Following the end of World War Two, French publishing house Gallimard started publishing translations of American crime novels through its Série noire imprint: including authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and David Goodis. The following year, French critic Nino Frank wrote the earliest essays identifying a new departure in American film making, the ‘Film Noir’- though the term itself did not come into ‘official’ use until the publication of Raymond Borde & Etienne Chaumeton’s study ‘Panarama du film noir americain’ in 1955, and wasn’t widely adopted in America until the 1970’s. According to Borde and Chaumeton, the ‘Noir’ cycle officially begins with John Houston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941) and ends with Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) – though the style can be traced back as far as Fritz Lang’s M (1931), and forward to films like Memento (2000).
Characterised by fear, mistrust, bleakness, paranoia, fatalism, disillusionment, existential plots and confessional voiceovers, they provided a distinctly pessimistic view of post-war America. However, while the view was American, the ‘feel’ was distinctly European with shadowy expressionistic lighting, stark and skewered camera angles, jarring editing and deep shadows. Due to this style, the best Noirs are in Black and White – with key European directors such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Jacques Tourneur. Noir protagonists were typically anti-heroes: crooked cops, down and out private eyes, war veterans, petty criminals, gamblers and killers; while the women were often unloving, mysterious, duplicitous and manipulative – but always gorgeous.
While the style dropped out of favour after the late 1950’s, its elements were present in several standout films of the 1960’s from The Manchurian Candidate (1962) to Point Blank (1967). It made a resurgence in the 1970’s, and an even stronger one in the 1990’s. Films from this period on are referred to as ‘Neo-Noir’ and, while some are merely an affected stylism, enough original ‘Noir’ runs through them to satisfy purists.
The Maltese falcon
John Huston’s classic adaptation of Dasheill Hammett’s hard-boiled novel (using large chunks of the novels dialogue) with Bogart as Hammett’s definitive private eye, the cynical Sam Spade. When Bogart’s partner is murdered while tailing someone at the request of a beautiful client he sets out to find the killer, even though he was sleeping with his partners wife. His investigations drag him into a byzantine plot that sees him pitted against a sinister fat man (Sydney Greenstreet), an effete European (Peter Lorre), a doped up gunman (Elisha Cook Jr.), and his client (Mary Astor) a treacherous women whose loyalties turn on a dime – all of whom are after a mysterious black statuette in the shape of a bird, and rumoured to be encrusted with gold and jewels…
Double indemnity
Director Billy Wilder and writer Raymond Chandler adapted James M. Cain’s novel into one of the best early Noirs. Smooth insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) meets femme-fatale Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) when he calls to renew her husband’s automobile insurance. Sparks fly and together they scheme to murder her husband and collect a large insurance payoff using the ‘double indemnity’ clause in his life insurance. Narrated by MacMurray to his Claims Investigator boss Barton Keyes (Edward G Robinson) in a flashback, the story is still holds tension right until the last reel, and is full of Chandler’s snappy dialogue.
Laura
Darryl F Zanuck, founder of 20th Century Fox once declared that Gene Tierney was ‘unquestionably the most beautiful woman in movie history’, and ‘Laura’, based on the Vera Caspary novel, more than shows why. Dana Andrews plays a tough Homicide Detective who falls in love with the portrait of career girl/murder victim Laura Hunt (Tierney). But when Laura suddenly returns alive, he has to figure out who the dead girl is, who shot her, and more importantly, if Laura was the intended victim. Full of great lines, Otto Preminger directs this stylish murder/mystery with a great supporting cast that includes Clifton Webb as an acid-tongued journalist who was Laura’s mentor, & Vincent Price as her vacuously charming playboy boyfriend. The DVD also comes with two biographies; one on the tragic life of actress Tierney, and the other on the career of Vincent Price as one of cinemas most versatile villains.
Gilda
One of the most cynical Noirs, Charles Vidor’s Gilda stars Glenn Ford as Johnny Farrell, a down on his luck gambler in wartime Buenos Aires. Rescued from a fight by mysterious casino owner Ballin Mundson (George Macready), he is recruited to work in his illegal casino where he soon rises to be Mundson’s ‘right hand man’. All is well until Mundson goes on a business trip and returns with beautiful new bride Gilda (Rita Hayworth), a woman from Johnny’s past. Unaware of their previous relationship he assigns Johnny to keep an eye on Gilda, and their mutual dislike produces some of the most scathing dialogue committed to film. Factor in the bizarre romantic triangle that ensues, the mysterious Tungsten (a rare metal) cartel Mundson heads, the Germans who want to control it, the evocative setting, and Hayworth’s famous ‘striptease’ to ‘Put the blame on Mame’ and you have a classic piece of Noir.
Out of the past
Robert Mitchum is Jeff Bailey the owner of a small garage and living an idyllic life in small town California… until his past catches up with him in the form of ruthless gangster Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) and his girlfriend Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer). Jacques Tourneur’s brilliantly realised Noir is one of the best examples of the genre. Flashbacks within flashbacks reveal Mitchum’s past as Private Eye Jeff Markham hired by Douglas to retrieve his wayward girlfriend Grier, and the $40,000 of his money she ran off with. He manages to track her to Mexico, but that’s just the beginning of his ensnarement with the nasty pair. Mitchum is at his laconic best as Markham, conveying the characters desperation with the most economic of gestures, and the beautiful Greer is nothing short of brilliant as the remorseless femme fatale. Tourneur’s camerawork and use of light and shadow convey an inky darkness to even the most sunlit scene. The film was adapted by Daniel Mainwaring (using the pseudonym Geoffrey Homes) from his own 1946 novel ‘Build My Gallows High’, and is one of those instances where the film improves on the book, though that may have been due to the uncredited dialogue revisions by Frank Fenton, a B-movie writer whose best known credit was John Ford’s Wings of Eagles.
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