Towards (and away from) a Definition of Noir.
May as well start off this blog with a film that is perhaps one of the most quintessential examples of what we now recognise as film noir, The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946), and a futile attempt at answering that moot and unanswerable question: what is a film noir?
This might be a bit whistle-stop…
One reason that The Killers is a superb example of the form is because it so neatly embodies many of the tropes and traits we most readily associate with noir cinema. This is true in a number of ways; its narrative form incorporates fluctuations between flashback sequences and the present day; its aesthetic, complete with chiaroscuro lighting and odd angles, exemplifies the visual signature of noir; it would be hard to find a more compelling and pernicious femme fatale than Kitty Collins, played with alluring and malicious seductiveness by Ava Gardner; and it is predominantly concerned with complex problems affecting the masculine protagonist (and secondary male characters), exploring this issue at the expense of a more balanced portrayal of women, and thus reducing the female of the species into two categories – good and bad.
The Killers can also be considered as a quintessential example of noir cinema in that many of the cultural and artistic antecedents of the cinematic form are clearly in evidence in the film’s themes and aesthetics. The influence of hardboiled literature can be felt throughout, indeed, it is based (somewhat loosely) on The Killers, a short-story by the father of the hardboiled genre, Ernest Hemingway; the spectre of German Expressionism can be witnessed in its aesthetics, influenced heavily by the film’s German director, Robert Siodmak, in fact, émigré filmmakers themselves are a mainstay of noir cinema and are often credited with, among other things, imbuing noir with its expressionistic appearance; the influence of American gangster films upon noir is also here, felt most acutely in the moral ambivalence and empathy that the film’s anti-hero protagonist, Swede Anderson (played by Burt Lancaster in his first role), enjoys, and the presence of the older, manipulative gangsters.
Yet, as is often the case, this is not news to those familiar with noir criticism; Robert G. Porfirio, for one, has already noted that The Killers is the embodiment of all things noir (Film Noir Reader, pp.177-187). What’s more, conventions only go so far when it comes to defining noir as a body of films. For example, the androcentrism, if not outright misogyny of noir is undermined, or at least challenged, by the fact that it is men who are the downfall of the successful female protagonist in the eponymous Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945 – the reverse, however, has also been argued, suggesting that Mildred is punished in a number of ways for her success and for her gall to step beyond the circumscribing exigencies of mid-twentieth century gender boundaries). The poisonous presence of women as a trait of noir is also challenged by the loving Julie (Audrey Totter) in Robert Wise’s amazing 1949 boxing noir, The Set-Up, (although, bless her, the poor little thing is still presented as not really possessing the ability to comprehend matters on a level that the men in the film are able to).
Attempting to use superficial definitions that rely solely upon aesthetic and narrative motifs to define noir inevitably leads to erroneous conclusions. As Colin Schindler points out “a noir film need not necessarily be dominated by an urban or a nocturnal setting. The Postman Always Rings Twice is set in a small roadside café on a lonely highway, yet its tone is unmistakably noir.” (Hollywood Goes To War, p101.) Anomalies, exceptions to the rules, and outright oddities always seem stick out their foot and trip up any seemingly successful attempts at attaching fixed signifiers to noir, meaning that describing and defining noir cinema is a bit like trying to describe and define a very specific colour: it’s difficult to put it into words, but you know it when you see it. The abiding irony may be that the evasive quintessence of what exactly constitutes noir cinema is, in fact, the defining characteristic of noir as a cohesive body of films.
But “Okay Jerry,” I said to myself, “You're a tough guy. You've been sapped twice, choked, beaten silly with a gun, shot in the arm until you're crazy as a couple of waltzing mice. Now let's see you do something really tough - like putting your pants on and define film noir.” Well, in truth I can’t and I don’t think anyone can, one man’s noir is another man’s melodrama, is another man’s western, is another man’s crime caper. If I was, however, forced to throw my two cents in, I would have to say that noir hinges upon one narrative device: the quest. If we take The Killers, for example, nobody knows why the mild-mannered Swede is gunned down by two hitmen in small town America, or why he didn’t put up any kind of fight. This is where Hemingway stopped his story and left the audience wondering. By 1946, however, it becomes the self-appointed task of an insurance investigator, Riordan (Edmund O’Brien) to find out what happened in this man’s life to cause this grizzly, resigned, and premature end.
Of course, quests are seen in many films that don’t fall into the noir category, and, what’s more, in its simplest form the quest is the very basis of classic storytelling and as such can be seen in innumerable examples of films and literature, American and otherwise. In the unique cultural climate in which much noir was made, however, the quest takes on a particular resonance. In The Killers, one reason Riordan feels the need to vindicate another man’s life arises, we may assume, out of an empathy and brotherhood brought about by the postwar dislocation of the American males identity. Riordan feels the need to give Swede’s life significance through giving meaning to his death in the hope that this will further cement his own identity and that of the American male. So whilst “the quest” itself is not necessarily a motif of noir, when it is married with genre (if you want to call noir a genre…) conventions such as the detective, American masculine anxieties, fatalism, sexuality, lust, revenge, low key lighting, et cetera, it becomes the tie that binds the most disparate examples of noir cinema.
What’s more, the quest is caused, necessitated and accentuated by other genre traits . Many noir motifs become physical, emotional, or even paranormal obstacles in the protagonist’s quest; darkness, femme fatales, older males, detectives, criminals, fate, even staircases. Whether it be the detective’s quest to solve an enigma, a wrongly accused man’s attempt to clear his name, a killer’s attempt to get away with murder and evade the law, or simply one man trying to find out who gave him a luminous toxin that will soon cause his death, the quest symbolises the American male’s attempt to understand, find order, and reconcile with an infinitely incomprehensible and morally questionable world
Now, that was a very brief and undeveloped argument, and I hope to go into more detail on how culture, politics, and commercial factors impacted upon noir in later posts. However, for introductory purposes I just wanted to give an impression of how the conventions of noir are symptomatic of wider issues affecting American society, and how the quest is an important signifier of noir and its cultural context. Feel free to disagree, and prizes of little-to-no material value to the first person to spot the quote and name the film (clue: its in quotation marks and feels out of sync with the rest of the text).
May as well start off this blog with a film that is perhaps one of the most quintessential examples of what we now recognise as film noir, The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946), and a futile attempt at answering that moot and unanswerable question: what is a film noir?
This might be a bit whistle-stop…
One reason that The Killers is a superb example of the form is because it so neatly embodies many of the tropes and traits we most readily associate with noir cinema. This is true in a number of ways; its narrative form incorporates fluctuations between flashback sequences and the present day; its aesthetic, complete with chiaroscuro lighting and odd angles, exemplifies the visual signature of noir; it would be hard to find a more compelling and pernicious femme fatale than Kitty Collins, played with alluring and malicious seductiveness by Ava Gardner; and it is predominantly concerned with complex problems affecting the masculine protagonist (and secondary male characters), exploring this issue at the expense of a more balanced portrayal of women, and thus reducing the female of the species into two categories – good and bad.
The Killers can also be considered as a quintessential example of noir cinema in that many of the cultural and artistic antecedents of the cinematic form are clearly in evidence in the film’s themes and aesthetics. The influence of hardboiled literature can be felt throughout, indeed, it is based (somewhat loosely) on The Killers, a short-story by the father of the hardboiled genre, Ernest Hemingway; the spectre of German Expressionism can be witnessed in its aesthetics, influenced heavily by the film’s German director, Robert Siodmak, in fact, émigré filmmakers themselves are a mainstay of noir cinema and are often credited with, among other things, imbuing noir with its expressionistic appearance; the influence of American gangster films upon noir is also here, felt most acutely in the moral ambivalence and empathy that the film’s anti-hero protagonist, Swede Anderson (played by Burt Lancaster in his first role), enjoys, and the presence of the older, manipulative gangsters.
Yet, as is often the case, this is not news to those familiar with noir criticism; Robert G. Porfirio, for one, has already noted that The Killers is the embodiment of all things noir (Film Noir Reader, pp.177-187). What’s more, conventions only go so far when it comes to defining noir as a body of films. For example, the androcentrism, if not outright misogyny of noir is undermined, or at least challenged, by the fact that it is men who are the downfall of the successful female protagonist in the eponymous Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945 – the reverse, however, has also been argued, suggesting that Mildred is punished in a number of ways for her success and for her gall to step beyond the circumscribing exigencies of mid-twentieth century gender boundaries). The poisonous presence of women as a trait of noir is also challenged by the loving Julie (Audrey Totter) in Robert Wise’s amazing 1949 boxing noir, The Set-Up, (although, bless her, the poor little thing is still presented as not really possessing the ability to comprehend matters on a level that the men in the film are able to).
Attempting to use superficial definitions that rely solely upon aesthetic and narrative motifs to define noir inevitably leads to erroneous conclusions. As Colin Schindler points out “a noir film need not necessarily be dominated by an urban or a nocturnal setting. The Postman Always Rings Twice is set in a small roadside café on a lonely highway, yet its tone is unmistakably noir.” (Hollywood Goes To War, p101.) Anomalies, exceptions to the rules, and outright oddities always seem stick out their foot and trip up any seemingly successful attempts at attaching fixed signifiers to noir, meaning that describing and defining noir cinema is a bit like trying to describe and define a very specific colour: it’s difficult to put it into words, but you know it when you see it. The abiding irony may be that the evasive quintessence of what exactly constitutes noir cinema is, in fact, the defining characteristic of noir as a cohesive body of films.
But “Okay Jerry,” I said to myself, “You're a tough guy. You've been sapped twice, choked, beaten silly with a gun, shot in the arm until you're crazy as a couple of waltzing mice. Now let's see you do something really tough - like putting your pants on and define film noir.” Well, in truth I can’t and I don’t think anyone can, one man’s noir is another man’s melodrama, is another man’s western, is another man’s crime caper. If I was, however, forced to throw my two cents in, I would have to say that noir hinges upon one narrative device: the quest. If we take The Killers, for example, nobody knows why the mild-mannered Swede is gunned down by two hitmen in small town America, or why he didn’t put up any kind of fight. This is where Hemingway stopped his story and left the audience wondering. By 1946, however, it becomes the self-appointed task of an insurance investigator, Riordan (Edmund O’Brien) to find out what happened in this man’s life to cause this grizzly, resigned, and premature end.
Of course, quests are seen in many films that don’t fall into the noir category, and, what’s more, in its simplest form the quest is the very basis of classic storytelling and as such can be seen in innumerable examples of films and literature, American and otherwise. In the unique cultural climate in which much noir was made, however, the quest takes on a particular resonance. In The Killers, one reason Riordan feels the need to vindicate another man’s life arises, we may assume, out of an empathy and brotherhood brought about by the postwar dislocation of the American males identity. Riordan feels the need to give Swede’s life significance through giving meaning to his death in the hope that this will further cement his own identity and that of the American male. So whilst “the quest” itself is not necessarily a motif of noir, when it is married with genre (if you want to call noir a genre…) conventions such as the detective, American masculine anxieties, fatalism, sexuality, lust, revenge, low key lighting, et cetera, it becomes the tie that binds the most disparate examples of noir cinema.
What’s more, the quest is caused, necessitated and accentuated by other genre traits . Many noir motifs become physical, emotional, or even paranormal obstacles in the protagonist’s quest; darkness, femme fatales, older males, detectives, criminals, fate, even staircases. Whether it be the detective’s quest to solve an enigma, a wrongly accused man’s attempt to clear his name, a killer’s attempt to get away with murder and evade the law, or simply one man trying to find out who gave him a luminous toxin that will soon cause his death, the quest symbolises the American male’s attempt to understand, find order, and reconcile with an infinitely incomprehensible and morally questionable world
Now, that was a very brief and undeveloped argument, and I hope to go into more detail on how culture, politics, and commercial factors impacted upon noir in later posts. However, for introductory purposes I just wanted to give an impression of how the conventions of noir are symptomatic of wider issues affecting American society, and how the quest is an important signifier of noir and its cultural context. Feel free to disagree, and prizes of little-to-no material value to the first person to spot the quote and name the film (clue: its in quotation marks and feels out of sync with the rest of the text).
