1.2 The Rules of Film Noir

1.2 The Rules of Film Noir

The chase is on in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949)

Film Noir.
When you think that phrase, the mind is immediately drawn to images of leggy ice queens, rumbled losers in fedoras, guns, neon and certain deadpan cynicism.
Film Noir wasn’t a self conscious movement in the way the French New Wave was. It wasn’t a brand name like a Marvel superhero epic.
But it did tap into something dark in the American postwar zeitgeist (spirit/mood/ideas/beliefs) and became for a spell hugely popular. It also created some of the most unforgettable images in film history.

Film Noir hit its zenith in the late ‘40s, a time when veterans were returning home in droves after having witnessed unimaginable horrors. Under the weight of war trauma, men felt the brittle veneer of traditional masculinity – strong, stoic and dominant — crack and crumble. Film Noir tapped into this anxiety. It’s no accident that film scholars have called Film Noir the male weepy.

Rule #1: Choose a Dame with a Past and a Hero with No Future

The noir protagonist is inevitably some hapless schmuck who is doomed, suckered to death or ignominy by lust, greed or some darker subterranean self-destructive urge. And inevitably the catalyst for this fall is a dame. Usually blonde. Always gorgeous. The femme fatale is inevitably the center of the movie and frequently its antagonist. Film Noir bluntly lays bare what wasn’t discussed in polite society; that the way for a woman to get power in American society was through sex. The gender dynamics in this genre are the stuff that has launched hundreds of PhD dissertations.

Rule #2: Use No Fiction But Pulp Fiction

Studios rushed to adapt the pulp works of Raymond Chandler (Links to an external site.), James M. Cain (Links to an external site.) and particularly Dashiell Hammett (Links to an external site.), the first true hardboiled writer. Hammett’s novels like Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon are terse, violent and cynical; they contain the DNA of the Film Noir. (Huge source of original material...cheap grocery story material were being absorbed by the nation en masse - Hollywood started adapting what was available and still does now)(Many of them were contracted to be consulted to be screenwriters not only of their own materials)

Rule #3: See America Through a Stranger’s Eyes

The rise of Nazism in Germany forced hundreds of writers, filmmakers and composers like Fritz Lang (Links to an external site.), Robert Siodmak (Links to an external site.) and Billy Wilder (Links to an external site.) to the sun-dappled shores of Los Angeles. With them, they brought the aesthetics of German Expressionism — canted camera angles, stark lighting and grotesque shadows. It was a look that merged seamlessly with the bleak, elemental stories of Noir. They also brought with them a war-weary foreigner’s sense of the country, one that saw the brutality and corruption of America beneath the patriotic bunting. (the emigrant community to escape - outsider perspective is perpsective changes and you can see that in these films).  

Rule #4: Make It Any Color As Long As It’s Black

They wouldn’t call it Film Noir if the movies didn’t use a lot of black. (esp in the 40s pushes and demands the story be told in an artistic way. the lighting and shot framing cinematography emotive way... the pressure the thrill of these stories... more black than white in the grey scale). 

Rule #5: It Ain’t What You say It’s the Way That you Say it

The Hayes code limited how bawdy and violent Film Noir could get. So filmmakers got creative, using off-screen space and lots and lots of euphemisms. Check out what Lauren Bacall (Links to an external site.) says to Humphrey Bogart (Links to an external site.) in The Big Sleep. Link to choice piece 

Link to the video lines - of The Big Sleep
"Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first, see if they’re front runners or come from behind, find out what their hole card is, what makes them run."

It’s pretty obvious she isn’t talking about horses. And if you want to see just how lascivious her delivery is, watch the film above.

- Jonathan Crow "The 5 Essential Rules of Film Noir," Open Culture - Link

While some of this may seem like oversimplification, take a look at the full monty in the BBC focus from 2009:

Excellent BBC Documentary -- The Rules of Film Noir (2009) BBC
Link here 

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