noir movies meaning

For description of noir as a genre, see, e.g., Bould (2005), p. 2; Hirsch (2001), pp. Edeson later photographed The Maltese Falcon (1941), widely regarded as the first major film noir of the classic era. It was applied to crime films of the 1940s and 1950s, mostly produced in the United States, which adopted a 1920s/1930s Art Deco visual environment. See, e.g., Silver (1996), p. 11; Ottoson (1981), pp. [61] Years earlier, working at Warner Bros., Hellinger had produced three films for Raoul Walsh, the proto-noirs They Drive by Night (1940), Manpower (1941) and High Sierra (1941), now regarded as a seminal work in noir's development. Others simply share narrative elements and a version of the hardboiled sensibility associated with classic noir, such as Castle of Sand (1974; Japan), Insomnia (1997; Norway), Croupier (1998; UK), and Blind Shaft (2003; China). : Parts I, II, Noir and Neonoir | The Criterion Collection, Collection: "Film Noir, Visuality and Themes", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Film_noir&oldid=997255512, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with Encyclopædia Britannica links, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Aziz, Jamaluddin Bin (2005). The Lost Weekend (1945), directed by Billy Wilder, another Vienna-born, Berlin-trained American auteur, tells the story of an alcoholic in a manner evocative of neorealism. "Mister 'See'-Odd-Mack'". Serving as producer, writer, director and top-billed performer, Hugo Haas made films like Pickup (1951), The Other Woman (1954) and Jacques Tourneur, The Fearmakers (1958)). Criss Cross (1949), with Lancaster again the lead, exemplifies how Siodmak brought the virtues of the B-movie to the A noir. 4, 15–16, 18, 41; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. Relatif aux Noirs : C'est un chanteur noir. Robert Wise (Born to Kill [1947], The Set-Up [1949]) and Anthony Mann (T-Men [1947] and Raw Deal [1948]) each made a series of impressive intermediates, many of them noirs, before graduating to steady work on big-budget productions. Learn a new word every day. 210–11. [43], The film now most commonly cited as the first "true" film noir is Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), directed by Latvian-born, Soviet-trained Boris Ingster. 245–47; Maslin (1996). Look it up now! Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible). How to use a word that (literally) drives some pe... Do you know these earlier meanings of words? Ignored: Bould (2005); Christopher (1998); Ottoson (1981). FILM NOIR DEFINITION What is film noir? There is usually an element of drug or alcohol use, particularly as part of the detective's method to solving the crime, as an example the character of Mike Hammer in the 1955 film Kiss Me Deadly who walks into a bar saying "Give me a double bourbon, and leave the bottle". Aziz (2005), section "Future Noir and Postmodernism: The Irony Begins". Though a tricky genre to define, there are the usual tell-tale signs such as seduction, violence, and loose morals all revolving around a central mystery. Here, we have tried to decode the meaning of ‘film noir’ through Billy Wilder’s extraordinary masterpieces, referencing to his 1975 interview conducted by Robert Porfirio. Science fiction, noir, and anime are brought together in the Japanese films of 90s Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), both directed by Mamoru Oshii. [199] In describing the adaptation of Double Indemnity, noir analyst Foster Hirsch describes the "requisite hopeless tone" achieved by the filmmakers, which appears to characterize his view of noir as a whole. Chaumeton and Borde have argued that film noir grew out of the "literature of drugs and alcohol". [73] The work of other directors in this tier of the industry, such as Felix E. Feist (The Devil Thumbs a Ride [1947], Tomorrow Is Another Day [1951]), has become obscure. The film opens with a dead body face down in a swimming pool. Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. There are a number of works in film, television, photography, even video games that are noir-like. [151] The hero is the target of investigation in Gattaca (1997), which fuses film noir motifs with a scenario indebted to Brave New World. Film noir does not have a thematic coherence: the term is most often applied to crime dramas, but certain westerns and comedies have been cited as examples of film noir by some critics. Kolker (2000), pp. Silver (1996), pp. Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4, 19–26, 28–33; Hirsch (2001), pp. Noir definition is - crime fiction featuring hard-boiled cynical characters and bleak sleazy settings. Scholar Jamaluddin Bin Aziz has observed how "the shadow of Philip Marlowe lingers on" in such other "future noir" films as 12 Monkeys (1995), Dark City (1998) and Minority Report (2002). While the contemporary term neo-noir functions to bring the noir into the contemporary landscape, it has been often criticized for its dilution of the noir genre, Arnett commenting on its ‘amorphous’ reach: ‘any film featuring a detective or crime qualifies’, and Cawelti recognizing its ‘generic exhaustion’. Many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Great Depression. [158], Noir parodies come in darker tones as well. "UCLA's Pre-Code Series". Arnett, Robert (October 2006) Eighties Noir: The Dissenting Voice in Reagan's America'. [156] In 1947 as well, The Bowery Boys appeared in Hard Boiled Mahoney, which had a similar mistaken-identity plot; they spoofed the genre once more in Private Eyes (1953). Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. The interview, published in Film Noir Reader 3 , sees the director break down his role in the true formation go film noir, detailing how he approaches his cinematic creations with unerring accuracy. From January through December deep shadows, clutching hands, exploding revolvers, sadistic villains and heroines tormented with deeply rooted diseases of the mind flashed across the screen in a panting display of psychoneurosis, unsublimated sex and murder most foul. The television series Veronica Mars (2004–07) also brought a youth-oriented twist to film noir. 111–16. 116–22; Ottoson (1981), p. 2. Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001) continued in his characteristic vein, making the classic noir setting of Los Angeles the venue for a noir-inflected psychological jigsaw puzzle. 255–61. Greenspun, Roger (1973). [172], The low-key lighting schemes of many classic film noirs are associated with stark light/dark contrasts and dramatic shadow patterning—a style known as chiaroscuro (a term adopted from Renaissance painting). [4] "We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel ..."—this set of attributes constitutes the first of many attempts to define film noir made by French critics Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton in their 1955 book Panorama du film noir américain 1941–1953 (A Panorama of American Film Noir), the original and seminal extended treatment of the subject. Latter-day noir has been in the forefront of structural experimentation in popular cinema, as exemplified by such films as Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, and Memento. Incidents that occurred during the war as well as those post-war, functioned as an inspiration for a "Cold War Noir" subgenre. Most film noir movies take place in New York City or Los Angeles. Urban environment 2. What made you want to look up film noir? [75] It is one of the seven classic film noirs produced largely outside of the major studios that have been chosen for the United States National Film Registry. The violence was also more potent. [108] Detective series, prevalent on American television during the period, updated the hardboiled tradition in different ways, but the show conjuring the most noir tone was a horror crossover touched with shaggy, Long Goodbye-style humor: Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974–75), featuring a Chicago newspaper reporter investigating strange, usually supernatural occurrences. [63] Other directors associated with top-of-the-bill Hollywood film noirs include Edward Dmytryk (Murder, My Sweet (1944), Crossfire (1947))—the first important noir director to fall prey to the industry blacklist—as well as Henry Hathaway (The Dark Corner (1946), Kiss of Death (1947)) and John Farrow (The Big Clock (1948), Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)). (1998). Définitions de noir. [134], Director Sean Penn's The Pledge (2001), though adapted from a very self-reflexive novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, plays noir comparatively straight, to devastating effect. [144][145], In the post-classic era, a significant trend in noir crossovers has involved science fiction. Noir Genre Definition – What’s the best definition for the noir genre? Naremore (2008), p. 275; Wager (2005), p. 83; Hanson (2008), p. 141. [32] Among films not considered film noirs, perhaps none had a greater effect on the development of the genre than Citizen Kane (1941), directed by Orson Welles. [b] The "Girl Hunt" ballet in Vincente Minnelli's The Band Wagon (1953) is a ten-minute distillation of—and play on—noir in dance. Narrative structures sometimes involved convoluted flashbacks uncommon in non-noir commercial productions. Silver makes a case for how "side light is used ... to reflect character ambivalence", while shots of characters in which they are lit from below "conform to a convention of visual expression which associates shadows cast upward of the face with the unnatural and ominous".[176]. Released the month before Lang's M, City Streets has a claim to being the first major film noir; both its style and story had many noir characteristics. Conclusion: Neo-Noir. A half-decade after Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend, Billy Wilder made Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Ace in the Hole (1951), noirs that were not so much crime dramas as satires on Hollywood and the news media. 9, 311–12 n. 1. [31] The movement's sensibility is mirrored in the Warner Bros. drama I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), a forerunner of noir. 203–5; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. [64] Some were Bs in the most precise sense, produced to run on the bottom of double bills by a low-budget unit of one of the major studios or by one of the smaller Poverty Row outfits, from the relatively well-off Monogram to shakier ventures such as Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC). Spicer (2007), pp. Ph. The climaxes of a substantial number of film noirs take place in visually complex, often industrial settings, such as refineries, factories, trainyards, power plants—most famously the explosive conclusion of White Heat, set at a chemical plant. "Film Noir and the Meaning of Life", in. In the eyes of many critics, the city is presented in noir as a "labyrinth" or "maze". See Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 31, on general issue. The British miniseries The Singing Detective (1986), written by Dennis Potter, tells the story of a mystery writer named Philip Marlow; widely considered one of the finest neo-noirs in any medium, some critics rank it among the greatest television productions of all time. film noir meaning: 1. a style of film, usually about crime, that presents the world as being unpleasant, strange, or…. [157] The Cheap Detective (1978), starring Peter Falk, is a broad spoof of several films, including the Bogart classics The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. 392, 396). [45] Variety magazine found Ingster's work: "...too studied and when original, lacks the flare to hold attention. [57], Orson Welles had notorious problems with financing but his three film noirs were well budgeted: The Lady from Shanghai (1947) received top-level, "prestige" backing, while The Stranger (1946), his most conventional film, and Touch of Evil (1958), an unmistakably personal work, were funded at levels lower but still commensurate with headlining releases. Moody style of gangster or thriller film, often shot in dark contrasting images. 284–86; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 278. [78] In addition to The Killers, Burt Lancaster's debut and a Hellinger/Universal co-production, Siodmak's other important contributions to the genre include 1944's Phantom Lady (a top-of-the-line B and Woolrich adaptation), the ironically titled Christmas Holiday (1944), and Cry of the City (1948). See, e.g., Hirsch (2001), p. 17; Christopher (1998), p. 17; Telotte (1989), p. 148. 6–9; Silver and Ward (1992), pp. For specific production circumstances, see Brady, Frank. The English translation is dark movie, indicating something sinister and shadowy, but also expressing a … Two RKO productions starring Robert Mitchum take film noir over the border into self-parody: The Big Steal (1949), directed by Don Siegel, and His Kind of Woman (1951). [44], Donald Marshman, Life (August 25, 1947)[47], Most film noirs of the classic period were similarly low- and modestly-budgeted features without major stars—B movies either literally or in spirit. [169] Concerning films made either before or after the classic period, or outside of the United States at any time, consensus is even rarer. 3, 6 passim. See, e.g., Hirsch (2001), pp. Davis (2004), p. 194. 13, 28, 241; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. It’s a transgressive sub-genre that explores niche subjects and the director’s style normally defines it. [59] Scarlet Street was a semi-independent, cosponsored by Universal and Lang's Diana Productions, of which the film's co-star, Joan Bennett, was the second biggest shareholder. For characterization of definitive tone as "hopeless", see pp. Just because a movie has things such as murder, investigations, bribery, or other elements of a criminal plot does not mean that it should be defined as noir. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Spicer (2007), pp. The "blaxploitation" film Shaft (1971), wherein Richard Roundtree plays the titular African-American private eye, John Shaft, takes conventions from classic noir. The most acclaimed of the neo-noirs of the era was director Roman Polanski's 1974 Chinatown. In 1973, director Robert Altman flipped off noir piety with The Long Goodbye. [118] The characteristic work of David Lynch combines film noir tropes with scenarios driven by disturbed characters such as the sociopathic criminal played by Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet (1986) and the delusionary protagonist of Lost Highway (1997). David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), an adaptation of the speculative novel by J. G. Ballard, has been described as a "film noir in bruise tones". 140–55, on "B Pictures versus Intermediates". Find more French words at wordhippo.com! [41] Burnett's characteristic narrative approach fell somewhere between that of the quintessential hardboiled writers and their noir fiction compatriots—his protagonists were often heroic in their own way, which happened to be that of the gangster. Pictures versus Intermediates '' in Ballinger and Graydon ( 2007 ), 133. Presented in noir. 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