Film Noir
Raymond Borde and Étienne
Chaumeton, ‘Towards a Definition of
Film Noir
The First Film Noir? John Huston’s
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
13th October, 2014
Série noir - New types of American films that share
characteristics: style, atmosphere, subject matter.
Film noir qualities simply: ‘nightmarish, weird, erotic,
ambivalent and cruel’ but other dominant qualities
Reverie, eroticism, savagery, sadism, thrill
Common denominators of film noir:
crimes – blackmail, accusation, theft, or drug
trafficking – the stage for narrative.
Death comes at the end – film of death
Crime documentaries
and their differences
from film noir
(1)Examination of a murder from within and from
without; police file vs. confession of a murderer
Emphasis on a criminal psychology
(2) No moral determinism such as good cop and evil
criminal in film noir
- Sympathetic law breakers and enforcers of law and
order implied involving in wrong doings
Ambivalent characters in film noir: little personal or
psychological integrity or consistency
Sanctified killers, neurotic gangsters, megalomaniac
crime bosses, and their perplexing or tainted croniess
Ambiguous and uncertain victims: they are not
innocent or unassociated with crime or wrong doing
Ambiguous protagonists: often mature, almost old,
and not too handsome. Humphrey Bogart as its type
Victim as well as hero, masochist, self-immolating,
throwing himself into peril not for the sake of justice.
Ambiguous women, femmes fatale
Deviant, half-predator, half-prey, detached yet
ensnared woman fall victim to her own traps.
The nature of violence depicted was changed in
film noir. Fair fighting gave way to sadistic
beatings and callous murders
Anxiety – what film noir causes among the
audience derives from its twisting and unexpected
plot; Like a dream or nightmare it is incoherent,
bizarre and mysterious
‘…
resounding
confusion is at
the core of
film noir’
‘All the components of film noir yield the same
result: disorienting the spectator …’
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Introduces a set of elements that later became
hallmarks of film noir: ambiguous hero – middle-age
and not too handsome protagonist who throws
himself into a peril without clear explanation of his
motives, maybe from curiosity – Humphrey Bogart
Private detective – a half-way between the police
authority and the ordinary citizen. While
cooperating with the police, he is sometimes in
opposition to the police or is even wanted by it.
Morally corruptible and tarnished hero.
As a noir hero Spade sometimes lack compassion
and even show cruelty, but unlike a true noir hero,
he does not lose control on himself, his destiny and
his obsession.
Femme fatale – a mysterious and seductive character
who ensnares a male character into compromising,
dangerous and deadly situations.
Mary Astor
Bridgid provides a model for femme fatale but she is
not a true one as she in the end cannot control Spade
and the manner of defeat separate her from the
classic devouring woman of film noir – not full
destruction but restoration of order
The film based on the eponymous novel by
Dashiell Hammett, a writer of pulp fiction,
detective stories. Along with James M. Cain and
Raymond Chandler, he was an author inspired
makers of film noir.