I took James Naremore's MORE THAN NIGHT off the shelf (and
recommend it once again) to check what he really has to say
about the French usage of film noir. He writes (and I
quote):
"The French were also predisposed to invent American noir
because it evoked the golden age of their own cinema. They
were quick to observe that the new Hollywood thrillers
resembled such Popular Front films as Pé°© le Moko (1936), Hô´¥¬
du Nord (1938), and Le jour se l趥 (1939) - a group of shadowy
melodramas, set in an urban criminal milieu and featuring
doomed protagonists who behaved with sangfroid under
pressure. The term _film noir_ had in fact been employed by
French writers of the late 1930s in discussions of these
films. Film historian Charles O'Brien points out that in the
years immediately before the war, the word _noir_ often had
pejorative connotations and was frequently used by the
right-wing French press in their attacks on the 'immorality
and scandal' of left-wing culture. _Noir_ was nevertheless
embraced as a descriptive adjective by several writers on the
Left
(particularly after the war), and the style favoured by the
Popular Front, whether it was called 'noir' or not,
constituted a respectable and quite recognizable type of
filmmaking for most critics throughout the world. Thus, when
Double Indemnity was released in the United States in 1944, a
reviewer for The Hollywood Reporter noted that it was 'more
than a little reminiscent of the late lamented, excellent
French technique.'"
There's also a lot of stuff about the Surrealists (Georges
Duhamel was a part of the group) and Sartre. Check it
out.
Juri http://pulpetti.blogspot.com
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03 Oct 2005 EDT