It takes a lot to laugh, it takes even more to explain exactly what the beast that is
film noir... is. The historical story, as I see it:
film noir, as it would later be named by the French when a big glut of American films hit them after the war, was cinema's adolescence. It was the period when the injustice and agony of the world came tumbling down on Hollywood's head and it no longer had the guilelessness of newborn innocence to protect it. And like do us all at that troubled time in our lives, it lost its mind a little.
Because they were the most convenient and appropriate examples of the "social fantastic" (Tom Conley), the things you have to look out for are:
- A Hard-Boiled Detective Who Has Either Never Loved Or Loved So Strongly It Broke Him And Now There's No One Home
- A Rainy City
- A Dame With Big Eyes Who's Not What She Seems
- One Or More Guns
- Hats And Coats
- Complication After Mind Bending Complication To The Central Case That The Detective Is Working On
- Edward G. Robinson
- An Unhappy Ending
Aside from that, the spirit of
noir lives on, no matter the vibrancy of color. We're not talking about pictures on a screen here, but a way of life, perhaps the oldest and most seductive of all. The term may technically translate as "black movie", but
film noir means Shit Is Fucked Up. It looks like its going to take a whole semester of explaining all the intricacies of the matter, the societal disillusionment that washed America white after the Second World War, the pop culture of the nation consistently blaring the worst nightmares of its nuclear-family, bomb-shelter-conscious, gosh-darn-steak-and-brussel-sprouts audience right in their face. But I think James Naremore summed it all up nicely when he spoke simply of the faded night-club star, as she "imagines again the dazzle of her debut through the bottom of her bourbon".
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