> Johnny,
>
> Re your question below:
>
> > But weren't the majority of noir directors
ex-pat
> > Europeans?
>
> Some were. Some weren't. Some
American-born
> directors who were movers and shakers in film
noir
> include John Huston, Edward Dmytryk (actually he
was
> born in Canada, but that's still the North
American
> continent), Ted Tetzloff, Richard Fleischer,
and
> Anthony Mann.
>
> They may have been influenced, directly or
indrectly,
> by things like German expressionism (certainly
such
> German-born noir directors as Fritz Lang or
Robert
> Siodmak were; in fact, I think Lang is often
credited
> as the inventor of German expressionism), but
mainly
> they were trying to make tight, gritty crime movies
in
> an inexpensive way that LOOKED expensive.
>
> There's a great story about Edward Dmytryk lecturing
a
> bunch of college kids during the '70s. He
figures
> they all want to hear about the Hollywood
blacklist,
> so he's surprised when one of them raises his hand
and
> asks him about something called film
noir.
>
> "Film noir?" he says. "What the hell is film
noir?"
>
> "Well," says the college kid, "you should know.
You
> invented it."
>
> Up to then Dmytryk, who was a professional
filmmaker,
> not a naval-contemplating film theorist, had
never
> heard the term.
>
> JIM DOHERTY
>
>
Yes but the directors most responsible for what came to be
known as the
"noir" look - night for night shooting, expressionistic use
of shadows, wet pavements, low key lighting etc etc were the
Eastern & Central European directors who brought many of
these things over from places like Germany's UFA studios -
Wilder, Lang, etc and even Hitchcok had served some of his
apprenticeship at the UFA studios; and probably even more
responsible for the look would be the European
cinematographers such as John Alton. So, even though not all
film noir directors & technicians came from Europe (in
fact a quick, perfunctory check seems to indicate they were
definitely a minority) I think their influence & that of
the German Expressionist cinema of the 1920's was a huge
influence on the film noir look & style, very much out of
proportion to the numbers of European migrants working in
Hollywood at the time.(And sometimes, getting that expensive
look was expensive. Shooting at night was certainly not cheap
& in some instances, such as DOUBLE INDEMNITY, the
archetypal film noir, they actually did have big budgets (by
the standards of the time) to work with.Of course, low budget
was generally the norm. As Robert Mitchum said "We didn't
know from film noir. The big stars at RKO like Cary Grant got
all the money. We had to light our sets with cigarette
butts"). In the end , film noir is an American art form but
America is a land of immigrants and like the US itself,film
noir is the sum of it's parts and many of the important parts
came from Europe - particularly the visual language used. In
other words, film noir is a cultural goulash. Would someone
pass me the paprika, please?
Rene
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