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When you think of a film noir, what kind of film do you have in mind? Let's concentrate for a start on the kinds of stories told by a film noir. Try to think of films, which you have actually watched, even if you remember only bits of them. Don't worry if you can't answer all the following questions! Make a note, if you can, of your answers. (If you really can't remember any films of this kind, go to Section 3, but still use the following questions.)

To help you better focus on what you remember from the previous section, in this section you are invited to watch a few short sequences from "classical" film noir. Go through the questions in the previous section and compare your notes with what you actually see. If you can, add, correct, or specify what you had already noted. (You can obviously watch the same sequences more than once, if you need it or feel like it!)

(From: Double indemnity, by B.Wilder, USA 1944) (From: The killers, by R.Siodmak, USA 1946)

Then compare your remarks with my comments (Sections 2/3).

Section 4: The femme fatale in film noir

Kaplan (Kaplan E.A. (ed.) 1978. Women in film noir, BFI Publishing, London, quoted in Cook P. (ed.) 2007. The cinema book, British Film Institute, London) summarizes quite effectively the role played by women in film noir:

"The film noir world is one in which women are central to the intrigues of the films, and are furthermore usually not placed safely in ... familiar roles ... Defined by their sexuality, which is presented as desirable but dangerous, the women function as an obstacle to the male quest. The hero's success or not depends on the degree to which he can extricate himself from the women's manipulations. Although the man is sometimes simply destroyed because he cannot resist women's lures, often the world of the film is the attempted restoration of order through the exposure and then destruction of the sexual, manipulating woman."

However, this view of the femme fatale has also been contested by remarking, not only that many women have been writers and scriptwriters of film noir, but also that sometimes this character is not present at all; besides, she does nothing but underline the other side of the coin - the male's crisis and the crisis of masculinity in general. These women are actually at the centre of the plot thanks to the fact that they are active, intelligent, dominant and careful to deal with their sexuality (even if, eventually, they usually pay for all this with their death or their submission to an otherwise "patriarchal" order). Being, as they are, only interested in themselves and in money as the source of their independence, they represent a powerful alternative to the classical Hollywood characterization of the woman as mother vs prostitute or as wife vs lover. In this sense gender studies stress the ambiguity of film noir, which can appear as extremely misogynous but also, at the same time, celebrate the woman's liberation from all those melodramatic situations in which tradition compels them, making them passive and submissive. In the film noir, on the whole, the woman can appear as a worthy antagonist of the main character, albeit often as a cynical, smart predator.

Section 5: The visual style of film noir

Film noir is defined, besides its narrative content and the attitudes and ideologies it conveys, for its particular visual style, which is easily discernible and has influenced, since its very beginning, a plethora of subsequent films.

Watch the above sequences again and try to define what can be considered as typical elements of the noir's visual style. Focus your attention, for instance, on such aspects as:

the use of light and shadows in general;
the way light is used for bodies and objects;
the mise-en-scène;
the depth of field;
the use of voice-over;
flashbacks and temporal ellipses.

Then compare your remarks with my comments (Section 5).

Section 6: Origins and sources of film noir

Film noir had its heyday in the '40s and '50s of last century: traditionally, its chronological limits are usually set by The Maltese Falcon (1941 - see above), on the one hand, and Touch of evil (by Orson Welles, USA 1958), on the other.

Just think back to that period, to the historical events that took place then, to the corresponding economic and social conditions, and to the changes that Western societies were going through in those years. Can you get a hint of how film noir were able, not just to be extremely successful at the box-office, but also to reflect in a certain way the period's society with its problems and anxieties? In other words, can the atmosphere, the plots, the characters of film noir sill have something to tell us something about one of the most complex and controversial periods of the '900s? Just try to think about it ... and then compare your remarks with my comments (Section 6).

The sources of film noir

As we have seen, the sociocultural roots of film noir go back to well before the '40s, and this parallels with the fact that writers and scriptwriters who were the sources of film noir, especially at its very start, had published their works in the '30s (for example, Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, James M.Cain).

We have also noted how the German expressionist movement, which was very active at various artistic levels since the end of the First World War, influenced film noir's visual style in remarkable ways, besides being one of the most important inspiration, from this point of view, for another major film of the '40s, which in turn had an outstanding influence on film noir itself, Citizen Kane (by Orson Welles, USA 1941). The wisdespread diffusion of expressionist aesthetics and techniques in American cinema was also due to to the presence of directors and cinematographers who, starting at the end of the '20s, emigrated from Germany and Eastern European countries to the U.S.A. (Several of them, among whom Fritz Lang, Joseph von Sternberg, Otto Preminger, Douglas Sirk, Max Ophuls, Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak, would then leave an impressive mark on American cinema even in the following decades).

Another direct influence on the development of film noir has been traced to the so-called "French poetic realism", illustrated by such directors as Marcel Carné, Julien Duvivier and Jean Renoir, who composed settings and contexts vastly different from the sophisticated, stereotyped comedies so frequently produced in those years, by exploring the dark and ambiguous side of the concrete life of the working classes.

Curiously, the label "film noir" seems to have been used for the first time only in 1946, by the French critic Nino Frank in a review of some of the first (and most famous) American film noir of the immediately previous years. The label "film noir" was probably inspired by the title of a famous French series of detective stories (the Série Noire). However, the decisive contribution to the knowledge and appreciation of the genre came a few years later, from a few French critics (who would eventually found the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma), and who would then themselves becomes influential exponents of the Nouvelle Vague, with particular reference to François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.

It was only at end of the '60s, however, that the term "film noir" started to be used in anglosaxon countries, also thanks to the widepsread action of a famous critic (and director of film noir himself), Paul Schrader.

Section 7: The persistence of a genre: the neo-noir

We have already remarked that the film noir, not just as a source of narrative material, but also and foremost as a visual style, has continued and continues to survive in a host of other films, even very recent ones, often combining with other genres, from horror to science fiction, from thriller to fantasy-adventure.

Do you recall any films, either recent or past, which in some way and from a certain point of view combine aspects (first and foremost visual) of the film noir? Could you say for whichh specific reasons you would associate these films to the "classical" film noir we've been discussing in this Workshop? Then compare your remarks with my comments (Section 7).

Section 8: Conclusion

Hirsch (Hirsch F. 1999. Detours and lost highways: A map of neo-noir, Limelight, New York, citato in Phillips W.H. 2005. Film. An introduction, Bedford/St.Martin's, Boston/New York) has clearly summed up and, at the same time, explained the ever-lasting vitality of film noir:

"The private investigation quest; crimes of passion and profit; stories involving masquerade, amnesia, split identity, and double and triple crosses continue to be the genre's abiding concerns ... Noir endures, but, inevitably, not in the same way as forty and fifity years ago. Like any genre which survives, it has had to adapt; and as a set of narrative patterns, a repertoire of images, a nucleus of character types, it has proven remarkably elastic. Against the odds, and after several premature obituaries, noir is a mainstay of commercial narrative filmmaking."