Geek Syndicate Issue 8 | Page 18

Geek Syndicate
Good start, but surely there’s
more to it? Of course there is.
One thing that is certain, however, is that no singly accepted
definition exists for film noir.
Some might argue it is not a
genre at all, rather it is a motif
or a style. After all, there are
noirs that are comic book films
(Batman 1989, Dir: Tim Burton),
westerns (Man of the West 1958,
Dir: Anthony Mann), even musicals (Carmen Jones 1954, Dir:
Otto Preminger) and others.
For some it is about style and
atmosphere. For others, it is a
certain characterisation and
content. But what is it that
makes film noir, noir?

Your classic film noir, then,
should contain many of the
following
tropes.
Moods,
themes and characters: someone down on their luck; an
almost B-movie sensibility;
existential crises, fleeting moments of success, often cruelly taken away; shades of grey
and moral ambiguity within
each main character; ambiguous endings; clever subtexts;
an uncomfortably peculiar
American-ness; night scenes
full of smoke and shadows and
rain; a nagging sense of claustrophobia; street locations,

Image © RKO Radio Pictures, 1947

I think one of the classic
tropes of noir is in fact its inherent intangibility. It might
be easy to spot a noir film
while watching it, but it’s not
so easy to describe why. It’s
about atmosphere, emotion,
mood and tone. Coincidence

and paranoia. An overwhelming sense that things are out
of control, yet might be happening for a reason. Sometimes they might be about the
little man being controlled by
larger unseen forces that are
not understood. Sometimes
they are about the throw of a
dice.

“and then she walked in ...” The Detective and the Dame (Out of the Past)

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usually fogbound; neorealist
dialogue and use of the street
slang of the time; flashbacks;
voiceovers; drinking, especially shorts; rumpled suits; a
crime, often of or for passion;
and of course, the beautiful
femme-fatale.
What is interesting about almost all previous works about
film noir (including this piece)
is that they all begin with asking a question. They ask “just
what is film noir?” They debate and they explain. They
never tell. Film noir films have
a particular oddness about
them and that’s why they are
what they are.

A Brief History Lesson
The origins of film noir can
probably be traced back to the
pulp novels of the nineteenthirties that featured hardboiled detectives and prohibition-style gangsters. However,
you also need to consider the
influence of German expressionist cinema and the films
of Fritz Lang (especially M,
1931 starring Peter Lorre) and
French experimental and realist cinema of the time, as typified by Jean Renoir.
However, there are several key
writers that really form the
foundations, or the springboards (to mix metaphors)
of noir. Three in particular
stand out. These are James
Cain, Dashiell Hammett and
Raymond Chandler. Hammett,
who wrote one of the classics
of film noir – The Maltese Falcon (1941 Dir: John Huston) –