heads in precisely the opposite direction, with tales of deception, seduction, and corruption exploiting bright, sun-baked settings, stereotypically the desert or open water, to caustic effect. Significant predecessors from the classic and early post-classic eras include ''The Lady from Shanghai''; the Robert Ryan vehicle ''[[Inferno (1953 film)|Inferno]]'' (1953); the French adaptation of [[Patricia Highsmith]]'s ''[[The Talented Mr. Ripley]]'', ''[[Plein Soleil|Plein soleil]]'' (''Purple Noon'' in the U.S., better rendered elsewhere as ''Blazing Sun'' or ''Full Sun''; 1960); and director Don Siegel's version of ''[[The Killers (1964 film)|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''; ''The Hot Spot''; ''Delusion'' (1991); and ''Red Rock West'', and TV's ''Miami Vice'', which premiered in 1984 and turned increasingly mordant over its five-year run.
 
−
 
 
−
====Worldview, morality, and tone====
 
−
Film noir is often described as essentially pessimistic. 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 frequently doomed. The movies are seen as depicting a world that is inherently corrupt. 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. Nicholas Christopher's opinion is representative: "it is as if the war, and the social eruptions in its aftermath, unleashed demons that had been bottled up in the national psyche."<ref>Christopher (1997), p. 37.</ref> Film noirs, 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.
 
  
−
[[Image:BigClinch.jpg|thumb|250px|right|"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." Bogey. Bacall. ''[[The Big Sleep (1946 film)|The Big Sleep]]''.]]
+
Over the past 25 years, the big-budget auteur to work most frequently in a neo-noir mode has been Michael Mann, with the films ''Thief'' (1981), ''Heat'' (1995), and ''Collateral'' (2004), as well as the 1980s TV series ''Miami Vice'' and ''Crime Story''. Mann's output exemplifies a primary strain of neo-noir, 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.  
  
−
Rather than focusing on simple "black and white" decisions, film noirs tend to pose moral quandaries that are unusually ambiguous and relative—at least within the context of Hollywood cinema. Characters that do pursue goals based on clear-cut moral standards may be more than willing to let the "ends justify the means." For example, the investigator hero of ''The Stranger'', obsessed with tracking down a Nazi war criminal, places other people in mortal danger in order to capture his target. Whereas the 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; in their very different ways, the conclusions of ''Chinatown'' and ''The Hot Spot'' provide two clear examples.
+
Working generally with much smaller budgets, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have created one of the most substantial film oeuvres influenced by classic noir, with movies such as ''Blood Simple'' (1984) and ''Fargo'' (1996), considered by some a supreme work in the neo-noir mode.  
  
−
The tone of film noir is generally regarded as downbeat; some critics experience it as darker still—"overwhelmingly black," according to Robert Ottoson.<ref>Ottoson (1981), p. 1.</ref> 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."<ref>Schrader (1972), p. 54. For characterization of definitive tone as "hopeless," see pp. 53 ("the tone more hopeless") and 57 ("a fatalistic, hopeless mood").</ref> In describing the adaptation of ''Double Indemnity,'' leading noir analyst Foster Hirsch describes the "requisite hopeless tone" achieved by the filmmakers, which appears to characterize his view of noir as a whole.<ref>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).</ref> On the other hand, definitive film noirs such as ''The Big Sleep'', ''The Lady from Shanghai'', and ''Double Indemnity'' itself are famed for their hardboiled [[repartee]], often imbued with sexual innuendo and self-reflexive humor—notes of another tone.
+
Perhaps no contemporary films better reflect the classic noir than those of director-writer [[Quentin Tarantino]]; neo-noirs of his such as ''Reservoir Dogs'' (1992) and ''Pulp Fiction'' (1994).
−
 
 
−
==Notes==
 
−
<div class="references-small">
 
−
{{fnb|1}} There is no completely objective way of establishing the most appropriate length for a list of notable films in a particular field or for deciding on the criteria for inclusion. A list of 20 films from the 1940s and 15 from the 1950s (reflecting the relative number of noirs detected by latter-day critics in each decade) provides comfortingly round numbers and a scope large enough to include (almost) all the classic film noirs claimed to be essential yet small enough not to overwhelm the reader intent on a self-education in noir from the ground up.
 
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−
The methodology employed to identify "notability"—restated later in the text of the article as "enduring fame"—relies on [http://www.imdb.com IMDb.com]'s [http://www.imdb.com/list Power Search] function. With the "first" (''Stranger on the Third Floor'') and "last" (''Touch of Evil'') classic noirs guaranteed inclusion into the rosters of 20 and 15, the list of notables is based on the IMDb-identified film noirs most highly rated by that site's users, with a minimum vote count of 2,000 for the 1940s and (reflecting the lower awareness of later noir) 1,000 for the 1950s, and a minimum average "rating" of 7.1 (out of a possible 10).
 
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This rating procedure led to a nearly "perfect" 20 films for the 1940s (with ''Stranger on the Third Floor'' making 21) and a "perfect" 15 films (including ''Touch of Evil'') for the 1950s. One exclusion needed to be made from the 1940s, which was easily done. Though identified by IMDb as a film noir, there is not presently a critical consensus that ''[[Suspicion]]'' (1941), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, qualifies for inclusion in the category. In addition, Hitchcock is already represented four times on the notables list.
 
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−
In the case of the 1950s, a single substitution was made—the imperative was not exclusion, but inclusion: ''Night and the City'', for reasons described in the article, is treated by almost all film historians as an American film noir; furthermore, it is regarded by almost all critics who have published extensively in the field as one of the finest movies of the type. It passes the 1,000-vote criterion, it has a very high rating of 8.0, and it is fair to say that any critic would be shocked to see it excluded from a list of notable examples of classic noir. The movie dropped in its favor was ''[[The Desperate Hours (film)|The Desperate Hours]]'' (1955): (a) star Humphrey Bogart is already represented six times on the list; (b) no published critics regard it as a prime example of the form; and (c) the leading encyclopedia in the field, Silver and Ward's, does not conclusively state that it is a noir. In terms of historical notability, based on the critical literature, the most important film missing from the list is probably ''Murder, My Sweet'' and the most important missing director is certainly [[Anthony Mann]] (covered in the article). Of those films on the present list professional critics would be most likely to sacrifice in favor of ''Murder, My Sweet,'' some would forego ''High Sierra'' (insufficiently noir in style), others ''The Lost Weekend'' (insufficiently noir in plot), still others ''The Stranger'' (insufficiently noir in provocation).
 
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−
Actors are listed as "significant noir performers" according to different criteria for stars and supporting players: The former are listed as significant if they were star-billed in at least three film noirs total or in two films on the notables list (stars of listed films who do not qualify as significant noir performers are named in parentheses). The latter are identified as significant (and thus named) if they appeared in at least five film noirs total—the name of one nonqualifying supporting player is included: Lee Marvin appeared in only two movies now regarded as film noirs of the classic period, but his performance as Vince Stone in ''The Big Heat'' is one of the most renowned villainous turns in the chronicles of noir. An accounting of the most important missing star or featured actors would include at least [[Veronica Lake]], [[Robert Ryan]], [[Richard Conte]], [[Dan Duryea]], [[Alan Ladd]], [[Dick Powell]], and heavies [[William Bendix]] and [[Raymond Burr]]. Character actor [[Whit Bissell]] appeared in no fewer than a dozen classic noirs.<br />
 
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{{fnb|2}}A fifth fundamental question also prompts little agreement: What is the preferred [[English plural#Compounds from the French|English plural]] of "film noir"? There are valid arguments to be made for and against "films noirs" (the spelling in the original French), "films noir" (arguably the most grammatical English), and "film noirs" (the most prevalent usage). Individual writers and publishing concerns are free to select any one of the three styles according to their own preferences. In Wikipedia, however, a group of writer-editors with different and often strongly held opinions on the matter must agree to use a common style. As the matter of controversy comes down to the spelling of a word and the topic of discussion is primarily American, the standard reference authority is the leading dictionary of American English, [[Merriam-Webster|''Merriam-Webster's'']]. The latest edition of ''[[Webster's Dictionary#The Collegiate Dictionary|Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary]]''—acknowledging all three aforementioned styles as acceptable—gives as the preferred spelling "film noirs." That is the style used in this article.
 
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</div>
 
  
 
==References==
 
==References==
−
<div class="references-small"><references /></div>
+
* Aziz, Jamaluddin Bin. "Future Noir." In ''Transgressing Women: Investigating Space and the Body in Contemporary Noir Thrillers''. Ph. D. dissertation, Department of English and Creative Writing, Lancaster University, 2005.
−
 
+
* Borde, Raymond, and Etienne Chaumeton. ''A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941–1953.'' Translated by Paul Hammond. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002. ISBN 0-87286-412-X.
−
==Sources==
+
* Christopher, Nicholas. ''Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City''. New York: Free Press, 1997. ISBN 0-684-82803-0.
−
* Aziz, Jamaluddin Bin (2005). "Future Noir," chap. in "Transgressing Women: Investigating Space and the Body in Contemporary Noir Thrillers." Ph. D. dissertation, Department of English and Creative Writing, Lancaster University (chapter available [http://www.crimeculture.com/Contents/Articles-Summer05/JemAziz1.html online]).
+
* Dancyger, Ken, and Jeff Rush ''Alternative Scriptwriting: Successfully Breaking the Rules''. Boston: Focal Press, 2002. ISBN 0-240-80477-5.
−
* Borde, Raymond, and Etienne Chaumeton (2002 [1955]). ''A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941–1953'', trans. Paul Hammond. San Francisco: City Lights Books. ISBN 0-87286-412-X
+
* Greenspun, Roger. "Mike Hodges's 'Pulp' Opens; A Private Eye Parody Is Parody of Itself." ''New York Times,'' February 6, 1973.
−
* Christopher, Nicholas (1997). ''Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City''. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-684-82803-0
+
* Hirsch, Foster. ''The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir''. New York: Da Capo, 2001. ISBN 0-306-81039-5.
−
* Dancyger, Ken, and Jeff Rush (2002). ''Alternative Scriptwriting: Successfully Breaking the Rules''. Boston et al.: Focal Press. ISBN 0-240-80477-5
+
* McGilligan, Patrick. ''Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast''. New York: Faber and Faber, 1997. ISBN 0-571-19375-7.
−
* Greenspun, Roger (1973). "Mike Hodges's 'Pulp' Opens; A Private Eye Parody Is Parody of Itself," ''New York Times'', February 9.
+
* Naremore, James. ''More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. ISBN 0-520-21294-0.
−
* [[Foster Hirsch|Hirsch, Foster]] (2001). ''The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir''. New York: Da Capo. ISBN 0-306-81039-5
+
* Ottoson, Robert. ''A Reference Guide to the American Film Noir: 1940–1958''. London: Scarecrow Press, 1981. ISBN 0-8108-1363-7.
−
* McGilligan, Patrick (1997). ''Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast''. New York and London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-19375-7
+
* Palmer, R. Barton. "The Sociological Turn of Adaptation Studies: The Example of ''Film Noir.''" In ''A Companion To Literature And Film.'' Edited by Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo. Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004. ISBN 0-631-23053-X.
−
* Naremore, James (1998). ''More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts''. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21294-0
+
* Schatz, Thomas. ''The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era.'' London: Faber and Faber, 1998. ISBN 0-571-19596-2.
−
* Ottoson, Robert (1981). ''A Reference Guide to the American Film Noir: 1940–1958''. Metuchen, N.J., and London: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-1363-7
+
* Schrader, Paul. "Notes on Film Noir." ''Film Comment'' 8 (1).
−
* Palmer, R. Barton (2004). "The Sociological Turn of Adaptation Studies: The Example of ''Film Noir''," in ''A Companion To Literature And Film'', ed. Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo (pp. 258–277). Maiden, Mass., Oxford, and Carlton, Australia: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-23053-X
+
* Silver, Alain. [http://members.aol.com/alainsil/noirkmd/noirkmd1.htm ''Kiss Me Deadly:'' Evidence of a Style.] Retrieved November 24, 2007.
−
* Schatz, Thomas (1998 [1996]). ''The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era'', new ed. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-19596-2
+
* Silver, Alain, and James Ursini (eds). ''Film Noir Reader.'' Pompton Plains, N.J.: Limelight Editions, 2004.
−
* [[Paul Schrader|Schrader, Paul]] (1972). "Notes on Film Noir," ''Film Comment'' 8, no. 1 (collected in Silver and Ursini, ''Film Noir Reader [1]'').
+
* Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth M. Ward (eds). ''Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style,'' 3rd edition. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1992. ISBN 0-87951-479-5.
−
* Silver, Alain (1995). "''Kiss Me Deadly'': Evidence of a Style," rev. ver. (collected in Silver and Ursini, ''Film Noir Reader [1]''; available [http://members.aol.com/alainsil/noirkmd/noirkmd1.htm online]).
 
−
* Silver, Alain, and James Ursini (and Robert Porfirio—vol. 3), eds. (2004 [1996–2004]). ''Film Noir Reader'', vols. 1–4. Pompton Plains, N.J.: Limelight Editions (introductions to vols. 1 and 2 and selected essays available [http://members.aol.com/alainsil/noir/index.htm online]).
 
−
* Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth M. Ward, eds. (1992). ''Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style'', 3d ed. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press. ISBN 0-87951-479-5
 
  
 
==Further reading==
 
==Further reading==
−
* Biesen, Sheri Chinen (2005). ''Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-8217-6
+
* Biesen, Sheri Chinen. 2005. ''Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-8217-6.
−
* Cameron, Ian, ed. (1993). ''The Book of Film Noir''. New York: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-0589-4
+
* Cameron, Ian (ed). 1993. ''The Book of Film Noir''. New York: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-0589-4.
−
* Chopra-Gant, Mike (2005). ''Hollywood Genres and Postwar America: Masculinity, Family and Nation in Popular Movies and Film Noir''. London: IB Tauris. ISBN 1-85043-838-2  
+
* Chopra-Gant, Mike. 2005. ''Hollywood Genres and Postwar America: Masculinity, Family and Nation in Popular Movies and Film Noir''. London: IB Tauris. ISBN 1-85043-838-2.
−
* Clarens, Carlos (1980). ''Crime Movies: An Illustrated History''. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-01262-X
+
* Clarens, Carlos. 1980. ''Crime Movies: An Illustrated History''. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-01262-X.
−
* Cochran, David (2000). ''America Noir: Underground Writers and Filmmakers of the Postwar Era''. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. ISBN 1-56098-813-4
+
* Cochran, David. 2000. ''America Noir: Underground Writers and Filmmakers of the Postwar Era''. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. ISBN 1-56098-813-4.
−
* Copjec, Joan, ed. (1993). ''Shades of Noir''. London and New York: Verso. ISBN 0-86091-625-1
 
−
* Dimendberg, Edward (2004). ''Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity''. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01314-X
 
−
* [[Raymond Durgnat|Durgnat, Raymond]] (1970). "Paint It Black: The Family Tree of the ''Film Noir''," ''Cinema'' 6/7 (collected in Gorman et al., ''The Big Book of Noir'', and Silver and Ursini, ''Film Noir Reader [1]'').
 
−
* Fisher, Lara (2007). "Noir is my Beat." Morrisville, NC: Lulu ISBN 1-4303-2330-3
 
−
* Gorman, Ed, Lee Server, and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. (1998). ''The Big Book of Noir''. New York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 0-7867-0574-4
 
−
* Hannsberry, Karen Burroughs (1998). ''Femme Noir: Bad Girls of Film''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0429-9
 
−
* Hannsberry, Karen Burroughs (2003). ''Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-1484-7
 
−
* Holm, D. K. (2005). ''Film Soleil''. Harpenden, UK: Pocket Essentials. ISBN 1-904048-50-1
 
−
* Kaplan, E. Ann, ed. (1998). ''Women in Film Noir'', new ed. London: British Film Institute. ISBN 0-85170-666-5
 
−
* Keaney, Michael F. (2003). ''Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940–1959''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-1547-9
 
−
* Lyons, Arthur (2000). ''Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir''. New York: Da Capo. ISBN 0-306-80996-6
 
−
* Mason, Fran (2002). ''American Gangster Cinema: From'' Little Caesar ''to'' Pulp Fiction. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave. ISBN 0-333-67452-9
 
−
* McArthur, Colin (1972). ''Underworld U.S.A.'' New York: Viking. ISBN 0-670-01953-4
 
−
* [[Eddie Muller|Muller, Eddie]] (1998). ''Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir''. New York: St. Martin's. ISBN 0-312-18076-4
 
−
* Neale, Steve (2000). ''Genre and Hollywood''. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-02606-7
 
−
* Palmer, R. Barton (1994). ''Hollywood's Dark Cinema: The American Film Noir''. New York: Twayne. ISBN 0-8057-9335-6
 
−
* Palmer, R. Barton, ed. (1996). ''Perspectives on Film Noir''. New York: G.K. Hall. ISBN 0-8161-1601-6
 
−
* Rabinowitz, Paula (2002). ''Black & White & Noir: America's Pulp Modernism''. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-11481-8
 
−
* Schatz, Thomas (1997). ''Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s''. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. ISBN 0-684-19151-2
 
−
* Selby, Spencer (1984). ''Dark City: The Film Noir''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. ISBN 0-89950-103-6
 
−
* Shadoian, Jack (2003). ''Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster Film'', 2d ed. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514291-8
 
−
* Silver, Alain, and James Ursini (1999). ''The Noir Style''. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press. ISBN 0-87951-722-0
 
−
* Spicer, Andrew (2002). ''Film Noir''. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education. ISBN 0-582-43712-1
 
−
* Telotte, J. P. (1989). ''Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir''. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06056-3
 
−
* Tuska, Jon (1984). ''Dark Cinema: American Film Noir in Cultural Perspective''. Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-23045-5
 
  
 
==External links==
 
==External links==
−
*[http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/the_complete_list.html All-Time 100 Movies] ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine's noir-heavy list includes a single TV production, ''The Singing Detective'', among its 100 picks
+
All links retrieved March 26, 2024.
−
*[http://www.classicnoir.com Classic Noir Online] comprehensive survey of over 700 noir titles, with links to actors and directors
+
 
−
*[http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html Film Noir] leading individual fansite; part of Tim Dirks's [[Filmsite.org]]
+
*[http://www.classicnoir.com Classic Noir Online] comprehensive survey of over 700 noir titles, with links to actors and directors. ''www.classicnoir.com''
−
*[http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/noir.jsp Film Noir] Q&A-style essay by leading noir critic-historian [[Eddie Muller]]; part of the [[GreenCine]] website
+
*[http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html Film Noir] leading individual fansite; part of Tim Dirks's ''Filmsite.org''
−
*[http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/Noirbib.html Film Noir: A Bibliography of Materials] holdings of the [[UC Berkeley]] Library
+
*[http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue02/infocus/filmnoir.htm Film Noir: An Introduction] essay with links to discussions of ten important noirs; part of ''Images: A Journal of Film and Popular Culture''. ''www.imagesjournal.com''
−
*[http://www.film-noir-alley.com Film Noir Alley] individual fansite devoted to classic noir of the 1940s and 1950s
+
*[http://www.noircity.com/foundation.html Film Noir Foundation] educational resource addressing the cultural, historical, and artistic significance of film noir. ''www.noircity.com''
−
*[http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue02/infocus/filmnoir.htm Film Noir: An Introduction] essay with links to discussions of ten important noirs; part of ''Images: A Journal of Film and Popular Culture''
 
−
*[http://www.noircity.com/foundation.html Film Noir Foundation] educational resource addressing the cultural, historical, and artistic significance of film noir
 
−
*[http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6384/noirfilmsfr.html Le Film Policier Noir] extensive discussion (in English) of French noir by Yuri German; part of the ''Hard-Boiled Mysteries'' website
 
−
*[http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19950130/COMMENTARY/11010314/1023 A Guide to Film Noir Genre] ten deadeye bullet points from [[Roger Ebert]]
 
−
*[http://www.crimeculture.com/Contents/NeoNoir.html  An Introduction to Neo-Noir] essay by [[Lee Horsley]]
 
−
*[http://www.crimeculture.com/Contents/Noir%20Thriller%20Intro.html ''The Noir Thriller'': Introduction] excerpt from 2001 book by Lee Horsley
 
−
*[http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/noir/index.html No Place for a Woman: The Family in ''Film Noir'' and Other Essays] writings by John Blaser, with noir-related media
 
−
*[http://outofthepast.libsyn.com/ Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir] podcast close readings of many classic noirs by Shannon Clute and Richard Edwards
 
  
 
[[Category:Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
 
[[Category:Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
 
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Latest revision as of 19:47, 26 March 2024


Colorized version of the shadow of the vampire seen climbing stairs in the famous film Nosferatu (1922).

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.

The term film noir (French for "black film"), was first applied to Hollywood movies by French critic Nino Frank in 1946. Many of those involved in the making of the classic noirs later professed to be unaware of having created a distinctive type of film.

Though film noirs were not known to be especially uplifting or spiritually redeeming, they did serve a moral purpose in that they brought to light the ambiguity of good and evil as well as how the underlying presence of temptation can disturb one's fair intentions, even those related to the pursuit of justice.

Definition

Film noir embraced a variety of genres, from the gangster film to the police procedural to the so-called "social problem picture," and evidence of a variety of visual approaches, from Hollywood mainstream to outré (outside). While many critics refer to film noir as a genre in itself, others argue that it is more of a stylistic approach that can be applied to any genre.

The history of film noir criticism has seen fundamental questions become matters of controversy unusually intense for such a field. Where aesthetic debates tend to concentrate on the quality and meaning of specific artworks and the intentions and influences of their creators, in film noir, the debates are regularly much broader.

Outside of the classic period, it becomes harder to classify movies as noir. In order to decide which films are noir (and which are not), many critics refer to a set of elements they see as marking examples of the mode. For instance, some critics insist that a true film noir must have a bleak conclusion, though many acknowledged classics of the genre have clearly happy endings. Other common elements of the tradition have a female representing the femme fatale character, snappy dialog, an urban setting, low-lighting, crime, and characters holding a pessimistic worldview.

The prehistory of noir

Film noir draws from sources not only in cinema but from other artistic forms as well. The low-key lighting schemes commonly linked with film noir is in the tradition of chiaroscuro and tenebrism, techniques using high contrasts of light and dark developed by fifteenth and sixteenth century painters associated with Mannerism and the Baroque.

Another important cinematic antecedent to classic noir was 1930s French poetic realism, with its romantic, fatalistic attitude and celebration of doomed heroes. Italian neorealism is yet another acknowledged influence on certain trends in noir, with its emphasis on quasi-documentary authenticity. However, aesthetics of Film noir was most deeply influenced by German Expressionism, a cinematic movement of the 1910s and 1920s, closely related to contemporary developments in theater, photography, painting, sculpture, and architecture. The opportunities offered by the booming Hollywood film industry and, later, the threat of growing Nazi power led to the emigration of many important film artists working in Germany who had been directly involved in the Expressionist movement. Directors such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Michael Curtiz brought dramatic lighting techniques and a psychologically expressive approach with them to Hollywood, where they would make some of the most famous of classic noir films. Lang's 1931 masterwork, the German film, M, is among the first major crime films of the "sound era" to join a characteristically "noirish" visual style with a noir-type plot, one in which the protagonist is a criminal, as are his most successful pursuers. M was also the occasion for the first star performance by Peter Lorre, who would go on to act in several formative American noir films of the classic era.

By 1931, director Michael Curtiz had already been in Hollywood for half a decade, making as many as six films a year. Movies of his, such as 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) and Private Detective 62 (1933) are among the early Hollywood sound films arguably classifiable as noir. Giving movie-makers particularly free stylistic rein were Universal horror pictures such as Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1932), and The Black Cat (1934). The Universal horror film that comes closest to noir, both in story and sensibility, however, is The Invisible Man (1933), directed by Englishman James Whale and shot by American Carl Laemmle, Jr.

Regarding movies not themselves considered film noir, perhaps none had a greater effect on the development of the genre than America's own Citizen Kane (1941), the landmark motion picture directed by Orson Welles. Its Sternbergian visual intricacy and complex, voiceover-driven narrative structure have been echoed in dozens of classic film noirs.

Early literary influences

The primary literary movement to have influenced 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 noir films, 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). A decade before the classic era, a story of Hammett's was the source for the gangster melodrama City Streets (1931), directed by Rouben Mamoulian and photographed by Lee Garmes, who worked regularly with Sternberg. Wedding a style and story both with many noir characteristics, released the month before Lang's M, City Streets has a claim to being the first major film noir.

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 noir films—Murder, My Sweet (1944; adapted from Farewell, My Lovely), The Big Sleep (1946), and Lady in the Lake (1947)—but 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. For much of the 1940s, one of the most prolific and successful authors of this often downbeat brand of suspense tale was Cornell Woolrich. No writer's published work provided the basis for more film noirs of the classic period than Woolrich's—thirteen in all—including Black Angel (1946), Deadline at Dawn (1946), and Fear in the Night (1947).

A crucial literary source for film noir, now often overlooked, was W.R. Burnett, whose first novel published was Little Caesar, in 1929. It would be adapted into the hit for Warner Bros. in 1931; the following year, Burnett was hired to write dialog for Scarface while Beast of the City was adapted from one of his stories. Some critics regard these latter two movies as film noir despite their early date. 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 way, a way just happening to be that of the gangster. During the classic era, his work, either as author or screenwriter, was the basis for seven movies now widely regarded as film noir, including three of the most famous: High Sierra (1941), This Gun for Hire (1942), and The Asphalt Jungle (1950).

The classic period

The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. The movie most commonly cited as the first "true" film noir is Boris Ingster's Stranger on the Third Floor (1940). 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 considered full-fledged noir by some critics, most categorize them as "proto-noir" or in similar terms.

Rita Hayworth and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity

Orson Welles's Touch of Evil (1958) is frequently cited as the last noir of the classic period. Some scholars believe film noir never really ended, but has 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 made in the noir tradition are seen as part of a continuity of classic noir. A majority of critics, however, regard comparable movies 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 movie-making style and latter-day awareness of noir as a historical source for allusion.

Most of the film noir of the classic period were modestly budgeted features without major stars, also known as B-movies (either literally or in spirit), in which writers, directors, cinematographers, and other craftsmen were relatively free from the typical big-picture constraints. While enforcement of the Production Code ensured that no movie character could literally get away with murder, at the B level of noir one could come awful close. Thematically, noir films as a group were most exceptional for the relative frequency with which they centered on women of questionable virtue—a focus very rare in Hollywood films after the mid-1930s and the end of the pre-Code era. The signal movie in this vein was Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Barbara Stanwyck as the unforgettable femme fatale. An A-level feature in all ways, the movie's commercial success and seven Oscar nominations made it probably the most influential of the early noir films.

Conventional "A" films, however emotionally tortuous, were ultimately expected to convey positive, reassuring messages. And in terms of style, invisible camerawork and editing techniques, flattering soft lighting schemes, and deluxely trimmed sets were the standard for these features. The makers of film noir turned all this on its head, creating sophisticated, sometimes bleak dramas tinged with mistrust, cynicism, and a sense of the absurd, in settings that were frequently either real-life urban or budget-saving minimalist, with often strikingly expressionist lighting and unsettling techniques such as wildly skewed camera angles and convoluted flashbacks. The noir style gradually influenced the mainstream, even beyond Hollywood.

Thirty-five notable American films in the noir classic period

(with directors and significant noir performers—supporting players in italics)

  • Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) d. Boris Ingster, with Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook Jr.
  • High Sierra (1941) d. Raoul Walsh, with Ida Lupino, Humphrey Bogart, Arthur Kennedy
  • The Maltese Falcon (1941) d. John Huston, with Bogart, Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Cook
  • Shadow of a Doubt (1943) d. Alfred Hitchcock, with Joseph Cotten
  • Laura (1944) d. Otto Preminger, with Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb
  • Double Indemnity (1944) d. Billy Wilder, with Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson
  • The Lost Weekend (1945) d. Wilder, with Ray Milland
  • Mildred Pierce (1945) d. Michael Curtiz, with Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Bruce Bennett
  • Detour (1945) d. Edgar G. Ulmer, with Tim Ryan, Esther Howard, Don Brodie (starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage)
  • The Big Sleep (1946) d. Howard Hawks, with Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Dorothy Malone
  • Gilda (1946) d. Charles Vidor, with Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George Macready, Joseph Calleia
  • The Killers (1946) d. Robert Siodmak, with Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, Charles McGraw, William Conrad, Jeff Corey
  • Notorious (1946) d. Hitchcock, with Claude Rains (starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman)
  • The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) d. Tay Garnett, with Lana Turner, John Garfield, Audrey Totter
  • The Stranger (1946) d. Orson Welles, with Robinson, Loretta Young, Erskine Sanford
  • Dark Passage (1947) d. Delmer Daves, with Bogart, Bacall, Bennett
  • The Lady from Shanghai (1947) d. Welles, with Hayworth, Welles, Everett Sloane, Ted de Corsia, Sanford
  • Out of the Past (1947) d. Jacques Tourneur, with Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, Richard Webb, Steve Brodie
  • Key Largo (1948) d. Huston, with Bogart, Robinson, Bacall, Claire Trevor, Thomas Gomez
  • White Heat (1949) d. Walsh, with James Cagney, O'Brien, Steve Cochran, Fred Clark (costarring Virginia Mayo)
  • The Asphalt Jungle (1950) d. Huston, with Sterling Hayden, Barry Kelley, Ray Teal
  • D.O.A. (1950) d. Rudolph Maté, with O'Brien, Luther Adler
  • In a Lonely Place (1950) d. Nicholas Ray, with Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith, Jeff Donnell
  • Night and the City (1950) d. Jules Dassin, with Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Mike Mazurki
  • Sunset Boulevard (1950) d. Wilder, with William Holden, Clark, Jack Webb (costarring Gloria Swanson)
  • Ace in the Hole (1951) d. Wilder, with Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur, Frank Cady, Richard Benedict, Teal, Lewis Martin, Timothy Carey
  • Strangers on a Train (1951) d. Hitchcock, with Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Kasey Rogers, John Doucette (costarring Robert Walker)
  • Pickup on South Street (1953) d. Samuel Fuller, with Widmark, Richard Kiley, Milburn Stone
  • The Big Heat (1953) d. Fritz Lang, with Ford, Grahame, Lee Marvin, Carolyn Jones, Doucette
  • Kiss Me Deadly (1955) d. Robert Aldrich, with Dekker, Paul Stewart, Marian Carr, Jack Elam, Helton (starring Ralph Meeker)
  • The Night of the Hunter (1955) d. Charles Laughton, with Mitchum, Shelley Winters (costarring Lillian Gish)
  • The Killing (1956) d. Stanley Kubrick, with Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen, Cook, Marie Windsor, de Corsia, Carey, Joe Turkel, Jay Adler
  • The Wrong Man (1956) d. Hitchcock, with Henry Fonda, Harold J. Stone (costarring Vera Miles)
  • Sweet Smell of Success (1957) d. Alexander Mackendrick, with Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Levene, Donnell, Jay Adler
  • Touch of Evil (1958) d. Welles, with Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Welles, Calleia, Ray Collins

Neo-noir and echoes of the classic mode

The 1960s and 1970s

New trends emerged in the post-classic era. The Manchurian Candidate (1962), directed by John Frankenheimer, Shock Corridor (1962), 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.

In a different vein, filmmakers such as Arthur Penn, John Boorman, and Alan J. Pakula directed movies that knowingly related themselves to the original film noir, inviting audiences in on the game. Conscious acknowledgment of the classic era's conventions, as historical archetypes to be revived, rejected, or re-imagined, is what puts the "neo" in neo-noir, according to many critics. The first broadly popular crime drama of an unmistakable neo-noir nature was not a movie, but the TV series Peter Gunn (1958–61), created by Blake Edwards.

A manifest affiliation with noir traditions can also provide the basis for explicit critiques of those traditions. The first major film of this type was French director Jean-Luc Godard's 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. In 1973, director Robert Altman, who had worked on Peter Gunn, showed his disrespect for noir piety with The Long Goodbye.

The most acclaimed of the neo-noirs of the era was director Roman Polanski's 1974 Chinatown. Written by Robert Towne, it is set in 1930s Los Angeles, an accustomed noir locale nudged back some few years in a way that makes the pivotal loss of innocence in the story even crueler. Where Polanski and Towne raised noir to a black apogee by turning rearward, director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader brought the noir attitude crashing into the present day with Taxi Driver (1976), a cackling, bloody-minded gloss on bicentennial America.

Some of the strongest 1970s noirs were remakes of the classics, thus "neo" mostly by default. Altman's heartbreaking Thieves Like Us (1973) and Farewell, My Lovely (1975), are notable examples. 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 the horror crossover, Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974–75), featuring a Chicago newspaper reporter investigating strange, usually supernatural occurrences.

The 1980s through the present

The turn of the decade brought Scorsese's black-and-white Raging Bull (co-written by Schrader) was an acknowledged masterpiece that is often voted as the greatest film of the 1980s in critics' polls. The film 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). From 1981, the popular 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. Such mainstreaming of neo-noir is evident in films such as Black Widow (1987), Shattered (1991), and Final Analysis (1992). Few neo-noir films 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.

Over the past 25 years, the big-budget auteur to work most frequently in a neo-noir mode has been Michael Mann, with the films Thief (1981), Heat (1995), and Collateral (2004), as well as the 1980s TV series Miami Vice and Crime Story. Mann's output exemplifies a primary strain of neo-noir, 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.

Working generally with much smaller budgets, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have created one of the most substantial film oeuvres influenced by classic noir, with movies such as Blood Simple (1984) and Fargo (1996), considered by some a supreme work in the neo-noir mode.

Perhaps no contemporary films better reflect the classic noir than those of director-writer Quentin Tarantino; neo-noirs of his such as Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994).

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Aziz, Jamaluddin Bin. "Future Noir." In Transgressing Women: Investigating Space and the Body in Contemporary Noir Thrillers. Ph. D. dissertation, Department of English and Creative Writing, Lancaster University, 2005.
  • Borde, Raymond, and Etienne Chaumeton. A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941–1953. Translated by Paul Hammond. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002. ISBN 0-87286-412-X.
  • Christopher, Nicholas. Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City. New York: Free Press, 1997. ISBN 0-684-82803-0.
  • Dancyger, Ken, and Jeff Rush Alternative Scriptwriting: Successfully Breaking the Rules. Boston: Focal Press, 2002. ISBN 0-240-80477-5.
  • Greenspun, Roger. "Mike Hodges's 'Pulp' Opens; A Private Eye Parody Is Parody of Itself." New York Times, February 6, 1973.
  • Hirsch, Foster. The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir. New York: Da Capo, 2001. ISBN 0-306-81039-5.
  • McGilligan, Patrick. Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast. New York: Faber and Faber, 1997. ISBN 0-571-19375-7.
  • Naremore, James. More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. ISBN 0-520-21294-0.
  • Ottoson, Robert. A Reference Guide to the American Film Noir: 1940–1958. London: Scarecrow Press, 1981. ISBN 0-8108-1363-7.
  • Palmer, R. Barton. "The Sociological Turn of Adaptation Studies: The Example of Film Noir." In A Companion To Literature And Film. Edited by Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo. Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004. ISBN 0-631-23053-X.
  • Schatz, Thomas. The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. London: Faber and Faber, 1998. ISBN 0-571-19596-2.
  • Schrader, Paul. "Notes on Film Noir." Film Comment 8 (1).
  • Silver, Alain. Kiss Me Deadly: Evidence of a Style. Retrieved November 24, 2007.
  • Silver, Alain, and James Ursini (eds). Film Noir Reader. Pompton Plains, N.J.: Limelight Editions, 2004.
  • Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth M. Ward (eds). Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, 3rd edition. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1992. ISBN 0-87951-479-5.

Further reading

  • Biesen, Sheri Chinen. 2005. Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-8217-6.
  • Cameron, Ian (ed). 1993. The Book of Film Noir. New York: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-0589-4.
  • Chopra-Gant, Mike. 2005. Hollywood Genres and Postwar America: Masculinity, Family and Nation in Popular Movies and Film Noir. London: IB Tauris. ISBN 1-85043-838-2.
  • Clarens, Carlos. 1980. Crime Movies: An Illustrated History. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-01262-X.
  • Cochran, David. 2000. America Noir: Underground Writers and Filmmakers of the Postwar Era. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. ISBN 1-56098-813-4.

External links

All links retrieved March 26, 2024.

  • Classic Noir Online comprehensive survey of over 700 noir titles, with links to actors and directors. www.classicnoir.com
  • Film Noir leading individual fansite; part of Tim Dirks's Filmsite.org
  • Film Noir: An Introduction essay with links to discussions of ten important noirs; part of Images: A Journal of Film and Popular Culture. www.imagesjournal.com
  • Film Noir Foundation educational resource addressing the cultural, historical, and artistic significance of film noir. www.noircity.com

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