Noir after the forties

Context of forties

• Disillusionment with American Dream – depression, war, etc• Gender issues• Hays code• German and Eastern European

influence• Edward Hopper images of American life

Other aspects of Forties Noir

• Studio-bound look to the genre• Contrast to the colourful musicals of

the era• B-movies• Psychoanalysis popular leads to

interest in character motivation

Why the French name?

• Post war influx of American films to French market

• French film critics, e.g. Francois Truffaut & Andre Bazin begin to analyse the style, content and ideology of the films

How does Noir evolve?• Lighter cameras lead to greater use of location

shooting

Scarlet Street – Fritz Lang 1945

Studio-bound artificial lighting

Killer’s Kiss – Stanley Kubrick 1955

Naturalistic, location lighting

• Jazz music becomes more prominent in soundtrack

• Times change – style follows

• Different generation and attitudes

• Cold war paranoia creeps in as a theme

1958 - The ‘end’ of Noir

• Touch of Evil – Orson Welles 1958

1970s Noir pastiche

• Chinatown – Roman Polanski 1974

1980s – Noir parody

• Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid – Carl Reiner 1982

Neo-noir

Key features of Neo-Noir• A ‘knowingness’ to convention• Deliberately retro look - postmodern attitude• Sometimes deliberate subversion of the noir

‘rules’• References to the classic noir past• Playfulness• Often a critique of consumer society more than

fully serious psychological exploration• Freedom to indulge in the amorality denied the

classic noirs

Crossing genre boundaries

A Neo noir film?