{"id":1236,"date":"2022-12-07T16:39:59","date_gmt":"2022-12-07T16:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebratingcinema.com\/?p=1236"},"modified":"2026-03-18T22:06:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T22:06:18","slug":"what-is-film-noir-a-genre-style-or-something-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebratingcinema.com\/what-is-film-noir-a-genre-style-or-something-else\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Film Noir, a genre, style or something else?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My dad has this rotating bookcase-rack filled to the brim with pocket editions of these cheap dimestore novels you could buy in gas stations across post-war America. I\u2019d browse through them and notice the pulpy titles and striking covers: Twisted Wives, Satan is a Woman, Girls Dormitory, Satan is a Lesbian\u2026 The list goes on. I was never really compelled to read them, but I did imagine how these trashy titles could play out as a film: stories of lust and jealousy, crime and betrayal, death and desire. Little did I know that this collection of books was also the home for some absolute bangers like The Big Sleep<\/em>, The Maltese Falcon<\/em> and The Postman Always Rings Twice<\/em>, pulp novel staples I\u2019d later become familiar with through their unforgettable film adaptations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I first started watching American Film Noir films, my dad\u2019s dime store collection began to make sense as a reservoir for some of the best films ever made in the American Studio system. I could bond over these films with my dad, who loved American actors like Humphrey Bogart, James Cackney and James Dean. The strong and silent types as Tony Soprano used to call them. Then we watched Touch of Evil<\/em>, Orson Welles genius answer to the American Film noir, and got even more obsessed about cinema together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At film studies, I got to learn about the cinematic era that preceded what is now commonly known as the film noir. Our Professor Jim Hurley, who sadly passed away in 2014, gave a course on Weimar Cinema, about the period of filmmaking between the aftermath of World War I and the rise of Nazi Germany, which was the starting point of some of the best directors of the 20th century, including the one and only Fritz Lang, whose Dr Mabuse<\/em> and M<\/em> can be seen as some of the greatest anchor points for the Film Noir. Generally understood as urban drama\u2019s and thrillers, film noir films are often labyrinth detective and crime drama\u2019s about the moral trappings of life in the crushingly big city. These are paranoid films about the darker penchants of human nature, amplified by crime syndicates, state corruption and sexual tension. Sure, they can be pulpy, but in the hands of the right director, the cheap source material becomes a well of existential observations and deep reflection on human behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best film noirs are drenched in an almost supernatural aura. It seems as if the characters are controlled by forces bigger than themselves. They\u2019re steering towards impending doom and have no way of changing direction. This sinister vibe can be hypnotic, hallucinatory, intoxicating or even arousing. I can imagine why so many audiences flocked to these films and why so many directors tried to make them: it\u2019s the stuff that movies are made of, packaged in audience-friendly formats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also understand why so many directors harken back to the film noir of yore, which begs the question: what even is a film noir anymore? with all the talk of neo-noir, and neo-neo-neo-noir, it\u2019s hard to even define what a film noir even is. It\u2019s for this very reason that Australian critic Adrian Martin says that Film Noirs have never existed as a genre per se, but only as a mode of production in a very specific time in the United States after World War II. I agree with him that the label Film Noir has become a kind of hollow container for a lot of films to be attached to, but at the same time it\u2019s a useful way to describe the vibe of some of these unforgettably haunting and gripping films that are so delightfully twisted and fucked up while still playing for a mainstream audience. It\u2019s maybe the cinephile compromise of the ages, a type of film that\u2019s enjoyable for each and everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you want to find out what this loose definition of the film noir is all about, you need to check out the LAB111 programme Tom compiled that brings together some of the very bests in the genre on the big screen. I think Tom has already talked about Nightmare Alley on this podcast, which is the inspiration for the programmes title: TALES FROM NIGHTMARE ALLEY, but there\u2019s plenty of other cinematic goods to be found here, from The Killing<\/em> by friend of the podcast Stanley Kubrick to the aforementioned A Touch of Evil<\/em> by Orson Welles. But don\u2019t miss out on Otto Premingers Laura<\/em>, Michael Kurtiz\u2019 Mildred Pierce<\/em> and Jules Dassin’s Night and the City<\/em> either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An essay beginning with a bookcase full of pulpy post-war American dimestore novels \u2014 Twisted Wives, Satan is a Woman, Girls Dormitory \u2014 and the question of why their covers felt like a portal to another world. Film noir, this piece argues, is not a genre but an atmosphere: a way of looking at the world that presupposes guilty men, dangerous women, and a city that will not let you be innocent. An introduction to noir through the images that made it \u2014 and the question of whether it ever really went away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"page\/page-gutenberg.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cold-open"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebratingcinema.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebratingcinema.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebratingcinema.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebratingcinema.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebratingcinema.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/celebratingcinema.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1910,"href":"https:\/\/celebratingcinema.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions\/1910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebratingcinema.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebratingcinema.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebratingcinema.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebratingcinema.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}