Named by French critics to describe films based on mid-20th-century crime fiction, noir features a style and language unique to itself. These films often center on stories told from the viewpoint of morally gray or explicitly criminal protagonists, with shadows used so powerfully that they become central characters themselves.
With the Second World War behind us, writers could more freely question the nature of crime, our economic structure, and the moral dilemmas hidden behind the curtain, down dark alleys, and in the hearts of those who knew things were never as simple as they appeared. In our cultural consciousness, there now lived the awareness of a darkness so heinous we knew it did not disappear from our world on May 7, 1945. We now had the freedom to approach storytelling with a cynicism almost unthinkable during the bleak years of the Depression when escapism reigned, or during the war era, when we did not have the luxury to stand uncertain, moral compasses shaking in our hands. Writers of crime fiction began to challenge the notion that contentment was a reward all men could earn through honest work, the idea of women as eternal guardians of morality, and what life looked like for those who lived outside the bounds of light and law.
My journey into the back alleyways of noir began long before the first time I would see the screen shadows I had come to adore so deeply that I felt like I had a duty to share them at every opportunity. It came with early exposure to the works of Charles Dickens and a class reading of “Wuthering Heights.” From Dickens, I became enchanted with the interconnectedness of the lives of those living within the same city— that the actions made by them, because of them, or with little obvious connection to them would create stories that had less obvious heroes and villains. Stories like “Wuthering Heights” gave me a burning desire for characters that seemed damned before they had even begun, with pasts limiting all futures, and with reasons to empathize with one who may seem to be in the wrong. It was this mirroring of the complexities, this greying of moralities, and this call to reconsider wrong that led me to the lonely places, to answers only found from out of the past, and to know each of the lives of Harry Lime. I would travel beyond the mid-century and the years of film without colors—into such a diverse application of noir that I could write a hundred articles exploring each leg of the journey.
The debate over the classification of noir film swings between a true “genre” and a “film style.” The emergence of neo-noir films in the late seventies and early eighties gave validation to the argument that noir is more of a language within film—a language that is accompanied by certain stylistic elements but not beholden to them. Noir films exist within cyberspaces, futuristic metropolises, gritty daylight realities, and in the areas protected by caped crusaders because the stylistic influences of classic noir live within them so vividly.
The ancestors of noir are those crime films from the 1930s such as “The Public Enemy” (1931) and “Scarface” (1983), the “Thin Man” (1934 – 1939) series, and from the German expressionist films “M” (1931) and “The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” (1933). Within them are found the fatalistic stories, shadow worlds, and criminal elements that created our classic ideas of the noir film but also informed the future of neo-noir. We learned how to slip into the story of a lone wolf detective, to question the motives of that gorgeously dressed woman who knows much more than she is letting on, and to revel in the streetscapes that are not well-lit. Films like “The Maltese Falcon” (1941), “The Big Sleep” (1946), and “Double Indemnity” (1944) gave us character archetypes that would manifest themselves into those hard-boiled detectives in “Se7en” (1995), “Devil in a Blue Dress” (1995), and “Chinatown” (1974).
Moral ambiguity and quests for answers set up fantastic worlds of crime, inviting us on a ride along into the darkness. We may have started in the Los Angeles of the early fifties, but we would continue into the futurepast year of 2019 in Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982), a film that marries the influences of noir with science fiction in the readiest example of neo-noir and its ability to transcend predictable hallmarks while retaining its essence. Often referred to as “tech-noir,” this subset of science & shadow carries within it films such as “Minority Report” (2002), “Dark City” (1998), and “The Matrix” trilogy (1999 – 2003). Stories of men on missions of vengeance and vigilantes lend themselves gloriously to the ever-evolving world of noir and have never been limited to offerings from our shores.
From “Le Samouraï” (1967), a French film about a meticulous hitman spotted by a witness leaving the scene of a job and the twenty-four hours following his exposure, to the “John Wick” series beginning in 2014, following the reluctant return of a legendary hitman to the criminal underworld after retiring—beginning with an insult so grievous that the only fitting reply is revenge. Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy” (2003) details vengeance painstakingly planned and executed with a brutality made sympathetic by excellent storytelling. The trajectory of noir influences is deeply and deliciously intertwined with stories of masked heroes and villains. The shared literary lineage of the detectives of the pulp novel and the superheroes of the comic book builds worlds made more real by the inclusion of street-level stories, characters working within, without, and in between the law, and the many stylistic visual elements that can take a golden-age hero into times that feel more relatable while still retaining an atmosphere of the fantastic.
From early serials to stylized animated depictions to graphic novels written as noir imaginings, the union of comic book and noir film continues to bring forth films able to attract audiences on the fringes of fandom, from the noir-fused stylistic visuals of the film adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel “Sin City” into a 2005 film to the darker dawn of Gotham City in Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” Trilogy and more recently 2022’s “The Batman”— featuring storytelling, dialogue, and visual elements breathing new life into both genres. Influences gained by the noir film, as they existed before named, in its subsequent golden and bronze ages, have no limits in application to other genres, for shadows show up everywhere.
Whether you travel backward, forwards, or somewhere in between this month; I wish you a happy Noirvember.
