Film Noir

Media Studies - HdM Stuttgart - SS 2002 Prof. Dr. Stephen Lowry

written by: Jan Schulze (11145)

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Contents
1. Introduction 2. Film Noir a Definition 2.1 Characteristics of Film Noir 2.2 The Term Film Noir 2.3 Film Style or Genre? 3. History of Film Noir 3.1 Origins of Film Noir

3.1.1 German Expressionist Film 3.1.2 French Poetic Realism 3.1.3 Hard-boiled Authors 3.2.1 Romanticism (Wartime Period) 3.2.2 Realism (Post-War Period) 3.2.3 Obsession (Final Phase)

3.2 The classic Period of Film Noir

3.3 Neo-Noir 4. Film Language 4.1 Mise-en-scne and Film Style 4.2 Montage and Narration 4.3 Imagery
4.3.1 4.3.2 4.3.3 4.3.4 Phallic Symbols and Fetish Telephones Mirrors and Staircases Neon-signs

5. Characters in Film Noir 5.1 Men 5.2 Women 6. Thematic Content of Film Noir 6.1 Law and Moral Ambiguity 6.2 Alienation 6.3 Irrevocable Past 6.4 The Role of the Family 7. Bibliography

1. Introduction
Quinlan: "Come on, read my future for me." Tanya: "You haven't got any." Quinlan: "What do you mean?" Tanya: "Your future is all used up." Touch of Evil (1958) Roberts: "That's life. Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you up." Detour (1945)

Film Noir is difficult to get a grip on. Both film critics and historians participate in the discussion on its definition. There are often varying opinions, which criteria a movie has to come up with to deserve the term Noir. Moreover there is still an ongoing debate, whether Film Noir is a genre of its own or whether it is a film style. At first, this paper will cover the discussion on Film Noir to get to a possible definition. Film language, characters and thematic content of Film Noir will then be looked at in greater detail. Furthermore, there will be a short view on the origins and history of Film Noir.

2. Film Noir a Definition

The primary moods of classic Film Noir are alienation, pessimism, moral corruption and paranoia. Its Characters are anti-heroes, corrupt characters and violent villains of the gloomy underworld or hard-boiled detectives, desperately trying to retain last leftovers of moral integrity, which often results in a very cynical attitude. The females in Film Noir are either trustworthy and loving women or femme fatales that lead the male characters into committing a crime, often ruining him. Noirs are shot in black and white and show the dark and inhumane part of human nature with cynicism and doomed love. An oppressive atmosphere of menace, pessimism, anxiety, suspicion that anything can go wrong, defeat and entrapment are omnipresent characteristics of Film Noir. Film Noir is marked by expressionistic lighting, disorienting visual schemes and skewed camera angles, circling cigarette smoke and unbalanced compositions. Interiors frequently have low-key lighting and dark and gloomy appearances. Exteriors are urban night scenes with deep shadows, wet asphalt, rain-slicked or mean streets, flashing neon lights, and low key lighting. Story locations are often in murky and dark streets, dimlylit apartments and hotel rooms of big cities. Narratives are characterised through a complex and convoluted structure, typically told with a series of flashbacks and reflective or cynical voice-over narration. Film Noir seldom has a happy end.

2.1 Characteristics of Film Noir

2.2 The Term Film Noir

The term Film Noir was first used by French film critics to describe a new trend in American wartime cinema. During the war there was an embargo on American films in France. In July and August 1946 five American Films had their premiere in Paris: The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk, 1944), Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944), Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944) and The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1945). Critics noticed, that all of these movies featured increasingly dark looks, thematic content and "narrative, stylistic and thematic departures from the Hollywood cinema of the pre-war years."1 American film critics adopted the term Film Noir no sooner than the late 60s, when the classic Noir period was already over. So-called Neo-Noirs (Post-, Modern- or Tech-Noirs) appeared after the classic period with a revival of the themes of classic Noir.

Krutnik (1991), S. 15.

2.3 Film Style or Genre?

It is interesting, that neither American film critics nor the audience were consciously aware of what was going on, unless the French provided a name for something, that Hollywood did not know it had created. This can be taken as a clue, that Film Noir must not be seen as a genre but rather as some sort of aesthetic movement or film style. Though elements of the Noir conglomerate - visual style, thematic content, way of storytelling and specific scenery and characters - certainly appear in many Noirs, they are not as conventionalised as in a genre. Advocates of this theory are for example Durgnat,2 Schrader3 and Bordwell/Staiger/Thompson.4 They do not view Film Noir as a genre and emphasize the stylistic elements. Tone and mood are given considerable weight. Genre per se is defined by conventionalisation of plot and characters. It uses special mechanisms to produce standardised emotional effects in the audience. Thus, genre movies are always characterized by a "commercial aesthetic",5 i.e. commercialism is cause of the style. But, as John Belton puts it, there "was no body of noir conventions",6 filmmakers could have been urged to follow. Apparently the makers of Film Noir did not deliberately set out to actually make Noirs. Film Noir frequently uses certain elements, may they be visual or thematic, but it always retains the freedom to use and combine them in unconventional ways. Another argument, why Film Noir can not be seen as a genre of its own, is the fact, that Noir characteristics are often crossing genre boundaries. We know Noir Westerns, Noir Gangster Films and Noir Melodramas. On the other hand, almost every traditional genre has been combined with others. A prominent example for such genre-fusion is the Sci-Fi Western Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977), which George Lucas has described as "a fastpaced action-adventure film in the tradition of the American Western."7 There are quite a number of critics and scientists, which in fact see Film Noir as a genre and as part of the systemization of Hollywood's narrational regulation during the 1940s. Higham/Greenberg8 are of the opinion, that Film Noir relies upon a system of well defined conventions and expectations like other genre defined movies. The fact that the term Film Noir was not familiar to the film industry and audience of the 40s and 50s does not necessarily work as an argument against the genre definition of Noir, because it is possible to argue that the defining characteristics of Film Noir did indeed constitute a set of conventions and expectations. Types of genres are not bound to a certain period of time. This may be an argument against regarding Noirs as a genre. But if one accepts the more recent films with Noir characteristics as a continuation of the Noir tradition this argument may not count. Belton9 claims, that Films Noirs are definitely genre movies, but the genre they belong to is not Film Noir. Any genre movie, as for example the detective film, the western, or the melodrama can be a Film Noir. He also proposes another possibility of Film Noir classification which considers it as a purely affective phenomenon; that is, it does things to people. Noir can just be used as an adjective like funny or sad. As (almost) every film has funny or sad moments, every film can have its Noir moments. All of these different views on Film Noir try to define and capture the essence of Noir. The fact, that there is no satisfying explanation for everyone certainly makes Film Noir a very interesting topic.

Comp. Durgnat (1970), pp. 49-56. Comp. Schrader (1972), p. 53. Comp. Bordwell/Staiger/Thompson (1988), p 75. 5 Maltby (1995). 6 Comp. Belton (1994), p. 186. 7 John Rogers (1997), internet. 8 Comp. Higham/Greenberg (1968). 9 Comp. Belton (1994), p. 187.
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3. History of Film Noir

3.1.1 German Expressionist Film Film Noir has borrowed heavily from the expressionist film techniques and lighting used by German directors in the 1920s, including F.W. Murnau, G.W. Pabst and Robert Wiene. Noir Movies often feature high contrast between light and shadow, threatening shadows that restrict the protagonist and very bright highlights. In general, lighting situation is far from natural and is used to emphasize the thematic content of the movies. This unnatural, graphic lighting is found in many expressionist films. Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1919) is certainly one of the most famous. Caligari features not only very artificial lighting situations, but also has very disturbing settings. The stage designers consequently stuck to their motto "Das Filmbild muss Graphik werden" and painted a distorted, threatening environment. Just like the Caligari stage design was mainly painted, Film Noir uses painting with light and shadows. The technical term for painting with light and shadows is chiaroscuro, which stems from fine art. Film Noir and German expressionist film also share many dcor elements as metaphors for alienation, self-absorption and the feeling of being at the mercy of unknown forces. Some of them are staircases, mirrors, corridors or portraits. Just like expressionist film, Noirs often use a frame story. Expressionist film is strongly influenced by the post-war economic and social situation. All ideals were shattered and people became tied up by an economic and political system out of their control. A comparable situation, i.e. the time after world war II, was the historical background of Film Noir. 3.1.2 French Poetic Realism Movies of the Poetic Realism of the 30ies also depict the confusion of an economically difficult time. They point up social problems by the fate of their characters. The darker parts of everyday-life in a big city play an important role, just like they did in Film Noir. Although French Poetic Realism is considered to be the least important influence on Film Noir, "it nevertheless has had a large effect on American filmmaking during the 1940s and 1950s."10 There is a poetic flavour in many Noirs, as for example in The Asphalt Jungle (John Houston, 1950). The Femme Fatale in Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) is not as demonised as other Femme Fatales, but in fact is portrayed in a poetic, more romantic way. The fact that European film style has been widely adopted in America is rather unusual, as Hollywood cinema seldom takes up foreign influences. The distinct European connection attached to Film Noir has been mainly caused by emigrants from European cinema, that fled the political turbulence of the Third Reich. 3.1.3 Hard-boiled Authors Americas thirties gave birth to a new literary tradition called hard-boiled novels. These crime novels, so called pulp fiction, were very popular. They presented their readers a completely different world and a different kind of detective than those found in English and earlier detective stories. Hard-boiled novels featured a new realism. The hero was as much an antihero, the action was taken down on the streets, it was violent. Language was cut short and often marked by verbal wit. Upper-class detectives were replaced by the proletarian tough guy detective that was walking the mean streets, often finding himself on the edge of law and crime. Contemporary America is described as an urban and industrialized area where people are in the hands of naturalistic drives. Prominent similarities between hard-boiled fiction and Film Noir are complex structures of story-telling and a pessimistic and cynical attitude of the characters. Works of well-known hard-boiled authors like Dashiell Hammet, Raymond Chandler or Horace McCoy were adapted to the screen and many of the authors were hired by Hollywood as screenwriters. Obviously this hard-boiled fiction had a considerable influence on Film Noir.
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3.1 Origins of Film Noir

Sze (2002), internet.

3.2 The classic period of Film Noir

3.2.1 Romanticism (wartime period) The first phase of classic Noir is determined by a generally romanticist attitude. The male protagonist is surrounded by a morally corrupt world without giving in to the various temptations along his way. In The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), which is often said to be the first Film Noir, detective Sam Spade is afflicted by bigger and smaller gangsters, trying to drag him into their affairs. But he stays true to his principles and finally delivers them to the police. Other detective stories, that have the same thematic content, are Marlowes screen adaptations, as for example The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946) or The Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1946). These movies of the lone wolfs, that didnt necessarily have to be private investigators, generally feature much more talk than action and are filmed in studio sets. Women generally take up a more active role, than was normal for contemporary movies, which reflects the changes of the American woman in these times. Female protagonists are either actively supporting the male protagonist or are actively working against him. These themes will be developed further in the second period of Film Noir. This Gun For Hire (Robert Weston, 1942) shows a much more negative character, than one would expect in this first Noir period. But although the main protagonist, a killer, has many negative characteristics, the general romanticist attitude of the film often makes us forget them. 3.2.2 Realism (post-war period) The first time after World War II can be seen as the second phase of classic Noir. It is determined by a realism, that focuses on "the problems of crime in the streets, political corruption and police routine."11 The movies feature increasingly negative or at least less romantic heroes and are often filmed on location. Movies of this Noir phase are characterized by a realistic urban look. The post-war period of Film Noir has strongly to be seen in its historical context. Soldiers were returning from the war and soon found, that they had wasted years. Their families had become strange to them, and their former professions had been taken over by women. Thus, they had problems fitting themselves back into society and soon got disillusioned. Generally women occupied powerful and responsible positions and had gained a new sexual freedom. An important theme of post-war Noir are alienated men, that find themselves confronted with situations and problems, they dont understand. They are wrongfully suspected and innocently accused. At first these victims were mainly men returning from war, but gradually the theme of the "wrong man" was broadened. In The Big Clock (John Farrow, 1948) a reporter realizes, that he himself is the suspect he was after all the time. He now has to get rid of the suspicions and, in addition, has to defend himself against his publisher, who is the real villain. Another interesting thing about post-war Noirs is an increased fascination in trivialized psychological concepts, and many Noirs of this time feature a stereotyped psychotic killer, that often chooses weak women as victims. This can be seen as a result of the social situation mentioned above and is symptomatic for a patriarchal society. In The Accused (Jonathan Kaplan, 1949) male aggression and misogyny can be seen very clearly. The female protagonist, a psychologist, is accused of murder, because she has killed a violator in self-defence. Women in post-war Noir have more stereotyped roles, which can be seen as a patriarchal reaction on the new freedom of women. Either they are weak victims of male aggressions or they are demonised femme fatales, that use their sex-appeal without scruple to reach their goals. In the end, the femme fatal often has to pay for her deeds, i.e. the instrumentalization of her sexuality. 3.2.3 Obsession (final phase) The third and final phase of Film Noir featured neurotic, psychopathic heroes. About ten years of despair and economical problems brought Film Noir "down to the root causes of the period: the loss of public honour, heroic conventions, personal integrity and, finally, psychic

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Schrader (1999), p. 59.

stability."12 It seems as if directors of the final Noir period were quite aware, that they stood at the end of the Noir phenomenon, and wanted to give a last salute to the Noir tradition by taking it to an extreme. An increased interest in popular psychological concepts is now almost omnipresent. The male protagonist in White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949) is a neurotic with a mother fixation, that could be a classic example for Freuds Oedipus complex. In the end, he kills himself with the words "Made it, Ma. Top of the world". In this final period of classic Noir it is not solely the gangster, that is obsessive and neurotic, but also the other side, the police. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958), which is seen by many critics as the last classic Noir, features a corrupt and psychopathic Sheriff of a Mexican frontier town. Instead of regular investigations, he uses his twitching leg as indicator of guilt and innocence. If there is no sufficient evidence, he plants it himself. Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1950) focuses on the mutual sexual enslavement of a robber couple, whose obsessive sexuality is given vent in their robberies.

Certainly, Film Noir was in its prime during the late forties and fifties. But every once in a while there are films that certainly can be seen as a continuation of the Noir tradition. Although these movies do not contain as many Noir elements as films of the classic Noir period, they are strongly influenced by Film Noir or even represent some kind of homage to the classics of the genre. Often they provide an own interpretation of Noir and open new perspectives for a stylistic definition of classic Noir. Se7en (David Fincher, 1995) combines a relatively modern setting with the inherent qualities of Film Noir. Se7en is an extremely violent and dark film. We are taken to an underworld of death always confronted with the aftermath of the killer's crimes. This can be seen as a variation of the classic Noir feeling of predestination without a chance of active intervention, a theme that is pushed to an extreme in the ending sequence. Ridley Scott's science-fiction classic Blade Runner (1982) also owes much to Film Noir, using typical visual and thematic Noir elements. With its lonely cop Deckard walking dark, mean streets in a city of eternal night and perpetual rain, it certainly exemplified Noir's postmodern incarnations. Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981) was an uncredited remake of Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) that focused explicitly on the kinky sexuality that always was an implicit undercurrent of Noir. L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997) was evidently shot in the style of the 1950s and thus refashions Noir rather literally. It is a crime film set in the early 1950s, with detailed period decor, smoky atmosphere, classic automobiles and the requisite femme fatale. Dark City (Alex Proyas, 1998) is a strange synthesis of science-fiction and crime melodrama, with a hopelessly obscure plot about an alien race that creates a city-planet with the intention of generating, studying, and stealing human emotions. The images evoke Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) and the best Bogart films and the narrative is a variation of Noir's sense of humanity lost and being at the mercy of unknown forces. A central image of Dark City is a whirlpool, and characters are seen literally spinning out of control through the webwork of the film's malevolent cityscape.

3.3 Neo-Noir

4. Film Language
In Hollywoods Thirties, the focus certainly has been on the actors and their movements. In Film Noir, the composition is given more weight than physical action. "A typical Film Noir would rather move the scene cinematographically around the actor, than have the actor control the scene by physical action."13 More than in physical action, Film Noir is interested in the inner state of its protagonists, which is often expressed through the Noir style of composition. One of the techniques used
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4.1 Mise-en-scne and film style

Schrader (1999), p. 59. Schrader (1999), p. 57.

was the low-key lighting which causes the effect of obscuring the action, and deglamourizing the star so that the composition becomes more important than the actor. Earlier American movies had focused on the star. In American gangster movies of the thirties, which are seen as forerunners of Film Noir, shadows are cast on the background of the settings. In Film Noir, the shadows even cover the actors to a great extent. The use of these shadows and a generally low key lighting also emphasize the cold and the darkness in the Noirs. The sources of light are moved to "impossible" places; often light is coming from parts of the image, where there is no source of light. Spotlights are used to emphasize only part of the characters face, as for example the eyes. Film Noir often endeavours to delay the viewers curiosity. Thus it uses shadows and special camera angles, that hide the villains identity to the viewer. Often we see only the murderers gun, but not his face. Night shots in former Hollywood movies where shot during the daytime with an reduced exposure time, because it was it was cheaper (day for night, nuit Americaine). But even the cheapest Noirs were filmed during real darkness and night is definitely black. In Film Noir we find a repeated use of an image composition where the lines no longer are horizontal, but vertical and sloping. This gives an unsettling impression. The world often seems like a prison, something that these images along with the use of image metaphors like sun blinds help to underline. Wherever possible, the visual style uses a closed form that helps to emphasize the natural boundaries of the image. In addition to the rectangle of the screen, there is always an inherent inner frame created by walls, furniture, doors, railing, shadows or persons. Other characteristics of Film Noir are extreme low and high-angle perspectives, as well as Dutch angles that are shot with a tilted camera. Travelling cameras are used for special purposes only. A typical camera movement is backward-tracking in front of a fleeing person. This conveys quick pace and action as well as the fear and panic in the fleeing persons face. Close-ups convey claustrophobic feelings and are especially used, if the protagonist is somehow lost or in panic. Scenes containing explicit violence often feature many close-ups, although Film Noir generally avoids showing acts of violence directly and uses a more stylised approach. Close-ups are often shot with a wide angle optic, which distorts proportions and makes things grow out of the screen. Noir mise-en-scne often uses extreme depth of focus. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), which has often been said to be a visual role model of Film Noir,14 was the first movie to extensively use visual composition along the axis of depth. Although depth of focus in Film Noir is used to make connections between objects and persons, it never integrates actors into their surroundings. On the contrary it reduces them to mere decorative element of their environment. Women in Film Noir often take up an active role and are displayed as very potent. Their power and strength are visually expressed, both through the iconography of the image, and through the visual style. It is often the woman that dominates and controls the camera, both because of her own strength and because of the male heroes attraction to her. Thus other participants become static within the image. The femme fatale, who is destroyed in the end loses her physical motion in the course of the narration. The dress code also changes with the development of the female character. In Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945) for instance, she is dressed up in more manly clothes during the film and her own development.

In the first period of Film Noir, the basic dramatic structure is mainly circular. In the end nothing has changed much for the main character. Of course a lot has happened, but the character just finds himself at the starting point again. Movies of the post-war period show a real plot-development. By the end of the movie, the character finds himself in a completely different situation. He has found his identity, proofed his innocence, escaped his enemies or, especially in the later movies, has his life ruined. The late phase of classic Noir, that is characterized through an extremely pessimistic look on its psychotic and obsessive protagonists, features characters that almost always end dead.

4.2 Montage and Narration

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Werner (2000), p. 103.

Even if the main protagonist escapes the danger, it is definitely made clear, that his mental injuries wont heal. Film Noir often uses a complex narrative structure. Detective films of the first classic phase confront the viewer with many names and complex connections between their protagonists. Howard Hawks, a well-known Noir director, has admitted not only once,15 that he hasnt fully understood his own film. The situation of the characters and their way of acting were more important to him, then the exact plot. The narrative structure of later Noirs is less complex, but often disjuncted and fragmented. To do this, flashbacks are often used, which emphasizes the feeling of lost time and despair. According to Paul Schrader, time is manipulated because the form stands above the content. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) tells the story through real time and through remembered time. The film opens with Walter Neff arriving at his office in the middle of the night and delivering into a dictating machine his confession for killing a man - "for money (pause) and for a woman." These words trigger a flashback that is occasionally narrated by his voice-over confession. Gradually the narrative brings real time and memory together. The unusual combination of these two time layers gives the spectator a premonition of what will occur or what has occurred in the flashback story. Finally the two time layers meet as Neff is about to die from a gunshot that he suffers at the end of his flashback. In Detour (Edgar Ulmer, 1945) the male protagonists voice over persistently addresses an impersonal You, assuming that the listener is smug, unsympathetic, and unbelieving. Detour is a B-picture, produced by a poverty row company, that has become a Film Noir classic. The male character feels passive, controlled by fate and womens ambitions. His crimes are committed "accidentally" but out of deep anger and resentment. Voice-over and flashback were persistent stylistic and narrative elements of Film Noir. While Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) carefully glues the spectator to who is speaking, when, and from where, other films use voice-over and flashback temporality more ambiguously. Often we need to inquire about the motives of narrative voices, how much they know and whether they are telling the truth, when and to whom they are speaking. If the dominant Hollywood style provided all the information spectators would need to follow the narrative, Film Noir seems to emphasize narrative gaps, and even the possibility of narratives that can deceive. Besides Double Indemnity and Detour, voice-over is for example a key narrative aspect of Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945), Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946), The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1948), and Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947). Narration in Film Noir is often supported by the telephone. Phone calls are used to introduce plot points in several major Film Noirs. "The telephone is in fact most important in its function as an essential part of narrative development and of effective story-telling in Film Noir."16 In Sorry, Wrong Number (Anatole Litvak, 1948), the entire narration is brought forward with the help of sixteen telephone conversations and through the various flashbacks of the people talking in these calls. Film Noir gives up the Hollywood style of invisible cuts and deliberately switches from medium shots to extreme close-ups or lines up long shots of the same size with different camera perspectives. Film Noir also makes use of artistically cut dream and drug sequences. Stranger on the Third Floor (Boris Ingster, 1940) centres around a newspaper reporter who dreams, that he is on trial for his life and that no one will believe in his innocence. But in the dream he recognizes the real killer, lurking in the back of the courtroom. Other and more famous dream sequences can be found in Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk, 1944), and Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock, 1945).

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Werner (2000), p. 103. Kihr (1998), internet.

4.3 Imagery

4.3.1 Phallic symbols and fetish Film Noir relies on a fixed set of symbols and highly developed visual metaphors. They often are used to support or underline narration and thematic Noir content as well as Noir style of mise-en-scne. Thus they are an important part of the complex Film Noir conglomerate. Ill focus on the most prominent examples, but many other interesting metaphors and symbols can be found in Film Noir. Women, especially the femmes fatales, use for example cigarettes and guns for phallic symbols. The seductive cigarette and the open lips of the femme fatale also play with some kind of oral fixation. The circling cigarette smoke, as well as the obligatory gun, have become trademarks of Film Noir and are found on almost every Noir movie poster. Another fixation or fetish in Film Noir are womens feet. In Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang, 1945) the male protagonist Chris Cross is painting the toenails of femme fatale Kitty. The scene is said to be a homage to Der blaue Engel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930), in which a similar scene can be found. An equivalent ritual is shown in Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) with Walter Neff touching Phyllis foot, that is adorned with a little silver chain. Interiors in Film Noir are often "filled with too many knick-knacks, oversized portraits, and fishbowls."17 Noirs often use portraits to emphasize the haunted and gloomy feeling, that is omnipresent in many Noirs. In Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944) and I Wake Up Screaming (Bruce Homberstone, 1941) portraits of the female protagonists completely command the gaze of the camera and the other characters. Even after her death, the strong female character has the power to intrude visually on the narrative, often continuing to "live" through her portrait. The hopeless infatuation with the dead womens portraits also reveals a disturbing inclination to necrophilia. I Wake Up Screaming portrays a detective, who is investigating in a murder. In many key scenes, a photograph of Vicki, the murdered woman, appears at the centre of the camera's field of vision. She seems to be watching each character as the investigation of her murder places that character in danger. In the final scene of the film, the camera reveals the full visual power of the murdered femme fatale the detective's entire apartment is filled with her photographs in a shrine to his obsession. Laura is certainly the most famous illustration of this point. A striking portrait of the dead woman commands the centre of every scene in her apartment. Although not being as obsessive as the detective in I Wake Up Screaming, the investigator assigned to solve her murder actually falls in love with her portrait without ever having seen her alive. 4.3.3 Telephones Besides playing an important role in supporting narration, telephones are often used as visual metaphors to show two opposing environments and alienation between people. Although they talk to each other and are actually connected over telephone-wires, Noir characters are spatially separated. This also emphasizes the typical Noir uncertainty, as it "symbolizes the all-to-present threat of relating in a virtual and thus uncertain manner."18 In addition to its role as a visual metaphor of empty and cold relationships, a piercingly ringing telephone can also represent a real threat to the characters in the Noir world. The telephone's presence implies a permanent source of potentially bad or shocking news, which is another variation of the typical Noir feeling, that anything can go wrong. "The sound of a telephone is designed to draw immediate and urgent attention to itself, and in the already haunted atmosphere of Film Noir, this usually means trouble for the leading men and women."19 4.3.4 Mirrors and Staircases Film Noir often invokes mirrors to indicate when characters might be harbouring ulterior motives, divided loyalties, or ambivalent emotions. So it's not surprising that the mirror has become an often-used symbol of Film Noir, where look-alikes and double crosses are as commonplace as blackmail and murder. The theme of the look-alike has been very popular

Leibman (1989), p. 174. Kihr (1998), internet. 19 Kihr (1998), internet.

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in German expressionist movies, as for example in Der Student von Prag (Henrik Galeen, 1926), where the main protagonist, Balduin, is offered 100 thousand gold pieces in return for his reflection. The film ends with Balduin shooting at his reflection and falling to the ground, dead. Robert Siodmaks The Dark Mirror (1946) uses twins to illustrate a schizophrenic personality. Moments after a murder in self defence, The Woman in the Window (1944) shows Prof. Wanley and Alice, that are reflected in mirrors. This already indicates, that there will be more complications to their unfolding nightmare than meets the eye. Later, it turns out, that Alice has been leading a double life, seeing a married man on the sly. Orson Welles The Lady from Shanghai (1948) uses multiple mirrors to reflect the multiple planes of fabrication and deception surrounding and closing in upon the characters, until no one can tell what is real and what is illusion. All illusions, plans, and pretences are shattered in the final scenes, which is symbolized by Everett Sloan crawling among the pieces of a broken mirror, which stand for the sharp, brittle fragments of smashed loyalties and broken dreams. Besides mirrors, Film Noir also uses doorways, staircases and windows to suggest glimpses into other dimensions dreams, nightmares, fears, illusions, alternate plots or plans of which the characters themselves may or may not be fully aware. Staircases with their many graphic lines that lead into different directions, support the feeling of a world out of control. Furthermore, the bars of banisters look like prison bars, which is another well-known visual symbol in Film Noir. The bars dont necessarily have to be real grilles, but also can be other parts of the environment, that have an equally restricting look. The shadows of sun blinds, but also high reeds in the final scenes of Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1950) have the same function.20 5.3.5 Neon signs Neon-signs are omnipresent in Noirs cityscape. Not only the nightclubs, in which the lone wolfs find a refuge from the everlasting rain, are marked by neon-signs, but also hotelrooms have an unavoidably flickering neon-sign in front of the windows. They are symbols of the industrialized city and emphasize the cold and lonely feeling, that is a common undercurrent of many Noirs. Blinking neon-signs are often used to create dynamic lighting situations full of tensions, with faces, that appear in the dark and vanish again, when the letters are momentarily unlit. Often letters are missing, which contributes to the generally seedy milieu, in which Noir is often set. The Unsuspected (Michael Curtiz, 1947) shows the neon-sign of a hotel called Peekskill. From inside the hotel room, the main protagonist, an escaped prisoner, sees only part of the sign. The blinking letters simply say "kill kill kill".

5. Characters in Film Noir

5.1 Male characters
Film Noir often explores the themes of secrecy and longing. Noir characters, especially the male characters, long for something they think they need, either to fill a gap in their lives or to break out of the normality of their everyday routine. The means to achieve this outbreak are usually found in money or, just as often, in wild romance and danger. The Noir hero is bored or unsatisfied with his existence and easily falls for the temptations of the femme fatale and for the potential easy but dangerous money in the Noir world. Movies of the second period feature characters that find themselves in strange situations, without knowing how they got there. These victim-type characters are simply in search for answers. In trying to find, what he is looking for, the male protagonist violates the morals of society. Thus he resorts to secrecy, eventually tripping over his own crimes and becoming the victim of his own greed. If he is lucky, he gets a new chance and is embraced back into society. If he is not so lucky, he becomes entangled in an even larger web of lies and deception, doomed, if not to lose his life, then at least to experience real physical and emotional pain.
20

Comp. Silver/Ursini (1999), p. 42.

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The male protagonist often fails to recognize the dishonesty inherent in many of Noirs principal women. This tragic flaw destroys the central male characters in films as diverse as Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang, 1945), The Locket (John Brahm, 1947) and Angle Face (Otto Preminger, 1953). Indeed, everyone in Noir is betrayed. Nobody in this dark and threatening atmosphere can be relied on, and yet the fate of the Noir hero in this world of secrecy is dependent upon his relationships to those people around him. Because the presentation of crucial but mostly dysfunctional relationships of Noir characters is part of the dense Noir conglomerate, they are revealed not only by the narrative of the film, but often become visualized by the camera-view, by the lighting, or by other cinematographic means. Thus, a usable definition of the Noir protagonist has to encompass its most intrinsic character motif: alienation. Noirs of the first period feature the tough guy, who is a less negative character. He mostly stays true to his principles and, although he doesnt better himself during the course of the film, he isnt found ruined or dead in the end. Many critics focus on the romantically depicted moral integrity of some of the hard-boiled male characters,21 and see them as a result of social conventions, that filmmakers didnt dare to ignore completely during their first steps in the Noir world. Especially during the war-time with its omnipresent patriotic propaganda no place for such subversive undercurrents was available. However it isnt so much a true moral integrity, which these characters stick to, but much more their own principles, regardless of any social dos or donts. John Blaser finds, that even the archetypal Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941) is "a tarnished hero, at best."22 He completely lacks compassion and doesnt show any sign of sadness, when his partner is killed. He also was having an affair with his partners wife. In a later scene, Sam Spade is going to knock his opponent unconscious, but shortly the hit he pauses and grins into his opponents face. The already mentioned (pages 6 and 9) overt Freudian aspects of Noir characters in the final phase of Film Noir are up to now an interesting topic for scientists of all fields. As Film Noir was more interested in style than in a plot, the performance of its actors is not its main concern.23 Actors of both genders act often as if wearing stiff masks on their faces. They dont display their emotions freely, but on the other hand are never denying them completely. Actors, that were said to lack talent, as well as acting beginners were very successful in Film Noir. Roles of Film Noir were often more demanding and interesting for actors than those of classical Hollywood movies.

The Noir portrayal of women is often stereotyped, although there are different variations of common Noir stereotypes. Woman in Film Noir play mostly an active role, except for the helpless victims of male aggression in Noirs second period (page 5). The active women can be divided into three different categories.24 Borders of these categories are of course not well-defined and often we find combinations of these three types. The femme fatales are intelligent and influential, sometimes destructive and obtain power and strength from sexuality. They calculatingly use their sex-appeal to reach their goals and to put themselves in advantage. Egoism and a certain lust for life are common characteristics of Noir femme fatales. They often feel confined within a marriage or a close male-female relationship and attempt to break free, usually with violent results. The so-called spider woman, who and has to be categorized as femme fatale, represents he dark, perverted and decadent side of sexuality in Film Noir. This is expressed through clawlike hands, dark sun-glasses and bizarre cigarette-holders. A perfect example for these spider women is for example Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950). The femme fatale is the best-known type of woman in Film Noir and is still an interesting topic for scientists of all fields. In his article Personality Disorders and the Film Noir Femme

5.2 Female characters

Comp. Werner (2000), p. 31. Blaser (1999a), internet. 23 Comp. Werner (2000), p. 142. 24 Comp. Blaser (1999b), internet.
22

21

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Fatale Scot Snyder examines, how depictions of Film Noir femmes fatales reflected and influenced contemporary American culture.25 The so-called nurturing women are supporting the male protagonist without any ulterior motives. Often, they are depicted as bad good girls, who seem to be bad in the beginning, but turn out to be good.26 In this regard, they show the same ambiguity as the femme fatales, that look good but are bad - just vice versa. The bookseller in The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946) is a prominent example for these nurturing women, as well as the secretary of Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941). There is never the possibility of marrying these nurturing women, who remain unattainable, and the hero seldom makes an effort in this direction. The nurturing women are also called blondes, according to their hair colour. In contrast to the femmes fatales, they are mostly lit with high key lighting. Often, they are shown outside the mean places of the city, whereas the femme fatale seems "comfortable in the world of cheap dives, shadowy doorways and mysterious settings."27 The third category of women, according to John Blaser, are the marrying type. These women "threaten the hero by insisting that he marry her and accept his conventional role as husband and father."28 By the late 1950s and into the 1960s the strong, tough and independent women were being replaced by coadjutors and consorts and active women were moved more and more into the background. The male protagonists were now being portrayed as gallant Don Juans or attentive Casanovas, a fashion that was to reach its zenith with the James Bond films.

6. Thematic Content of Film Noir

The dominant model for screenwriting has long decreed that a Hollywood cinema has to create goal-oriented characters who confront a series of obstacles, conflicts, complications, and crises before the movie provides some kind of resolution. Although obstacles and complications can be inner, psychological ones, a screenplay must also create external ones: "antagonists" who personify the protagonist's obstacles and concrete problems that require practical solutions. Characters associated with the law, such as police officers or gangsters, and concrete legal problems, such as arrests or trials, have long provided filmmakers with a wide array of realistic obstacles to place in front of goal-oriented characters. The Hollywood pictures now identified as Films Noirs offer an almost obsessive concern with law-related obstacles and resolutions. But whereas The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946) almost strictly follows the Hollywood production code that "law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation"29, later Noirs constantly avoid to do so. In fact, Film Noir is characterized through an omnipresent moral ambiguity. Borders between good and evil are blurred and (almost) any moral comment is avoided. Film Noir features both good and bad criminals as well as good and bad cops. Often good and evil exist in one person. Characters of Film Noir are contradictory and retain a moral ambiguity throughout the whole movie.

6.1 Law and moral ambiguity

Big American cities are the main settings in Film Noir. But not their boulevards, splendour streets and their noble districts are shown, but backyards, shabby hotel-rooms, bars, docklands and industrial areas. These places reflect their characters feelings. They often serve them only as temporal homes and show their restlessness and homelessness. To a great extent, all the Noir heroes are alienated and seem to be strangers in an unfriendly world. This explanation fits in nicely with an existential definition of Film Noir. The concept of alienation is crucial to most existentialist point of views. For existentialists
25

6.2 Alienation

26

Snyder (2001), pp. 155-168. Comp. Werner (2000), p. 143. 27 Place (1978), p. 41. 28 Blaser (1999b), internet. 29 Doherty (1999), p. 361.

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like Kierkegaard or Sartre, man stands alone, alienated from any social or intellectual order, and is therefore totally self-dependent. Nobody can be relied on, and dysfunctional relationships are a main theme of Film Noir. In Sorry, Wrong Number (Anatole Litvak, 1948), the main character, Leona Stevenson, is unable to leave her bedroom and is therefore not able to take part in the lives of the people related to her. The only way she can get connected is over the phone but, as she is soon to find out, this connection is a mere technical one. Relationships and friendships she thought she had, do not really exist, and she is doomed to the realization that hers is only a virtual power that can be taken away at any point. This also underlines the classic Noir feeling that anything can go wrong.

Narration in Film Noir is often characterized through an extensive use of flashbacks, which are often combined with voice-overs. Truncated and fragmented time provides the viewer with a premonition, what will happen in the future and what has happened in the past. This unconventional use of time emphasizes lost time and despair and creates a feeling of predestination and irrevocable past. Film Noir generally shuts its eyes to the future and is determined by a romantic devotion to a past, that is lost forever. Its characters have a fixation on the past. They completely refuse, to look forward to the future, and just live from day to day. This has to bee seen against the historical background. Especially the soldiers returning from war seemingly had no future they could look forward to. The passion for the past and the fear of the future are expressed through a romantic narration of an irrevocable past. Film Noir characters long for the past, or in contrary, try to free themselves from its burden. Anyway, they assume the solutions to their problems in the past, not in the future. In Out Of The Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947), the heros indiscretion in the past closes off his future. Typical of Film Noir, the story is narrated - in a mesmerizing voice-over sounding like the voice of fate - by the hero while driving toward his rendezvous with his past. In the course of the film, he reveals his secret, other self in his sordid past in a long flashback.

6.3 Irrevocable past

6.4 The role of the family

The representation of the family institution in movies of Hollywoods Thirties was always characterized by a patriarchal and conservative attitude. Men were shown as the ruler and head of the family, women took on a domestic role and children were totally dependent on their parents. Thus, family reflected Americas hierarchical and authoritarian society. As family in Family Noir shows a hierarchical and patriarchal structure, it is often seen as a metaphor for the society as a whole. It functioned as an ideological cornerstone of society and represented a framework for reproduction, as marriage was the only institution that legitimated reproduction. Although married couples were the only ones that were allowed to enjoy sexuality, they were never presented as sexual partners or in any other ways eroticised. In Film Noir the family relations are quite different. In some ways the Noirs are based on the absence of the family.30 If family relations are shown, they are broken up, filled with mutual hatred or in other ways perverted. Marriages in Film Noir are often described as boring and sterile. Because of this twisted family life, both men and women seek satisfaction outside marriage in Film Noir. This satisfaction is not only sexual, but also an attempt to reassure and find themselves in this confused and threatening society, an escape from the frustrating routine in an alienated existence. Some critics are of the opinion that Film Noir shows what happens if one chooses to stand outside the traditional values of the patriarchal system and claim, that the family, or absence of it, in Film Noir is valuated with negativity. The violation of the marriages and traditional valued family institution often results in destruction for the violators. In this manner both pleasure and death await outside the family institution. Janey Place agrees that Film Noir tends to destroy the independent woman as a moral lesson to the audience and to the male characters who fall under her spell. "The ideological operation of the myth (the absolute

30

Comp. Harvey (1997), p. 32.

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necessity of controlling the strong, sexual woman) is thus achieved by first demonstrating her dangerous power and its frightening results, then destroying it."31 On the other hand, critics value the absence of the family and the Noir depiction of women as a criticism of traditional family values and social standards. Although "Film Noir cannot completely resist the urge to restore or reinforce the family, even if it is only at the last minute",32 the tacked-on happy ending always remains an alien element and is already as such a criticism of the Hollywood production code. The femme fatales transgressions against the traditional family constitute a much stronger image that her final punishment. "Despite the ritual punishment of acts of transgression, the vitality with which these acts are endowed produces an excess of meaning which cannot finally be contained. Narrative resolutions cannot recuperate their subversive significance."33 Not only the femme fatale, but also the good girls (nurturing women and marrying types) are a constant subversive criticism of traditional family life. The good girls are portrayed in way, that completely lacks excitement for the male characters, which strongly contrasts the sensual, passionate appeal of the femme fatale. Noir mise-en-scene of the family home also reveal a distinctly anti-family current. Detective Philip Marlowe, the main protagonist in Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk, 1944) describes the family home sarcastically as a "mausoleum". And indeed, family homes being stuffed with weird fixtures, and cut in half by stairways and room dividers are always given a haunted feeling. These are four prominent examples of thematic content, Film Noir is concerned with. Unfortunately, only a small selection of Noirs rich thematic variety can be presented. Just like in chapter 4.3 (Imagery) a truly comprehensive treatise would go beyond the scope of this paper.

31 32

Place (1978), p. 45. Blaser, John (1999b), internet. 33 Harvey (1978), p. 33.

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7. Bibliography
Belton, John (1994) American Cinema/American Culture. New-York: McGraw-Hill. Blaser, John (1999a) Film Noir and the Hard-Boiled Detective Hero. Http://[Link]/MRC/noir/[Link]. Blaser, John (1999b) No Place for a Woman: The Family in Film Noir. Http://[Link]/MRC/noir/[Link]. Bordwell, David/Staiger, Janet/Thompson, Kristin (1988) The Classical Hollywood Cinema. Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. London: Routledge. Doherty, Thomas (1999) Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934. New York: Columbia University Press. Durgnat, Raymond (1970) "Paint It Black: The Family Tree of Film Noir." In: Cinema, 6/7, pp. 49-56. Harvey, Sylvia (1978) "Woman's place: The absent family". In Women in film noir. Ed. Ann Kaplan. London: British Film Institute, pp. 32-34. Higham, Charles/Greenberg, Joel (1968) Hollywood in the Forties. New York: A.S. Barnes & Co. Karrash, Ann Theresa (1997) From Betty to Phyllis - Defining the Femme Fatale of Film Noir. [Link] Kihr, Gtz (2001) Film Noir and the Imaginary - The Significance of the Telephone in Film Noir. Http://[Link]. Krutnik, Frank (1991) In a Lonely Street - Film noir, Genre, Masculinity. London, New York: Routledge. Leibman, Nina C. (1989) "The Family Spree of Film Noir". In Journal of Popular Film and Television. Washington, DC: Heldref Publications, pp. 168-184. Maltby, Richard (1995) Hollywood Cinema. Oxford: Blackwell. Place, Janey (1978) "Women in Film Noir". In Women in film noir. Ed. Ann Kaplan. London: British Film Institute, pp. 35-67. Rogers, John (1997) May the force be with you once again. Http://[Link]/JamStarWars/jan24_starwars2.html Schrader, Paul (1999) "Notes on Film Noir". In Film Noir Reader. Ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini. New York: Limelight, pp. 53-63. Snyder, Scot (2001) "Personality Disorders and the Film Noir Femme Fatale". In: Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 8(3). Albany: School of Criminal Justice, pp. 155-168. Silver, Alain/Ursini, James (1999) The Noir Style. Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc. Sze, Stephen (2002) Seminars on Fritz Lang II - Aesthetics of Darkness: From Expressionism to Noir. Http://[Link]/CE/CulturalService/HKFA/english/newsletter/nl19_10.html. Werner, Paul (2000) Film Noir und Neo-Noir. Mnchen: Vertigo.

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