Film Noir  (Winter-Spring 2017)  Class ID: 1824

Study Leader:  Lloyd Stires (lstires@auxmail.iup.edu)

Study Leader Assistant:  Richard Becherer (richardbecherer@yahoo.com)

Articles (and videos) available on the internet:

Schrader, P. (1972). Notes on film noir. http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1069028.files/Schrader%20on%20Notes%20on%20Film%20Noir.pdf

Durgnat, R. (1970). Paint it black: The family tree of the film noir. https://atomicanxietyblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/51818818-raymond-durgnat-the-family-tree-of-the-film-noir.pdf

Place, J., & Peterson, L. (1974). Some visual motifs of film noir. http://www.surfacenoise.info/neu/film101/readings/VisualMotifsPlacePeterson.pdf

Jack’s Movie Reviews. (2016). Defining film noir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K77aPil7btM

Filmmaker IQ. (2013). Origins of film noir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i2CsU2ldQA&t=38s

Filmmaker IQ. (2013). The basics of lighting for film noir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsmVL7SDp5Y

Suggestions for further reading:

Silver, A., Ward, E., Ursini, J, & Porfirio, R., Eds. (2010). Film Noir: The Encyclopedia. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press. A basic reference book first published in 1979, it has been revised several times. This is the most recent edition.

Muller, E. (1998). Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. New York: St. Martin’s. One of the best of many books about film noir.

Silver, A., & Ursini, J. , Eds. (1996). Film Noir Reader. New York: Limelight Editions. There are three additional volumes in this series, but the most important articles are in this volume.

Schickel, R. (1992).  Double Indemnity.  New York:  Macmillan.  A short book in the British Film Institute’s Film Classics series.

Lingeman, R. (2012). The Noir Forties. New York: Nation Books. A political and cultural history of 1945-1950, illustrated by films noir.

Other suggestions:

Check Wikipedia’s “List of film noir titles” for a comprehensive list of hundreds of films.  See also “List of neo-noir titles.” [www.wikipedia.org]

The only television network that shows films noir with any regularity is Turner Classic Movies (TCM).

The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has a couple of dozen films noir.

Some films noir whose copyrights were not renewed and are in the public domain are available for free viewing on You Tube. The drawback is that picture and sound quality is usually substandard. Enter the title of a film you think might be available, or enter “film noir” for several playlists containing 100-250 movies and television programs. [www.youtube.com]

You can learn quite a bit about a film by looking it up at the Internet Movie Data Base. [www.imdb.com]

March 8–The Maltese Falcon

During World War II, the French were “deprived” of American films due to the German occupation.  After the war, French critics noticed that American crime films had become more cynical and pessimistic.

Film noir literally means “black film,” but “dark film” is a better translation.

Film noir refers to any of about 300 black and white crime films released in the U. S. between 1940 and 1959.

Pre-noir = similar films before 1940.

Neo-noir = after 1959.

Hard-boiled detectives

A major influence on film noir was hard-boiled detective stories from the pulp fiction of the 1920s through the 1950s, by authors such as Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler.

Traditional mysteries (Arthur Conan Doyle [Sherlock Holmes], Agatha Christie [Hercule Poirot]) are like an intellectual exercise in which the detective searches for clues, announces the solution at the end.

The hard-boiled detective’s strategy is to stir things up by asking questions, behaving unpredictably, etc., in the hope of provoking guilty people into taking action and revealing themselves.

The solution to the mystery may be less important than the atmosphere.

Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)

As a young man, Hammett worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency.  Most of his stories were based on personal experiences or those of his colleagues.  His training gave his work greater authenticity.

Between 1929 and 1934, he write the five novels on which his reputation is based:  Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), The Maltese Falcon (1930), The Glass Key (1931) and The Thin Man (1934).  He then suffered from writer’s block for almost 30 years.

A key theme in Hammett’s life and his fiction:  Loyalty vs. betrayal.  He felt guilty over his work as a strike breaker for Pinkerton.  In later life, his refusal to betray friends (“name names”) resulted in a six-month jail term and his being blacklisted.

The film

The Maltese Falcon was the first film directed by John Huston.  He was given a low budget ($327K) and a six week shooting schedule.

Rather than writing the screenplay, Huston claimed to have “edited” the book.  All the plot and most of the dialogue was Hammett’s.

It was basically a studio film shot on sound stages, but its innovative photography, including use of light and shadow, high and low camera angles, etc., make it a key early film noir.

The Maltese falcon is a McGuffin–a plot device to produce action.  It has value because the characters think it has value.  The irony is that it’s a fake.

Key line:  “The stuff that dreams are made of,” from Shakespeare, The Tempest.

Sam Spade operates in an environment where almost everyone lies almost all the time and there is no loyalty.

Key lines:  “We didn’t exactly believe your story; we believed your $200.”

“I love you like a son, but I can always get another son; there’s only one Maltese falcon.”

Spade’s ethics:  The dominant interpretation of the book (and film) is that it is a masterpiece of misdirection.  Spade fooled the other characters (and the reader) by pretending to pursue the falcon, while actually searching for Archer’s killer.

Key lines:  “Don’t be too sure I’m a crooked as I’m supposed to be.”

“When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it.”

However, the dialogue leaves open the possibility that he might have behaved differently if the falcon had been real.

Hammett (and Huston) were able to evade censorship by suggesting homosexuality indirectly, including use of the word “gunsel,” which refers to a young man kept by an older man for homosexual purposes.

March 15–Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity was a collaboration between two authors of hard-boiled fiction (novelist James M. Cain and screenwriter Raymond Chandler) and a screenwriter-director trained in German Expressionism (Billy Wilder).

German Expressionism

One way of classifying schools of filmmaking is realism vs. expressionism. Realism attempts to capture the subject objectively, while in expressionism the filmmaker attempts to manipulate reality.

Expressionism is associated with German films of the 1920s and 1930s. It is characterized by dramatic lighting, tilted cameras, distorted sets, and use of symbolism.

Film noir could be said to be Hitler’s gift to American cinema, since many of its best known directors were Jews who emigrated to this country from Germany or France before WWII. The list includes Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak, Jacques Tourneur, Otto Preminger, Edgar Ulmer, Fred Zinnemann, Rudolph Mate, Curtis Bernhardt, William Dieterle and Andre de Toth.

James M. Cain (1892-1977)

Cain was a journalist whose first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), was a big success. He wrote 20 novels, including Double Indemnity (1936) and Mildred Pierce (1941), and many short stories.

Although classified as a hard-boiled mystery writer, his books were usually about adultery and murder in a middle class setting. He was known for his spare prose and authentic dialogue.

Double Indemnity was loosely based on 1927 New York murder case in which Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray conspired to murder Snyder’s husband for $100,000 in insurance money. They were caught and executed.

Billy Wilder (1906-2002)

He was born Samuel Wilder to a Jewish family in Austria and spent his early years in Vienna, where he worked as a journalist—usually a stringer for one of many tabloids. He moved to Berlin in the late ’20s, where he became a screenwriter at UFA (Universum Film-Aktien Gesellschaft), a large, successful German film studio.

Wilder was one of the first to see the danger posed by the Nazis. He left Germany for Paris in January 1933, and moved to the U. S. in 1934.

He was unsuccessful in persuading his mother to leave Austria. He lost contact with her when Germany annexed Austria in 1938. In 1945, he learned that his mother, stepfather and grandmother had perished in the Holocaust.

Wilder became a successful screenwriter in collaboration with Charles Brackett. He said he turned to directing because he was tired of other directors ruining his scripts.

Double Indemnity was his third film. Brackett refused to work on it because he thought the novel was “disgusting,” so Wilder asked Raymond Chandler, whose work he admired, to co-author the script.

Wilder directed 25 feature films, including two others—Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Ace in the Hole (1951)–that are considered to be films noir. He received six Academcy Awards, two for best director, three for best screenplay, and one for best picture—The Apartment (1960).

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

Chandler began writing crime fiction at age 44 with short stories in pulp magazines. His first novel, The Big Sleep (1939), featured private detective Philip Marlowe. Among the six other Marlowe novels were Farewell, My Lovely (1940) and The Long Goodbye (1953).

He was critically praised for the excellence of his prose. Chandler’s dialogue is evident throughout Double Indemnity, especially in the narration.

Key line: “I killed him for the money and for a woman. I didn’t get the money, and I didn’t get the woman.”

Visual style

Two aspects of film noir style to look for in Double Indemnity:

1. Chiaroscuro—high contrast between light and dark areas of the shot, i.e., a room lit through venetian blinds.
2. Vertical angle between the camera and the human subject(s). A camera looking up at the person implies that he or she has high power or status. A camera looking down diminishes the person.

The film

Double Indemnity can be seen as Wilder’s critique of American society: Beneath the superficial friendliness and optimism of Southern California is a seething cauldron of lust, greed and betrayal.

Key line: “I knew I had ahold of a red hot poker and the time to drop it was before I burned my hand off.”

It is a mystery that lacks surprise, since we learn who done it and that he is caught in the first five minutes. It sustains interest through suspense—knowing that something bad will happen to the protagonist, but not knowing what or when.

The film’s central metaphor of a trolley car that you can’t get off until the end of the line implies fatalism. Nothing can be done to prevent the negative outcome. Flashback narratives are also said to be fatalistic because what has happened can’t be changed.

Critics have debated whether the relationship between Neff and Keyes contains a gay subtext. The line, “I love you too,” and the fumbling with cigars invites such speculation. However, as Freud noted, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

To placate the censors, Wilder emphasized the film’s moral of “crime does not pay.” However, it can also be read to suggest that non-crime doesn’t pay, either. Avoiding risk by always listening to your “little man” can leave you lonely and bitter.

Wilder filmed a 15-minute scene of Walter Neff being executed in the gas chamber with Keyes witnessing the execution and walking away sadly. However, he decided not to use it.

March 22–The Killers

Film Noir Visual Style

References: Article by Place and Peterson; video, “The basic of lighting for film noir.” Links in reading list at top of this page.

Classical Cinema	Film Noir
High key (low contrast) lighting	Low key (high contrast) lighting
Balanced, three-point lighting	Imbalanced lighting
Day-for-night	Night-for-night
Shallow focus	Deep focus
Normal focal length	Wide-angle focal length
Eye-level camera	Extreme low and high angles
Symmetrical mise-en-scene	Asymmetrical mise-en-scene
Open, unobstructed views	Foreground obstructions

Basic lighting set-up.

1. Key light = primary source of light, directed at the actors from above and to one side of the camera. It is usually hard, direct light that produces sharply defined shadows.
2. Fill light = soft, diffused or indirect light, placed on the other side of the camera, that fills in the shadows produced by the key light.
3. Back light = direct light shining on the actor from behind, which gives the actor form by differentiating him or her from the background.

High key lighting, also called balanced, three-point lighting = when all three lights are used generously, creating low contrast. The result is a brightly-lit but bland-looking scene.

Low-key lighting also called imbalanced lighting = when the key light is brighter than the others, creating areas of high contrast and rich, dark shadows. Film noir cinematographers use key, fill and back lights in almost every conceivable variation. One purpose is to produce chiaroscuro—high contrast between light and darkness.

Prior to film noir, night scenes were shot day-for-night, in daylight, with a filter over the lens to create the illusion of nighttime. Night-for-night = night scenes actually shot at night. This requires artificial light sources to illuminate each area of the frame that you want to be seen. It is more time-consuming and expensive, but creates realistic, high contrast night scenes.

Depth of field: Films noir tend to require a deep focus; that is, both foreground and deep background objects must be in focus. There are two ways to increase depth of field: Either add more light or use a lens with a wider focal length. Since films noir often require darkness, wide-angle lenses are used, which introduces some distortion, especially in nearby objects.

Rather than placing the camera at eye level, it may be placed at ground level, looking up at the actors, or above the actors, looking down on them. Shooting a person from below increases his or her apparent power, while shooting from above reduces it.

Mise-en-scene = the placement of actors and other objects within the frame. In a balanced or symmetrical mise-en-scene, the people are equidistant from one another and fill the frame. Films noir of use an assymetrical mise-en-scene. Objects in the foreground are sometimes used to obstruct part of the frame.

One purpose of film noir mise-en-scene is to create a visually unstable environment to temporarily confuse or disorient the viewer. Traditional films go from establishing shot to medium shot to close-ups. If you skip the establishing shot, especially if you start the scene with a closeup, the viewers have to figure out what’s going on.

These film noir styles spread to non-noir films of the 1940s and 1950s, and are now part of the standard film vocabulary.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

“The Killers” was an 8-page short story published in Scribner’s magazine in 1927. It is an example of minimalist fiction—very little plot, a totally passive central character, and a spare writing style (mostly dialogue).

It is one of 24 Nick Adams stories, about a young man’s coming of age. It illustrates the common Hemingway theme of accepting death with courage and dignity.

The film was marketed to exploit the public’s admiration of Hemingway, but his story occupies only the first 13 minutes of the film. It poses the question: Why did Swede lose his desire to live? The screenwriters wrote a 90-minute back story to answer that question.

The screenplay is credited to Anthony Veiller, with uncredited help from John Huston and Richard Brooks. A Huston interview suggests that he was probably the principal author.

Robert Siodmak (1900-1973)

Born in Dresden, Germany; he was trained at UFA studios in Berlin, fled to Paris and then the U. S. He directed 54 films, including 22 in the U.S. between 1941 and 1952, 10 of which are films noir.

The film

Siodmak is known for his use of expressionist visual style. The first 13 minutes is a prime example of high contrast night photography. He was nominated for the best director Academy Award for The Killers. It was also nominated for best screenplay, editing and musical score. (No wins.)

The film involves a femme fatale, a robbery and a double double-cross. It is usually regarded as fatalistic. Swede appears to be depressed, is suicidal and is passive in the face of death.

Key line: “I did something wrong . . . once.”

The resolution suggests that the investigation was futile. Policy-holders save 1/10 of a cent on their 1947 premiums. It is an early example of a film with a message about the meaninglessness of life.

March 29–The Asphalt Jungle

Film genres

Films are typically classified by genre. Genre (literally, genre = kind) = a type of narrative text that is characterized by repeated patterns of settings, characters, plots, icons (props), and visual styles. Examples include Westerns, science fiction, musicals, comedies, horror, etc.

Genres serve as shorthand communication. When a film is classified by genre, the audience knows what to expect. From the filmmaker’s perspective, genre helps to market the film.

Film noir as a genre:

• The setting is the contemporary world, usually a city at night.
• The plot: A protagonist commits a crime, usually a murder. An investigation ensues which involves the protagonist in a web of misadventures.
• The characters usually include a protagonist, a femme fatale and an investigator. (A character may play more than one of these roles.) Others may be a conventional wife or girlfriend, police, criminals, corrupt politicians, a psychiatrist, etc. Silver and Ward (1979) suggest that two typical characteristics of a film noir protagonist are alienation from society and obsession with a goal (which may be the femme fatale).

Genres are sometimes said to have a prototype or perfect example. Damico (1978) has described the following film noir prototype:

Either because he is fated to do so by chance, or because he has been hired for a job specifically associated with her, a man whose experience of life has left him sanguine and often bitter meets a not-innocent woman of similar outlook to whom he is sexually and fatally attracted. Through this attraction, either because the woman induces him to it or because it is the natural result of their relationship, the man comes to cheat, attempt to murder, or actually murder a second man to whom the woman is unhappily or unwillingly attached (generally he is her husband or lover), an act which brings about the sometimes metaphoric but usually literal destruction of the woman, the man to whom she is attached, and frequently the protagonist himself.

Very few films noir fit the prototype. (Double Indemnity and The Killers do, but The Maltese Falcon does not.) The question then becomes: How far can a film deviate from the prototype and still be classified as a film noir? Some argue that film noir is not a genre, that its plots and characters are so diverse that its only defining characteristics are mood and visual style.

W. R. (William Riley) Burnett (1899-1982)

Burnett was pulp fiction writer who, although he doesn’t have the reputation of Hammett or Chandler, had an uncanny ability to write stories that were cinematic. His first novel and screenplay was Little Caesar (1930), a successful gangster film. Burnett published 38 novels, many of which were turned into films, and wrote about the same number of screenplays.

Burnett and John Huston co-wrote the screenplay of Burnett’s novel High Sierra in 1941. Huston admired Burnett’s work and purchased the rights to his 1949 novel, The Asphalt Jungle. The screenplay was written by Huston and Ben Maddow.

John Huston (1906-1987)

Huston was the director and screenwriter of The Maltese Falcon, and a screenwriter of The Killers. The Asphalt Jungle was his last film noir, with the exception of his acting performance in the neo-noir Chinatown (1974).

He directed 37 films, for most of which he also wrote the screenplay. He was nominated for 15 Academy Awards; he won two, for direction and screenplay of The Treaure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

The film

Some critics suggest that, with The Asphalt Jungle, Huston set out to expand film noir into new territory: the heist or caper film. Instead of one flawed protagonist, he has six of them, each with his own back story.

The heist film has become a popular sub-genre. Heist films tend to have a three-act plot:

1. Planning—assembling of a team of specialists; planning the heist.
2. Execution—often meticulously detailed; generates suspense due to time pressure to complete the job and the possibility of accidents. With rare exceptions, the heist is successful.
3. Aftermath—the plans unravel and go wrong; the spoils usually can’t be divided immediately, leaving open the possibility of a double-cross.

The Asphalt Jungle is told from the criminal’s point of view. Gang members are largely sympathetic, trying to better their lives, but through crime. Society is corrupt; both the police and the lawyer are on the take. (The lecture on crime by the police commissioner doesn’t fit, but was presumably included to allow the film to pass censorship.)

Key line: “Crime is just a left-handed form of human endeavor.”

Huston’s visual style is characterized by long, well-composed, deep focus shots. There are several actors in the frame—one character in the foreground and others in different planes. This allows him to frame one character’s actions and others’ responses within the same shot, without cutting between them.

The film can be reasonably described as anti-urban. The city (Cincinnati) is a bombed out shell. Most of he film takes place indoors, in shabby surroundings, with few windows; is claustrophobic. But Dix’s return to rural Kentucky is accompanied by bright sunlight and inspirational music.

April 5–In a Lonely Place

In a Lonely Place was written by Dorothy B. Hughes (1904-1993), an American crime writer who wrote 14 novels. However, the screenplay by Andrew Solt had little in common with her novel, which is about a serial rapist and killer.  In addition, the shooting script was changed in important ways during filming by director Nicholas Ray.

The film was financed by Santana, Humphrey Bogart’s production company, and was an attempt by Bogart to break away from the studio system and do films that interested him.

The final product was almost certainly influenced by the breakup of Ray’s marriage to co-star Gloria Grahame, and by the fact that Ray’s career was threatened by investigations of his former political activities and the possibility that he would be blacklisted.

Nicholas Ray (1911-1979)

Born Raymond Nicholas Kienzle, Jr., in LaCross, WI, Nick Ray was a brilliant director, but also self-destructive—a heavy drinker and gambler and a bisexual who was married four times.

His early influences read almost like a who’s-who of the left wing of the American entertainment industry. At the University of Chicago, he was a student of playwright Thornton Wilder, and he left the university to become an apprentice to architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Ray moved to New York in 1935 and joined two radical theatre groups, the Theatre of Action and the Group Theatre, first as an actor and later a director. His mentors included producer John Houseman and director Elia Kazan. It was during this period that he joined the Communist Party.

He was head of the folklore division of the WPA and traveled around the country with Alan Lomax, recording blues and folk singers. He directed a series of radio programs, Back Where I Come From, featuring the music of folksingers like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Leadbelly. He also directed a Broadway play, Beggar’s Opera, based on the music of Duke Ellington.

Ray moved to Hollywood in 1944 to become the assistant director of Elia Kazan’s first film, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

His chance to direct came when John Houseman hired him to do They Live By Night, a film noir about a young bank robber and his girlfriend on the run from the police, based on the novel Thieves Like Us (1937) by Edward Anderson. Because RKO didn’t like the film, its release was held up for two years, but it is routinely included on lists of the best films noir.

Other highly regarded films directed by Ray include On Dangerous Ground (1952), also a film noir, Johnny Guitar (1954), a “noir Western,” Rebel Without a Cause (1955), starring James Dean as a troubled teenager, and Bigger Than Life (1956), about middle-class addiction to painkillers.

The Communist Scare and the Hollywood Blacklist

Many writers, directors and actors were members of the Communist Party during the 1930s and 1940s. They were attracted to the Communist Party because it was the most liberal of the organized political parties at that time and they agreed with its stance on issues such as poverty, civil rights and peace. The Soviet Union was our ally in World War II.

After World War II, Communist Party membership was retroactively redefined as disloyalty to the US, and conservative politicians such as Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) and members of the bipartisan House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) tried to eliminate former Communists from government, universities, and the entertainment field.

HUAC’s investigation of Hollywood was based on an unsophisticated theory of media influence which stated that movies were brainwashing the public with Communist propaganda. In fact, only a small percentage of late 1940s movies were “social problem films” with an arguably liberal message.

When subpeonaed to testify by HUAC, witnesses were asked whether they had ever been a member of the Communist Party. If yes, they were asked to name names, placing them in a profound ethical dilemma. If they refused to name names, they could go to jail, and some did. If they did name names, they betrayed their friends, and might be blacklisted anyway.

HUAC hearings were more like a show trial, since almost all the names were already known. They were intended to humiliate former Communist Party members and eliminate liberals from positions of influence in society.

The blacklist could sometimes be avoided by making a public confession and dramatically changing your political views. This approach was taken by Ray’s mentor, Elia Kazan, who converted to conservatism and directed the anti-union film On the Waterfront, which ends with the protagonist agreeing to inform on his former colleagues.

Many film noir writers, directors and actors were affected by the blacklist. Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon, was jailed for refusing to name names by a New York State district attorney. Ben Maddow, who co-wrote the screenplay of The Asphalt Jungle, was blacklisted, as were actors Sam Jaffe and Dorothy Tree. Actors Sterling Hayden and Marc Lawrence named names. John Huston, who was never a Communist Party member, moved to Ireland and became an Irish citizen in 1952.

Nicholas Ray was eventually called by HUAC to testify in 1952 and saved his career by naming names. Actor Art Smith, who played Dix’s agent Mel Lippman in In a Lonely Place was blacklisted.

The film

In a Lonely Place illustrates how a director’s last-minute choices can greatly affect the quality of the film.

1. The shooting script included an insert of Laurel looking out her window as Mildred left Dix’s apartment. This made it clear that she knew Dix was innocent. Ray deleted this insert. As a result, Laurel is seen as lying to the police and she becomes gradually more suspicious of Dix’s guilt throughout the film.

It could be argued that the first half of the film is about Dix; the second half is about Laurel’s attempt to escape from the relationship. The murder investigation typical of films noir becomes less relevant as the film progresses.

2. The original ending called for Dix to strangle Laurel to death. This was filmed, but Ray was dissatisfied and shot the existing ending, which substitutes sadness for melodramatics.

Film noir visual style is illustrated by devices such as vertical camera placement to illustrate threat, kick lights shining on Bogart’s eyes, and the wrought-iron apartment gates symbolizing the entrapment of the the characters.

Some film scholars see government surveillance of private citizens, and the effects that this has its targets and their relationships, as one of Ray’s primary themes. Although Dix shows paranoid symptoms, his violent behavior is driven in part by his being surreptitiously recorded, spied on and followed, and by the untrustworthy behavior of his friend Brub and eventually Laurel.

The film allows Ray (and presumably Bogart) to express deep reservations about the quality of Hollywood films. Hollywood’s target audience is said to be Mildred, who believes that an epic is a film that is long and where lots of things happen. A successful director is derided as a “popcorn salesman.”

April 12–Out of the Past

The Rise and Fall of Film Noir

The period between 1945-1960 is remembered today as a happy time. Why did this period produce films that were more cynical and violent, had darker moods and less happy endings than pre-war films?

Post-WWII disillusionment:  Americans had high expectations; the reality fell short.

World War II. The violence of the war (Holocaust, bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) changed our expectations about the level of violence in society.

Returning veterans faced psychological problems, i.e., post-traumatic stress. Men returned home to find that their wives and girlfriends had taken up with new partners. There was a substantial rise in the divorce rate in 1946.

Reconversion. Some 2.1 million defense industry jobs vanished in 1945. Women had entered the work force during the war, and not all of them were willing to return to being housewives. There was considerable unemployment, on the order of 7-8 million in 1946. Eventually, industry began producing consumer products and family incomes rose, but this took a while.

Crime. Although the data are not as good as we would like, there was apparently a substantial increase in the crime rate, especially of violent crimes.

Urbanization. This was a long-term trend. The U. S. gradually went from a rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrialized one. This process accelerated after World War II.

The Cold War. Americans were not permitted to enjoy peacetime for very long; the Korean War began in 1950. The threat of Communism was hyped both here and abroad. The threat of nuclear annihilation was a source of considerable anxiety.

Film industry considerations

Monopoly structure of film industry (vertical integration). In the 1940s, the five major studios (MGM, RKO, Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount) either owned or controlled most of the theatres. Their contracts with the theatres called for block booking. In order to get the most popular films, they had to accept all of the studios’ products.

The double feature was the norm in most theatres. Most films noir were second features (“B” movies).

Weekly attendance in the U.S. peaked in 1946 at 90 million. (U. S. population in 1946 = 141 million.) This created a need for more films and guaranteed an audience for films that were released. The guaranteed audience permitted more experimentation.

Technology. Faster film stock required less light, which permitted darker scenes, deeper focus, night-for-night shooting. Lighter weight cameras and lights allowed technicians to move about more easily, allowing more shooting on location. Most films noir were made on about half the budget and a shorter shooting schedule than those of “A” features.

Censorship. The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of moral guidelines that governed studio releases from 1930 to 1968. Noir directors fought with censors over issues such as adultery, sympathy for criminals, and detailed description of crimes. There was a gradual decline in the influence of the code throughout the noir period.

The Decline of Film Noir

It is not necessary to explain the decline of film genres. Filmmakers or the public may simply have grown tired of them.

End of monopoly structure. The Justice Department first filed an anti-trust suit against the major studios in 1938. Studios agreed to drop block booking in 1946, and to divest themselves of theatres in 1948. This took a while. Paramount was the first to divest in 1949; MGM the last in 1959. Once block booking was gone, theatre owners gradually abandoned the double feature, which reduced demand for second features.

Blacklist. The first Hollywood hearings of the House Unamerican Activities Committee occurred in 1947; a second wave followed in 1951. The primary effect of the blacklist was to eliminate talented writers, directors and actors.

To demonstrate that they were not liberals, the studios gradually abandoned “problem films.” There was an increase in docu-noirs, or police procedurals, i.e., The Naked City (1948), which advocated conservative, “law and order” solutions to crime. Films rouge (“red” films) were films noir with Communists as villains, i.e., Pickup on South Street (1953).

Technicolor. Color film required much more light; the result was a return to high key lighting.

Television. TV reduced demand for films, especially second features, since the studios believed that “blockbusters” were needed to compete with TV.

Jacques Tourneur (1904-1977)

Jacques Tourneur was born in Paris, the son of successful French director Maurice Tourneur. He directed three feature films in France before emigrating to the United States in 1934. He directed 30 films in the U.S. and England between 1939 and 1965.

His career highlights include three horror-noirs produced by Val Lewton: Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and The Leopard Man (1943); two other films noir: Berlin Express (1948) and Nightfall (1957); and the English horror classic, Night of the Demon (1957).

He is best known for his visual style—his low key cinematography, especially of night scenes, and his careful shot composition.

The film

Many regard Out of the Past as a prototype, or perfect example, of a film noir. It has all the essential ingredients: It has a European director whose style is expressionistic. It was adapted from a pulp novel, Build My Gallows High by Daniel Mainwaring. It has a protagonist who makes bad decisions, both a femme fatale and a “good” woman, a police investigation, and a convoluted plot involving several double-crosses.

As with many films noir, it features a long flashback, narrated by the protagonist, which can be suspected of being self-serving. Flashbacks encourage fatalism: I can’t do anything about it now, subtly implies I couldn’t do anything then.

Fatalism

Jeff in Out of the Past is often said to be a prime example, although similar claims could be made about Swede in The Killers or Walter Neff in Double Indemnity.

Key line: “You’re like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another.”

Jeff accuses Cathy, but the same might be said about him. He is competent, but oddly passive.

We ordinarily assume that people know their own motives, they deliberate before taking action, and they are causally effective. Obviously, life is not that simple and we are not always causally effective.

We may fail because external forces prevent us from reaching our goals. But film noir portrays a different source of causal ineffectiveness: The protagonist knows that what he is doing is wrong or foolish, but he is powerless to prevent himself from doing it.

This is sometimes called passive agency or weak intentionality. The behavior satisfies the formal conditions of agency, but is irrational. In the aftermath, the character may rationalize by denying responsibility for his actions, claiming that he was a victim of fate.

Ultimately, at the conclusion of the film, Jeff siezes control in order to kill Cathy (and himself).