What Is Film Noir (To Me)

Since I'm writing about films noir this month, it's probably a good idea to define what I think makes a movie part of this genre. Coming up with an all-encompassing definition is difficult. Noir films are generally crime movies from the '40s and '50s. However, not all crime movies from the '40s and '50s are noir. And, there are films that fall outside of that date range that are what I would consider noir films. Finally, there are films in other genres (horror, science fiction, western) that are also noir movies.

I look for five general general characteristics that make film noir?

First, the visual style. While film noir can be in color (e.g., A Kiss Before Dying (1956), Vertigo (1958) and most post-50s film noir) the majority are in black and white and filmed in a stylized fashion, where the light and shadow become characters of their own. Unlike most films, where lighting is used to fully illuminate the action, in noir, what is lost in the shadow is equally as important. The lighting can be naturalistic, but is often not; it is used to maintains a sense of reality out of alignment, where the shadows are seeping into the light.

Second, characters are often morally conflicted. In some of the best noir films, there are no traditional heroes. The Asphalt Jungle (1950) is my favorite example of this. Every character, including the protagonist, Sterling Hayden, is a criminal. Hayden is a thug, someone who doesn't "reform" in the end. More traditional protagonists often have serious flaws, even if they are the hero of the film. Ralph Meeker's Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly (1955) is almost as bad as his opponents, taking apparent pleasure in dispensing violence (as well as making a living blackmailing adulterous spouses).

Women in film noir are femme fatales, beautiful, alluring, strong characters, who are just as dangerous as the men. While there are women who are "good girls," many of them have their own flaws, some severe. Simone Simon, the star of the 1942 noir horror Cat People, is at best, dangerously delusional, believing she turns into a panther due to an ancient curse. AT worst, she really can turn into a panther, symbolically a "woman" unable to control her passion. (I'll have more on Cat People when I review it later this month). Female characters in noir films are often more complex than those in traditional movies of the time. A character like Marie Windsor's undercover police woman in The Narrow Margin (1952) is rich and complex, one that has multiple layers and is three-dimensional. Many other female roles are similarly complex in films of this genre.

Third, obsession is a common theme. Most of the characters want something, to the point that they will do anything to get it. This obsession leads them - protagonist and antagonist alike - to bend the rules of society...or break them. This is important, as obsession plays off the visual styles - of the shadows of relentless obsession overcoming the better light of a more balanced approach to life and of the stark imagery denoting how the characters see the world. It is a place of things to possess in a very black and white, zero-sum manner. The characters, often full of passions (whether obvious or smoldering just beneath the surface) have a focus. It can be a Maltese Falcon, a faded Hollywood career (1950's Sunset Boulevard) or a quest for one's true identity in a surreal city of perpetual night (1998's Dark City). It doesn't matter what the thing is, as long as there is an obsession that will overwhelm the character's moral center as they struggle to possess it.

Fourth, most film noir have an urban setting. Not all, of course; for example, Key Largo (1948) is set in a hotel in the Florida Keys and Red River (the 1948 Howard Hawks masterpiece) takes place on the trail of a cattle drive in the late-19th century. Most of the movies in this genre, however, are set in cities, in urban jungles as dangerous as any wilderness. The ultimate expression of the noir city is seen in Blade Runner (1982). Los Angeles of 2019 is a vast metropolis of megastructures, almost always seen at night and in the rain.

The urban setting is important as it becomes a character it its own right. The great cities of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are the usual settings for noir films, representing the pinnacle of America's urban/industrial power in the mid-20th century. Significantly, they are also, home to thieves, corrupt cops, drunks and floozies, a man-made eco-system of predators and prey.

Fifth, while noir films do exist outside of the 1940s and 1950s, the closer you get to modern cinema, the more you see that many of the defining characteristics of film nor have metastasized throughout the cinema. This is particularly true of the morally ambiguous characters, which are now standard for movies of all genres. While I will look at some movies outside these two decades, they are fewer and in some cases (Like Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000)) they are conscious homages to the noir genre and, therefore, of a different nature than the films they imitate.

A stylized look, where the interplay of light and shadow creates a sense of reality out of balance, characters who are morally ambiguous and motivated by consuming obsessions, a setting that depicts the greatest accomplishments of our civilization - the cities - as dangerous "asphalt jungles," where you are either predator or prey (and often times both). All of these things go into making a film noir...at least from my point of view.