Bad girl movies
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Film noir (; ) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish
Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...
crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American ''film noir''. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key, black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography. 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
Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
. The term ''film noir'', French for 'black film' (literal) or 'dark film' (closer meaning), was first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, but was unrecognized by most American film industry professionals of that era. Frank is believed to have been inspired by the French literary publishing imprint Série noire, founded in 1945. Cinema historians and critics defined the category retrospectively. Before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic films noir were referred to as "
melodrama A modern melodrama is a dramatic work in which the plot, typically sensationalized and for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or exces ...
s". Whether film noir qualifies as a distinct genre or whether it is more of a filmmaking style is a matter of ongoing debate among scholars. Film noir encompasses a range of plots: the central figure may be a private investigator ('' The Big Sleep''), a plainclothes police officer ('' The Big Heat''), an aging boxer ('' The Set-Up''), a hapless grifter ('' Night and the City''), a law-abiding citizen lured into a life of crime ('' Gun Crazy''), or simply a victim of circumstance ('' D.O.A.''). Although film noir was originally associated with American productions, the term has been used to describe films from around the world. Many films released from the 1960s onward share attributes with films noir of the classical period, and often treat its conventions self-referentially. Some refer to such latter-day works as neo-noir. The clichés of film noir have inspired parody since the mid-1940s.


Definition

The questions of what defines film noir, and what sort of category it is, provoke continuing debate. "We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel ..."—this set of attributes constitutes the first of many attempts to define film noir made by French critics Raymond Borde and Étienne 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 emphasize that not every film noir embodies all five attributes in equal measure—one might be more dreamlike; another, particularly brutal. The authors' caveats and repeated efforts at alternative definition have been echoed in subsequent scholarship: in the more than five decades since, there have been innumerable further attempts at definition, yet in the words of cinema historian Mark Bould, film noir remains an "elusive phenomenon ... always just out of reach". Though film noir is often identified with a visual style, unconventional within a Hollywood context, that emphasizes low-key lighting and unbalanced compositions, films commonly identified as noir evidence a variety of visual approaches, including ones that fit comfortably within the Hollywood mainstream. Film noir similarly embraces a variety of genres, from the
gangster film A gangster film or gangster movie is a film belonging to a genre that focuses on gangs and organized crime. It is a subgenre of crime film, that may involve large criminal organizations, or small gangs formed to perform a certain illegal act. The ...
to the
police procedural The police show, or police crime drama, is a subgenre of procedural drama and detective fiction that emphasizes the investigative procedure of a police officer or department as the protagonist(s), as contrasted with other genres that focus on eith ...
to the gothic romance to the social problem picture—any example of which from the 1940s and 1950s, now seen as noir's classical era, was likely to be described as a melodrama at the time. While many critics refer to film noir as a genre itself, others argue that it can be no such thing. Foster Hirsch defines a genre as determined by "conventions of narrative structure, characterization, theme, and visual design". Hirsch, as one who has taken the position that film noir is a genre, argues that these elements are present "in abundance". Hirsch notes that there are unifying features of tone, visual style and narrative sufficient to classify noir as a distinct genre. Others argue that film noir is not a genre. Film noir is often associated with an urban setting, but many classic noirs take place in small towns, suburbia, rural areas, or on the open road; setting, therefore, cannot be its genre determinant, as with the Western. Similarly, while the
private eye ''Private Eye'' is a British fortnightly satire, satirical and current affairs (news format), current affairs news magazine, founded in 1961. It is published in London and has been edited by Ian Hislop since 1986. The publication is widely r ...
and the
femme fatale A ''femme fatale'' ( or ; ), sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of ...
are
stock character A stock character, also known as a character archetype, is a fictional character in a work of art such as a novel, play, or a film whom audiences recognize from frequent recurrences in a particular literary tradition. There is a wide range of st ...
types conventionally identified with noir, the majority of films noir feature neither; so there is no character basis for genre designation as with the gangster film. Nor does film noir rely on anything as evident as the monstrous or supernatural elements of the
horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...
, the speculative leaps of the
science fiction film Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial lifeforms, spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, interstellar ...
, or the song-and-dance routines of the
musical Musical is the adjective of music. Musical may also refer to: * Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance * Musical film and television, a genre of film and television that incorporates into the narr ...
. An 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. 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 film noir as a "cycle" and a "phenomenon", even as he argues that it has—like certain genres—a consistent set of visual and thematic codes. Screenwriter
Eric R. Williams Eric R. Williams is an American screenwriter, professor, Cinematic virtual reality (cine-VR), cinematic virtual reality director, and new media storyteller. He is known for developing alternative narrative and documentary techniques that take adv ...
labels both film noir and screwball comedy a "pathway" in his screenwriters taxonomy; explaining that a pathway has two parts: 1) the way the audience connects with the protagonist and 2) the trajectory the audience expects the story to follow. Other critics treat film noir as a "mood", characterize it as a "series", or simply address a chosen set of films they regard as belonging to the noir "canon". There is no consensus on the matter.


Background


Cinematic sources

The aesthetics of film noir were influenced by German Expressionism, an artistic movement of the 1910s and 1920s that involved theater, music, photography, painting, sculpture and architecture, as well as cinema. The opportunities offered by the booming Hollywood film industry and then the threat of Nazism led to the emigration of many film artists working in Germany who had been involved in the Expressionist movement or studied with its practitioners. '' M'' (1931), shot only a few years before director Fritz Lang's departure from Germany, is among the first crime films of the sound era to join a characteristically noirish visual style with a noir-type plot, in which the protagonist is a criminal (as are his most successful pursuers). Directors such as Lang, Jacques Tourneur, Robert Siodmak and Michael Curtiz brought a dramatically shadowed lighting style and a psychologically expressive approach to visual composition ('' mise-en-scène'') with them to Hollywood, where they made some of the most famous classic noirs. 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 ''20,000 Years in Sing Sing'' is a 1932 American Pre-Code drama film set in Sing Sing Penitentiary, the maximum security prison in Ossining, New York, starring Spencer Tracy as an inmate and Bette Davis as his girlfriend. It was directed by Mi ...
'' (1932) and '' Private Detective 62'' (1933) are among the early Hollywood sound films arguably classifiable as noir—scholar Marc Vernet offers the latter as evidence that dating the initiation of film noir to 1940 or any other year is "arbitrary". Expressionism-orientated filmmakers had free stylistic rein in
Universal Universal is the adjective for universe. Universal may also refer to: Companies * NBCUniversal, a media and entertainment company ** Universal Animation Studios, an American Animation studio, and a subsidiary of NBCUniversal ** Universal TV, a t ...
horror pictures such as ''
Dracula ''Dracula'' is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist, but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking ...
'' (1931), ''
The Mummy A mummy is an unusually well preserved corpse. Mummy or The Mummy may also refer to: Places *Mummy Range, a mountain range in the Rocky Mountains of northern Colorado in the United States *Mummy Cave, a rock shelter and archeological site in Par ...
'' (1932)—the former photographed and the latter directed by the Berlin-trained
Karl Freund Karl W. Freund, A.S.C. (January 16, 1890 – May 3, 1969) was an Austrian cinematography, cinematographer and film director best known for photographing ''Metropolis (1927 film), Metropolis'' (1927), ''Dracula (1931 English-language film), Dracul ...
—and '' The Black Cat'' (1934), directed by Austrian émigré
Edgar G. Ulmer Edgar Georg Ulmer (; September 17, 1904 – September 30, 1972) was a Jewish- Moravian, Austrian-American film director who mainly worked on Hollywood B movies and other low-budget productions, eventually earning the epithet 'The King of PRC', ...
. The Universal horror film that comes closest to noir, in story and sensibility, is '' The Invisible Man'' (1933), directed by Englishman James Whale and photographed by American
Arthur Edeson Arthur Edeson, A.S.C. (October 24, 1891 – February 14, 1970) was a film cinematographer, born in New York City. His career ran from the formative years of the film industry in New York, through the silent era in Hollywood, and the sound era th ...
. Edeson later photographed '' The Maltese Falcon'' (1941), widely regarded as the first major film noir of the classic era.
Josef von Sternberg Josef von Sternberg (; born Jonas Sternberg; May 29, 1894 – December 22, 1969) was an Austrian-American filmmaker whose career successfully spanned the transition from the silent to the sound era, during which he worked with most of the major ...
was directing in Hollywood during the same period. Films of his such as '' Shanghai Express'' (1932) and '' The Devil Is a Woman'' (1935), with their hothouse eroticism and baroque visual style anticipated central elements of classic noir. The commercial and critical success of Sternberg's silent '' Underworld'' (1927) was largely responsible for spurring a trend of Hollywood gangster films. Successful films in that genre such as ''
Little Caesar Little Caesar may refer to: People * Ptolemy XV Philopator Philometor Caesar, nicknamed Caesarion ("Little Caesar"), last pharaoh of Egypt, son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra * Little Caesar (singer) (1928-1994; birth name Harry Caesar) U.S. sing ...
'' (1931), '' The Public Enemy'' (1931) and '' Scarface'' (1932) demonstrated that there was an audience for crime dramas with morally reprehensible protagonists. An important, possibly influential, cinematic antecedent to classic noir was 1930s French poetic realism, with its romantic,
fatalistic Fatalism is a family of related philosophical doctrines that stress the subjugation of all events or actions to fate or destiny, and is commonly associated with the consequent attitude of resignation in the face of future events which are thou ...
attitude and celebration of doomed heroes. The movement's sensibility is mirrored in the Warner Bros. drama '' I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang'' (1932), a forerunner of noir. Among films not considered noir, perhaps none had a greater effect on the development of the genre than ''
Citizen Kane ''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American drama film produced by, directed by, and starring Orson Welles. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Herman J. Mankiewicz. The picture was Welles' first feature film. ''Citizen Kane'' is frequently cited ...
'' (1941), directed by Orson Welles. Its visual intricacy and complex, voiceover narrative structure are echoed in dozens of classic films noir. Italian neorealism of the 1940s, with its emphasis on quasi-documentary authenticity, was an acknowledged influence on trends that emerged in American noir. ''
The Lost Weekend ''The Lost Weekend'' is a 1945 American drama film noir directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman. It was based on Charles R. Jackson's The Lost Weekend (novel), 1944 novel about an Alcoholism, alcoholic writer. The film ...
'' (1945), directed by Billy Wilder, another Vienna-born, Berlin-trained American auteur, tells the story of an alcoholic in a manner evocative of neorealism. It also exemplifies the problem of classification: one of the first American films to be described as a film noir, it has largely disappeared from considerations of the field. Director Jules Dassin of '' The Naked City'' (1948) pointed to the neorealists as inspiring his use of location photography with non-professional extras. This semidocumentary approach characterized a substantial number of noirs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Along with neorealism, the style had an American precedent cited by Dassin, in director Henry Hathaway's '' The House on 92nd Street'' (1945), which demonstrated the parallel influence of the cinematic newsreel.


Literary sources

The primary literary influence on film noir was the hardboiled school of American
detective A detective is an investigator, usually a member of a law enforcement agency. They often collect information to solve crimes by talking to witnesses and informants, collecting physical evidence, or searching records in databases. This leads th ...
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 James Mallahan Cain (July 1, 1892 – October 27, 1977) was an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter. He is widely regarded as a progenitor of the hardboiled school of American crime fiction. His novels ''The Postman Always Rings Twice ...
(whose '' The Postman Always Rings Twice'' appeared five years later), and popularized in
pulp magazine Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazine ...
s 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 ''Double Indemnity'' is a 1944 American crime film noir directed by Billy Wilder, co-written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, and produced by Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Sistrom. The screenplay was based on James M. Cain's 1943 novel of the same ...
'' (1944), ''
Mildred Pierce ''Mildred Pierce'' is a psychological drama by James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1941. A story of “social inequity and opportunity in America" set during the Great Depression, ''Mildred Pierce'' follows the trajectory of a lower- ...
'' (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 by Hammett was the source for the gangster melodrama '' City Streets'' (1931), directed by Rouben Mamoulian and photographed by
Lee Garmes Lee Garmes, A.S.C. (May 27, 1898 – August 31, 1978) was an American cinematographer. During his career, he worked with directors Howard Hawks, Max Ophüls, Josef von Sternberg, Alfred Hitchcock, King Vidor, Nicholas Ray and Henry Hathaway, whom ...
, who worked regularly with Sternberg. Released the month before Lang's ''M'', ''City Streets'' has a claim to being the first major film noir; both its style and story had many noir characteristics.
Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive durin ...
, 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 ''Farewell, My Lovely'' is a novel by Raymond Chandler, published in 1940, the second novel he wrote featuring the Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe. It was adapted for the screen three times and was also adapted for the stage and rad ...
''), '' The Big Sleep'' (1946), and ''
Lady in the Lake ''Lady in the Lake'' is a 1947 American film noir starring Robert Montgomery, Audrey Totter, Lloyd Nolan, Tom Tully, Leon Ames and Jayne Meadows. An adaptation of the 1943 Raymond Chandler murder mystery ''The Lady in the Lake'', the picture ...
'' (1947)—he was an important
screenwriter A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter, scriptwriter, scribe or scenarist) is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based. ...
in the genre as well, producing the scripts for ''Double Indemnity'', ''
The Blue Dahlia ''The Blue Dahlia'' is a 1946 American crime film and film noir with an original screenplay by Raymond Chandler''Variety'' film review; January 30, 1946, page 12.''Harrison's Reports'' film review; February 2, 1946, page 19. directed by George M ...
'' (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 under the pseudonym George Hopley or William Irish). No writer's published work provided the basis for more films noir of the classic period than Woolrich's: thirteen in all, including '' Black Angel'' (1946), '' Deadline at Dawn'' (1946), and '' Fear in the Night'' (1947). Another crucial literary source for film noir was W. R. Burnett, whose first novel to be published was ''Little Caesar'', in 1929. It was turned into a hit for Warner Bros. in 1931; the following year, Burnett was hired to write dialogue for ''Scarface'', while '' The Beast of the City'' (1932) was adapted from one of his stories. At least one important reference work identifies the latter as a film noir despite its 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 own way, which happened to be that of the gangster. During the classic era, his work, either as author or screenwriter, was the basis for seven films now widely regarded as films noir, including three of the most famous: '' High Sierra'' (1941), '' This Gun for Hire'' (1942), and '' The Asphalt Jungle'' (1950).


Classic period


Overview

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 categorized as full-fledged noir in Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's film noir' encyclopedia, other critics tend to describe them as "proto-noir" or in similar terms. The film now most commonly cited as the first "true" film noir is ''
Stranger on the Third Floor ''Stranger on the Third Floor'' is a 1940 American film noir directed by Boris Ingster and starring Peter Lorre, John McGuire, and Margaret Tallichet, and featuring Elisha Cook Jr. It was written by Frank Partos. Modern research has shown tha ...
'' (1940), directed by Latvian-born, Soviet-trained
Boris Ingster Boris Ingster was a Russian-American screenwriter, film and television director, and producer (October 29, 1903 in Riga, then in the Russian Empire - August 2, 1978 in Los Angeles, California) notable for his role in launching the film noir genr ...
.See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 19; Irwin (2006), p. 210; Lyons (2000), p. 36; Porfirio (1980), p. 269. Hungarian émigré Peter Lorre—who had starred in Lang's '' M''—was top-billed, although he did not play the primary lead. (He later played secondary roles in several other formative American noirs.) Although modestly budgeted, at the high end of the
B movie A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature ...
scale, ''Stranger on the Third Floor'' still lost its studio, RKO, US$56,000 (), almost a third of its total cost. '' Variety'' magazine 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." ''Stranger on the Third Floor'' was not recognized as the beginning of a trend, let alone a new genre, for many decades. Most 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. There was more visual experimentation than in Hollywood filmmaking as a whole: the Expressionism now closely associated with noir and the semi-documentary style that later emerged represent two very different tendencies. Narrative structures sometimes involved convoluted flashbacks uncommon in non-noir commercial productions. In terms of content, enforcement of the Production Code ensured that no film 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 very risqué for the time. Thematically, films noir were most exceptional for the relative frequency with which they centered on portrayals of 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 film in this vein was ''
Double Indemnity ''Double Indemnity'' is a 1944 American crime film noir directed by Billy Wilder, co-written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, and produced by Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Sistrom. The screenplay was based on James M. Cain's 1943 novel of the same ...
'', directed by Billy Wilder; setting the mold was
Barbara Stanwyck Barbara Stanwyck (; born Ruby Catherine Stevens; July 16, 1907 – January 20, 1990) was an American actress, model and dancer. A stage, film, and television star, during her 60-year professional career she was known for her strong, realistic sc ...
's unforgettable
femme fatale A ''femme fatale'' ( or ; ), sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of ...
, Phyllis Dietrichson—an apparent nod to Marlene Dietrich, who had built her extraordinary career playing such characters for Sternberg. An A-level feature, the film'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" followed, 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 films such as '' The Maltese Falcon'' (1941), with
Humphrey Bogart Humphrey DeForest Bogart (; December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957), nicknamed Bogie, was an American film and stage actor. His performances in Classical Hollywood cinema films made him an American cultural icon. In 1999, the American Film In ...
as
Sam Spade Sam Spade is a fictional character and the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel '' The Maltese Falcon''. Spade also appeared in four lesser-known short stories by Hammett. ''The Maltese Falcon'', first published as a serial in the pulp ...
, and '' Murder, My Sweet'' (1944), with
Dick Powell Richard Ewing Powell (November 14, 1904 – January 2, 1963) was an American actor, musician, producer, director, and studio head. Though he came to stardom as a musical comedy performer, he showed versatility, and successfully transformed into ...
as Philip Marlowe. The prevalence of the private eye as a lead character declined in film noir of the 1950s, a period during which several critics describe the form as becoming more focused on extreme psychologies and more exaggerated in general. 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 Michael Hammer or Mike Hammer may refer to: *Michael Armand Hammer (1955–2022), American philanthropist and businessman *Michael Martin Hammer (1948–2008), engineer and author *Mike Hammer (character), a fictional hard boiled detective ** ''Mick ...
. As described by
Paul Schrader Paul Joseph Schrader (; born July 22, 1946) is an American screenwriter, film director, and film critic. He first received widespread recognition through his screenplay for Martin Scorsese's ''Taxi Driver'' (1976). He later continued his collabo ...
, "
Robert Aldrich Robert Burgess Aldrich (August 9, 1918 – December 5, 1983) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. His notable credits include '' Vera Cruz'' (1954), ''Kiss Me Deadly'' (1955), ''The Big Knife'' (1955), '' Autumn L ...
's teasing direction carries ''noir'' to its sleaziest and most perversely erotic. Hammer overturns the underworld in search of the 'great whatsit' hichturns out to be—joke of jokes—an exploding atomic bomb." 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 films made outside the classic era to be something other than genuine film noir. 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 filmmaking style and latter-day awareness of noir as a historical source for allusion. These later films are often called neo-noir.


Directors and the business of noir

While the inceptive noir, ''Stranger on the Third Floor'', was a B picture directed by a virtual unknown, many of the films noir still remembered were A-list productions by well-known film makers. Debuting as a director with '' The Maltese Falcon'' (1941),
John Huston John Marcellus Huston ( ; August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter, actor and visual artist. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered ...
followed with '' Key Largo'' (1948) and '' The Asphalt Jungle'' (1950). Opinion is divided on the noir status of several
Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...
thrillers from the era; at least four qualify by consensus: ''
Shadow of a Doubt ''Shadow of a Doubt'' is a 1943 American psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. Written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville, the film was nominated for an Academy ...
'' (1943), ''
Notorious Notorious means well known for a negative trait, characteristic, or action. It may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Notorious'' (1946 film), a thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock * ''Notorious'' (1992 film), a TV film re ...
'' (1946), '' Strangers on a Train'' (1951) and '' The Wrong Man'' (1956), Otto Preminger's success with ''
Laura Laura may refer to: People * Laura (given name) * Laura, the British code name for the World War I Belgian spy Marthe Cnockaert Places Australia * Laura, Queensland, a town on the Cape York Peninsula * Laura, South Australia * Laura Bay, a bay on ...
'' (1944) made his name and helped demonstrate noir's adaptability to a high-gloss
20th Century-Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Disn ...
presentation. Among Hollywood's most celebrated directors of the era, arguably none worked more often in a noir mode than Preminger; his other 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 were not so much crime dramas as satires on Hollywood and the news media respectively. ''
In a Lonely Place ''In a Lonely Place'' is a 1950 American film noir directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, produced for Bogart's Santana Productions. The script was written by Andrew P. Solt from Edmund H. North's adaptation o ...
'' (1950) was Nicholas Ray's breakthrough; his other noirs include his debut, '' They Live by Night'' (1948) and '' On Dangerous Ground'' (1952), noted for their unusually sympathetic treatment of characters alienated from the social mainstream. Orson Welles had notorious problems with financing but his three film noirs were well-budgeted: '' The Lady from Shanghai'' (1947) received top-level, "prestige" backing, while '' The Stranger'' (1946), his most conventional film, and '' Touch of Evil'' (1958), 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. ''Scarlet Street'' was a semi-independent, cosponsored by
Universal Universal is the adjective for universe. Universal may also refer to: Companies * NBCUniversal, a media and entertainment company ** Universal Animation Studios, an American Animation studio, and a subsidiary of NBCUniversal ** Universal TV, a t ...
and Lang's Diana Productions, of which the film's co-star, Joan Bennett, was the second biggest shareholder. Lang, Bennett and her husband, the Universal veteran and Diana production head Walter Wanger, made '' Secret Beyond the Door'' (1948) in similar fashion. Before leaving the United States while subject to the Hollywood blacklist, Jules Dassin made two classic noirs that also straddled the major/independent line: ''
Brute Force Brute Force or brute force may refer to: Techniques * Brute force method or proof by exhaustion, a method of mathematical proof * Brute-force attack, a cryptanalytic attack * Brute-force search, a computer problem-solving technique People * Brut ...
'' (1947) and the influential documentary-style '' The Naked City'' (1948) were developed by producer Mark Hellinger, who had an "inside/outside" contract with Universal similar to Wanger's. Years earlier, working at Warner Bros., Hellinger had produced three films for
Raoul Walsh Raoul Walsh (born Albert Edward Walsh; March 11, 1887December 31, 1980) was an American film director, actor, founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), and the brother of silent screen actor George Walsh. He w ...
, the proto-noirs '' They Drive by Night'' (1940), '' Manpower'' (1941) and '' High Sierra'' (1941), now regarded as a seminal work in noir's development. Walsh had no great name during his half-century as a director but his noirs '' White Heat'' (1949) and '' The Enforcer'' (1951) had A-list stars and are seen as important examples of the cycle. Other directors associated with top-of-the-bill Hollywood films noir 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 Kiss of Death may refer to: * Kiss of Judas, Judas's betrayal of Jesus with a kiss identifying him to his executioners * Kiss of death (mafia), a Mafia signal that someone has been marked for execution Film and television * ''Kiss of Death'' ...
'' (1947)) and John Farrow (''
The Big Clock ''The Big Clock'' is a 1946 novel by Kenneth Fearing. Published by Harcourt Brace, the thriller was Fearing's fourth novel, following three for Random House (''The Hospital'', ''Dagger of the Mind'', ''Clark Gifford's Body'') and five collections ...
'' (1948), ''
Night Has a Thousand Eyes ''Night Has a Thousand Eyes'' is a 1948 American horror film directed by John Farrow and starring Edward G. Robinson, Gail Russell and John Lund. The screenplay was written by Barré Lyndon and Jonathan Latimer. The film is based on the nov ...
'' (1948)). Most of the Hollywood films considered to be classic noirs fall into the category of the B movie. 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 Poverty Row outfits, from the relatively well-off
Monogram A monogram is a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol. Monograms are often made by combining the initials of an individual or a company, used as recognizable symbols or logos. A series o ...
to shakier ventures such as Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC). Jacques Tourneur had made over thirty Hollywood Bs (a few now highly regarded, most forgotten) before directing the A-level ''Out of the Past'', described by scholar Robert Ottoson as "the ''ne plus ultra'' of forties film noir". Movies with budgets a step up the ladder, known as "intermediates" by the industry, might be treated as A or B pictures depending on the circumstances. Monogram created Allied Artists in the late 1940s to focus on this sort of production. Robert Wise (''
Born to Kill Born to Kill may refer to: Film * ''Born to Kill'' (1947 film), a film noir directed by Robert Wise * ''Born to Kill'' (1967 film), a Spaghetti Western directed by Antonio Mollica * ''Born to Kill'' (1974 film) or ''Cockfighter'', a film direct ...
''
947 Year 947 ( CMXLVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – A Hungarian army led by Grand Prince Taksony campaigns in Italy, heading ...
'' The Set-Up''
949 Year 949 ( CMXLIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * Arab-Byzantine War: Hamdanid forces under Sayf al-Dawla raid into the theme of Ly ...
and
Anthony Mann Anthony Mann (born Emil Anton Bundsmann; June 30, 1906 – April 29, 1967) was an American film director and stage actor. Mann initially started as a theatre actor appearing in numerous stage productions. In 1937, he moved to Hollywood where ...
('' T-Men''
947 Year 947 ( CMXLVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – A Hungarian army led by Grand Prince Taksony campaigns in Italy, heading ...
and '' Raw Deal''
948 Year 948 ( CMXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * Arab–Byzantine War: Hamdanid forces under Sayf al-Dawla raid into Asia Mi ...
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 most celebrated work with cinematographer John Alton, a specialist in what James Naremore called "hypnotic moments of light-in-darkness". '' He Walked by Night'' (1948), shot by Alton 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 The police show, or police crime drama, is a subgenre of procedural drama and detective fiction that emphasizes the investigative procedure of a police officer or department as the protagonist(s), as contrasted with other genres that focus on eith ...
" crime dramas. It was released, like other Mann-Alton noirs, by the small Eagle-Lion company; it was the inspiration for the '' Dragnet'' series, which debuted on radio in 1949 and television in 1951. Several directors associated with noir built well-respected oeuvres largely at the B-movie/intermediate level.
Samuel Fuller Samuel Michael Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997) was an American film director, screenwriter, novelist, journalist, and World War II veteran known for directing low-budget B movie, genre movies with controversial themes, often ...
's brutal, visually energetic films such as '' Pickup on South Street'' (1953) and '' Underworld U.S.A.'' (1961) earned him a unique reputation; his advocates praise him as "primitive" and "barbarous". Joseph H. Lewis directed noirs as diverse as '' Gun Crazy'' (1950) and '' The Big Combo'' (1955). The former—whose screenplay was written by the blacklisted
Dalton Trumbo James Dalton Trumbo (December 9, 1905 – September 10, 1976) was an American screenwriter who scripted many award-winning films, including ''Roman Holiday'' (1953), ''Exodus'', ''Spartacus'' (both 1960), and ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'' (1944) ...
, disguised by a front—features a bank hold-up sequence shown in an unbroken take of over three minutes that was influential. ''The Big Combo'' was shot by John Alton and took the shadowy noir style to its outer limits. The most distinctive films of
Phil Karlson Phil Karlson (born Philip N. Karlstein; July 2, 1908 – December 12, 1982) was an American film director. Karlson directed '' 99 River Street'', ''Kansas City Confidential'' and ''Hell's Island'', all with actor John Payne, in the early 1950s ...
('' The Phenix City Story'' 955and ''
The Brothers Rico ''The Brothers Rico'' is a 1957 American crime film noir directed by Phil Karlson and starring Richard Conte, Dianne Foster and Kathryn Grant. Plot Eddie Rico (Richard Conte) is the happily married owner of a prosperous laundry company in Baysh ...
''
957 Year 957 ( CMLVII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * September 6 – Liudolf, the eldest son of King Otto I, dies of a violent fever nea ...
tell stories of vice organized on a monstrous scale. The work of other directors in this tier of the industry, such as Felix E. Feist ('' The Devil Thumbs a Ride''
947 Year 947 ( CMXLVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – A Hungarian army led by Grand Prince Taksony campaigns in Italy, heading ...
'' Tomorrow Is Another Day'' 951, has become obscure.
Edgar G. Ulmer Edgar Georg Ulmer (; September 17, 1904 – September 30, 1972) was a Jewish- Moravian, Austrian-American film director who mainly worked on Hollywood B movies and other low-budget productions, eventually earning the epithet 'The King of PRC', ...
spent most of his Hollywood career working at B studios and once in a while on projects that achieved intermediate status; for the most part, on unmistakable Bs. In 1945, while at PRC, he directed a noir cult classic, '' Detour''. Ulmer's other noirs include '' Strange Illusion'' (1945), also for PRC; '' Ruthless'' (1948), for Eagle-Lion, which had acquired PRC the previous year 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 larger studios for distribution. Serving as producer, writer, director and top-billed performer, Hugo Haas made films like '' Pickup'' (1951), '' The Other Woman'' (1954) and Jacques Tourneur, ''
The Fearmakers ''The Fearmakers'' is a 1958 American film noir crime film directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Dana Andrews. The screenplay is based on the 1945 novel of the same name by Darwin Teilhet. The film centers on seemingly nonpartisan political ...
(1958)''. It was in this way that accomplished noir actress Ida Lupino established herself as the sole female director in Hollywood during the late 1940s and much of the 1950s. She does not appear in the best-known film she directed, ''
The Hitch-Hiker ''The Hitch-Hiker'' is a 1953 American film noir thriller co-written and directed by Ida Lupino, starring Edmond O'Brien, William Talman and Frank Lovejoy, about two friends taken hostage by a hitchhiker during an automobile trip to Mexico. ...
'' (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 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 Rudolph Maté (born Rudolf Mayer; 21 January 1898 – 27 October 1964) was a Polish-Hungarian-American cinematographer, film director and film producer who worked as cameraman and cinematographer in Hungary, Austria, Germany, France and the Unite ...
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 were blacklisted in the 1950s. Independent production usually meant restricted circumstances but ''Sweet Smell of Success'', despite the 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 films now regarded as classic-era films noir (a figure matched only by Lang and Mann). In addition to ''The Killers'',
Burt Lancaster Burton Stephen Lancaster (November 2, 1913 – October 20, 1994) was an American actor and producer. Initially known for playing tough guys with a tender heart, he went on to achieve success with more complex and challenging roles over a 45-yea ...
's debut and a Hellinger/Universal co-production, 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 ''Christmas Holiday'' is a 1944 American film noir crime film directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly. Based on the 1939 novel of the same name by W. Somerset Maugham, the film is about a woman who marries a South ...
'' (1944), and ''
Cry of the City ''Cry of the City'' is a 1948 American film noir starring Victor Mature, Richard Conte, and Shelley Winters. Directed by Robert Siodmak, it is based on the novel by Henry Edward Helseth, ''The Chair for Martin Rome''. The screenwriter Ben Hecht ...
'' (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 economic reasons: dim lighting saved on electricity and 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 hastily written scripts, of which there was not always enough time or money to shoot every scene. In ''Criss Cross'', Siodmak achieved these effects with purpose, wrapping them around
Yvonne De Carlo Margaret Yvonne Middleton (September 1, 1922January 8, 2007), known professionally as Yvonne De Carlo, was a Canadian-American actress, dancer and singer. She became a Hollywood film star in the 1940s and 1950s, made several recordings, and late ...
, playing the most understandable of femme fatales; Dan Duryea, in one of his many charismatic villain roles; and Lancaster as an ordinary laborer turned armed robber, doomed by a romantic obsession.


Outside the United States

Some critics regard classic film noir as a cycle exclusive to the United States; Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, for example, argue, "With the Western, film noir shares the distinction of being an indigenous American form ... a wholly American film style." However, although the term "film noir" was originally coined to describe Hollywood movies, it was an international phenomenon. Even before the beginning of the generally accepted classic period, there were films made far from Hollywood that can be seen in retrospect as films noir, for example, the French productions ''
Pépé le Moko ''Pépé le Moko'' () is a 1937 French film directed by Julien Duvivier starring Jean Gabin, based on a novel of the same name by Henri La Barthe and with sets by Jacques Krauss. An example of the 1930s French movement known as poetic realism, ...
'' (1937), directed by
Julien Duvivier Julien Duvivier (; 8 October 1896 – 29 October 1967) was a French film director and screenwriter. He was prominent in French cinema in the years 1930–1960. Amongst his most original films, chiefly notable are ''La Bandera (film), La Bandera'', ...
, and ''
Le Jour se lève ''Le jour se lève'' (, "The day rises"; also known as ''Daybreak'') is a 1939 French film directed by Marcel Carné and written by Jacques Prévert, based on a story by Jacques Viot. It is considered one of the principal examples of the French ...
'' (1939), directed by
Marcel Carné Marcel Albert Carné (; 18 August 1906 – 31 October 1996) was a French film director. A key figure in the poetic realism movement, Carné's best known films include '' Port of Shadows'' (1938), ''Le Jour Se Lève'' (1939), '' The Devil's Envoys ...
. In addition, Mexico experienced a vibrant film noir period from roughly 1946 to 1952, which was around the same time film noir was blossoming in the United States. During the classic period, there were many films produced in Europe, particularly in France, that share elements of style, theme, and sensibility with American films noir 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) and '' Les Diaboliques'' (1955), both directed by
Henri-Georges Clouzot Henri-Georges Clouzot (; 20 November 1907 – 12 January 1977) was a French film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best remembered for his work in the thriller film genre, having directed ''The Wages of Fear'' and '' Les Diaboliques'', ...
. '' Casque d'Or'' (1952), '' Touchez pas au grisbi'' (1954), and ''
Le Trou ''The Hole'' (french: Le Trou) is a 1960 French crime film directed by Jacques Becker. It is an adaptation of José Giovanni's 1957 book '' The Break''. It was called ''The Night Watch'' when first released in the United States, but is released un ...
'' (1960) directed by
Jacques Becker Jacques Becker (; 15 September 1906 – 21 February 1960) was a French film director and screenwriter. His films, made during the 1940s and 1950s, encompassed a wide variety of genres, and they were admired by some of the filmmakers who led th ...
; and ''
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud ''Elevator to the Gallows'' (french: Ascenseur pour l'échafaud), also known as ''Frantic'' in the U.S. and ''Lift to the Scaffold'' in the U.K., is a 1958 French crime thriller film directed by Louis Malle, starring Jeanne Moreau and Maurice R ...
'' (1958), directed by Louis Malle. French director Jean-Pierre Melville is widely recognized for his tragic, minimalist films noir—'' Bob le flambeur'' (1955), from the classic period, was followed by ''
Le Doulos ''Le Doulos'' () is a 1962 French crime film written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, adapted from the novel of the same name by Pierre Lesou. It was released theatrically as ''The Finger Man'' in the English-speaking world, but all video an ...
'' (1962), '' Le deuxième souffle'' 1966), '' Le Samouraï'' (1967), and '' Le Cercle rouge'' (1970). In the 1960s, Greek films noir "''The Secret of the Red Mantle''" and "''The Fear''" allowed audience for an anti-ableist reading which challenged stereotypes of disability. . Scholar Andrew Spicer argues that British film noir evidences a greater debt to French poetic realism than to the expressionistic American mode of noir. Examples of British noir from the classic period include '' Brighton Rock'' (1947), directed by John Boulting; ''
They Made Me a Fugitive ''They Made Me a Fugitive'' (released in the United States as ''I Became a Criminal'') is a 1947 British film noir set in postwar England.''Variety'' film review; 2 July 1947, page 13.''Harrison's Reports'' film review (14 February 1948), page 26 ...
'' (1947), directed by Alberto Cavalcanti; '' The Small Back Room'' (1948), directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger; ''
The October Man ''The October Man'' is a 1947 mystery film/film noir starring John Mills and Joan Greenwood, written by novelist Eric Ambler, who also produced. A man is suspected of murder, and the lingering effects of a brain injury he sustained in an earlier ...
'' (1950), directed by Roy Ward Baker; and ''
Cast a Dark Shadow ''Cast a Dark Shadow'' is a 1955 black-and-white British suspense film noir directed by Lewis Gilbert, based on the play ''Murder Mistaken'' by Janet Green. The story concerns a husband played by Dirk Bogarde who murders his wife. Plot After ...
'' (1955), directed by Lewis Gilbert. Terence Fisher directed several low-budget thrillers in a noir mode for Hammer Film Productions, including ''
The Last Page ''The Last Page'', released in the United States as ''Man Bait'', is a 1952 British film noir produced by Hammer Film Productions starring George Brent, Marguerite Chapman and Diana Dors. The film is notable for being the first Hammer film dire ...
'' (a.k.a. ''Man Bait''; 1952), ''
Stolen Face ''Stolen Face'' is a 1952 British film noir directed by Terence Fisher and starring Paul Henreid, Lizabeth Scott and André Morell. It was made at Riverside Studios by Hammer Film Productions. Plot Dr. Philip Ritter, a plastic surgeon (Paul He ...
'' (1952), and ''
Murder by Proxy ''Murder by Proxy'' is a 1954 British film noir crime drama film directed by Terence Fisher and starring Dane Clark, Belinda Lee and Betty Ann Davies. The screenplay concerns a man who is offered money to marry a woman. It was produced by Hamm ...
'' (a.k.a. ''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 Gene Eliza Tierney (November 19, 1920 – November 6, 1991) was an American film and stage actress. Acclaimed for her great beauty, she became established as a leading lady. Tierney was best known for her portrayal of the title character in the ...
—it is technically a UK production, financed by
20th Century-Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Disn ...
's British subsidiary. The most famous of classic British noirs is director Carol Reed's '' The Third Man'' (1949), from a screenplay by Graham Greene. Set in Vienna immediately after World War II, it also stars two American actors, Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, who had appeared together in ''Citizen Kane''. 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 films recognizable as films noir, including '' Drunken Angel'' (1948), ''
Stray Dog A free-ranging dog is a dog that is not confined to a yard or house. Free-ranging dogs include street dogs, village dogs, stray dogs, feral dogs, etc., and may be owned or unowned. The global dog population is estimated to be 900 million, of w ...
'' (1949), '' The Bad Sleep Well'' (1960), and '' High and Low'' (1963). Spanish author Mercedes Formica's novel '' La ciudad perdida'' (The Lost City) was adapted into film in 1960. Among the first major neo-noir films—the term often applied to films that consciously refer back to the classic noir tradition—was the French ''
Tirez sur le pianiste ''Shoot the Piano Player'' (french: Tirez sur le pianiste; UK title: ''Shoot the Pianist'') is a 1960 French New Wave crime drama film directed by François Truffaut that stars Charles Aznavour as the titular pianist with Marie Dubois, Nicole ...
'' (1960), directed by
François Truffaut François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more tha ...
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 these are quintessentially self-aware neo-noirs—for example, '' Il Conformista'' (1969; Italy), '' Der Amerikanische Freund'' (1977; Germany), ''
The Element of Crime ''The Element of Crime'' ( da, Forbrydelsens Element) is a 1984 experimental neo-noir crime film co-written and directed by Lars von Trier. It is the first feature film directed by Trier and the first installment of the director's Europa trilogy ...
'' (1984; Denmark), and ''
El Aura ''The Aura'' ( es, El aura, links=no) is a 2005 neo-noir psychological thriller film directed and written by Fabián Bielinsky and starring Ricardo Darín. It is Bielinsky's second and final feature film before his death in 2006. The plot revolve ...
'' (2005; Argentina). Others simply share narrative elements and a version of the hardboiled sensibility associated with classic noir, such as '' Castle of Sand'' (1974; Japan), '' Insomnia'' (1997; Norway), '' Croupier'' (1998; UK), and '' Blind Shaft'' (2003; China).


Neo-noir and echoes of the classic mode

The neo-noir film genre developed mid-way into the Cold War. This cinematological trend reflected much of the cynicism and the possibility of nuclear annihilation of the era. This new genre introduced innovations that were not available to earlier noir films. The violence was also more potent.


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 ''Blast of Silence'' is a 1961 American neo-noir written, directed by, and starring Allen Baron. The film also stars Molly McCarthy and Larry Tucker and features Peter H. Clune. It was produced by Merrill Brody, who was also the cinematographe ...
'' (1961) and '' Cape Fear'' (1962) and the noirs of the late 1950s, new trends emerged in the post-classic era. ''
The Manchurian Candidate ''The Manchurian Candidate'' is a novel by Richard Condon, first published in 1959. It is a political thriller about the son of a prominent U.S. political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for a Communist conspiracy. The ...
'' (1962), directed by John Frankenheimer, ''
Shock Corridor ''Shock Corridor'' is a 1963 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Samuel Fuller, and starring Peter Breck, Constance Towers, and Gene Evans. The film tells the story of a journalist who gets himself intentionally committed ...
'' (1963), directed by
Samuel Fuller Samuel Michael Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997) was an American film director, screenwriter, novelist, journalist, and World War II veteran known for directing low-budget B movie, genre movies with controversial themes, often ...
, and '' Brainstorm'' (1965), directed by experienced noir character actor
William Conrad William Conrad (born John William Cann Jr., September 27, 1920 – February 11, 1994) was an American actor, producer, and director whose entertainment career spanned five decades in radio, film, and television, peaking in popularity when he s ...
, all treat the theme of mental dispossession within stylistic and tonal frameworks derived from classic film noir. ''The Manchurian Candidate'' examined the situation of
American prisoners of war American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...
(POWs) during the Korean War. Incidents that occurred during the war as well as those post-war functioned as an inspiration for a "Cold War Noir" subgenre. The television series '' The Fugitive'' (1963–67) brought classic noir themes and mood to the small screen for an extended run.Ursini (1995), pp. 284–86; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 278. In a different vein, films began to appear that self-consciously acknowledged the conventions of classic film noir as historical
archetypes The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis. An archetype can be any of the following: # a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that ot ...
to be revived, rejected, or reimagined. These efforts typify what came to be known as neo-noir. Though several late classic noirs, ''Kiss Me Deadly'' in particular, were deeply self-knowing and post-traditional in conception, none tipped its hand so evidently as to be remarked on by American critics at the time. The first major film to overtly work this angle was French director
Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran ...
's ''
À bout de souffle ''Breathless'' (french: À bout de souffle, lit=Out of Breath) is a 1960 French crime drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as a wandering criminal named Michel, and Jean Seberg as his American girlfrie ...
'' (''Breathless''; 1960), which pays its literal respects to Bogart and his crime films while brandishing a bold new style for a new day. In the United States, Arthur Penn (1965's '' Mickey One'', drawing inspiration from Truffaut's ''
Tirez sur le pianiste ''Shoot the Piano Player'' (french: Tirez sur le pianiste; UK title: ''Shoot the Pianist'') is a 1960 French New Wave crime drama film directed by François Truffaut that stars Charles Aznavour as the titular pianist with Marie Dubois, Nicole ...
'' and other
French New Wave French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconocla ...
films),
John Boorman Sir John Boorman (; born 18 January 1933) is a British film director, best known for feature films such as ''Point Blank'' (1967), ''Hell in the Pacific'' (1968), ''Deliverance'' (1972), ''Zardoz'' (1974), '' Exorcist II: The Heretic'' (1977), ...
(1967's '' Point Blank'', similarly caught up, though in the '' Nouvelle vague'''s deeper waters), and Alan J. Pakula (1971's '' Klute'') directed films that knowingly related themselves to the original films noir, inviting audiences in on the game. A manifest affiliation with noir traditions—which, by its nature, allows different sorts of commentary on them to be inferred—can also provide the basis for explicit critiques of those traditions. In 1973, director
Robert Altman Robert Bernard Altman ( ; February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was a five-time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director and is considered an enduring figure from the New H ...
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 outrage some 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 "
blaxploitation Blaxploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s. The term, a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation", was coined in August 1972 by Junius Griffin, the president o ...
" film ''
Shaft Shaft may refer to: Rotating machine elements * Shaft (mechanical engineering), a rotating machine element used to transmit power * Line shaft, a power transmission system * Drive shaft, a shaft for transferring torque * Axle, a shaft around whi ...
'' (1971), wherein Richard Roundtree plays the titular African-American private eye, John Shaft, takes conventions from classic noir. The most acclaimed of the neo-noirs of the era was director Roman Polanski's 1974 ''
Chinatown A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austra ...
''. 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 Paul Joseph Schrader (; born July 22, 1946) is an American screenwriter, film director, and film critic. He first received widespread recognition through his screenplay for Martin Scorsese's ''Taxi Driver'' (1976). He later continued his collabo ...
brought the noir attitude crashing into the present day with '' Taxi Driver'' (1976), a crackling, bloody-minded gloss on bicentennial America. In 1978, Walter Hill wrote and directed '' The Driver'', a chase film 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 Ross Macdonald was the main pseudonym used by the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar (; December 13, 1915 – July 11, 1983). He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in Southern California and featur ...
, the leading literary descendant of Hammett and Chandler, for ''
The Drowning Pool ''The Drowning Pool'' is a 1950 mystery novel by American writer Ross Macdonald, his second book in the series revolving around the cases of private detective Lew Archer. Plot summary Archer is hired by a woman to investigate a libellous lett ...
'' (1975). Some of the strongest 1970s noirs, in fact, were unwinking remakes of the classics, "neo" mostly by default: the heartbreaking '' Thieves Like Us'' (1974), directed by Altman from the same source as Ray's ''They Live by Night'', and ''
Farewell, My Lovely ''Farewell, My Lovely'' is a novel by Raymond Chandler, published in 1940, the second novel he wrote featuring the Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe. It was adapted for the screen three times and was also adapted for the stage and rad ...
'' (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.


1980s and 1990s

The turn of the decade brought Scorsese's black-and-white '' Raging Bull'' (1980, cowritten by Schrader). An acknowledged masterpiecein 2007 the
American Film Institute The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees. Leade ...
ranked it as the greatest American film of the 1980s and the fourth greatest of all timeit tells the story of a boxer's moral self-destruction that recalls in both theme and visual ambiance noir dramas such as '' Body and Soul'' (1947) and '' Champion'' (1949). From 1981, ''
Body Heat Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different. A thermoconforming organism, by contrast, simply adopts the surrounding temperature ...
'', 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 Black widow may refer to: Spiders * Black widow spider, a common name for some species of spiders in the genus ''Latrodectus'' American species * ''Latrodectus apicalis'', the Galapagos black widow * ''Latrodectus curacaviensis'', the South Amer ...
'' (1987), ''
Shattered Shattered may refer to: Books * ''Shattered'' (Casey book), a 2010 non-fiction book: true-crime account of pregnant mother's murder * ''Shattered'' (Francis novel), a 2000 novel by Dick Francis: glassblower seeks videotape following death of j ...
'' (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. The film also demonstrates how neo-noir's polychrome palette can reproduce many of the expressionistic effects of classic black-and-white noir. Like ''Chinatown'', its more complex predecessor, Curtis Hanson's Oscar-winning ''
L.A. Confidential ''L.A. Confidential'' (1990) is a neo-noir novel by James Ellroy and the third of his L.A. Quartet series. It is dedicated to Mary Doherty Ellroy. The epigraph is "A glory that costs everything and means nothing"— Steve Erickson. Plot The s ...
'' (1997), based on the James Ellroy novel, demonstrates the opposite tendency—the deliberately retro film noir; its tale of corrupt cops and femmes fatale is seemingly lifted straight from a film of 1953, the year in which it is set. Director
David Fincher David Andrew Leo Fincher (born August 28, 1962) is an American film director. His films, mostly psychological thrillers and biographical dramas, have received 40 nominations at the Academy Awards, including three for him as Best Director. Fin ...
followed the immensely successful neo-noir ''
Seven 7 is a number, numeral, and glyph. 7 or seven may also refer to: * AD 7, the seventh year of the AD era * 7 BC, the seventh year before the AD era * The month of July Music Artists * Seven (Swiss singer) (born 1978), a Swiss recording artist ...
'' (1995) with a film that developed into a cult favorite after its original, disappointing release: '' Fight Club'' (1999), a ''
sui generis ''Sui generis'' ( , ) is a Latin phrase that means "of its/their own kind", "in a class by itself", therefore "unique". A number of disciplines use the term to refer to unique entities. These include: * Biology, for species that do not fit in ...
'' mix of noir aesthetic, perverse comedy, speculative content, and satiric intent. Working generally with much smaller budgets, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have created one of the most extensive oeuvres influenced by classic noir, with films such as '' Blood Simple'' (1984) and ''
Fargo Fargo usually refers to: * Fargo, North Dakota, United States * ''Fargo'' (1996 film), a crime film by the Coen brothers * ''Fargo'' (TV series), an American black comedy–crime drama anthology television series Fargo may also refer to: Othe ...
'' (1996), the latter considered by some a supreme work in the neo-noir mode. The Coens cross noir with other generic traditions 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''. The characteristic work of
David Lynch David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist and actor. A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Be ...
combines film noir tropes with scenarios driven by disturbed characters such as the sociopathic criminal played by
Dennis Hopper Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker and photographer. He attended the Actors Studio, made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in ''Giant'' (1956). In the next ten years ...
in '' Blue Velvet'' (1986) and the delusionary protagonist of '' Lost Highway'' (1997). The ''Twin Peaks'' cycle, both the
TV series A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed betw ...
(1990–91) and a film, ''
Fire Walk with Me Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition point, flames are pr ...
'' (1992), puts a detective plot through a succession of bizarre spasms.
David Cronenberg David Paul Cronenberg (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation ...
also mixes surrealism and noir in '' Naked Lunch'' (1991), inspired by William S. Burroughs'
novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
. Perhaps no American neo-noirs better reflect the classic noir B movie spirit 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 films from the era readily identifiable as neo-noir (some retro, some more au courant) include director John Dahl's ''
Kill Me Again ''Kill Me Again'' is a 1989 American neo-noir Silver, Alain; Ward, Elizabeth; eds. (1992). ''Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style'' (3rd ed.). Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press. thriller film directed by John Dahl, an ...
'' (1989), ''
Red Rock West ''Red Rock West'' is a 1993 American neo-noir thriller film directed by John Dahl and starring Nicolas Cage, Lara Flynn Boyle, J. T. Walsh, and Dennis Hopper. It was written by Dahl and his brother Rick, and shot in Montana, Willcox, Arizona, Son ...
'' (1992), and ''
The Last Seduction ''The Last Seduction'' is a 1994 American neo-noir erotic thriller film directed by John Dahl, and features Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg, and Bill Pullman. The film was produced by ITC Entertainment and distributed by October Films. Fiorentino ...
'' (1993); four adaptations of novels by Jim Thompson—''
The Kill-Off ''The Kill-Off'' is a 1989 American crime drama film written and directed by Maggie Greenwald, based on a 1957 novel of the same name by Jim Thompson. It was an independent film, produced by Lydia Dean Pilcher and shot by Declan Quinn in his fi ...
'' (1989), ''
After Dark, My Sweet ''After Dark, My Sweet'' is a 1990 American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by James Foley and starring Jason Patric, Bruce Dern, and Rachel Ward. It is based on the 1955 Jim Thompson novel of the same name. Plot Ex-boxer Kevin "Kid" Col ...
'' (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 Charles Ray Willeford III (January 2, 1919 – March 27, 1988) was an American writer. An author of fiction, poetry, autobiography, and literary criticism, Willeford is best known for his series of novels featuring hardboiled detective fiction, ...
; and '' Out of Sight'' (1998), from the novel by
Elmore Leonard Elmore John Leonard Jr. (October 11, 1925August 20, 2013) was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. His earliest novels, published in the 1950s, were Westerns, but he went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thri ...
. Several films by director-writer David Mamet involve noir elements: ''
House of Games ''House of Games'' is a 1987 American neo-noir heist thriller film directed by David Mamet, his directorial debut. He also wrote the screenplay, based on a story he co-wrote with Jonathan Katz. The film's cast includes Lindsay Crouse, Joe Mant ...
'' (1987), ''
Homicide Homicide occurs when a person kills another person. A homicide requires only a volitional act or omission that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no inten ...
'' (1991), ''
The Spanish Prisoner ''The Spanish Prisoner'' is a 1997 American neo-noir suspense film, written and directed by David Mamet and starring Campbell Scott, Steve Martin, Rebecca Pidgeon, Ben Gazzara, Felicity Huffman and Ricky Jay. It tells a story of corporate espion ...
'' (1997), and ''
Heist A heist is a robbery or burglary, especially from an institution such as a bank or museum. Heist may also refer to: Places *Heist, Germany, a municipality in Schleswig-Holstein *Heist-aan-Zee, West Flanders, Belgium *Heist-op-den-Berg, Antwerp, ...
'' (2001). On television, ''
Moonlighting Moonlighting may refer to: * Side job, a job taken in addition to one's primary employment Entertainment * ''Moonlighting'' (film), a 1982 drama film by Jerzy Skolimowski * ''Moonlighting'' (TV series), 1985–1989 American television series, s ...
'' (1985–89) paid homage to classic noir while demonstrating an unusual appreciation of the sense of humor often found in the original cycle.Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 279. 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 television films (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 rank it among the greatest television productions of all time.


Neon noir

Among big-budget auteurs, Michael Mann has worked frequently in a neo-noir mode, with such films as '' Thief'' (1981) and '' Heat'' (1995) and the TV series '' Miami Vice'' (1984–89) and '' Crime Story'' (1986–88). Mann's output exemplifies a primary strain of neo-noir, or as it is affectionately called, "neon noir", in which classic themes and tropes are revisited in a contemporary setting with an up-to-date visual style and
rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
- or hip hop-based musical soundtrack. Neo-noir film borrows from and reflects many of the characteristics of the film noir: the presence of crime and violence, complex characters and plot-lines, mystery, and moral ambivalence, all of which come into play in the neon-noir sub-genre. But more than just exhibiting the superficial traits of the genre, neon-noir emphasizes the socio-critique of film noir, recalling the specific socio-cultural dimensions of the interwar years when noirs first became prominent; a time of global existential crisis, depression and the mass movement of the rural population to cities. Long shots or montages of cityscapes, often portrayed as dark and menacing, are suggestive of what Dueck referred to as a ‘bleak societal perspective’, providing a critique on
global capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...
and consumerism. Other characteristics include the use of highly stylized lighting techniques such chiaroscuro, and neon signs and brightly lit buildings that provide a sense of alienation and
entrapment Entrapment is a practice in which a law enforcement agent or agent of the state induces a person to commit a "crime" that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit.''Sloane'' (1990) 49 A Crim R 270. See also agent provo ...
. Accentuating the use of artificial and neon lighting in the films-noir of the '40s and '50s, neon-noir films accentuate this aesthetic with electrifying color and manipulated light in order to highlight their socio-cultural critiques and their references to contemporary and pop culture. In doing so, neon-noir films present the themes of urban decay, consumerist decadence and capitalism, existentialism, sexuality, and issues of
race and violence Race is one of the correlates of crime receiving attention in academic studies, government surveys, media coverage, and public concern. Research has found that social status, poverty, and childhood exposure to violent behavior are causes of the r ...
in the contemporary culture, not only in America, but the globalized world at large. Neon-noirs seek to bring the contemporary noir, somewhat diluted under the umbrella of neo-noir, back to the exploration of culture: class, race, gender, patriarchy, and capitalism. Neon-noirs present an existential exploration of society in a hyper-technological and globalized world. Illustrating society as decadent and
consumerist ''Consumerist'' (also known as ''The Consumerist'') was a non-profit consumer affairs website owned by Consumer Media LLC, a subsidiary of ''Consumer Reports'', with content created by a team of full-time reporters and editors. The site's focu ...
, and identity as confused and anxious, neon-noirs reposition the contemporary noir in the setting of urban decay, often featuring scenes set in underground city haunts: brothels, nightclubs, casinos, strip bars, pawnshops, laundromats. Neon-noirs were popularized in the '70s and '80s by films such as '' Taxi Driver'' (1976), '' Blade Runner'' (1982), and films from
David Lynch David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist and actor. A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Be ...
, such as '' Blue Velvet'' (1986) and later, '' Lost Highway'' (1997). Other titles from this era included Brian De Palma's ''
Blow Out ''Blow Out'' is a 1981 American neo-noir mystery thriller film written and directed by Brian De Palma. The film stars John Travolta as Jack Terry, a movie sound effects technician from Philadelphia who, while recording sounds for a low-budget sl ...
'' (1981) and the Coen Brothers' debut '' Blood Simple'' (1984). More currently, films such as Harmony Korine’s highly provocative '' Spring Breakers'' (2012), and Danny Boyle’s '' Trance'' (2013) have been especially noted for their neon-infused rendering of film noir; while ''Trance'' was celebrated for ‘shak(ing) the ingredients (of the noir) like colored sand in a jar’, ''Spring Breakers'' notoriously produced
slew of criticism
referring to its ‘fever-dream’ aesthetic and ‘neon-caked explosion of excess’ (Kohn). Another neon-noir endowed with th

aesthetic is
The Persian Connection
', expressly linked to Lynchian aesthetics as a neon-drenched contemporary noir. Neon-noir can be seen as a response to the over-use of the term neo-noir. While the term neo-noir functions to bring noir into the contemporary landscape, it has often been criticized for its dilution of the noir genre. Author Robert Arnett commented on its "amorphous" reach: "any film featuring a detective or crime qualifies". The neon-noir, more specifically, seeks to revive noir sensibilities in a more targeted manner of reference, focalizing socio-cultural commentary and a hyper-stylized aesthetic.


2000s and 2010s

The Coen brothers make reference to the noir tradition again with '' The Man Who Wasn't There'' (2001); a black-and-white crime melodrama set in 1949; it features a scene apparently staged to mirror one from ''Out of the Past''. Lynch's '' Mulholland Drive'' (2001) continued in his characteristic vein, making the classic noir setting of Los Angeles the venue for a noir-inflected psychological jigsaw puzzle. British-born director Christopher Nolan's black-and-white debut, '' Following'' (1998), was an overt homage to classic noir. During the new century's first decade, he was one of the leading Hollywood directors of neo-noir with the acclaimed '' Memento'' (2000) and the remake of '' Insomnia'' (2002). Director Sean Penn's ''
The Pledge Pledge may refer to: Promises * a solemn promise * Abstinence pledge, a commitment to practice abstinence, usually teetotalism or chastity * The Pledge (New Hampshire), a promise about taxes by New Hampshire politicians * Pledge of Allegian ...
'' (2001), though adapted from a very self-reflexive novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, plays noir comparatively straight, to devastating effect. Screenwriter David Ayer updated the classic noir bad-cop tale, typified by ''
Shield for Murder ''Shield for Murder'' is a 1954 American film noir crime film co-directed by and starring Edmond O'Brien as a police detective who has become malevolent. It was based on the novel of the same name by William P. McGivern. Plot Lieutenant Barney No ...
'' (1954) and '' Rogue Cop'' (1954), with his scripts for '' Training Day'' (2001) and, adapting a story by James Ellroy, '' Dark Blue'' (2002); he later wrote and directed the even darker '' Harsh Times'' (2006). Michael Mann's ''
Collateral Collateral may refer to: Business and finance * Collateral (finance), a borrower's pledge of specific property to a lender, to secure repayment of a loan * Marketing collateral, in marketing and sales Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Collate ...
'' (2004) features a performance by Tom Cruise as an assassin in the lineage of ''Le Samouraï''. The torments of '' The Machinist'' (2004), directed by Brad Anderson, evoke both ''Fight Club'' and ''Memento''. In 2005, Shane Black directed ''
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang ''Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'' is a 2005 American neo-noir black comedy mystery thriller film written and directed by Shane Black (in his directorial debut), and starring Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, and Corbin Bernsen. The scrip ...
'', basing his screenplay in part on a crime novel by
Brett Halliday Brett Halliday (July 31, 1904 – February 4, 1977) is the primary pen name of Davis Dresser, an American mystery and western writer. Halliday is best known for the long-lived series of Michael Shayne mysteries he wrote, and later commissioned ...
, 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. With ultra-violent films such as ''
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance ''Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance'' (; lit. "Vengeance Is Mine") is a 2002 South Korean thriller film directed and co-written by Park Chan-wook. The film stars Shin Ha-kyun as Ryu, a young, deaf-mute factory worker trying to earn enough money for his ...
'' (2002) and '' Thirst'' (2009), Park Chan-wook of South Korea has been the most prominent director outside of the United States to work regularly in a noir mode in the new millennium. The most commercially successful neo-noir of this period has been '' Sin City'' (2005), directed by Robert Rodriguez in extravagantly stylized black and white with splashes of color. The film is based on a series of comic books created by Frank Miller (credited as the film'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 Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes (born 1 August 1965) is a British film and stage director, producer, and screenwriter. In 2000, Mendes was appointed a CBE for his services to drama, and he was Knight Bachelor, knighted in the 2020 New Year Honour ...
, and '' A History of Violence'' (2005), directed by
David Cronenberg David Paul Cronenberg (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation ...
; the latter was voted best film of the year in the annual '' Village Voice'' poll. Writer-director
Rian Johnson Rian Craig Johnson (born December 17, 1973) is an American filmmaker. He made his directorial debut with the neo-noir mystery film ''Brick'' (2005), which received positive reviews and grossed nearly $4 million on a $450,000 budget. Transition ...
's ''
Brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...
'' (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 Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
. The television series '' Veronica Mars'' (2004–07) and the movie '' Veronica Mars'' (2014) also brought a youth-oriented twist to film noir. Examples of this sort of generic crossover have been dubbed "teen noir". Neo-noir films released in the 2010s include Kim Jee-woon’s ''
I Saw the Devil ''I Saw the Devil'' () is a 2010 South Korean action thriller film directed by Kim Jee-woon and written by Park Hoon-jung. Starring Lee Byung-hun and Choi Min-sik, the film follows NIS agent Kim Soo-hyun (Lee), who embarks on a quest of revenge ...
'' (2010), Fred Cavaye’s '' Point Blank'' (2010), Na Hong-jin’s '' The Yellow Sea'' (2010),
Nicolas Winding Refn Nicolas Winding Refn (; born 29 September 1970), also known as Jang, is a Danish film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is known for his collaborations with Mads Mikkelsen, Tom Hardy and Ryan Gosling. He gained great success early in ...
’s ''
Drive Drive or The Drive may refer to: Motoring * Driving, the act of controlling a vehicle * Road trip, a journey on roads Roadways Roadways called "drives" may include: * Driveway, a private road for local access to structures, abbreviated "drive" ...
'' (2011), Claire Denis' '' Bastards'' (2013) and Dan Gilroy's '' Nightcrawler'' (2014).


2020s

The Science Channel broadcast the 2021 science documentary series ''
Killers of the Cosmos ''Killers of the Cosmos'' is a documentary science television series hosted by Aidan Gillen. Aired by the Science Channel, it premiered on September 19, 2021. Format In a format the Science Channel describes as "space noir," ''Killers of the C ...
'' in a format it describes as "space noir." In the series, actor Aidan Gillen in animated form serves as the host of the series while portraying a private investigator who takes on "cases" in which he "hunts down" lethal threats to humanity posed by the cosmos. The animated sequences combine the characteristics of film noir with those of a pulp fiction graphic novel set in the mid-20th century, and they link conventional live-action documentary segments in which experts describe the potentially deadly phenomena.


Science fiction noir

In the post-classic era, a 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 ''The Groundstar Conspiracy'' is a 1972 American neo noir crime film directed by Lamont Johnson. It stars George Peppard and Michael Sarrazin. Douglas Heyes' screenplay (written under his frequent pseudonym, Matthew Howard) was adapted very free ...
'' (1972) centers on another implacable investigator and an amnesiac named Welles. ''
Soylent Green ''Soylent Green'' is a 1973 American Environmental film, ecological dystopian thriller film directed by Richard Fleischer, and starring Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, and Edward G. Robinson in his final film role. It is loosely based on t ...
'' (1973), the first major American example, portrays a dystopian, near-future world via a noir detection plot; starring
Charlton Heston Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter; October 4, 1923April 5, 2008) was an American actor and political activist. As a Hollywood star, he appeared in almost 100 films over the course of 60 years. He played Moses in the epic film ''The Ten C ...
(the lead in ''Touch of Evil''), it also features classic noir standbys Joseph Cotten, Edward G. Robinson, and
Whit Bissell Whitner Nutting Bissell (October 25, 1909 – March 5, 1996) was an American character actor. Early life Born in New York City, Bissell was the son of surgeon Dr. J. Dougal Bissell and Helen Nutting Bissell. He was educated at the Allen-S ...
. The film was directed by
Richard Fleischer Richard O. Fleischer (; December 8, 1916 – March 25, 2006) was an American film director whose career spanned more than four decades, beginning at the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood and lasting through the American New Wave. Though he ...
, who two decades before had directed several strong B noirs, including ''
Armored Car Robbery ''Armored Car Robbery'' is a 1950 American film noir starring Charles McGraw, Adele Jergens, and William Talman. Directed by Richard Fleischer, ''Armored Car Robbery'' is a heist movie, a subgenre of crime-based films. It tells the story of a ...
'' (1950) and ''
The Narrow Margin ''The Narrow Margin'' is a 1952 American film noir starring Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor. Directed by Richard Fleischer, the RKO picture was written by Earl Felton, based on an unpublished story written by Martin Goldsmith and Jack Le ...
'' (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 film most directly influential on cyberpunk was '' Blade Runner'' (1982), directed by
Ridley Scott Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November 1937) is a British film director and producer. Directing, among others, science fiction films, his work is known for its atmospheric and highly concentrated visual style. Scott has received many accolades thr ...
, which pays evocative homage to the classic noir mode (Scott subsequently directed the poignant 1987 noir crime melodrama '' Someone to Watch Over Me''). Scholar Jamaluddin Bin Aziz has observed how "the shadow of Philip Marlowe lingers on" in such other "future noir" films as ''
12 Monkeys ''12 Monkeys'' is a 1995 American science fiction film directed by Terry Gilliam, inspired by Chris Marker's 1962 short film ''La Jetée'', starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt, with Christopher Plummer and David Morse in sup ...
'' (1995), '' Dark City'' (1998) and ''
Minority Report Minority Report may refer to: * Minority report (Poor Law), published by the UK Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress 1905–09 * "Minority Report", a 1949 science fiction short story by Theodore Sturgeon * "The Minority Report ...
'' (2002). Fincher's feature debut was '' Alien 3'' (1992), which evoked the classic noir jail film ''
Brute Force Brute Force or brute force may refer to: Techniques * Brute force method or proof by exhaustion, a method of mathematical proof * Brute-force attack, a cryptanalytic attack * Brute-force search, a computer problem-solving technique People * Brut ...
''. David Cronenberg's '' Crash'' (1996), an adaptation of the speculative novel by J. G. Ballard, has been described as a "film noir in bruise tones". 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 ''The Thirteenth Floor'' is a 1999 science fiction neo-noir film written and directed by Josef Rusnak, and produced by Roland Emmerich through his Centropolis Entertainment company. It is loosely based upon '' Simulacron-3'' (1964), a novel by ...
'' (1999), like ''Blade Runner'', is an explicit homage to classic noir, in this case involving speculations about virtual reality. Science fiction, noir, and anime are brought together in the Japanese films of 90s '' Ghost in the Shell'' (1995) and '' Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence'' (2004), both directed by
Mamoru Oshii is a Japanese filmmaker, television director and writer. Famous for his philosophy-oriented storytelling, Oshii has directed a number of acclaimed anime films, including ''Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer'' (1984), ''Angel's Egg'' (1985), ...
. '' The Animatrix'' (2003), based on and set within the world of '' The Matrix'' film trilogy, contains an anime short film in classic noir style titled "A Detective Story". Anime television series with science fiction noir themes include '' Noir'' (2001)Dargis (2004); Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 234. and '' Cowboy Bebop'' (1998). The 2015 film '' Ex Machina'' puts an understated film noir spin on the Frankenstein mythos, with the sentient
android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...
Ava as a potential ''femme fatale'', her creator Nathan embodying the abusive husband or father trope, and her would-be rescuer Caleb as a "clueless drifter" enthralled by Ava.


Parodies

Film noir has been parodied many times in many manners. In 1945,
Danny Kaye Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky; yi, דוד־דניאל קאַמינסקי; January 18, 1911 – March 3, 1987) was an American actor, comedian, singer and dancer. His performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and ...
starred in what appears to be the first intentional film noir parody, '' Wonder Man''.Silver and Ward (1992), p. 332. That same year, Deanna Durbin was the singing lead in the comedic noir ''
Lady on a Train ''Lady on a Train'' is a 1945 American film noir crime film directed by Charles David and starring Deanna Durbin, Ralph Bellamy, and David Bruce. Based on a story by Leslie Charteris, the film is about a woman who witnesses a murder in a nea ...
'', which makes fun of Woolrich-brand wistful miserablism. Bob Hope inaugurated the private-eye noir parody with ''
My Favorite Brunette ''My Favorite Brunette'' is a 1947 American romantic comedy film and film noir parody, directed by Elliott Nugent and starring Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. Written by Edmund Beloin and Jack Rose, the film is about a baby photographer on death r ...
'' (1947), playing a baby-photographer who is mistaken for an ironfisted detective. In 1947 as well, The Bowery Boys appeared in ''
Hard Boiled Mahoney ''Hard Boiled Mahoney'' is a 1947 film starring the comedy team of The Bowery Boys. It is the sixth film in the series. Plot Sach just lost his job as an assistant to a private detective, but he wasn't paid. Slip goes with him down to the dete ...
'', which had a similar mistaken-identity plot; they spoofed the genre once more in '' Private Eyes'' (1953). Two RKO productions starring Robert Mitchum take film noir over the border into self-parody: '' The Big Steal'' (1949), directed by Don Siegel, and ''
His Kind of Woman ''His Kind of Woman'' is a 1951 film noir starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell. The film features supporting performances by Vincent Price, Raymond Burr and Charles McGraw. The direction of the film, which was based on the unpublished story " ...
'' (1951). The "Girl Hunt" ballet in Vincente Minnelli's ''The Band Wagon'' (1953) is a ten-minute distillation of—and play on—noir in dance. ''The Cheap Detective'' (1978), starring Peter Falk, is a broad spoof of several films, including the Bogart classics ''The Maltese Falcon'' and ''Casablanca (film), Casablanca''. Carl Reiner's black-and-white ''Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid'' (1982) appropriates clips of classic noirs for a farcical Pastiche#Hodge-podge, pastiche, while his ''Fatal Instinct'' (1993) sends up noir classic (''Double Indemnity'') and neo-noir (''Basic Instinct''). Robert Zemeckis's ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' (1988) develops a noir plot set in 1940s L.A. around a host of cartoon characters. Noir parodies come in darker tones as well. ''Murder by Contract'' (1958), directed by Irving Lerner, is a deadpan joke on noir, with a denouement as bleak as any of the films it kids. 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 was likely a source of inspiration for both Melville's ''Le Samouraï'' and Scorsese's '' Taxi Driver''. Belying its parodic strain, '' The Long Goodbye''s final act is seriously grave. ''Taxi Driver'' caustically deconstruction, 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. Flirting with splatter film, splatter status even more brazenly, the Coens' ''Blood Simple'' is both an exacting Genre parodies, pastiche and a gross exaggeration of classic noir. Adapted by director Robinson Devor from a novel by
Charles Willeford Charles Ray Willeford III (January 2, 1919 – March 27, 1988) was an American writer. An author of fiction, poetry, autobiography, and literary criticism, Willeford is best known for his series of novels featuring hardboiled detective fiction, ...
, ''The Woman Chaser'' (1999) sends up not just the noir mode but the entire Hollywood filmmaking process, with each shot seemingly staged as the visual equivalent of an acerbic Marlowe wisecrack. In other media, the television series ''Sledge Hammer!'' (1986–88) lampoons noir, along with such topics as capital punishment, gun fetishism, and Harry Callahan (character), Dirty Harry. ''Sesame Street'' (1969–curr.) occasionally casts Kermit the Frog as a private eye; the sketches refer to some of the typical motifs of noir films, 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 A Prairie Home Companion (film), Altman-directed film based on Keillor's show). Firesign Theatre's Nick Danger has trodden 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 Calvin's alter egos (Calvin and Hobbes)#Tracer Bullet, 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.


Identifying characteristics

In their original 1955 canon of film noir, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton identified twenty-two Hollywood films released between 1941 and 1952 as core examples; they listed another fifty-nine American films from the period as significantly related to the field of noir. A half-century later, film historians and critics had come to agree on a canon of approximately three hundred films from 1940 to 1958. There remain, however, many differences of opinion over whether other films of the era, among them a number of well-known ones, qualify as films noir or not. For instance, ''The Night of the Hunter (film), The Night of the Hunter'' (1955), starring Robert Mitchum in an acclaimed performance, is treated as a film noir by some critics, but not by others. Some critics include ''Suspicion (1941 film), Suspicion'' (1941), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, in their catalogues of noir; others ignore it. Concerning films made either before or after the classic period, or outside of the United States at any time, consensus is even rarer. To support their categorization of certain films as noirs and their rejection of others, many critics refer to a set of elements they see as marking examples of the mode. The question of what constitutes the set of noir's identifying characteristics is a fundamental source of controversy. For instance, critics tend to define the model film noir as having a tragic or bleak conclusion, 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. Some critics perceive classic noir's hallmark as a distinctive visual style. Others, observing that there is actually considerable stylistic variety among noirs, instead emphasize plot and character type. Still others focus on mood and attitude. No survey of classic noir's identifying characteristics can therefore be considered definitive. In the 1990s and 2000s, critics have increasingly turned their attention to that diverse field of films called neo-noir; once again, there is even less consensus about the defining attributes of such films made outside the classic period.


Visual style

The low-key lighting schemes of many classic films noir are associated with stark light/dark contrast (vision), contrasts and dramatic shadow patterning—a style known as chiaroscuro (a term adopted from Renaissance painting). The shadows of Venetian blinds or banister rods, cast upon an actor, a wall, or an entire set, are an iconic visual in 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 filmmaking. While black-and-white cinematography is considered by many to be one of the essential attributes of classic noir, the color films ''Leave Her to Heaven'' (1945) and ''Niagara (1953 film), Niagara'' (1953) are routinely included in noir filmographies, while '' Slightly Scarlet'' (1956), ''Party Girl (1958 film), Party Girl'' (1958), and ''Vertigo (film), Vertigo'' (1958) are classified as noir by varying numbers of critics. Film noir is also known for its use of low-angle shot, low-angle, wide-angle lens, wide-angle, and Dutch angle, skewed, or Dutch angle shots. 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. Night-for-night shooting, as opposed to the Hollywood norm of day-for-night, was often employed. From the mid-1940s forward, location shooting 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 "side 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".


Structure and narrational devices

Films noir tend to have unusually convoluted story lines, frequently involving Flashback (literary technique), flashbacks and other editing techniques that disrupt and sometimes obscure the narrative sequence. Framing the entire primary narrative as a flashback is also a standard device. Voiceover narration, sometimes used as a structuring device, came to be seen as a noir hallmark; while classic noir is generally associated with first-person narration (i.e., by the protagonist), Stephen Neale notes that third-person narration is common among noirs of the semidocumentary style. Neo-noirs as varied as ''The Element of Crime'' (surrealist), ''After Dark, My Sweet'' (retro), and ''Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'' (meta) have employed the flashback/voiceover combination. Bold experiments in cinematic storytelling were sometimes attempted during the classic era: ''Lady in the Lake'', for example, is shot entirely from the Point of view shot, point of view of protagonist Philip Marlowe; the face of star (and director) Robert Montgomery (actor), Robert Montgomery is seen only in mirrors. ''The Chase (1946 film), The Chase'' (1946) takes Oneiric (film theory), 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'', ''Fight Club'', and ''Memento''.


Plots, characters, and settings

Crime, usually murder, is an element of almost all films noir; 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 heist film, heists or confidence trick, 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. According to J. David Slocum, "protagonists assume the literal identities of dead men in nearly fifteen percent of all noir." Amnesia is fairly epidemic—"noir's version of the common cold", in the words of film historian Lee Server. Films noir 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 protagonists of noir are described by many critics as "Social alienation, alienated"; in the words of Silver and Ward, "filled with existentialism, existential bitterness". Certain archetypal characters appear in many film noirs—hardboiled detectives, femme fatales, corrupt policemen, jealous husbands, intrepid claims adjusters, and down-and-out writers. Among characters of every stripe, cigarette smoking is rampant. From historical commentators to neo-noir pictures to pop culture ephemera, the private eye and the femme fatale have been adopted as the quintessential film noir figures, though they do not appear in most films now regarded as classic noir. Of the twenty-six 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 four others readily qualify as detective stories: ''Laura'', ''The Killers'', ''The Naked City'', and ''Touch of Evil''. There is usually an element of drug or alcohol use, particularly as part of the detective's method to solving the crime, as an example the character of Mike Hammer in the 1955 film '' Kiss Me Deadly'' who walks into a bar saying "Give me a double bourbon, and leave the bottle". Chaumeton and Borde have argued that film noir grew out of the "literature of drugs and alcohol". 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'', set at a chemical plant. In the popular (and, frequently enough, critical) imagination, in noir it is always night and it always raining. 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 searing effect. Significant predecessors from the classic and early post-classic eras include ''The Lady from Shanghai''; the Robert Ryan vehicle ''Inferno (1953 film), Inferno'' (1953); the French adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's ''The Talented Mr. Ripley'', ''Plein Soleil, Plein soleil'' (''Purple Noon'' in the United States, more accurately rendered elsewhere as ''Blazing Sun'' or ''Full Sun''; 1960); and director Don Siegel's version of ''The Killers (1964 film), The Killers'' (1964). The tendency was at its peak during the late 1980s and 1990s, with films such as ''Dead Calm (film), Dead Calm'' (1989), ''
After Dark, My Sweet ''After Dark, My Sweet'' is a 1990 American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by James Foley and starring Jason Patric, Bruce Dern, and Rachel Ward. It is based on the 1955 Jim Thompson novel of the same name. Plot Ex-boxer Kevin "Kid" Col ...
'' (1990), '' The Hot Spot'' (1990), ''Delusion (1991 film), Delusion'' (1991), ''
Red Rock West ''Red Rock West'' is a 1993 American neo-noir thriller film directed by John Dahl and starring Nicolas Cage, Lara Flynn Boyle, J. T. Walsh, and Dennis Hopper. It was written by Dahl and his brother Rick, and shot in Montana, Willcox, Arizona, Son ...
'' (1993) and the television series '' Miami Vice''.


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 are frequently doomed. The films 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. In author Nicholas Christopher's opinion, "it is as if the war, and the social eruptions in its aftermath, unleashed demons that had been bottled up in the national psyche." Films noir, 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. Film noir is often said to be defined by "moral ambiguity", yet the Motion Picture Production Code, 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: vice emerges triumphant in films as varied as the grim ''Chinatown'' and the ribald ''Hot Spot''. The tone of film noir is generally regarded as downbeat; some critics experience it as darker still—"overwhelmingly black", according to Robert Ottoson. 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". In describing the adaptation of ''Double Indemnity,'' noir analyst Foster Hirsch describes the "requisite hopeless tone" achieved by the filmmakers, which appears to characterize his view of noir as a whole. On the other hand, definitive film noirs such as ''The Big Sleep'', ''The Lady from Shanghai'', ''Scarlet Street'' and ''Double Indemnity'' itself are famed for their hardboiled repartee, often imbued with sexual innuendo and self-reflexive humor.


Music

The music of film noir was typically orchestral, per the Hollywood norm, but often with added dissonance. Many of the prime composers, like the directors and cameramen, were European émigrés, e.g., Max Steiner (''The Big Sleep'', ''Mildred Pierce''), Miklós Rózsa (''Double Indemnity'', ''The Killers'', ''Criss Cross''), and Franz Waxman (''Fury'', ''Dark City'', ''Night and the City''). ''Double Indemnity'' is a seminal score, initially disliked by Paramount's music director for its harshness but strongly endorsed by director Billy Wilder and studio chief Buddy DeSylva. There is a widespread popular impression that "sleazy" jazz saxophone and pizzicato bass constitute the sound of noir, but those characteristics arose much later, as in the late-1950s music of Henry Mancini for ''Touch of Evil'' and television's ''Peter Gunn''.


See also

* Film gris-a term coined by experimental filmmaker Thom Andersen * Scandinavian noir * List of film noir titles * List of neo-noir titles *
B movie A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature ...
* Modernist film * Postmodern film * Minimalist film * Maximalist film


Notes

  1. The plural forms of ''film noir'' in English include ''films noirs'' (English plurals#French compounds, derived from the French), ''films noir'', and ''film noirs''. Merriam-Webster, which acknowledges all three styles as acceptable, favors ''film noirs'', while the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' lists only ''films noirs''.
  2. ''His Kind of Woman'' was originally directed by John Farrow, then largely reshot under Richard Fleischer after studio owner Howard Hughes demanded rewrites. Only Farrow was credited.Server (2002), pp. 182–98, 209–16; Downs (2002), p. 171; Ottoson (1981), pp. 82–83.
  3. In ''Academic Dictionary of Arts'' (2005), Rakesh Chopra notes that the high-contrast film lighting schemes commonly referred to as "chiaroscuro" are more specifically representative of tenebrism, whose first great exponent was the Italian painter Caravaggio (p. 73). See also Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 16.


Citations


Sources

* Ackbar Abbas, Abbas, M. Ackbar (1997). ''Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. * Appel, Alfred (1974). ''Nabokov's Dark Cinema''. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. * 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 availabl
online
. * Ballinger, Alexander, and Danny Graydon (2007). ''The Rough Guide to Film Noir''. London: Rough Guides. * 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. * Borde, Raymond, and Etienne Chaumeton (2002 [1955]). ''A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941–1953'', trans. Paul Hammond. San Francisco: City Lights Books. * Bould, Mark (2005). ''Film Noir: From Berlin to Sin City''. London and New York: Wallflower. * Butler, David (2002). ''Jazz Noir: Listening to Music from'' Phantom Lady ''to'' The Last Seduction. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. * Cameron, Ian, ed. (1993). ''The Book of Film Noir''. New York: Continuum. * Christopher, Nicholas (1998 [1997]). ''Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City'', 1st paperback ed. New York: Owl/Henry Holt. * Clarens, Carlos (1980). ''Crime Movies: An Illustrated History''. New York: W.W. Norton. * Conard, Mark T. (2007). ''The Philosophy of Neo-Noir''. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. * Copjec, Joan, ed. (1993). ''Shades of Noir''. London and New York: Verso. * Creeber, Glen (2007). ''The Singing Detective''. London: BFI Publishing. * Ken Dancyger, Dancyger, Ken, and Jeff Rush (2002). ''Alternative Scriptwriting: Successfully Breaking the Rules'', 3d ed. Boston and Oxford: Focal Press. * Dargis, Manohla (2004). "Philosophizing Sex Dolls amid Film Noir Intrigue", ''The New York Times'', September 17 (availabl
online
. * Davis, Blair (2004). "Horror Meets Noir: The Evolution of Cinematic Style, 1931–1958", in ''Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Fear'', ed. Steffen Hantke. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. * Downs, Jacqueline (2002). "Richard Fleischer", in ''Contemporary North American Film Directors: A Wallflower Critical Guide'', 2d ed., ed. Yoram Allon, Del Cullen, and Hannah Patterson. London and New York: Wallflower. * Raymond Durgnat, 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]''). * Erickson, Glenn (2004). "Fate Seeks the Loser: Edgar G. Ulmer's ''Detour''", in Silver and Ursini, ''Film Noir Reader 4'', pp. 25–31. * Gorman, Ed, Lee Server, and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. (1998). ''The Big Book of Noir''. New York: Carroll & Graf. * Greene, Naomi (1999). ''Landscapes of Loss: The National Past in Postwar French Cinema''. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. * Greenspun, Roger (1973). "Mike Hodges's 'Pulp' Opens; A Private Eye Parody Is Parody of Itself", ''The New York Times'', February 9 (availabl
online
. * Hanson, Helen (2008). ''Hollywood Heroines: Women in Film Noir and the Female Gothic Film''. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. * Hayde, Michael J. (2001). ''My Name's Friday: The Unauthorized But True Story of Dragnet and the Films of Jack Webb''. Nashville, Tenn.: Cumberland House. * Foster Hirsch, Hirsch, Foster (1999). ''Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir''. Pompton Plains, N.J.: Limelight. * Hirsch, Foster (2001 [1981]). ''The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir''. New York: Da Capo. * Holden, Stephen (1999). "Hard-Boiled as a Two-Day-Old Egg at a Two-Bit Diner", ''The New York Times'', October 8 (availabl
online
. * D. K. Holm, Holm, D. K. (2005). ''Film Soleil''. Harpenden, UK: Pocket Essentials. * Hunter, Stephen (1982). "''Blade Runner''", in his ''Violent Screen: A Critic's 13 Years on the Front Lines of Movie Mayhem'' (1995), pp. 196–99. Baltimore: Bancroft. * Irwin, John T. (2006). ''Unless the Threat of Death is Behind Them: Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. * James, Nick (2002). "Back to the Brats", in ''Contemporary North American Film Directors'', 2d ed., ed. Yoram Allon, Del Cullen, and Hannah Patterson, pp. xvi–xx. London: Wallflower. * Jones, Kristin M. (2009). "Dark Cynicism, British Style", ''Wall Street Journal'', August 18 (availabl
online
. * Kennedy, Harlan (1982). "Twenty-First Century Nervous Breakdown", ''Film Comment'', July/August. * Kirgo, Julie (1980). "''Farewell, My Lovely'' (1975)", in Silver and Ward, ''Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference'', pp. 101–2. * Kolker, Robert (2000). ''A Cinema of Loneliness'', 3d ed. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. * Krutnik, Frank, Steve Neale, and Brian Neve (2008). ''"Un-American" Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era''. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. * Lynch, David, and Chris Rodley (2005). ''Lynch on Lynch'', rev. ed. New York and London: Faber and Faber. * Lyons, Arthur (2000). ''Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir''. New York: Da Capo. * Carl Macek, Macek, Carl (1980). "''City Streets'' (1931)", in Silver and Ward, ''Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference'', pp. 59–60. * Macek, Carl, and Alain Silver (1980). "''House on 92nd Street'' (1945)", in Silver and Ward, ''Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference'', pp. 134–35. * Mackendrick, Alexander (2006). ''On Film-making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director''. New York: Macmillan. * Marshman, Donald (1947). "Mister 'See'-Odd-Mack'", ''Life'', August 25. * Martin, Richard (1997). ''Mean Streets and Raging Bulls: The Legacy of Film Noir in Contemporary American Cinema''. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press. * Maslin, Janet (1996). "Deadly Plot by a Milquetoast Villain", ''The New York Times'', March 8 (availabl
online
. * McGilligan, Patrick (1997). ''Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast''. New York and London: Faber and Faber. * Eddie Muller, Muller, Eddie (1998). ''Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir''. New York: St. Martin's. * Naremore, James (2008). ''More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts'', 2d ed. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. * Neale, Steve (2000). ''Genre and Hollywood''. London and New York: Routledge. * Ottoson, Robert (1981). ''A Reference Guide to the American Film Noir: 1940–1958''. Metuchen, N.J., and London: Scarecrow Press. * 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. 258–77. Maiden, Mass., Oxford, and Carlton, Australia: Blackwell. * Place, Janey, and Lowell Peterson (1974). "Some Visual Motifs of ''Film Noir''", ''Film Comment'' 10, no. 1 (collected in Silver and Ursini, ''Film Noir Reader [1]''). * Porfirio, Robert (1980). "''Stranger on the Third Floor'' (1940)", in Silver and Ward, ''Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference'', p. 269. * Ray, Robert B. (1985). ''A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930–1980''. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. * Richardson, Carl (1992). ''Autopsy: An Element of Realism in Film Noir''. Metuchen, N.J., and London: Scarecrow Press. * Sanders, Steven M. (2006). "Film Noir and the Meaning of Life", in ''The Philosophy of Film Noir'', ed. Mark T. Conard, pp. 91–106. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. * Sarris, Andrew (1996 [1968]). ''The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo. * Schatz, Thomas (1981). ''Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System''. New York: Random House. * Schatz, Thomas (1998 [1996]). ''The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era'', new ed. London: Faber and Faber. * Paul Schrader, Schrader, Paul (1972). "Notes on Film Noir", ''Film Comment'' 8, no. 1 (collected in Silver and Ursini, ''Film Noir Reader [1]''). * Server, Lee (2002). ''Robert Mitchum: "Baby I Don't Care"''. New York: Macmillan. * Server, Lee (2006). ''Ava Gardner: "Love Is Nothing"''. New York: Macmillan. * Silver, Alain (1996 [1975]). "''Kiss Me Deadly'': Evidence of a Style", rev. versions in Silver and Ursini, ''Film Noir Reader [1]'', pp. 209–35 and ''Film Noir Compendium'' (newest with remastered frame captures, 2016), pp. 302–325. * Silver, Alain (1996). "Introduction", in Silver and Ursini, ''Film Noir Reader [1]'', pp. 3–15, rev. ver. in Silver and Ursini, ''Film Noir Compendium'' (2016), pp. 10–25. * 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. * Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth Ward (1992). ''Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style'', 3d ed. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press. (See also: Silver, Ursini, Ward, and Porfirio [2010]. ''Film Noir: The Encyclopedia'', 4th rev., exp. ed. Overlook. ) * Slocum, J. David (2001). ''Violence and American Cinema''. London and New York: Routledge. * Spicer, Andrew (2007). ''European Film Noir''. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. * Telotte, J. P. (1989). ''Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir''. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. * Thomson, David (1998). ''A Biographical Dictionary of Film'', 3rd ed. New York: Knopf. * Turan, Kenneth (2008). "UCLA's Pre-Code Series", ''Los Angeles Times'', January 27 (availabl
online
. * Tuska, Jon (1984). ''Dark Cinema: American Film Noir in Cultural Perspective''. Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood. * Tyree, J. M., and Ben Walters (2007). ''The Big Lebowski''. London: BFI Publishing. * Ursini, James (1995). "Angst at Sixty Fields per Second", in Silver and Ursini, ''Film Noir Reader [1]'', pp. 275–87. * "''Variety'' staff" (anon.) (1940). "''Stranger on the Third Floor''" [review], ''Variety'' (excerpte
online
. * "''Variety'' staff" (anon.) (1955). "''Kiss Me Deadly''" [review], ''Variety'' (excerpte
online
. * Vernet, Marc (1993). "''Film Noir'' on the Edge of Doom", in Copjec, ''Shades of Noir'', pp. 1–31. * Wager, Jans B. (2005). ''Dames in the Driver's Seat: Rereading Film Noir''. Austin: University of Texas Press. * Walker, Michael (1992). "Robert Siodmak", in Cameron, ''The Book of Film Noir'', pp. 110–51. * White, Dennis L. (1980). "''Beast of the City'' (1932)", in Silver and Ward, ''Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference'', pp. 16–17. * Widdicombe, Toby (2001). ''A Reader's Guide to Raymond Chandler''. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. * Williams, Linda Ruth (2005). ''The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.


Suggested reading

* Auerbach, Jonathan (2011). ''Film Noir and American Citizenship.'' Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. * Chopra-Gant, Mike (2005). ''Hollywood Genres and Postwar America: Masculinity, Family and Nation in Popular Movies and Film Noir''. London: IB Tauris. * Cochran, David (2000). ''America Noir: Underground Writers and Filmmakers of the Postwar Era''. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. * Dickos, Andrew (2002). ''Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir''. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. * Dimendberg, Edward (2004). ''Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity''. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard University Press. * Dixon, Wheeler Winston (2009). ''Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia''. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. * Grossman, Julie (2009). ''Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: Ready for Her Close-Up''. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. * Hannsberry, Karen Burroughs (1998). ''Femme Noir: Bad Girls of Film''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. * Hannsberry, Karen Burroughs (2003). ''Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. * Hare, William (2003). ''Early Film Noir: Greed, Lust, and Murder Hollywood Style''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. * Hogan, David J. (2013). ''Film Noir FAQ''. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard. * Kaplan, E. Ann, ed. (1998). ''Women in Film Noir'', new ed. London: British Film Institute. * Keaney, Michael F. (2003). ''Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940–1959''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. * Mason, Fran (2002). ''American Gangster Cinema: From'' Little Caesar ''to'' Pulp Fiction. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave. * Mayer, Geoff, and Brian McDonnell (2007). ''Encyclopedia of Film Noir''. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. * McArthur, Colin (1972). ''Underworld U.S.A.'' New York: Viking. * Naremore, James (2019). ''Film Noir: A Very Short Introduction''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Osteen, Mark. ''Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream'' (Johns Hopkins University Press; 2013) 336 pages; interprets film noir as a genre that challenges the American mythology of upward mobility and self-reinvention. * Palmer, R. Barton (1994). ''Hollywood's Dark Cinema: The American Film Noir''. New York: Twayne. * Palmer, R. Barton, ed. (1996). ''Perspectives on Film Noir''. New York: G.K. Hall. * Pappas, Charles (2005). ''It's a Bitter Little World: The Smartest, Toughest, Nastiest Quotes from Film Noir''. Iola, Wisc.: Writer's Digest Books. * Rabinowitz, Paula (2002). ''Black & White & Noir: America's Pulp Modernism''. New York: Columbia University Press. * Schatz, Thomas (1997). ''Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s''. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. * Selby, Spencer (1984). ''Dark City: The Film Noir''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. * Shadoian, Jack (2003). ''Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster Film'', 2d ed. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. * Silver, Alain, and James Ursini (1999). ''The Noir Style''. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press. * Silver, Alain, and James Ursini (2016). ''Film Noir Compendium''. Milwaukee, WI: Applause. * Spicer, Andrew (2002). ''Film Noir''. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education. * Starman, Ray (2006). ''TV Noir: the 20th Century''. Troy, N.Y.: The Troy Bookmakers Press.


Suggested listening

* ''Murder is My Beat: Classic Film Noir Themes and Scenes'' (1997, Rhino Movie Music) - 18-track audio CD * ''Maltese Falcons, Third Men & Touches of Evil-The Sound of Film Noir 1941-1950'' (2019, Jasmine Records [UK]) - 42-track audio CD * ''Film Noir: Six Classic Soundtracks'' (2016, Real Gone Jazz [UK]) - 57 tracks on 4 audio CDs


External links

*
Film Noir: A Bibliography of Materials
an

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 Studies
writings by John Blaser, with film noir glossary, timeline, and noir-related media

unrevised online version of essay by Alain Silver in three parts
(2)
an


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

an

essay by Alain Silver and Linda Brookover
Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival
co-sponsored by the Palm Springs, California, Palm Springs]
Cultural CenterNoir and Neonoir , The Criterion CollectionNotebook Primer: Film NoirCollection: "Film Noir, Visuality and Themes"
from the University of Michigan Museum of Art {{DEFAULTSORT:Film Noir Film noir, Film and video terminology Film genres History of film 1930s in film 1940s in film 1950s in film 1940s neologisms