Film Noir: the Genre that Wasn’t a Genre

Because it is not a set genre, as Science Fiction, people disagree as to what is and is not Noir. Schrader writes, “Almost every critic has his or her own definitions of film noir, along with a personal list of film titles and dates to back it up. A film of urban nightlife is not necessarily a film noir, and a film noir need not necessarily concern crime and corruption.”

 Keeping this in mind how do we determine what is a film noir? By its style, its content, and the mood it presents we determine whether it is “Film Noir.” Noir has its own style, that harkens back to German expressionism, and it uses it to convey its mood. The mood of Noir is caused by the events of the time.

To understand film noir, we have to understand and interpret the mood of the time. World War II was ending, and soldiers were coming home. Many of them came home to the jobs, positions, and other posts of life to find their worlds upside down. Women had taken over in many aspects of society. Traditionally men were the bread winners, but with them fighting the war, now women stepped in. Women gained independence they did not have before. The change of gender roles created a threat to the masculinity for many men returning home. Many of those same men had faced tough situations that conflicted with their moral senses. The redefining of morality and the world led into existentialism. Robert G. Porfirio writes “Existentialism is an outlook which begins with a disoriented individual facing a confuse world that he cannot accept. It places its emphasis on man’s contingency in a world where there are no transcendental values or moral absolutes, a world devoid of any meaning but the one man himself creates.”

 The change of the world created an existential outlook for many of those returning from the War.

The confused existential outlook reflects itself into film noir. In Double Indemnity we witness Keyes moral confusion when he realizes that his best friend, Neff, has taken him for a ride. Again in The Third Man, Lime has taken his best friend Martins for a ride. These men are faced with the fact that their friends have betrayed their moral centers and therefore Keyes and Martins must decide wether they should betray their moral code of friendship, or their general sense of morality. The black and white world ends here and ethical decision making becomes grey. Schrader writes about the hard-boiled detective novels that Film Noir has its roots in, “The hard boiled writers had their roots in pulp fiction or journalism, and their protagonists lived out a narcissistic, defeatist code. The hard boiled hero was, in reality, a soft egg compared to his existential counterpart...”

The portrayal of women in Film Noir, as femme fatales, represent a threat to masculinity. They are powerful dominant women. Sometimes they act as catalysts for murder, Double Indemnity, try to frame the protagonist, The Long Goodbye, or use him to get to their objective, The Maltese Falcon. Gaylan Studlar writes, “the protagonist’s meeting of a woman governs his direction and his doom, a situation that would be repeated, with variations, throughout much of film noir in Hollywood’s postwar years.” The Femme Fatale is mysterious and dangerous. She is seldom presented as a fully fleshed out character. In This Gun for Hire, the hit man Phillip Raven is given a fully thought back story which he tells. Not too many Film Noir’s give this for women. Richard Dyer rights, “...woman in film noir are above all us unknowable. It is not so much their evil as their unknowability (and attractiveness) that makes them fatal for the hero.To the degree that culture is defined my men, what is, and is known, is male. Film noir thus starkly divides the world into that which is unknown and unknowable (female) and, again by inference only, that which is known (male).”

 Woman in Noir become the unknown, the grey space, defying ethics. Phyllis Dietrichson best portrays this in Double Indemnity, her personality which allows her to kill is never fully explained. She lives in the shadows, literally and metaphorically, hidden from Neff. It should be noted that not every film noir has a femme fatale. This Gun For Hire has a positive female force which makes the killer Raven reconsider his methods and actions. Just as not every noir needs a femme fatale not every noir needs to adhere to the rules of noir. 

Noir has a greater cinematic presence than other film genres do to the restrictions presented on it at the time. James Naremore writes in “More than Night: Notes About Film Noir” of the limitations that filmmakers were allowed to show. The HUAC was suppressing political commentary by the left wing filmmakers. The Production Code Administration, Will Hays, and the MPPDA would not allow filmmakers to show gruesome violence, or sexual matter. Such impositions only helped the creative process of the filmmakers, wherein they continued to put in subject matter but in a more stylistic fashion. Double Indemnity, for example, uses a fade to imply sexual intercourse, whereas the book had a sense of urgency. Yet the implication is still there, the same effect is used in the Maltese Falcon as well. “Hollywood in the 1940s always depicted sexual intercourse through symbolism and ellipsis,” writes Naremore, “Scenes such as these remind us of what Christian Metz calls the “peculiarity” of censorship, which always allows things to pass around it.... The censor...seldom leaves a blank spot or an X across a scene. “You can see the censor,” Metz remarks, much as you can see the workings of a secondary revision in dreams; usually it manifests itself as a slight incoherence or displacement...and from the point of aesthetics, it sometimes has salutary results.” He continues to talk about how censorship restrictions upon films often give it a “confusing and dreamlike” quality in many pictures. This does not just apply to sex, but depictions of sexuality, violence, and other offbeat elements of the stories censors did not like.

The style of Noir comes from the camera. Dutch angles, long shots, low-key lighting, foggy sequences, long shadows, neon lights in a night time environment, and wet streets reflecting city lights are all some of the key elements of Noir. Compositions play heavy into Film Noir. Schrader writes, “Compositional tension is preferred to physical action. A typical film noir would rather move the scene cinematographically around the actor than have the actor control the scene by physical action.” Often characters are framed so that the city seems to be bearing over them, as if it will crush them very soon. A similar ominous effect is created by filming actors low angling up so that the ceiling dominates over them. Frames within the film frame were often employed to give a fatalistic feel toward a certain character. Such as the bars that fall over Brigid O’Shaughnessy at the end of the Maltese Falcon, to represent the prison where she is sent to. There are too many film noir stylistic motifs to talk about here, but it is important to note them to understand how it ties back into the heart of Noir, its bleak existential outlook. Even when Noir has a happy ending, such as Sam Spade solving the murders in the Maltese Falcon, it is still bleak because his partner is still dead, and the woman he fell in love with is going to prison because he sent her there.

The period of time in which Noir existed was a turbulent time, marked by the war and its end. Returning soldiers were trying to understand the world that they had stepped into, having an existential crisis. Like other art film drew from the world around it at the time it existed. The filmmakers often depicted very dark material, darker than what many censors would allow them to depict literally, so instead they depicted elements artistically on the screen. Noir style is very important to understand it as a genre. However, as it has been shown here, it is important to understand the social and philosophic reasoning for using the style. Merely looking unique or splendid for artistic sake would not be enough to make it a wonderful film style.

Bibliography:

Dyer, Richard. “Resistance Through Charisma: Rita Hayworth and Gilda.” Women in Film Noir. Ed. Kaplan, Ann.

Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. University of California PRess, Berkeley and Los Angeles. 2008. Ebook edition.

Martin, Angela. “Gilda Didn’t Do Any of Those Things You’ve Been Losing Sleep Over!’: The Central Women of 40s Films Noir” Women in Film Noir. Ed. Kaplan, Ann.

Porfirio, Robert G. "No Way Out: Existential Motifs in the Film Noir" Film Noir Reader. Ed. Silver, Alain and Ursini, James. 8th ed. New York: Limelight Editions, 2006.

Schrader, Paul. "Notes on Film Noir." Film Theory and Criticism. Ed. Braudy, Leo and Cohen, Marshall. 7th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Studlar, Gaylyn. "Double Indemnity" Film Analysis: A Norton Reader. Ed. Geiger, Jeffrey and Rutsky, R.L. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2005.

When Harry Met Holly: Existential Crisis Portrayed in The Third Man

Existentialism is one of the philosophies of choice for Film Noir, and The Third Man presents us with an existential crisis. The Third Man, written by Graham Greene, is a Noir world that exists in what critics term “Greeneland.” James Naremore describes Greeneland as “a world of dingy rooming houses, canned fish, drooping aspidistras, and doomed characters.” This is the world that Holly Martins lives. Martins is of the Noir world, an alienated “Hemingway hero.” American in a British-occupied Vienna. He arrives to find out that his friend, Harry Lime, whom he has come to visit at Lime’s request has died. Martins investigates foul play against Lime, and discovers that his friend is not who he thought him to be. Martins becomes confused in a world where not only he, but we the audience, do not speak the native tongue. His previous beliefs of right and wrong, good and evil, are challenged. Martins eventually must reconcile his beliefs and act on his beliefs to be authentic with himself. The Third Man shows us, using the film language attributed towards Film Noir, the existential struggle that Martins must go through as he learns the true nature and identity of his best friend.

Martins tries to understand his world but he is constantly befuddled as he gains new revelations. He is not cool like Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon; instead he is a schmuck in way over his head. Martins is not clever, either; for most of the first half of the film he believes that the police have murdered his friend Harry Lime. In most Noir films it would be typical for the police to be bungling, incompetent, or even the killers. However, the character Colonel Calloway is competent and presents Martins with empirical evidence that it is Lime who is immoral. With this, Martins begins to believe that things were not as he perceived them. Martins gets drunk repeatedly throughout the film, and his testimony is not taken credibly by others because of it. Robert G. Porfirio writes, “The Hemingway hero is a person ‘to whom something has been done’; that most central to this hero is the loss, and an awareness of it.” What Martins has lost is his friend, first in a literal way, and then in a spiritual way. As much of a schmuck as Martins is, he means well, and has a good heart. He is a moral person who stands by his friends. Morality is at the center of the conflict in The Third Man. Martins wants to help his friend Harry Lime, spending the first half of the film searching for Lime’s killer. We are given an interesting backdrop in the dog-eat-dog landscape of post war Vienna. The moral crime in the film is the existence of a black market for medicine. Martins is shown that Lime is watering down penicillin to steal the rest and sell on the black market. It is a blow to Martins, because his friend Lime is not just rebelling against authority, like they did in their youth, Lime has become a killer.

Halfway through The Third Man, Martins stumbles tipsy out of Anna’s flat and into the street. He sees Lime in a doorway, and is shocked by the revelation that his friend is still alive. Not just alive, but hiding from Martins as well as the police. Everything terrible that Martins found out that Lime had done, he is still doing. It is an existential blow to Martins, because now he has to determine the fate of his friendship, and eventually the fate of his friend who is draped in shadows.

Shadows play an important part in revealing that Lime is still alive. We are set up for the revelatory scene while Martins is in Anna’s apartment saying goodbye to her. Martins moves away from a flower box in the window and the camera pans through the flowers to give us a shot below of the street. We see the dark figure of a man in the street looking up at Anna’s apartment, but we cannot see his face. He moves back into a doorway and into the shadows. Then a cat comes over to him and plays with his shoes. After Martins is finished talking with Anna, he goes back into the streets. Martins would have walked right past Lime, who is hidden in a darkened doorway, but the cat meows, drawing attention to him. Martins looks at the doorway, which is shown with canted angles. At first Martins heckles the man from behind a wall, but then walks over to a ledge, leaning his back against its wall. All Martins can see is Lime’s shoes. Then we hear an angry local woman, and she turns the light on. The light the old woman turns on would not be as bright as the one shown on Lime’s face; its artificial, giving a dramatic introduction to Lime. With the light on Lime there are shadows of shadows of window panes behind him. These become symbolic bars for Lime, because he is a wanted man, and upon arrest would go to jail. We are shown a canted angle shot up of Martins’ reaction to the news his friend is alive. Martins’ world is again twisted and skewed. As the emotion of the reunion sets in, the camera pans into Lime’s face for a close up. Lime is grinning proudly like a friend who just pulled a gag on his best mate.

Then the light goes off and Lime disappears into the shadows again. Martins runs toward him, but a random car driving by delays him and gives Lime a chance to escape.

The shadowy doorway is empty when Martins gets there, but he hears loud footsteps and chases after Lime.

Martins does not see Lime’s face again in this sequence but see’s Lime’s shadow after he turns a corner. Lime’s large shadow is on the wall running away from him. Janey Place and Lowell Peterson write, “Claustrophobic framing devices such as doors, windows, stairways, metal bed frames, or simply shadows separate the character from other characters from his world, or from his own emotions.” The shadow is used tremendously in The Third Man. It is used to portray mystery as seen in this scene. It is an element of thrills when Lime is chased through the sewers by the police with their shadows looming around every turn. Martins’ Austria becomes a world of literal shadows. Within the context of this scene, the shadow literally keeps the mystery of Lime’s identity from Martins, like a blank sheet pulled over him. Then after Lime takes off, neither his face nor even his back are seen; instead we just see his shadow from around a corner. Martins is disconnected by his emotions and a lack of knowledge. Lime and Martins have become separated here by secrets, ethics, and shadows.

Director Carol Reed uses dutch angles on and off throughout the film. It becomes even more uneasy to have a shot with a dutch angle, followed by a cut back to Martins with a normal angle, and then to cut away and back once more with another dutch angle. Martins is shown dutch against the wall, and then again not dutch. After he moves across the street he is dutch again. It is as though Reed doesn’t want us to become familiar with one or the other, but always keeps us on our toes. The use of dutch angles follows Martins’ confusion and frustration in many other scenes as well. The more confident that Martins is in confronting Lime’s killer, he is shown in normal shots; then as Martins’ shock of Lime’s being alive hits him, the dutch angles return. It is an uneasy world for Martins, and for the viewer.

This scene in the film shows Martins in an existential crisis. “Existentialism,” writes Porfirio,” is an outlook which begins with a disoriented individual facing a confused world that he cannot accept.” Martins has been told his friend was killed, and now he faces a dead man, no longer dead—his best friend who has indirectly killed many people. Porfirio continues, “It places its emphasis on man’s contingency in a world where there are no transcendental values or moral absolutes, a world devoid of any meaning but the one man himself creates.” Martins has been confronted by the police for their help, which conflicts with his relationship with Lime. Only Martins can decide what he can do. This scene is about choice, for Martins to decide if he should live an “authentic” or an “inauthentic” life. Inauthentic is to reject values of oneself. Whereas an authentic life is to “discover the ability to create one’s own values; in so doing each individual assumes responsibility for his life through the act of choosing between two alternatives.” Choice comes later in the film, but should be noted here. The crisis arises at this scene of the film fully for the first time, meaning that Martins must look within himself authenticate his values and decide whom to help.

The revelation of Harry Lime being alive is midpoint in the film. At the beginning of the film, Martins arrived in Vienna to see his friend. Now, in this scene, Martins finally sees and understands his friend. The search for Lime’s killer has changed Martins’ outlook and view of Lime. In this scene, with little dialogue, and none of it from Harry Lime, Reed created a dramatic scene using many of the techniques attributed to film noir. We see the challenge that the crisis pushes Martins into, before he begins to state it in the following scenes with the police and then Anna. Martins loves his friend Lime, but knows he has a greater duty in stopping him to be authentic with himself.

1. Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. University of California PRess, Berkeley and Los Angeles. 2008. Ebook edition.
2. Peterson, Lowell and Place, Janey. "Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir." Film Noir Reader. Ed. Silver, Alain and Ursini, James. 8th ed. New York: Limelight Editions, 2006. 84.
3. Peterson, Lowell and Place, Janey. "Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir." Film Noir Reader. Ed. Silver, Alain and Ursini, James. 8th ed. New York: Limelight Editions, 2006. 68
4. Porfirio, Robert G. "No Way Out: Existential Motifs in the Film Noir" Film Noir Reader. Ed. Silver, Alain and Ursini, James. 8th ed. New York: Limelight Editions, 2006. 81
5. Porfirio. 87

International Films as Culture

In class I hear some professors pointing out the cultural differences found in foreign films. I find this odd. Having taken anthropology and psychology classes, as well as being familiar with the ideas of Joseph Campbell, I find myself disagreeing with my professors in this view. While yes, many foreign films are different than American films I believe that there are more elements in common.

To give an example of a difference I will point out the Japenese film Tokyo Story. My professor, Lau, highlighted the fact that the director Yasujiro Ozu risregards the "180" rule. This rule states that there is a line in a room and the camera can only show what is on one side of it. This helps to establish a continuity on a more subconscious element for the viewer. This way the characters on screen always look at the same direction, as if we were talking to them or they were on stage. Ozu will place the camera in a room where ever he pleases, so the characters will face to the right of the screen, and without moving, suddenly face the left within an edit. Now, I will contend that this could be viewed more as a "trend." Since film is relatively knew, and a capitalist country like ours allows for very little experimentation, of course filmmakers in other cultures are going to do something subtle as break the 180 rule. Most of the Japanese films I have watched, and even the more modern ones have not done this.

My teacher also explained that many of us in the audience, being "Western," may not understand the film, since it is about family, and modernization. This is absolutely wonk. Towards the end of the film the mother in the family died, and most of the children recovered emotionally from her death and went back to their busy lives rather quickly. At my Grandmothers death I was upset at the way her possessions were handed and bartered out the same way as in this film. I worry about my parents death, and I worry about life after they die. I worry about dissapointing them, not living up to their expectations. All of this is in the film. So how am I different from the eastern audiences that cried during this? I cried. My favorite How I Met Your Mother episodes dealt with Marshall loosing his father. This troubled me because I realised that I don't know what I will do without him. Visiting my Grandparents there is a conscious effort to try and cut pop culture and technology out of conversations, and many of us family members have failed to do so, leaving my Grandparents in the cold. They haven't caught up to modernity, and we have left them behind. So this element is not limited to Japan.

Joseph Campbell and other people that study story have noticed that you can break stories down into the most base elements. When you do this there are repetitive elements in all stories. There are different arguments that there are only 32 stories, and another for only two, (comedy and tragedy.) The human experience is very broad, and not limited to one nation, ethnicity, gender, ect. I wish people would open up there eyes and understand that. The only thing that seperates us is language. (I make this argument since technology can allow us to overcome geographic boundaries.) Film is in itself its own language, and like any language a director like Ozu can play with it. Regardless of the amount he has tweaked it there is a relatable human story there.