People are starting to think that any black and white movie is a film noir. These same lists were also including Casablanca!
It’s one of those phrases that’s so ill defined that you can invent your own meaning for it. Given this, it’s not surprising to see the boundaries change all the time.
I have heard someone call it a “noir romance” or something like that…
Well, if a film noir should include central characters of questionable morality caught in their situation + noirish cinematography, then you have it.
Calling it a spy thriller somehow underestimates it’s focus on existential themes…
Notorious also has a certain noir sensibility to it as well as many of the classic themes of film noir – fallen women of ill repute, lost innocence, mistrust, betrayal, disillusion, etc. It’s not fatalistic nor is it hardboiled enough to be a film noir for my tastes (more film noirish) but I don’t have a problem with people classifying it that way.
It’s one of those phrases that’s so ill defined that you can invent your own meaning for it.
As long as we’re inventing our own meanings, I’m declaring Notorious a 1950s Melodrama.
Sounds about right.
@Gringo: It is pretty self evident that noir is interchangeably defined by narrative structure, lighting, iconography, dialogue, and characters, depending on who’s writing about it and what they think it is.
my first instinct tells me “notorious” is not noir.
Doinel:
If Strangers on a Train doesn’t fall under the noir category, then someone needs to sit me down
and explain some things. Because maybe my checklist needs adjusting.
Here’s the rough list for Strangers on a Train:
1. Low key shots, odd angles, framing, and shadows to suggest malevolence, fear,
and protagonists’ troubled mental states
2. Emphasis on obsession, alienation, and
the dark psychology of the key characters
3. Main character thrust into potential legal danger and physical harm
through bizarre circumstances
4. Above circumstances indicate, for protagonist, a world out of control,
operated by unseen forces. sense of doom. (hostile environment becomes deterministic)
5. Good character doubled with bad character, psychologically linked
6. Bad guy’s evil deeds ultimately linked solely to deviant psychological state
By the way, I think Hitchcock made a similar foray into noir with Shadow of a Doubt,
and to a lesser degree with Saboteur.
I think you make a pretty good case but can noirs have happy endings?
I’ve heard some people call Vertigo a color noir (or is that a proto neo-noir?) It has the requisite fatalism/femme fatale so you can probably make a pretty compelling case for it if you wanted.
DP
The Woman in the Window, Key Largo, Phantom Lady, Ministry of Fear, and the Big Clock have happy endings,
and that’s just off the top of my head.
Yeah, you’re right even if I prefer my noirs to end on a downbeat. All good choices. Phantom Lady. Now that’s a great film, if you just for this scene alone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vEgZM5x0ik
yes, noirs can have happy endings. though they should probably be slightly undercut, at the very least, by what came before that ending. the one element that no noir can do without, if it wants to be called noir, is crime.
“vertigo” is certainly noir, and there have been other classic noirs in color.
Notorious not noir.
… but it is in B&W, maybe that’s throwing some people off.
its an interesting discussion, regarding hitch. many of his 40s and 50s films have been called noir. id say that some can be labeled as such, and some dont fit the bill. maybe we can go back and forth on a few more to see what people think.
i think “the wrong man” could certainly be called noir. however, im not so sure about “shadow of a doubt.”
-It is pretty self evident that noir is interchangeably defined by narrative structure, lighting, iconography, dialogue, and characters, depending on who’s writing about it and what they think it is.-
It depends on who you read. Raymond Durgnat’s “Paint It Black: The Family Tree of the Film Noir” argues that the principle considerations are motif and tone. Paul Schrader echoed this idea in his oft-cited “Notes on Film Noir”: "Film noir is not a genre (as Raymond Durgnat has helpfully pointed out over the objections of Higham and Greenberg’s Hollywood in the Forties). It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film “noir”, as opposed to the possible variants of film grey or film off-white. "
Durgnat, by the way, considered Rich and Strange_, Sabotage, and Rear Window, to be noir.
i wouldnt consider “rear window” noir. too much comedy, and not enough true darkness. the other films dont qualify for the fact that they were made in england, and too early (if we want to be a bit more exacting).
i agree with durgnat and schrader. but i think they were arguing for the primacy of mood, tone and motif to help prove that noir is not a genre, which it isnt. however, these factors are maybe too nebulous to use as primary defining characteristics of noir.
Schrader’s working definition of noir is more precise that Durgnat’s. He qualifies Durgnat’s description: “film noir is also a specific period of film history,” which seems about right to me, generally speaking, as does his division into three relatively distinct (if slightly overlapping) phases:
the wartime period, 1941-46
the post-war realistic period from 1945-49
film noir, from 1949-53 (“the period of psychotic action and suicidal impulse.”)
but, even then, some of his assumptions and conclusions are debatable.
i love the categorization of classic film noir as a specific period of film history. i think its spot on.
as far as the divisions within the period itself, i think there are probably only two. the 40s, which is sort of a formative/crystallization period. and the 50s, which is an exaggerated, stylized and self-reflexive period.
I tend to agree with Schrader that the post-war 40s films tend toward the more “realistic” but I don’t have a big problem with collapsing the first two periods together.
Film noir means a dark feeling movie about spies or policemen or someone inspecting a crime of some sort. And Notorious is about a woman spying on Nazis. I do see the arguments against it being film noir but I would consider it film noir.
spies do not figure into noir in a large, or defining manner. noir’s are about everyday people, for the most part. also gangsters and policemen. but inspecting a crime is not a defining characteristic of noir.
Matt Parks:
I agree about the debatable nature of discrete time periods.
In fact, regarding
“the post-war realistic period from 1945-49
film noir, from 1949-53 (“the period of psychotic action and suicidal impulse.”)
Film history doesn’t bear out those distinctions.
Psychotic and suicidal for 49-53?
Consider this incomplete list of noir titles that fall into that category, (and in a few cases define it):
1943: Shadow of a Doubt
1944: Laura
1945: Leave Her to Heaven, My Name is Julia Ross, Uncle Harry
1946: So Dark the Night, The Stranger
1947: The Locket, Nightmare Alley, The High Wall, Possessed, Fear in the Night
1948: Night Has a Thousand Eyes, The Dark Past, A Double Life
Bobby Wise: I think it would be a real neat trick to make the case that Shadow of a Doubt is not noir. But I’m all ears.
Have you read Schrader’s essay, Dr.?
Definitions are always slippery, like “realism” in literature. I’m not really interested in getting into a title-for-title debate on what’s noir and what’s not, but generally speaking, Schrader’s essay is useful, more so than most writing on the subject, but I don’t doubt that there are certain films that for certain viewers certain films are going to violate its boundries .My own definition is probably a little broader than Bobby’s and a little narrower than yours.
Shadow of a Doubt seems to be missing the prototypical noir protagonist and a few other key elements (it’s not exactly fresh in my memory since I haven’t seen it in a few years) unless every psychological thriller from the 1940s qualifies as a film noir.
i’ll try to make the case, just for the sake of argument and possible learning something new from the exchange of ideas.
“shadow” is not a very dark film, and it doesnt seem to have that oppressive noir mood, either in visuals or tone. uncle charlie is a very noirish character, true. but he’s not the protagonist of the film. young charlie is. the film is from her point of view, and her point of view is not so noirish (tortured, exaggerated, etc.). the ending of the film is ambivalent, which is good for starters. but it lacks that noir bite of cynicism, since we already know early on in the film that uncle charlie is indeed the killer.
i think the case can be made either “yay” or “nay”. but my instincts tell me its more psychological thriller than noir (not that there isnt a very fine line dividing the two). im not sold on this though, and perhaps it takes more energy to try to prove the film ISNT noir than it does to prove that it IS. maybe that counts for something, if its a true statement.
Matt:
Just to clarify, I wasn’t attempting to initiate a debate.
Quite the opposite.
Maybe I wasn’t clear in my intro, but my list was designed to illustrate and reinforce YOUR point about assumptions being debatable.
Oh yeah, I am familiar with Schrader’s essay.
I’ve memorized portions.
That may strike some as sad, but there it is.
Ai
I’ve seen Notorious on a few film noir lists, and I don’t understand why? Film Noir is a term that can be approached by many angles, and I don’t feel that any of them apply to Notorious.
To me, Notorious is a really well done spy thriller, not a film noir.
Any suggestions as to why some consider Notorious a film noir?