Illustration Samples

This work is the kind that I can try to recreate

Tutorial for this is above (double click to open PDF)

Film Noir Series

Darkness & Light Documentary

Remember angles and style of editing. Keep it simple and oblique. Strings for music. Get Wikipedia notes on the material to review.



Two silhouetted figures in The Big Combo (1955). The film's cinematographer was John Alton, the creator of many of film noir's iconic images.

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"), first applied to Hollywood movies by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, 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.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Problems of definition
* 2 The prehistory of noir
o 2.1 Literary sources
* 3 The classic period
o 3.1 Directors and the business of noir
* 4 Film noir outside the United States
* 5 Neo-noir and echoes of the classic mode
o 5.1 1960s and 1970s
o 5.2 1980s–2000s
+ 5.2.1 Psycho-noir
o 5.3 Science fiction noir
* 6 Film noir parodies
* 7 Approaches to defining noir
o 7.1 Visual style
o 7.2 Structure and narrational devices
o 7.3 Plots, characters, and settings
o 7.4 Worldview, morality, and tone
* 8 Notes
* 9 See also
* 10 References
* 11 Sources
* 12 Further reading
* 13 External links

[edit] Problems of definition
It was not until February 1973 that the New York Times first used the term, describing how the "moods and tensions" in the British private-eye parody Pulp came "out of the collective depths of the film noir".
It was not until February 1973 that the New York Times first used the term, describing how the "moods and tensions" in the British private-eye parody Pulp came "out of the collective depths of the film noir".[1]

"We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel...."[2] This is the first of many attempts to define film noir made by the French critics Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton in their 1955 book Panorama du film noir américain 1941–1953 (A Panorama of American Film Noir), the original and seminal extended treatment of the subject. They take pains to point out that not every film noir embodies all five attributes in equal measure—this one is more dreamlike, while this other is particularly brutal. The authors' caveats and repeated efforts at alternative definition have proved telling about noir's reliability as a label: in the five decades since, no definition has achieved anything close to general acceptance. The authors of most substantial considerations of film noir still find it necessary to add on to what are now innumerable attempts at definition. As Borde and Chaumeton suggest, however, the field of noir is very diverse and any generalization about it risks veering into oversimplification.

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 meat-and-potatoes Hollywood mainstream to outré. While many critics refer to film noir as a genre itself, others argue that it can be no such thing. Though noir is often associated with an urban setting, for example, many classic noirs take place mainly in small towns, suburbia, rural areas, or on the open road, so setting can not be its genre determinant, as with the Western. Similarly, while the private eye and the femme fatale are character types conventionally identified with noir, the majority of film noirs feature neither, so there is no character basis for genre designation as with the gangster film. Nor does it rely on anything as evident as the monstrous or supernatural elements of the horror film, the speculative leaps of the science fiction film, or the song-and-dance routines of the musical.

A more analogous case is that of the screwball comedy, widely accepted by film historians as constituting a "genre"—the screwball is defined not by a fundamental attribute, but by a general disposition and a group of elements, some (but rarely and perhaps never all) of which are found in each of the genre's films.[3] However, because of the diversity of noir (much greater than that of the screwball comedy), certain scholars in the field, such as film historian Thomas Schatz, treat it as not a genre but a "style." Alain Silver, the most widely published American critic specializing in film noir studies, refers to it as a "cycle" and a "phenomenon," even as he argues that it has—like certain genres—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." There is no consensus on the matter.

[edit] The prehistory of noir

Film noir has sources not only in cinema but other artistic media as well. The low-key lighting schemes commonly linked with the classic mode 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. Film noir's aesthetics are 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 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, 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.
The "original" femme fatale, Marlene Dietrich, in a publicity shot for Josef von Sternberg's mordant melodrama Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel; 1930).
The "original" femme fatale, Marlene Dietrich, in a publicity shot for Josef von Sternberg's mordant melodrama Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel; 1930).

By 1931, 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 horror pictures such as Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1932)—the former photographed and the latter directed by the Berlin-trained Karl Freund—and The Black Cat (1934), directed by Austrian émigré Edgar G. Ulmer. 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.

The Vienna-born but largely American-raised Josef von Sternberg was directing in Hollywood at the same time. Films of his such as Shanghai Express (1932) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935), with their hothouse eroticism and baroque visual style, specifically anticipate central elements of classic noir. The commercial and critical success of Sternberg's silent Underworld in 1927 was largely responsible for spurring a trend of Hollywood gangster films. Popular movies in the genre such as Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932) demonstrated that there was an audience for crime dramas with morally reprehensible protagonists.

An important, and possibly influential, cinematic antecedent to classic noir was 1930s French poetic realism, with its romantic, fatalistic attitude and celebration of doomed heroes; an acknowledged influence on certain trends in noir was 1940s Italian neorealism, with its emphasis on quasi-documentary authenticity. (The Warner Bros. drama I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang [1932] presciently combines these sensibilities.) Director Jules Dassin of The Naked City (1948) pointed to the neorealists as inspiring his use of on-location photography with nonprofessional extras; three years earlier, The House on 92nd Street, directed by Henry Hathaway, demonstrated the parallel influence of the cinematic newsreel. A few movies now considered noir strove to depict comparatively ordinary protagonists with unspectacular lives in a manner occasionally evocative of neorealism—the most famous example is The Lost Weekend (1945), directed by Billy Wilder, yet another Vienna-born, Berlin-trained American auteur. (In turn, one of the primary influences on neorealism was the 1930 German film Menschen am Sonntag, codirected and cowritten by Siodmak, cowritten by Wilder, and codirected and produced by Ulmer.) Among those 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 are echoed in dozens of classic film noirs.

[edit] Literary sources
The October 1934 issue of Black Mask featured the first appearance of the detective character whom Raymond Chandler would develop into the famous Philip Marlowe.
The October 1934 issue of Black Mask featured the first appearance of the detective character whom Raymond Chandler would develop into the famous Philip Marlowe.[4]

The primary literary influence on 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; adapted from Love's Lovely Counterfeit). 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 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; the Cain approach has come to be identified with a subset of the hardboiled genre dubbed "noir fiction." For much of the 1940s, one of the most prolific and successful authors of this often downbeat brand of suspense tale was Cornell Woolrich (sometimes using the pseudonyms George Hopley or William Irish). 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 to be published was Little Caesar, in 1929. It would be turned 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).

[edit] The classic period

The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. 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. The movie now most commonly cited as the first "true" film noir is Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), directed by Latvian-born, Soviet-trained Boris Ingster.[5] Hungarian émigré Peter Lorre, who played secondary roles in bigger-budgeted movies, was top-billed, though here too he did not play the lead. Stranger on the Third Floor was not recognized as the beginning of a trend, let alone a new genre, for many decades. Indeed, even though modestly budgeted—at the high end of the B movie scale—it still lost its studio, RKO, $56,000, almost a third of its total cost.[6] Variety found Ingster's work "too studied and when original, lacks the flare to hold attention. It's a film too arty for average audiences, and too humdrum for others."[7]
Out of the Past (1947) features many of the genre's hallmarks: a cynical private detective as the protagonist, a femme fatale, multiple flashbacks with voiceover narration, dramatic chiaroscuro photography, and a fatalistic mood leavened with provocative banter. The film stars noir icons Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer.
Out of the Past (1947) features many of the genre's hallmarks: a cynical private detective as the protagonist, a femme fatale, multiple flashbacks with voiceover narration, dramatic chiaroscuro photography, and a fatalistic mood leavened with provocative banter. The film stars noir icons Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer.

Most of the film noirs of the classic period were similarly low- and modestly budgeted features without major stars—B movies either literally or in spirit. In this production context, writers, directors, cinematographers, and other craftsmen were relatively free from typical big-picture constraints. Enforcement of the Production Code ensured that no movie character could literally get away with murder or be seen sharing a bed with anyone but a spouse; within those bounds, however, many films now identified as noir feature plot elements and dialogue that were—in some cases, still are—quite risqué. Thematically, film noirs as a group were most exceptional for the relative frequency with which they centered on women of questionable virtue—a focus that had become 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 (1944), 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 Oscar nominations made it probably the most influential of the early noirs. A slew of now-renowned noir "bad girls" would follow, such as those played by Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946), Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Ava Gardner in The Killers (1946), and Jane Greer in Out of the Past (1947). The iconic noir counterpart to the femme fatale, the private eye, came to the fore in movies such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), with Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, and Murder, My Sweet (1944), with Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe. Other seminal noir sleuths served larger institutions, such as Dana Andrews's police detective in Laura (1944), Edmond O'Brien's insurance investigator in The Killers, and Edward G. Robinson's government agent in The Stranger (1946).

Many claim that there is a significant distinction between the noirs of the 1940s and those of the 1950s—other than the relative disappearance of the private eye as a lead character there is no consensus on how that distinction manifests, but it often comes down to a view that the later classic noirs tend to be more "extreme" in one way or another. A prime example is Kiss Me Deadly (1955). Based on a novel by Mickey Spillane, the best-selling of all the hardboiled authors, here the protagonist is a private eye, Mike Hammer. As described by Paul Schrader, "Robert Aldrich's teasing direction carries noir to its sleaziest and most perversely erotic. Hammer overturns the underworld in search of the 'great whatsit'...[which] turns out to be—joke of jokes—an exploding atomic bomb."[8] Orson Welles's baroquely styled 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.

During these two decades in which noir is now seen as flourishing, conventional A films, however emotionally tortuous, were ultimately expected to convey positive, reassuring messages; in terms of style, invisible camerawork and 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 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.

[edit] Directors and the business of noir
A scene from In a Lonely Place (1950), directed by Nicholas Ray based on a novel by noir fiction writer Dorothy B. Hughes. Two of noir's defining actors, Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart, portray star-crossed lovers in the film.
A scene from In a Lonely Place (1950), directed by Nicholas Ray based on a novel by noir fiction writer Dorothy B. Hughes. Two of noir's defining actors, Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart, portray star-crossed lovers in the film.

While the inceptive noir, Stranger on the Third Floor, was a B picture directed by a virtual unknown, many of the film noirs that have earned enduring fame were A-list productions by name-brand moviemakers. Debuting as a director with The Maltese Falcon (1941), John Huston followed with the major noirs Key Largo (1948) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Opinion is divided on the noir status of several of Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers from the era; at least four qualify by consensus: Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951), and The Wrong Man (1956). Otto Preminger's success with Laura (1944) made his name and helped establish 20th Century-Fox's reputation for well-appointed A noirs. Among Hollywood's most celebrated directors of the era, arguably none worked more often in a noir mode than Preminger—his other classic noirs include Fallen Angel (1945), Whirlpool (1949), Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) (all for Fox) and Angel Face (1952). A half-decade after Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend, Billy Wilder made Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Ace in the Hole (1951), noirs that weren't so much crime dramas as satires on, respectively, Hollywood and the news media. In a Lonely Place (1950) was Nicholas Ray's breakthrough; his other noirs include his debut, They Live by Night (1948), and On Dangerous Ground (1952).

Orson Welles had notorious problems with financing, but his three film noirs were reasonably well budgeted: The Lady from Shanghai (1947) received top-level, "prestige" backing, while both The Stranger—his most conventional film—and Touch of Evil —an unmistakably personal work—were funded at levels lower but still commensurate with headlining releases. Like The Stranger, Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Window (1945) was a production of the independent International Pictures. Lang's follow-up, Scarlet Street (1945), was one of the few classic noirs to be officially censored: filled with erotic innuendo, it was temporarily banned in Milwaukee, Atlanta, and New York State.[9] Scarlet Street was a semi-independent—cosponsored by Universal and Lang's own Diana Productions, of which the movie's costar, Joan Bennett, was the second biggest shareholder. Lang, Bennett, and her husband, Universal veteran and Diana production head Walter Wanger, would make Secret Beyond the Door (1948) in similar fashion.[10] Before he was forced abroad for political reasons, director Jules Dassin made two classic noirs that also straddled the major/independent line: Brute Force (1947) and the influential documentary-style Naked City were developed by producer Mark Hellinger, who had an "inside/outside" contract with Universal similar to Wanger's.[11] Years earlier, working at Warner Bros., Hellinger had produced three films for Raoul Walsh, the proto-noirs They Drive by Night (1940) and Manpower (1941) and the recognized classic High Sierra (1941). Walsh had no great name recognition during his half-century as a working director, but his noirs—White Heat (1949) and The Enforcer (1951) would follow—had A-list stars and are now regarded as important examples of the cycle.[12] In addition to the aforementioned, other directors associated with top-of-the-bill Hollywood film noirs include Edward Dmytryk (Murder, My Sweet [1944]; Crossfire [1947]), the first important noir director to fall prey to the industry blacklist, as well as Henry Hathaway (The Dark Corner [1946], Kiss of Death [1947]) and John Farrow (The Big Clock [1948], His Kind of Woman [1951]).

As noted above, however, most of the Hollywood films now considered classic noirs fall into the broad category of the "B movie."[13] Some were Bs in the most precise sense, produced to run on the bottom of double bills by a low-budget unit of one of the major studios or by one of the smaller, so-called Poverty Row outfits, from the relatively well-off Monogram to shakier ventures such as Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC). Jacques Tourneur had made over thirty Hollywood Bs (a few now highly regarded, most completely forgotten) before directing the A-level Out of the Past, considered by some critics the pinnacle of classic noir. Movies with budgets a step up the ladder, known as "intermediates" within the industry, might be treated as A or B pictures depending on the circumstance—Monogram created a new unit, Allied Artists, in the late 1940s to focus on this sort of production. Such films have long colloquially been referred to as B movies. Robert Wise (Born to Kill [1947], The Set-Up [1949]) and Anthony Mann (T-Men [1947], Raw Deal [1948]) each made a series of impressive intermediates, many of them noirs, before graduating to steady work on big-budget productions. Mann did some of his finest work with cinematographer John Alton, a specialist in what critic James Naremore describes as "hypnotic moments of light-in-darkness."[14] He Walked by Night (1948), shot by Alton and, though credited solely to Alfred Werker, directed in large part by Mann, demonstrates their technical mastery and exemplifies the late 1940s trend of "police procedural" crime dramas. Put out, like other Mann–Alton noirs, by the small Eagle-Lion company, it was the direct inspiration for the Dragnet series, which debuted on radio in 1949 and television in 1951.
Detour (1945) cost $117,000 to make when the biggest Hollywood studios spent around $600,000 on the average feature. But the accountants at small PRC weren't happy—it was 30% over budget.
Detour (1945) cost $117,000 to make when the biggest Hollywood studios spent around $600,000 on the average feature. But the accountants at small PRC weren't happy—it was 30% over budget.[15]

Directors such as Samuel Fuller (Pickup on South Street [1953], Underworld U.S.A. [1961]), Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy [1950], The Big Combo [1955]), and Phil Karlson (Kansas City Confidential [1952], The Brothers Rico [1957]) built now well-respected oeuvres largely at the B-movie/intermediate level. (Dalton Trumbo—like Dmytryk, one of the Hollywood Ten—wrote the Gun Crazy screenplay disguised by a front while still blacklisted.) The work of others such as Felix E. Feist (The Devil Thumbs a Ride [1947], Tomorrow Is Another Day [1951]) await critical rediscovery. Edgar G. Ulmer spent almost his entire Hollywood career working at B studios—once in a while on projects that achieved intermediate status; for the most part, on unmistakable Bs. In 1945, while at PRC, he directed one of the all-time noir cult classics, Detour. Ulmer's other noirs include Strange Illusion (1945), also for PRC; Blonde Ice (1948), distributed by tiny Film Classics; and Murder Is My Beat (1955), for Allied Artists.

A number of low and modestly budgeted noirs were made by independent, often actor-owned, companies contracting with one of the larger outfits for distribution. Serving as producer, writer, director, and "star," Hugo Haas made several such films, including Pickup (1951) and The Other Woman (1954). It was in this way that accomplished noir actress Ida Lupino became the sole female director in Hollywood during the late 1940s and much of the 1950s—her best-known film is The Hitch-Hiker (1953), developed by her company, The Filmakers, with support and distribution by RKO. It is one of the seven classic film noirs produced largely outside of the major studios that have been chosen to date for the United States National Film Registry. Of the others, one was a small-studio release: Detour. Four were independent productions distributed by United Artists, the "studio without a studio": Gun Crazy; Kiss Me Deadly; D.O.A. (1950), directed by Rudolph Maté; and Sweet Smell of Success (1957), directed by Alexander Mackendrick. One was an independent distributed by MGM, the industry leader: Force of Evil (1948), directed by Abraham Polonsky and starring John Garfield, both of whom would be blacklisted in the 1950s. Independent production usually meant restricted circumstances, but not always—Sweet Smell of Success, for instance, despite the original plans of the production team, was clearly not made on the cheap, though like many other cherished A-budget noirs it might be said to have a B-movie soul.

Perhaps no director better displayed that spirit than the German-born Robert Siodmak, who had already made a score of films before his 1940 arrival in Hollywood. Working mostly on A features, he made eight movies now regarded as classic film noirs (a figure matched only by Lang and Mann). In addition to The Killers, Burt Lancaster's debut and a Hellinger/Universal coproduction, Siodmak's other important contributions to the genre include 1944's Phantom Lady (a top-of-the-line B and Woolrich adaptation), the ironically titled Christmas Holiday (1944), and Cry of the City (1948). Criss Cross (1949), with Lancaster again the lead, exemplifies how Siodmak brought the virtues of the B-movie to the A noir. In addition to the relatively looser constraints on character and message at lower budgets, the nature of B production lent itself to the noir style for directly economic reasons: dim lighting not only saved on electrical costs but helped cloak cheap sets (mist and smoke also served the cause); night shooting was often compelled by hurried production schedules; plots with obscure motivations and intriguingly elliptical transitions were sometimes the consequence of scripts written in haste, not every scene of which was there always time or money to shoot. In Criss Cross, Siodmak achieves all these effects with purpose, wrapping them around Yvonne De Carlo, playing the most understandable of femme fatales, Dan Duryea, in one of his deliciously charismatic villain roles, and Lancaster—already an established star—as an ordinary joe turned armed robber, a romantic obsessive on a one-way road to ruin.[16]
        Classic-era film noirs in the National Film Registry
1940-49         

The Maltese Falcon | Shadow of a Doubt | Laura | Double Indemnity | Mildred Pierce | Detour |
The Big Sleep | Notorious | Out of the Past | Force of Evil | The Naked City | White Heat
1950-58         

D.O.A. | Gun Crazy | Sunset Boulevard | In a Lonely Place | The Hitch-Hiker |
Kiss Me Deadly | The Night of the Hunter | Sweet Smell of Success | Touch of Evil

[edit] Film noir outside the United States

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."[17] Others, however, regard noir as an international phenomenon.[18] Even before the beginning of the generally accepted classic period, there were movies made far from Hollywood that can be seen in retrospect as film noirs, for example, the French productions Pépé le Moko (1937), directed by Jules Duvivier, and Le Jour se lève (1939), directed by Marcel Carné.
Jeanne Moreau in Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows; 1958). The film features a score composed and performed by jazz musician Miles Davis.
Jeanne Moreau in Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows; 1958). The film features a score composed and performed by jazz musician Miles Davis.

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: American-born director Jules Dassin moved to France in the early 1950s as a result of the Hollywood blacklist, and made one of the most famous French film noirs, Rififi (1955). Other well-known French films often classified as noir include Quai des Orfèvres (1947), Le Salaire de la peur (released in English-speaking countries as The Wages of Fear) (1953) and 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).

A number of thrillers produced in Great Britain during the classic period are also frequently referred to as film noirs, including Contraband (1940) and The Small Back Room (1949), directed by 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). Before leaving for France, Jules Dassin had been obliged by political pressure to shoot his last English-language film of the classic noir period in Great Britain: Night and the City (1950). Though it was conceived in the United States and was not only directed by an American but also stars two American actors—Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney—it is technically a UK production, financed by 20th Century-Fox's British subsidiary. 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.
Stray Dog (1949), directed and cowritten by Akira Kurosawa, contains many cinematographic and narrative elements associated with classic American film noir.
Stray Dog (1949), directed and cowritten by Akira Kurosawa, contains many cinematographic and narrative elements associated with classic American film noir.

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. (This was not even the first screen version of Cain's novel, having been preceded by the French Le Dernier tournant in 1939.) In Japan, the celebrated Akira Kurosawa directed several movies recognizable as film noirs, including Drunken Angel (1948), Stray Dog (1949), The Bad Sleep Well (1960), and High and Low (1963).

Among the first major neo-noir films—the term often applied to movies that consciously refer back to the classic noir tradition—was the French Tirez sur la pianiste (1960), directed by François Truffaut from a novel by one of the gloomiest of American noir fiction writers, David Goodis. 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, Il Conformista (1969; Italy), 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—The Castle of Sand (1974; Japan), Insomnia (1997; Norway), Croupier (1998; UK), Blind Shaft (2003; China).

[edit] Neo-noir and echoes of the classic mode

[edit] 1960s and 1970s

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) and the noirs of the late 1950s, 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 (Mickey One [1964], clearly drawing inspiration from Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste and other French New Wave films), John Boorman (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 Aldrich's masterpiece) tipped its hand in a way noticeable to most audiences of the time. 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.
Neo-noir/Take 1: As car thief Michel Poiccard, aka Laszlo Kovacs, Jean-Paul Belmondo in À bout de souffle (Breathless; 1960). Poiccard reveres and styles himself after Humphrey Bogart' s screen persona.
Neo-noir/Take 1: As car thief Michel Poiccard, aka Laszlo Kovacs, Jean-Paul Belmondo in À bout de souffle (Breathless; 1960). Poiccard reveres and styles himself after Humphrey Bogart' s screen persona.

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. Based on the novel by Raymond Chandler, it features one of Bogart's most famous characters, but in 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).

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. 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), adapting a novel by pulp master 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 (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 (1973), based on the same source as Ray's They Live by Night, and 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.

[edit] 1980s–2000s
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 in the notorious interrogation scene.
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 in the notorious interrogation scene.

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) 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. The mainstreaming of neo-noir is evident in such films as Black Widow (1987), 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, with the films Thief (1981), Heat (1995), and Collateral (2004), and 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. Like Chinatown, its more complex predecessor, Curtis Hanson's Oscar-winning 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.

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 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.

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 (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 (1990), and the remake of 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; 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 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.
Neo-noir/Take 3: Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Brick (2005). The movie's characters, most of them high-school students, speak in idiosyncratic English reminiscent of noir novelists Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
Neo-noir/Take 3: Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Brick (2005). The movie's characters, most of them high-school students, speak in idiosyncratic English reminiscent of noir novelists Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

Among the leading Hollywood directors of noir during the current decade has been the British-born Christopher Nolan, with the acclaimed Memento (2000), the remake of Insomnia (2002), and his dark-toned superhero films, Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008). Harsh Times (2006) is written and directed by David Ayer, also the screenwriter for Training Day (2001) and, adapting a story by 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 (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 (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 (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 (2005), directed by David Cronenberg; the latter, according to many critics, is the neo-noir of the decade. Writer-director Rian Johnson's 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.

[edit] Psycho-noir
Night club chanteuse Dorothy Vallens, played by Isabella Rossellini, sings the title song in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986).



Night club chanteuse Dorothy Vallens, played by Isabella Rossellini, sings the title song in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986).

The characteristic work of David Lynch combines film noir tropes with scenarios driven by disturbed characters such as the sociopathic criminal played by Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet (1986). Lost Highway (1996) and Mulholland Drive (2001) feature delusionary protagonists. The Twin Peaks cycle, both TV series (1990–91) and movie, Fire Walk with Me (1992), is built on a succession of bizarro spasms. This Lynchian mode has come to be grouped with other noir-influenced films 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 (1991) and Crash (1996).

Director David Fincher followed the noir science fiction of Alien³ (1992) and the immensely successful neo-noir Se7en (1995) with a film that earns much greater regard today than it did on original release, the psycho-noir Fight Club (1999). Nolan's Memento, as well as his debut feature, the British Following (1998), may both be classified as psycho-noir. The torments of The Machinist (2004), directed by Brad Anderson, evoke both Fight Club and Memento. In the first decade of 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.

[edit] Science fiction noir
Harrison Ford as detective Rick Deckard in Blade Runner (1982). As with many classic film noirs, the story is set in a rainy version of Los Angeles.
Harrison Ford as detective Rick Deckard in Blade Runner (1982). As with many classic film noirs, the story is set in a rainy version of Los Angeles.

In the post-classic era, the most significant trend in noir crossovers has involved science fiction. In Jean-Luc Godard's 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).

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), and Minority Report (2002).[19] 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 (1995) and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), both directed by Mamoru Oshii, and the short A Detective Story (2003), set in the Matrix universe.

[edit] Film noir parodies

Film noir has been parodied many times, in many manners. In 1945, Danny Kaye starred in what appears to be the first intentional film noir parody, Wonder Man.[20] That same year, Deanna Durbin was the singing lead in the comedic noir Lady on a Train, which makes fun of Woolrich-brand wistful miserablism. Bob Hope inaugurated the private-eye noir parody with My Favorite Brunette (1947), playing a baby photographer who is mistaken for an ironfisted detective.[20] The Big Steal (1949), directed by Don Siegel, and His Kind of Woman, are both clear examples of the classic film noir parodying itself.[21] The "Girl Hunt" ballet in Vincente Minnelli's The Band Wagon (1953) is a ten-minute distillation of—and play on—noir in dance.[22] The Cheap Detective (1978), starring Peter Falk, is a broad parody of several films, including the Bogart classics The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. Carl Reiner's "cut and paste" noir farce, the black-and-white Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), is a well known example of the obviously comedic latter-day parodies. Robert Zemeckis's Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) develops a noir plot set in 1940s L.A. around a host of cartoon characters.
"Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man." Robert De Niro as neo-noir anti-hero Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976).
"Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man." Robert De Niro as neo-noir anti-hero Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976).

Noir parodies come in darker tones as well. Murder by Contract (1958), directed by Irving Lerner, is an eighty-one-minute-long deadpan joke on noir, with a denouement as bleak as any of the movies it kids.[23] An ultra-low-budget Columbia Pictures production, it may qualify as the first intentional example of what is now called a neo-noir film; it certainly seems to have been a source of inspiration for Melville's Le Samouraï and Scorsese's Taxi Driver.[23] One of the quintessential 1970s neo-noirs,[24] Taxi Driver caustically deconstructs the "dark" crime film, taking it to an absurd extreme and then offering a conclusion that manages to mock every possible anticipated ending—triumphant, tragic, artfully ambivalent—while being each, all at once.[25] Flirting with splatter status even more brazenly, the Coens' Blood Simple is both an exacting pastiche and an exaggeration of classic noir.[26] Adapted by director Robinson Devor from a novel by Charles Willeford, The Woman Chaser (1999) sends up not just the noir mode but the entire Hollywood filmmaking process,[27] with seemingly each shot staged as the visual equivalent of a Marlowe wisecrack—funny, but it smarts.

In other media, the television series Sledge Hammer! (1986–88) lampoons noir, along with Dirty Harry, capital punishment, and anything else available. Sesame Street (1969–curr.) occasionally casts Kermit the Frog as a private eye; the sketches refer to some of the typical motifs of noir movies, in particular the voiceover. Garrison Keillor's radio program A Prairie Home Companion features the recurring character Guy Noir, a hardboiled detective whose adventures always wander into farce (Guy also appears in the Altman-directed film based on Keillor's show). Firesign Theatre's Nick Danger has trod the same not-so-mean streets, both on radio and in comedy albums. Cartoons such as Garfield's Babes and Bullets (1989) and comic strip characters such as Tracer Bullet of Calvin and Hobbes have parodied both film noir and the kindred hardboiled tradition—one of the sources from which film noir sprang and which it now overshadows.[28]

[edit] Approaches to defining noir

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:
Some consider 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.
Some consider 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:

* Which 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, are now routinely referred to as film noirs, but they were seldom considered as such a quarter-century ago. The process is ongoing: 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 denouements 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.1

[edit] Visual style



Shadows of window blinds fall upon private eye Jake Gittes, performed by Jack Nicholson, in Chinatown (1974).
Shadows of window blinds fall upon private eye Jake Gittes, performed by Jack Nicholson, in Chinatown (1974).

Film noirs tended to use low-key lighting schemes producing stark light/dark 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), Slightly Scarlet, and Vertigo (1958) are regarded as noir by varying numbers of critics.

Film noir is also known for its use of Dutch angles, low-angle shots, and wide-angle lenses. 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.

In an analysis of the visual approach of Kiss Me Deadly, 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."[29]

[edit] Structure and narrational devices

Film noirs tend to have unusually convoluted story lines, frequently involving flashbacks, flashforwards, 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 of protagonist Philip Marlowe; the face of star (and director) Robert Montgomery is seen only in mirrors. The Chase (1946) takes 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.

[edit] 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 heists or 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.
Pursued (1947): A Western adopting noir style, or a film noir set in the Wild West?
Pursued (1947): A Western adopting noir style, or a film noir set in the Wild West?

Film noirs tend to revolve around heroes who are more flawed and morally questionable than the norm, often fall guys of one sort or another. The characteristic heroes of noir are described by many critics as "alienated"; in the words of Silver and Ward, "filled with existential bitterness."[30] Certain archetypal characters appear in many film noirs—hardboiled detectives, femmes fatales, corrupt policemen, jealous husbands, intrepid claims adjusters, 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 nineteen National Film Registry noirs, 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 two others readily qualify as detective stories: Laura 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); the French adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, 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). 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.

[edit] 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."[31] 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.
"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." Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep.
"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." Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep.

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.

The tone of film noir is generally regarded as downbeat; some critics experience it as darker still—"overwhelmingly black," according to Robert Ottoson.[32] 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."[33] 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.[34] 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.

[edit] Notes

Note 1: Opinion is also divided on the English plural of film noir. In the French from which the term derives, the plural is films noirs. Some English speakers prefer films noir, while film noirs is the most common formulation. The latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, acknowledging all three styles as acceptable, gives as the preferred spelling film noirs.

[edit] See also

* List of film noir

[edit] References

1. ^ Greenspun (1973), p. 32.
2. ^ Borde and Chaumeton (2002), p. 2.
3. ^ See Dancyger and Rush (2002), p. 68, for a detailed comparison of screwball comedy and film noir.
4. ^ See Jim Doherty's essay on Carmady at the Thrilling Detective website for a detailed analysis of the private eye character who appears in "The Finger Man."
5. ^ See, e.g., Lyons (2000), p. 36 ("RKO is usually cited as having produced the first true film noir, Stranger on the Third Floor"); Server (1998), p. 158 ("Often credited as the 'first' film noir"); Porfirio (1980), p. 269 ("the first true film noir").
6. ^ Biesen (2005), p. 33.
7. ^ Variety (1940).
8. ^ Schrader (1972), p. 61.
9. ^ Bernstein (1995).
10. ^ McGilligan (1997), pp. 314–317.
11. ^ Schatz (1998), pp. 354–358.
12. ^ See, e.g., entries on individual films in (Silver & Ward 1992, pp. 97–98, 125–126, 311–312).
13. ^ See Naremore (1998), pp. 140–155, on "B Pictures versus Intermediates."
14. ^ Naremore (1998), p. 173.
15. ^ Erickson (2004), p. 26.
16. ^ Clarens (1980), pp. 200–202; Walker (1992), pp. 139–145.
17. ^ Silver and Ward (1992), p. 1.
18. ^ See Palmer (2004), pp. 267–268, for a representative discussion of film noir as an international phenomenon.
19. ^ Aziz (2005), section "Future Noir and Postmodernism : The Irony Begins."
20. ^ a b Silver and Ward (1992), p. 332.
21. ^ Pym, John, ed. (2004), Time Out Film Guide (3rd ed.), Time Out Publishing, pp. 121, 575-576, ISBN 1904978215
22. ^ Richardson, Carl (1992), Autopsy: An Element of Realism in Film Noir, The Scarecrow Press, p. 120, ISBN 0810824965
23. ^ a b Naremore (2008), p. 158 ("One of the earliest and best examples was Irving Lerner's Murder by Contract...which later exerted a strong influence on Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. A deadpan black comedy about the American Dream....")
24. ^ See, e.g.,
Horwath, Alexander; Elsaesser, Thomas & King, Noel, eds. (2004), The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s, Amsterdam University Press, p. 98, ISBN 9053566317 , and
Conard, Mark T. (2007), The Philosophy of Neo-Noir, University Press of Kentuck, p. 2, ISBN 0813124220
25. ^ See, e.g., Kolker (2000), pp. 238–241.
26. ^ Hunter, Stephen (1995), Violent Screen: A Critic's 13 Years on the Front Lines of Movie Mayhem, Bancroft Press, p. 7, ISBN 0963537644
27. ^ The New York Times Film Reviews 1999-2000, Routledge, 2001, p. 158, ISBN 0415936969
28. ^ Irwin, John T (2006), Unless the Threat of Death is Behind Them: Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir, JHU Press, p. xii, ISBN 0801884357, "...hard-boiled fiction of the thirties and forties prepared the audience and provided the material for... those movies that initiated the American film noir genre, whose black-and-white cycle lasted for twenty years and produced some three hundred films."
29. ^ Silver (1995), pp. 219, 222.
30. ^ Silver and Ward (1992), p. 6.
31. ^ Christopher (1997), p. 37.
32. ^ Ottoson (1981), p. 1.
33. ^ Schrader (1972), p. 54. For characterization of definitive tone as "hopeless," see pp. 53 ("the tone more hopeless") and 57 ("a fatalistic, hopeless mood").
34. ^ 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).

[edit] Sources

* 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 online).
* Bernstein, Matthew (1995). “A Tale of Three Cities: The Banning of Scarlet Street,” Cinema Journal 35, no. 1.
* Biesen, Sheri Chinen (2005). Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-8217-6
* 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
* Cameron, Ian, ed. (1993). The Book of Film Noir. New York: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-0589-4
* Christopher, Nicholas (1997). Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-684-82803-0
* Clarens, Carlos (1980). Crime Movies: An Illustrated History. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-01262-X
* Dancyger, Ken, and Jeff Rush (2002). Alternative Scriptwriting: Successfully Breaking the Rules. Boston et al.: Focal Press. ISBN 0-240-80477-5
* Erickson, Glenn (2004). "Fate Seeks the Loser: Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour" (collected in Silver and Ursini, Film Noir Reader 4).
* Gorman, Ed, Lee Server, and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. (1998). The Big Book of Noir. New York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 0-7867-0574-4
* Greenspun, Roger (1973). "Mike Hodges's 'Pulp' Opens; A Private Eye Parody Is Parody of Itself," New York Times, February 9.
* Hirsch, Foster (2001). The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir. New York: Da Capo. ISBN 0-306-81039-5
* Kolker, Robert (2000). A Cinema of Loneliness, 3d ed. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512350-6
* Lyons, Arthur (2000). Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir. New York: Da Capo. ISBN 0-306-80996-6
* McGilligan, Patrick (1997). Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast. New York and London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-19375-7
* 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
* 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
* 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
* Porfirio, Robert (1980). "Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)" (collected in Silver and Ward, Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference).
* 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
* Schrader, Paul (1972). "Notes on Film Noir," Film Comment 8, no. 1 (collected in Silver and Ursini, Film Noir Reader [1]).
* Server, Lee (1998). "The Black List: Essential Film Noir" (collected in Gorman et al., The Big Book of Noir).
* Silver, Alain (1995). "Kiss Me Deadly: Evidence of a Style," rev. ver. (collected in Silver and Ursini, Film Noir Reader [1]; available 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 online).
* Silver, Alain & Ward, Elizabeth, eds. (1992), Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style (3rd ed.), Overlook Press, ISBN 0-87951-479-5
* "Variety staff" (anon.) (1940). "Stranger on the Third Floor" [review], Variety, January 1 (excerpted online).
* Walker, Michael (1992). "Robert Siodmak" (collected in Cameron, The Book of Film Noir).

[edit] Further reading

* 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
* 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
* 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]).
* 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
* Martin, Richard (1999). Mean Streets and Raging Bulls: The Legacy of Film Noir in Contemporary American Cinema. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow. ISBN 0-8108-3642-4
* 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
* 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

[edit] External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Film noir

* The Noir Zone Contains details of over 1000 films noir and classic movies
* All-Time 100 Movies Time magazine's noir-heavy list includes a single TV production, The Singing Detective, among its 100 picks
* Classic Noir Online comprehensive survey of over 700 noir titles, with links to actors and directors
* Film Noir Q&A-style essay by leading noir critic-historian Eddie Muller; part of the GreenCine website
* Film Noir: A Bibliography of Materials holdings of the UC Berkeley Library
* Film Noir: An Introduction essay with links to discussions of ten important noirs; part of Images: A Journal of Film and Popular Culture
* Film Noir Foundation educational resource addressing the cultural, historical, and artistic significance of film noir
* Film Noir Studies writings by John Blaser, with film noir glossary, timeline, and noir-related media
* Le Film Policier Noir extensive discussion (in English) of French noir by Yuri German; part of the Hard-Boiled Mysteries website
* A Guide to Film Noir Genre ten deadeye bullet points from Roger Ebert
* An Introduction to Neo-Noir essay by Lee Horsley
* The Noir Thriller: Introduction excerpt from 2001 book by Lee Horsley
* Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir podcast close readings of many classic noirs by Shannon Clute and Richard Edwards

Metallica "Turn The Page" Video

6 minutes of video torment and documentary brilliance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HO_8RiJv_g

This is the GLA documentary stripper video that was so scary and evocative when I first saw it.

Mac & Tosh - The Goofy Gophers (1947)

The Goofy Gophers

Original Medium: Theatrical animation

Produced by: Warner Bros.

First Appeared: 1947

image: © Warner Bros.

More Cartoons by Warner Bros.

At first glance, Mac 'n' Tosh, aka "The Goofy Gophers", seem to be a blatant rip-off of Chip 'n' Dale, right down to the similar inspiration for their names. But look closer. Disney's chipmunk characters didn't even have names until their first meeting with Donald Duck, which came out ten months after the Gophers' first appearance, so obviously they didn't get their names from that source. And the idea of a pair of characters who look exactly alike couldn't have come from Chip 'n' Dale either, because the latter actually don't look all that similar. (Nor is the idea likely to have come from Heckle & Jeckle, who preceded the Gophers by only a few months, because of the amount of time it takes to produce an animated cartoon.) What's more, they didn't even have those individual names at first — "Mac" and "Tosh" were attached to them later, for the Bugs Bunny TV show.

And they were worlds apart in characterization. Disney's Chipmunks's main trait was just that they were annoying (tho cute). The Warner Bros. Gophers (which actually looked and acted more like squirrels) were also annoying (tho cute), but their most irritating trait was extreme politeness, whereas Chip 'n' Dale were just plain rude. The personalities of Mac 'n' Tosh harked back to cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper's Alphonse & Gaston, the overly polite Frenchmen who could never get anything done because neither would so much as walk through a door before the other.

The Goofy Gophers, which was the name of the cartoon that introduced the eponymous rodents, was released on January 25, 1947. It was written by Bob Clampett, who also designed the characters, and whose place in animation history was already assured by his having created Tweety Bird, Beaky Buzzard, Warner's version of the Gremlins and many other classic characters and concepts. But Clampett left the studio before the cartoon went into production, so it was directed by Art Davis (who later directed The Ant & the Aardvark, The Pink Panther and other series for the DePatie-Freleng Studio). Later entries in the series were directed by Bob McKimson (Foghorn Leghorn, Hippety Hopper) and Friz Freleng (Yosemite Sam, Speedy Gonzales). Mac's voice was done by Mel Blanc (Marvin Martian, Secret Squirrel and so many more) and Tosh's by Stan Freberg (Joonyer of The Three Bears, Bertie of Hubie & Bertie).

The Gophers were never superstars, but did appear in nine cartoons, eight in the 1940s and '50s with the last finally straggling to the screen halfway through the '60s. Three of the nine featured crossovers with other Warner characters. Bugs was in their first outing; they pestered Elmer Fudd in Pests for Guests (1955, directed by Freleng); and in their final appearance (Tease for Two, directed by McKimson and released August 28, 1965), they played against Daffy Duck.

They were never comic book stars, models for plush toys, or anything like that. They've made one or two appearances after the classic era, but never as headliners. Still, their nine cartoons are part of the Looney Tunes package, which have been enjoyed by generations of TV viewers.

Film Noir

​

Frank Miller - SIN CITY - A DAME TO KILL FOR

Gene Colan

http://www.genecolan.com/home.html

Early life and career

Daredevil #48 (Jan. 1969). Gene Colan (penciler) and George Klein (inker) slip an in-joke into this Times Square scene. Whatever caused the apparent frustration, note the word at Daredevil's left hand.
Daredevil #48 (Jan. 1969). Gene Colan (penciler) and George Klein (inker) slip an in-joke into this Times Square scene. Whatever caused the apparent frustration, note the word at Daredevil's left hand.

Born in The Bronx, New York City, New York,[2] Gene Colan began drawing at age three. "The first thing I ever drew was a lion. I must've absolutely copied it or something. But that's what my folks tell me. And from then on, I just drew everything in sight. My grandfather was my favorite subject".[2] He attended George Washington High School in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, and went on to study at the Art Students League of New York. His major art influences are Syd Shores, Coulton Waugh,[2] and Milton Caniff.[2]

He began working in comics in 1944, doing illustrations for publisher Fiction House's aviation-adventure series Wings Comics. "[J]ust a summertime job before I went into the service",[3] it gave Colan his first published work, the one-page "Wing Tips" non-fiction filler "P-51B Mustang" (issue #42, Dec. 1944).[4] His first comics story was a seven-page "Clipper Kirk" feature in the following month's issue.[5]

After attempting to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II but being pulled out by his father "because I was underage", Colan at "18 or 19" enlisted in the Army Air Corps.[2] Originally scheduled for gunnery school in Boulder, Colorado, plans changed with the war's sudden end. After training at an Army camp near Biloxi, Mississippi, he joined the occupation forces in the Philippines[2] There Colan rose to the rank of corporal, drew for the Manila Times, and won an art contest.[2]

Upon his return to civilian life in 1946, Colan went to work for Marvel Comics' 1940s precursor, Timely Comics. He recalled in 2000, "I was living with my parents. I worked very hard on a war story, about seven or eight pages long, and I did all the lettering myself, I inked it myself, I even had a wash effect over it. I did everything I could do, and I brought it over to Timely. What you had to do in those days was go to the candy store, pick up a comic book, and look in the back to see where it was published. Most of them were published in Manhattan, they would tell you the address, and you'd simply go down and make an appointment to go down and see the art director".[2] Al Sulman, listed in Timely mastheads then as an "editorial associate",[6] "gave me my break. I went up there, and he came out and met me in the waiting room, looked at my work, and said, 'Sit here for a minute'. And he brought the work in, and disappeared for about 10 minutes or so... then came back out and said, 'Come with me'. That's how I met [editor-in-chief] Stan [Lee].[7] Just like that, and I had a job".[2]

Hired as "a staff penciler", Colan "started out at about $60 a week. ... Syd Shores was the art director[8] Due to Colan's work going uncredited, in the manner of the times, comprehensive credits for this era are difficult if not impossible to ascertain.

After virtually all the Timely staff was let go in 1948 during an industry downturn, Colan began freelancing for National Comics, the future DC Comics. A stickler for accuracy, he meticulously researched his countless war stories for DC's All-American Men at War, Captain Storm, and Our Army at War, as well as for Marvel's 1950s forerunner Atlas Comics, on the series Battle, Battle Action Battle Ground, Battlefront, G.I. Tales, Marines in Battle, Navy Combat and Navy Tales. Colan's earliest confirmed credit during this time is penciling and inking the six-page crime fiction story "Dream Of Doom", by an uncredited writer, in Atlas' Lawbreakers Always Lose #6 (Feb. 1949).[9]

He would rent 16 mm movies of Hopalong Cassidy Westerns in order to trace likenesses for the DC licensed series, which he drew from 1954 to 1957.
Dr. Strange #180 (May 1969). Cover art by Colan and inker Tom Palmer, utilizing photomontage.


Dr. Strange #180 (May 1969). Cover art by Colan and inker Tom Palmer, utilizing photomontage.

[edit] Silver Age

While freelancing for DC romance comics in the 1960s, and Colan did his first superhero work for Marvel under the pseudonym Adam Austin.[10] Taking to the form immediately, he introduced the "Sub-Mariner" feature in Tales to Astonish, and succeeded Don Heck on "Iron Man" in Tales of Suspense.

Shortly afterward, under his own name, Colan became one of the premier Silver Age Marvel artists, illustrating a host of such major characters as Captain America, Dr. Strange (both in the late-1960s and the mid-1970s series), and his signature character, Daredevil. Colan's long run on the series Daredevil encompassed all but three issues in an otherwise unbroken, 81-issue string from #20-100 (Sept. 1966 - June 1973), plus the initial Daredevil Annual (1967). He returned to draw ten issues sprinkled from 1974-79, and an eight-issue run in 1997.

[edit] Dracula and Batman
Colan's art from Tomb of Dracula #40.


Colan's art from Tomb of Dracula #40.

Colan also garnered praise in the 1970s for illustrating the complete, 70-issue run of the acclaimed horror title Tomb of Dracula, as well as most issues of writer Steve Gerber's cult-hit, Howard the Duck.

Back at DC in the 1980s, following a professional falling out[citation needed] with Marvel's then editor-in-chief, Jim Shooter, Colan brought his shadowy, moody textures to Batman, serving as the Dark Knight's primary artist from 1982-1986, penciling Detective Comics #528-538, 540-546 and 555-567, and Batman #340, 343-345, 348-351 and others. He was also the artist of Wonder Woman from #288-305 (Feb. 1982 - July 1983). Helping to create new characters as well, Colan collaborated in the '80s with Tomb of Dracula writer Marv Wolfman on the 14-issue run of Night Force; with Cary Bates on the 12-issue run of Silverblade; and with Greg Potter on the 12-issue run of Jemm, Son of Saturn. As well, he drew the first six issues of Doug Moench's 1987 revival of The Spectre.

Colan's style, characterized by fluid figure drawing and extensive use of shadow, was unusual among Silver Age comic artists,[11] and became more pronounced so as his career progressed. He usually worked as a penciller, with Klaus Janson and Tom Palmer as his most frequent inkers. Colan broke from the mass-market comic book penciller/inker/colorist assembly-line system by creating finished drawings in graphite and watercolor on such projects as the DC Comics miniseries Nathaniel Dusk (1984) and Nathaniel Dusk II (1985-86), and the feature "Ragamuffins" in the Eclipse Comics umbrella series Eclipse #3, 5, & 8 (1981-83). All these were written by frequent collaborator Don McGregor.

Independent-comics work includes the Eclipse graphic novel Detectives Inc.: A Terror Of Dying Dreams (1985), written by McGregor and reprinted in sepia tone as an Eclipse miniseries in 1987, and the miniseries Predator: Hell & Hot Water for Dark Horse Comics. He contributed to Archie Comics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, drawing and occasionally writing a number of stories. His work there included penciling the lighthearted science-fiction series Jughead's Time Police #1-6 (July 1990 - May 1991), and the 1990 one-shot To Riverdale and Back Again, an adaptation of the NBC TV movie about the Archie characters 20 years later, airing May 6, 1990; Stan Goldberg and Mike Esposito drew the parts featuring the characters in flashback as teens, while Colan drew adult characters, in a less cartoony style.

Back at Marvel, he collaborated again with Marv Wolfman on a Tomb of Dracula prestige series and with Don McGregor on a Black Panther serial in the Marvel Comics Presents anthology.

[edit] Later life and career

In the 2000s, Colan returned to vampires by drawing a pair of stories for Dark Horse Comics' Buffy the Vampire Slayer series.

Colan and second-wife[12] Adrienne moved from New York City to Vermont late in life. At various points he has taught at Manhattan's School of Visual Arts and Fashion Institute of Technology, and had showings at the Bess Cutler Gallery in New York City and at the Elm Street Arts Gallery in Manchester, Vermont.

He penciled the final pages of Blade vol. 3, #12 (Oct. 2007), the final issue of that series, drawing a flashback scene in which the character dresses in his original outfit from the 1970s series Tomb of Dracula. That same month, for the anniversary issue Daredevil vol. 2, #100 (Oct. 2007), Colan penciled pages 18-20 of the 36-page story "Without Fear, Part One"; the issue additionally reprinted the Colan-drawn Daredevil #90-91 (Aug.-Sept. 1972).

[edit] Awards and honors

Colan was nominated for the Shazam Award for Best Penciller (Dramatic Division) in 1974. He received the 1977 and 1979 Eagle Award for Favorite Comic Book (Humor), for Howard the Duck, and was nominated foe five Eagle Awards in 1978.

In 2005, Colan was inducted into the comics industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

[edit] Critical assessment

Comics historians and critics have written[citation needed] that the shadowy depth of Colan's art makes it particularly well-suited for black-and-white reproduction, as in his stories for the Warren Publishing magazines Eerie and Blazing Combat in the 1960s and Marvel's Dracula Lives!, Hulk, The Savage Sword of Conan, and Savage Tales magazines in the 1970s. This is also evident in the black-and-white, trade paperback collections of his acclaimed 1970s horror series Tomb of Dracula.

Artwork Samples

Fi
rst appeared in Japan in Manga Erotics magazine Vol.3 (October 1999),
republished in Brazil by Conrad Editora in the book Garotas de Tóquio (March 2006)

http://kantakahama.com/

Boilet - the father of NM

http://www.boilet.net/am/nouvellemanga_manifeste_1.html

MANGA


Japanese comics attach particular importance to story (to its scale, to the variety of its topics) and especially to narration (to its fluidity, to the techniques it uses to suggest sensations and feelings). In Japan, a mangaka is someone who wants, above all, to tell stories, as opposed to those authors of bandes dessinées 'BDs' (1) in France who generally become comic book artists through an interest in drawing.

Unlike Franco-Belgian BDs, which until the '90s were quite content to rehash the same Sci-Fi, historical or adventure universes, manga (2) has always emphasised daily life as a theme.
At least half of Japanese comics tell stories of men and women and their everyday lives. This attachment to daily life as a theme is for me the principal reason of manga's success with a broad range of readers broad range of readers. While the universes of Franco-Belgian and American Sci-Fi or action comics almost exclusively target male teenagers, in Japan, manga's daily-life stories touch men as well as women, teenagers as well as adults. This allows the format to attract a readership larger than just otaku ; many Japanese readers are not « otaku » (meaning « fan of manga », as one can be a « stamp collector », a « Formula 1 buff » or a « Smap groupie » (3) ) but simply curious, open-minded people who read comics as they would read novels or go to the cinema...

It's a paradox that daily life, the favorite topic of French cinema in particular and of European cinema in general (most noticeably in contrast to Hollywood cinema), has been absent from BDs for a long time, whereas it has always been a favorite of manga...

TRANSLATED MANGA IN FRANCE


Most of the manga that have been translated in French over the past ten years have been commercial manga aimed at teenagers, to follow on from the animated series which preceded them on French TV screens. Their themes are adventure or Sci-Fi, featuring heroes... As in Japan, this very focused type of manga generates its own otaku phenomenon : specialized press, « cosplay » (costume-play), etc.
A number of daily-life manga are also being translated, but again they are primarily aimed at teenagers, with daily life often being treated in an often over-dramatic and caricatured way : a daily life closer to Hélène et les garçons or to the domestic dramas of Japanese television than to When the Cat's Away or Only Yesterday (4).
Daily-life manga, which I think should be able to reach a larger audience than just otaku in France, is a more adult manga, with daily life portrayed without overemphasis or stereotypes : a manga that has, however, been virtually ignored to date by French-speaking readers, with the exception a few years ago of translated editions of My Father's Calendar or of The Walking Man by Jirô Taniguchi.

BD


Compared to manga, the BD puts more focus on drawing. Its authors are first and foremost illustrators, often more preoccupied with graphics than with scenario. The readers are the first to confirm this « emphasis » given to graphics : an album with skilful or fashionable drawings will always find buyers in France, even if the story is lousy or stupid...

BD TRANSLATED IN JAPAN


Except for the translations of a few Tintin albums, which one sometimes finds in the children's section of large bookstores and which thus apparently only reach certain readers (5), none of the franco-belgian BDs published in Japan over the past ten years have met with great succes (6).

The names of two authors - Mœbius and Bilal - are nonetheless known today by members of the Japanese comics industry and, to a lesser degree, by some members of the general reading public. This recognition is not due to sales of their work (which have remained minimal for both) but solely to the promotion of their names, a campaign orchestrated since the end of the 1980s by the publishers, the press, booksellers and French institutions.

There is, however, very little chance that the BDs of these two authors will reach a large readership in Japan, this broad rande of readers that I spoke of before...

MŒBIUS


As often happens with Sci-Fi, the stories of Mœbius are very peculiar, one needs a certain culture and sense of nostalgia to appreciate them ; that is to say, not only a background in BDs and « Mœbius culture » but also a nostalgia for the BDs of the late '70s... In any case, both of these represent a culture and a nostalgia that the majority of Japanese readers don't share. If Moebius is recognized in Japan, it's above all, and rightly so, for the quality of his drawings : his albums therefore reach some rare BD otaku but mostly remain of interest to professional artists, graphic designers, illustrators, editors, etc. There are about five and six thousand of them in Japan.

ENKI BILAL


In addition to his movies, Bilal is appreciated in Japan for his drawings. The recent translations of le Sommeil du monstre (The Sleep of the Monster) and of The Nikopol Trilogy may have allowed readers to understand his stories, but there was no big change in the Japanese readers' or critics' perception of his work. On the contrary, they had their prejudices confirmed : « The BD is very well drawn, but it's static and tedious ! », « Incomprehensible » were offered in Bilal's case... There were 6,000 copies of the Japanese version of le Sommeil du monstre printed by Kawadeshobô in November 98, and only 4,800 copies had been sold by December 2000 after two years in bookstores and despite strong advertising.

THE NOUVELLE BD


With the emergence of publishers like l'Association or Ego comme X, a movement was born in France at the beginning of the '90s, precisely in reaction to the Sci-Fi / hero / action BDs for teenagers of the '80s. By proposing stories often based on daily life (whether autobiographical or fictional) in the form of albums following the strict format of 46 colour pages and serial framework, these publishers and their authors opened BD up to a new readership, showing that BD wasn't condemned to the only market of « BD fans », followers of adventure, of fantastic and pleasing false images...

The impact of this « Nouvelle BD » quickly travelled beyond the borders of France, and a number of authors discovered by l'Association and Ego comme X are being translated today in the rest of Europe, and their albums distributed in the United States. Meanwhile, the majority of their supposedly more « commercial » colleagues are unable to leave the Franco-Belgian market...
When it deals with daily life, the BD becomes not only more universal (universality is generally found in a kitchen or at the bottom of a garden, only rarely on Mars or Alpha Centauri), it also becomes, through the eyes of foreign readers, more « French ». It's also through encountering the typical « French touch » they appreciate that amateurs of French cinema or literature can become amateurs of French BD.

FRENCH CINEMA IN JAPAN


The second largest market in the world for French cinema is, after France itself, Japan. In 2000, French films attracted 2.6 million viewers in the Archipelago for the forty or so releases that took place there : a success that was not only due to the spectacular productions of Luc Besson, but also to more intimate works by directors like Jacques Doillon, Cédric Klapisch, Leos Carax and many others.
Since the Nouvelle Vague, Japanese film enthusiasts especially appreciate art films : it's among these amateurs of cinema, and very often of novels, that we can find in Japan a considerable number of potential readers for our '90s-born BDs that remind of the celebrated mood of French cinema...

MY BD-MANGA


In France, and more particularly since the release of Tôkyô est mon Jardin (Tôkyô Is My Garden) in 1997, people sometimes consider that my BDs are close to manga. For example, the Flemish critic Aarnoud Rommens, in an attempt to define my work, spoke of « European manga »...
In Japan, readers clearly perceive my stories AS BD, and although they may seem a bit unusual, they appear closer in their eyes to French cinema than to Bilal's albums. While French readers notice the « Japanese » side of my stories, it is their « French » tone that strikes their Japanese counterparts.

The term Nouvelle Manga was thus born in Japan to define my picture stories that are neither completely BD nor completely manga, and that remind of the tone of French cinema.

THE JAPANESE NOUVELLE MANGA


I discovered manga at the beginning of the '90s, in Japan, where I had access to the entire local production rather than simply the limited range of French translations, which was sporadic at the time but a little more extensive today, although still extremely fragmentary and aimed at niche markets.

What immediately struck me was the number of manga dealing with daily life. Manga, its works, its authors, its readers, all proved me that, like literature or cinema, graphic stories could speak about men and women, daily life, and still attract many readers. Better yet, I discovered that it was precisely thanks to this topic that the Japanese manga readership was so varied and so vast : that it wasn't limited only to the « otaku » , as opposed to the readership of BD in France, which is mainly made up of « fans » of the medium.

I realized what I had wanted to do for years in BD had existed from the start in manga, so not only has it become for me an almost inexhaustible source of inspiration but Japan is now also a favourable basis for me to create and publish my stories...

That's why, when a Japanese reader or journalist tells me that I make « Nouvelle Manga », I feel like replying that I am not the only one, since my work is inspired, or has affinities with, other manga by authors like Yoshiharu Tsuge, Naito Yamada, Kiriko Nananan, Yoshitomo Yoshimoto and many others...

But these authors are precisely the ones that French translators ignore ! It seems to me that the term « Nouvelle Manga » could help respond to this need in France through a communication strategy designed to promote adult, daily-life manga.

Having only been used in the French media for a few years, « le manga » is unfortunately already perceived in a very stereotypical way by both the public and the media. Manga in its masculine form is shorthand for a cheap Japanese comic book for children and teenagers, that is simultaneously violent and pornographic (7) : the Japanese equivalent of the sleazy imported Italian comic books of the past...
We're well placed with our own « BDs » and « comics » (8) to know that stereotypes die hard once they've become associated with a word.
That's why I propose to circumvent them ! Using the historical and sociological roots of the feminized version of the word « manga » (9), I think it would be possible to change its public perception.
Beyond « le » manga, essentially Japanese comics for a public mostly composed of teenagers, there is « la » manga, referring to Japanese comics d'auteur that are adult and universal, that speak of men and women and their daily life : a manga closer, for example, to the films of Yasujirô Ozu and Jacques Doillon or to the novels of Yasushi Inoue than to Sailor Moon or Luc Besson.

The term « Nouvelle Manga » will appear in France in September 2001 through a collection on which I am now working with publishers Ego comme X.
It will be inaugurated by one of my own « BD-manga », Yukiko's Spinach, which will then be followed, I hope, by translations of Japanese authors such as Yoshiharu Tsuge or Kiriko Nananan... The Nouvelle Manga will also welcome any French author acquainted with Franco-Japanese trends whose work is inspired by Japanese comics, an inspiration which would not only be graphic, as is too often the case, but above all narrative.

THE FRENCH NOUVELLE MANGA

For ten years now, several publishers and professionals have made the same errors in Japan with French BD that their Western counterparts have always made in France and Europe : to promote and put emphasis on a primarily graphic BD.

This attitude is all the more regrettable as, among the amateurs of daily-life manga on one hand and those of French cinema of the other, the number of Japanese readers who could be touched by something other than the simply « illustrative » or « teenage » BD is undoubtedly significant. The reception accorded my own work by these readers is certainly an indication of this, if not an unshakable proof.

Thanks to publishers like l'Association or Ego comme X, a daily-life BD was born in the '90s as a direction reaction to the illustrative and commercial BDs that paralysed the '80s : this « Nouvelle BD », with a sensibility often very close to that of French cinema and literature, has many albums which should, I think, reach a readership in Japan larger than the usual 5,000 or 6,000 illustration aficionados and professionals.

A consequence of the preponderance of graphic BDs in translation is that the Japanese public has strong prejudices against them today : « A BD is well-drawn Sci-Fi or adventure, but it's very complicated to read or very boring ».
It is to oppose these prejudices - or rather, once again, to circumvent them - that the term « Nouvelle Manga » was coined. With the translations of Tôkyô est mon jardin (Tôkyô wa boku no niwa / Tôkyô Is My Garden), Demi-tour (Hambun Ryokô / U Turn), and with my regular publications in the Japanese press, Japanese readers have discovered a BD that might be « well-drawn » but is also in their eyes « not so badly told » : a BD that is not inevitably complicated to read nor inevitably tedious and that reminds them of the tone and spirit of French cinema... A BD that does not correspond to the image they had of the medium, drawn like a BD but which can be read almost like a manga : a Nouvelle Manga.

The publication in Japan under the label « Nouvelle Manga » of l'Épinard de Yukiko (Yukiko no Hôrensô / Yukiko's Spinach) in August 2001 (Ohta Editions, simultaneously released by the French publisher Ego comme X) and the Nouvelle Manga Event in Tôkyô (10) have been for me occasions to explain to both to the Japanese public and to professional colleagues that BD isn't limited to Bilal and Mœbius and that many authors I consider fantastic and, more importantly, accessible to the Japanese public were born in the '90s. These BDs were written by Fabrice Neaud, David B., Emmanuel Guibert, Matthieu Blanchin, Blutch, Dupuy and Berberian, Frédéric Poincelet and many others. If my BDs are close to the spirit of French cinema or literature, theirs are too : we can therefore also call their work Nouvelle Manga.

AN AUTHOR'S INITIATIVE

I mentioned at the beginning of this text to some of the commonly mentioned differences between BD and manga, and I now declare that these differences are all the more pronounced when one compares commercial BDs with manga.
When aimed at a general or otaku public, BDs and manga tend to build up, on the level of both scenario and of drawings, formulae, stereotypes and nostalgic references to the point that they divide their readership. In France, manga otaku and fans of BD are quick to pit the two styles against each other... But when one looks at « la » manga and BD d'auteur, that is to say more adult manga and BDs, the differences almost completely disappear. While many series targeted at specific audiences can only attract their respective fans (either of BD or manga), who are already familiar with, or nostalgic for, the codes and mannerisms of the genre, smooth and innovative albums by Fabrice Neaud or Kiriko Nananan seem to me perfect for readers of BD and manga, specialists and neophytes, French and Japanese people alike.

The border between commercial BD and manga and auteur BD and manga seems to me to be more obvious and harder to cross than the one that divides the two genres overall...

The Nouvelle Manga aims to be an expression of this complicity, the Franco-Japanese prolongation of French BD d'auteur and « la » manga (the Japanese BD d'auteur) : an author's initiative (as opposed to a publisher's or import library's initiative that would inevitably lead to translations - or imports - of best-sellers) whose goal would be, by creating a bridge between the two genres, to present the readers with the best of the two countries' BDs and manga, and not just what sells most. This in the universal realm of daily life : be it autobiographical, documentary or fictional.


Frédéric Boilet
Tôkyô, August 12, 2001

English translation by Olivier Petitpas (Hong Kong, June 20, 2002)
& Ken Hollings (London, July 12, 2003)