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Film Noir • Characteristics
• The Films
 THE
FILMS
In "Notes on Film Noir,"
Paul Schrader divides film noir into three broad phases.
These overlapping timeframes not only reflect changes in a
dark movement of Hollywood films but in the unsettled mood
of the country as well.
The first period of films lasted from 1941 and included some
films of 1946. It coincides with the turbulent war years and
a little beyond and is the phase of "the private eye
and the lone wolf, studio sets, and more talk than action."1
THE MALTESE FALCON
The Maltese Falcon, along with Laura, Double
Indemnity, and Murder My Sweet, was one of the
original American film noirs viewed by French critics
after the war and is still cited by many critics as the beginning
of the film noir movement.
Directed by John Huston, the film
starred Humphrey Bogart as the cynical anti-hero, private
eye Sam Spade. The hero's new moral uncertainty wasn't lost
on Philip T. Hartung as he wrote in The Commonweal
that "in this tense film the chase for the falcon causes many
bodies to fall with sickening thuds before the hero-detective,
whose own hands are not too clean, unravels all."2
Other reviewers were simply grateful
for the return of crime film. In "Some Pictures Move"
in the New Republic, Otis Ferguson wrote, "The Maltese
Falcon is the first crime melodrama with finish, speed
and bang to come along in what seems ages, and since its pattern
is one of the best things Hollywood does, we have been missing
it. It is the old Dashiell Hammett book, written back in the
days when you could turn out a story and leave it at that,
without any characters joining the army, fleeing as refugees
or reforming bad boys, men or women."3
Yet five years later, French critic
Nino Frank wrote that "these 'dark' films, these films
noirs, no longer have anything in common with the ordinary
run of detective movies. Because they are purely psychological
stories, action, either violent or exciting, matters less
than faces, behavior, words – hence the verisimilitude
of the characters."4
A VARIETY OF DARK FILMS
During the first half of the 1940s, the American psyche was
dominated by the total war effort – and all of the contradictory
feelings that come with wartime.
Some of the more widely-recognized film noirs were
made during this time, including: The Blue Dahlia, Gaslight,
This Gun for Hire, Mildred Pierce, The Woman in the Window,
Spellbound, The Big Sleep, Gilda, The Postman Always Rings
Twice, and The Dark Mirror.
Philip Hartung's review "Simply
Thrilling" noted that "The Big Sleep
mixes violence and 'smart' wisecracks along with its suspense,
and manages to achieve quite a scarey effect. [...] Various
seamy characters wander in and out of the confusion –
and most don't make it out of their own free will."5
All of these films contained the classic noir crimes
and moral ambiguity and were marked by its stylistic, stark
shadows and sense of claustrophobia – a mood that echoed
the darker side of America at war.
DOUBLE INDEMNITY
Schrader uses Billy Wilder/Raymond
Chandler film, Double Indemnity (1944) as a bridge
to the postwar phase of film noir, writing that initially
the unflinching dark vision of Double Indemnity was
almost blocked by the combined efforts of Paramount, the Hays
Office, and star Fred MacMurry. However, within three short
years, "Double Indemnitys were dropping off the
studio assembly line."6
Critics at the time recognized the moral contradictions that
were beginning to show up in Hollywood films. The war was
raging, and frustration with the overpowering war effort,
along with anxieties about the role of women in society and
a new American cynicism were beginning to make themselves
known.
As James Agee notes in The Nation,
"The James Cain story, [scripted by Raymond Chandler and]
under Billy Wilder's control, is to a fair extent soaked in
and shot through with money and the coolly intricate amorality
of money; you can even supply the idea, without being contradicted
by the film, that among these somewhat representative Americans,
money and sex and a readiness to murder are as inseparably
interdependent as the Holy Trinity."7
This cynical view of American morals
was echoed by Manny Farber in The New Republic. In
a review entitled "Hard-as-Nails Department" he remarks
that the film is one in which "the only people who aren't
deceiving someone are either ferociously soured on life, or
as dyspeptic and wry as the claims manager, or too foolish
to bother with." He goes on to note that the film contains
"some very bright, realistic perceptions of the kind
of people and places that rarely get into American movies."8
As the war ended, a new era of postwar realism was ushered
into American society and into its films.
POSTWAR FILMS
After World War II, nothing
in America would be the same, including Hollywood films. An
even greater sense of darkness and realism began to creep
into film noir. In the immediate aftermath of the war,
Schrader finds that America's "wartime antagonism turns
with a new viciousness toward American society itself."9
Hartung's contemporary review
of The Blue Dahlia (1946), "Violence with a Vehemence,"
seemed to bear this out."The Blue Dahlia's opening scenes
indicate cynically and firmly that a man fresh out of uniform
shouldn't walk in on his wife unannounced. Ladd does, and
is greatly shocked to find that she is not the faithful little
woman he thought he left behind. The script (written by Raymond
Chandler and very hard-boiled throughout) paints this tramp
in strong colors; and Doris Dowling's portrayal makes her
inhumanly vicious."10
During the postwar phase which
ran roughly from 1945-49, films tended more toward crimes
in the street, political corruption and police. A new breed
of less romantic heroes – Richard Conte, Burt Lancaster
– made their appearance.11
Realistic urban settings were seen in films with violent
titles such as The Killers, Raw Deal, Kiss
of Death, Force of Evil, Dark Passage, Cry
of the City, Ruthless, Pitfall, Boomerang!,
and The Naked City.
In Somewhere in the Night,
Nicholas Christopher writes of the new transformation of the
city into an unsettling force within film noir. "In
the explosive postwar American city of the film noir,
violence becomes a delirious, everyday reality –
a circus of horrors [...] where the pace of construction,
demolition and rebuilding is incredible."12
HOUSE UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES COMMITTEE
Hollywood was fighting its own dark battles in the postwar
years as filmmakers and other members of the film community
were targeted by the government in their efforts to investigate
and root out Communist subversives.
Hollywood wasn't their only target
as Sklar notes in Movie-Made America. "The period
of anti-Communist madness in American life was a time when
accusations without proof were immediately granted the status
of truth; when guilt was assumed, and innocence had to be
documented."13
This atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust permeated much
of American society in the late 1940s – and the moral
ambiguity and cynicism of film noir was even more appropriate
for the time.
NOIR'S LAST PHASE
The final, truly dark phase
of film noir lasted from 1949 to 1953, and according
to Schrader was marked by personal disintegration, psychotic
action, and suicidal impulse. He states, "the noir
hero, seemingly under the weight of ten years of despair,
started to go bananas."14
The hero on – or over – the edge could be found
in films like Gun Crazy, Out of the Past, Kiss
Tomorrow Goodbye, D.O.A., They Live by Night,
Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Big Heat, Kiss
me Deadly, and finally, Touch of Evil in 1958.
Charles Gregory, in "Living
Sideways" sees this sense of bitterness and loss of control
in The Big Heat (1953) as the "hero" punishes
his mistress by throwing boiling coffee in her face –
and later, with her face heavily bandaged, she responds by
taking a deep breath, smiling weakly and saying "Well,
I guess I can always go through life sideways." Gregory
writes, "and thus in tone and metaphor she defines a
whole way of life epitomized in the American films identified
as 'film noir.'"15
THE END OF NOIR
As James Naremore notes in More
than Night, "from the perspective of the mid 1950s,
it appeared that noir was dying."16
Along with the possible exhaustion of a formula,
he adds economic and political reasons, including the fact
that Hollywood's response to television and the growing leisure
industry was to turn to "Cinemascope, color, and biblical
epics," and noting that many of the key noir writers
and directors of the previous decade had been blacklisted
by the major studios.16
Film noir's time was over, and it had been a good
run. But even though filmmakers continue to rediscover and
emulate film noir today, the movement itself could
have only existed in the world of America in the 1940s.
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Characteristics • The Films •
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