I am also pretty well
> convinced that American naturalism is noir's daddy,
and
> that Gothic is noir's granddaddy.
>
miker: I don't think there is any doubt (certainly not in my
mind, anyhow) that noir is descended from Gothic - in fact,
in Brian Aldiss's seminal history of science fiction The
Billion Year Spree (later revised as The Trillion Year Spree)
he makes a convincing case, to my mind, that Gothic is the
ancestor of just about every popular genre of the 20th
century; at least, science fiction, all different genres of
crime/mystery including hardboiled & noir, the romance
and even the Western. I think this notion may have been first
put forward by American lit critic Leslie Fiedler but I
couldn't say for sure.At any rate, the connection between
Gothic & noir is pretty obvious, I think. Perhaps the
best place to see that connection is in certain films noirs
such as The Red House, The Spiral Staircase and Night of the
Hunter.Although, come to think of it, going back much earlier
I think the roots of noir are already apparent in the work of
Edgar Allan Poe - think of stuff like The Tell Tale
Heart.
Rene
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