Film Noir
Paul Schrader, ‘Notes on Film Noir’
Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep
‘Notes on Film Noir’
• New mood – cynicism, pessimism and darkenss
– penetrated into the American cinema.
• Hollywood film grew darker, charcters more
corrupt and themes more fatalistic and the
tone more hopeless.
• First noticed by French film critics and
continued to be identified – Noir film
• Reflected the mood of the politics and the
society in the 1940s.
‘Notes on Film Noir’
• ‘The Forties may be to the Seventies what the
Thirties were to the Sixties.’
• The end of WWII and the Vietnamese War.
• Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined by
conventions of setting and conflict. It is
defined by tone and mood.
• It is period specific – movies of the forties and
early fifties portraying ‘the world of dark, slick
city streets, crime and corruption.’
‘Notes on Film
Noir’
• From The Maltese Falcon (1941) to A Touch of
Evil (1958)
• Most Hollywood films made between 1941 and
1953 contain some noir elements.
‘Notes on Film Noir’
• Exactly because noir is not a genre, no matter
how many noir elements are accumulated, they
do not make a genre.
Four conditions that brought about film noir
• WAR AND POSTWAR DISILLUSIONMENT
• Antagonism and viciousness to the American
society.
• POSTWAR REALISM
• Greater realism of location shooting than
elaborate sets of melodrama became more
common.
‘Notes on Film Noir’
• THE GERMAN INFLUENCE
• ‘Paint it Black’
• Germanization of Hollywood by German expats
• Expressionist films of the 20s and 30s.
• Cinematographer John Alton
• Realism and expressionism
‘Notes on Film Noir’
• THE HARD-BOILED TRADITION
• Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, James M.
Cain and Dashiell Hammett created ‘hard-boiled’
tough anti-heroes.
‘Notes on Film Noir’
STYLISTICS
• ‘Most of scenes are lit for night.’
• Oblique and vertical lines are emphasized – as in
German Expressionist film
‘Notes on Film Noir’
• ‘The actors and setting are often given equal
lighting emphasis.’
• Composition is more important than action.
Physical action is subordinated to frame
composition.
‘Notes on Film Noir’
• Attachment to water. Rainfall, noir streets wetted
with fresh rain. Docks and piers are preferred
settings.
• Romantic narration: Robert Mitchum narrates his
past in Out of the Past
• Complex chronological order
‘Notes on Film Noir’
• THEMES
• Raymong Durgnat’s 11 thematic categories
• Overriding noir theme, which Durgnat misses –
a passion for the past and present and a fear of
the future.
Three phases of film noir
• The war-time period 1941-46 with Double
Indemnity as a bridge to the postwar period.
The phase of the private eye and the lone wolf.
More talk than action.
‘Notes on Film Noir’
• The postwar realist period: 1945 – 1949. The
problems fo crime in the streets, political
corruption and police routine. Heroes less
romantic.
• The period of psychotic action and suicidal
impulse: 1949-53. Mentally tormented and
neurotic protagonists and killers.
• Cream of the film noir getting down to ‘the root
causes of the period: the loss of public honor,
heroic conventions, personal integrity, and …
pyschic stability.’
‘Notes on Film Noir’
• The end of film noir in the 50s with A Touch of Evil
as the epitaph.
• The rise of McCarthy and Eisenhower – few social
criticism and more bourgeois life style.
• The rise of television undercut the German vision
• Colour photography – the final blow.
‘Notes on Film Noir’
• Creative noir period – Film noir helped bring
out the best in everyone.
• Film directors made their best in film noir,
started their career in film noir, and moved
from other film to make film noir.
• Cinematographers were allowed to be highly
mannered.
• Actors were sheltered by cinematographers.
‘Notes on Film Noir’
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Critical neglect of film noir in USA
Westerns are more American than noir.
Film noir is inferior ‘B’ film
Auteur theory tries to find the uniqueness of a
director not similarity to other directors.
Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep (1946)
• Generally considered as a film noir classic.
• ‘The Big Sleep is the best scripted, best
directed, best acted, and least
comprehensible film noir ever made.’ Tim
Robey, a film critic for Daily Telegraph
• ‘… it is one of the great film noirs, a black-andwhite symphony’ Roger Ebert, a film critic for
Chicago Sun Times
Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep (1946)
• No flashbacks or voice-over narration found in
Double Indemnity.
• No angst-ridden hero.
• The German influence is absent.
• No nightmare or no aminous shadows
• Little expressionistic low-key lighting or
distorted images.
• Instead The Big Sleep is heavy with (witty)
dialogue.
Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep (1946)
• No defeated anti-hero, but instead Marlow as a
strong, smart and capable private eye.
• No major femme fatale
BUT
• Live through unspeakable experiences, Bogart’s
Marlow goes through transformation in
character. More nervous and without
confidence.
• since the whole idea of film noir was to live
through unspeakable experiences and keep
your cool, this was the right screenplay for this
time in his life.