Kev,
Re your question below:
> Not that I don't think you're full of baloney
on
> your narrow
> definition of noir. . .
You guys are going to have to make up your minds. I've been
criticized because my definition's too broad and I've been
criticized because it's too narrow. Really, now, it can't be
both.
> . . . but why the specific cut-off
> date of 1964? Film
> historians generally peg the end of the classic
noir
> period as
> mid-fifties, usually with the release of KISS
ME
> DEADLY, so I'm
> curious as to why you stretch the era eight or
nine
> years longer...
It was certainly starting to die out by the mid-50's, as more
and more movies that WOULD have been noir began to be made in
color (case in point: HOUSE OF BAMBOO a color, wide-screen
cop drama in which Robert Stack sort of limbers up for his
Eliot Ness characterization a few years later was almost a
scene-for-scene, and in some cases line-for-line
[Harry Kleiner received script credit for both films], remake
of a noir cop drama released 6 or 7 years earlier called THE
STREET WITH NO NAME).
Nevertheless, while film noir, virtually on life-support, was
seriously in need of a priest to administer the Last Rites,
and examples were less and less frequent, they didn't die out
altogether.
In the early '60s, there were Samuel Fuller's UNDERWORLD
U.S.A., John Frankenheimer's THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, Blake
Edwards's EXPERIMENT IN TERROR, Martin Ritt's THE SPY WHO
CAME IN FROM THE COLD
(actually that was '65, but filming started in '65;
interestingly, at least one critic has complained that the
B&W cinematography made the already bleak story TOO
downbeat), Val Guest's HELL IS A CITY, and Joseph Losey's THE
CRIMINAL (aka THE CONCRETE JUNGLE).
Noir stylistics were also still kept alive on TV in early
'60's shows like PETER GUNN, THE UNTOUCHABLES, JOHNNY
STACCATO, and NAKED CITY.
By the mid-60's, with virtually all theatrical films being
made in color, and more and more color TV's making their way
into American homes (compelling all three networks to become
"full-color" networks), noir dies out. And that's why I make
the mid-60's the approximate cut-off date.
But here's the thing. It not only dies out, it dies out
without anyone really being aware that it was alive in the
first place because, at least in the US, the term film noir
was not regularly used to describe a particular type of film
until the early '70's, and then it was almost entirely
retrospective.
Eventually, after all that retrospection, a lot of filmmakers
deliberately set out to MAKE film noirs, something none of
the classic "noir" filmmakers had ever tried to do.
Let me make something clear here. I don't say that there
haven't been post-1964 films that have had a dark, sinister
atmosphere and that, therefore, are noir in the strict
definitional sense.
What I say is that TRUE film noir, during the classic
"noir cycle," was not deliberate, that it existed during a
particular period, that it required B&W photography to
achieve the dark, sinister visual style that is associated
with it, that it died out not because the type of stories
that lent themselves to that kind of filmmaking fell out of
favor (as films like 1966's HARPER, 1967's TONY ROME and IN
THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, 1968's BULLITT, MADIGAN, and THE
DETECTIVE, etc., all show) but because black and white movies
fell out of favor. Consequently, any
"neo-noir," deliberately trying to recapture that flavor,
even if the film is worthwhile, even if it's sometimes
superior to the genuine article, always gives the impression
of "trying too hard," of
"attempting to recapture a bygone era of filmmaking," etc.
And that's why I say they're not REALLY film noir.
> And is there a corresponding start-up
point?
A lot of people credit Boris Ingster's THE STRANGER ON THE
THIRD FLOOR, which was released in 1940, as the first genuine
film noir. So I guess 1940's as good a year as any.
If you don't hold the position that film noir is a strictly
American invention (a hard position to hold when you consider
how many of the great noir filmmakers were born elsewhere), I
think you could make a case that Fritz Lang's *M* is one of
the first genuine film noirs. It's a tough, gritty crime film
with the same sort of visual stylistics that would come to be
associated with noir, and, moreover, Lang, once he emigrated
to the US, would be associated with American film noir by
helming such great films as THE BIG HEAT, THE WOMAN IN THE
WINDOW, CLOAK AND DAGGER, etc., and, finally, it featured one
of the great film noir actors, Peter Lorre, as the curiously
sympathetic bad guy.
As others on this list have pointed out, though they weren't
crime films, many of the Universal horror films used the same
sort of visual stylistics associated with noir in the
1930's.
JIM DOHERTY
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