jay@umd5.UUCP (05/14/85)
It occurred to me that if a discussion of film noir actually gets started in this news group, there may be many subscribers who don't know (and probably a lot who don't care) what this term even means. Briefly, the post-World War II French, who had not been able to see American films during the war, invented this term for a type of Hollywood film that had not been in existence prior to the war. American films had turned dark; the protagonists were no longer heros and the notion of good and evil was blurred. The typical film noir has the male protagonist fall under the spell of a femme fatale and, after a torrid romance and some killing, one or both of them are destroyed. Some of the classics in this cycle of films are 'Double Indemnity', 'The Postman Always Rings Twice', 'Murder, My Sweet', 'Out of the Past', 'Scarlet Street', etc. There are many, many more. The films tend to use light and shadow, odd angles, mirrors, claustrophobic sets, etc., all of which suggest the obsessions of the characters within the films. What brought on this cycle of films is still being argued over but it is generally believed that anxieties produced by the war were vented in the psychological examinations of the darker side of human nature. I hope I haven't been pedantic or preachy. I'm just trying to generate a little interest in something other than six-sentence reviews of current films. I think this group has a place for the old as well as the new, at least I hope so. -- Jay Elvove ..!seismo!rlgvax!cvl!umd5!jay
reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (05/19/85)
In article <510@umd5.UUCP> jay@umd5.UUCP writes: >Briefly, the >post-World War II French, who had not been able to see American films during >the war, invented this term for a type of Hollywood film that had not >been in existence prior to the war. It should be noted that the French recognized this genre well. Films very much of the film noir mold were extremely popular in France in the 1930s. "Scarlet Street", for instance, is a remake of Renoir's "Le Chienne". "Port of Shadows" and "Pepe Le Moko" are just a couple of examples of French film noir of this period. In fact, Jean Gabin was probably the first great male film noir star, paving the way for Robert Mitchum and John Garfield. As far as semantic roots go, I'm not sure when the term was coined, but it was derived from "roman noir", or "black novel", which term was used to describe British Gothic novels of the 18th and 19th century. -- Peter Reiher reiher@ucla-cs.arpa soon to be reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDA {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher