Film Noir = Black and White? (1 Viewer)

[Dennis Nicholls]

Another definition may be a film with Barbara Stanwyk in it....
So is The Third Man a noir? It's mostly a downer story with lots of sleazy characters oozing around.

 

[Brad Vautrinot]

Film Noir is my favorite genre. Below is a definition as stated, in part, from Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style (New York: Overlook/Viking, 1992):
"Dark rooms with light slicing through venetian blinds, alleys cluttered with garbage, abandoned warehouses where dust hangs in the air, rain-slickened streets with water still running in the gutters, dark detective offices overlooking busy streets: this is the stuff of film noir--that most magnificent of film forms--a perfect blend of form and content, where the desperation and hopelessness of the situations is reflected in the visual style, which drenches the world in shadows and only occasional bursts of sunlight. Film noir, occasionally acerbic, usually cynical, and often enthralling, gave us characters trying to elude some mysterious past that continues to haunt them, hunting them down with a fatalism that taunts and teases before delivering the final, definitive blow."
"The femme fatale would play a crucial role in the film noir, whether in the guise of Jane Greer in Out of the Past, Rita Hayworth in Lady From Shanghai, Veronica Lake in The Blue Dahlia, Joan Bennett in Scarlet Street, Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy, Gloria Grahame in Human Desire, Lizbeth Scott in Dead Reckoning, Ava Gardner in The Killers, or Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. These women were black widows who slowly drew in the heroes with come-hither looks and breathless voices. Communicating a danger of sex that is worthy of the '90s AIDS epidemic, the femme fatale knew how to use men to get whatever she wanted, whether it was just a little murder between lovers (as in Double Indemnity) or a wild, on-the-run lifestyle (as in Gun Crazy). The femme fatale was always there to help pull the hero down. And in the case of Mildred Pierce, we even get a femme fatale in the form of a daughter who threatens to destroy her mother's life."
"Heroes in the film noir world would forever struggle to survive. Some of the heroes learned to play by the rules of film noir and survived by exposing corruption, such as Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep and Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet. But more often than not, they were the saps destroyed by love (Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity and Edward G. Robinson in Scarlet Street), a past transgression (Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past), or overly ambitious goals (Richard Widmark in Night and the City and Sterling Hayden in The Killing)."
"Titles like Pitfall, Nightmare, Kiss of Death, and Edge of Doom describe what you'll find in film noir. And titles like Night and the City, Side Street, Hell's Island and The Asphalt Jungle convey the terrain. But maybe it's titles such as The Big Heat and The Big Sleep that most simply convey the film noir essence--an overpowering force that can't be avoided."
An absolutely wonderful film genre with so many great ones that I can't pick a favorite, but Laura is right up there.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Not to be confused with the "investigative narrative" like High and Low or M. I think LA Confidential falls more in line with that.

However, as with any genres Film Noir can be and is blended with other genres.

Thus Cyberpunk Blade Runner is meshed with Film Noir, although in some ways Cyberpunk borrowed from Noir and is therefore slightly Noir by definition.

Dark City is square on Sci-Fi, possibly an example of post-Cyberpunk (if you've read in the Dark City/Truman thread or over in the sci-fi polls thread) that is blended heavily with Noirish styles and characters.

Blood Simple and Man Who Wasn't There are perfect examples of the genre, 1 in color the other in B&W.

The very nature of police, crime, detectives involved in "investigative narrative", "crime capers", and "film noir" can cause them to blend together though they aren't inherently the same at all.

Like Heat, not a Film Noir in the least - though it does mix the other 2 genres, crime caper and investigative narrative. (I should call it criminal narrative because it's not always a caper, like White Heat. Sometimes it's just criminal behavoir, like the other side of the coin from the investigative process).

So LA Confidential has elements of Noir, but falls far from comitting to it.

 

[Patrick McCart]

North By Northwest, perhaps?

The Coen Brothers first feature, BLOOD SIMPLE, which has never been released on LD or DVD in its original theatrical presentation.

The DVD is 1.85:1 anamorphic and is the director's cut, to boot.