noir movies meaning

36, 39, 130–33. The term film noir, French for 'black film' (literal) or 'dark film' (closer meaning),[1] was first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, but was unrecognized by most American film industry professionals of that era. See the full definition for film noir in the English Language Learners Dictionary, Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about film noir. 214–15; 253–54, 269–70, 318–19. Test your vocabulary with our 10-question quiz! This cinematological trend reflected much of the cynicism and the possibility of nuclear annihilation of the era. David Cronenberg also mixes surrealism and noir in Naked Lunch (1991), inspired by William S. Burroughs' novel. 284–86; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 278. Edgar G. Ulmer spent most of his Hollywood career working at B studios and once in a while on projects that achieved intermediate status; for the most part, on unmistakable Bs. "Twenty-First Century Nervous Breakdown". The English translation is dark movie, indicating something sinister and shadowy, but also expressing a … "[181] Amnesia is fairly epidemic—"noir's version of the common cold", in the words of film historian Lee Server. "Deadly Plot by a Milquetoast Villain", Palmer, R. Barton (2004). [140] Similarly, graphic novels provide the basis for Road to Perdition (2002), directed by Sam Mendes, and A History of Violence (2005), directed by David Cronenberg; the latter was voted best film of the year in the annual Village Voice poll. They regard true film noir as belonging to a temporally and geographically limited cycle or period, treating subsequent films that evoke the classics as fundamentally different due to general shifts in filmmaking style and latter-day awareness of noir as a historical source for allusion. 9–10. 182–98, 209–16; Downs (2002), p. 171; Ottoson (1981), pp. 188, 202–3. (1986–88) lampoons noir, along with such topics as capital punishment, gun fetishism, and Dirty Harry. Carl Reiner's black-and-white Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982) appropriates clips of classic noirs for a farcical pastiche, while his Fatal Instinct (1993) sends up noir classic (Double Indemnity) and neo-noir (Basic Instinct). During the classic era, his work, either as author or screenwriter, was the basis for seven films now widely regarded as film noirs, including three of the most famous: High Sierra (1941), This Gun for Hire (1942), and The Asphalt Jungle (1950). 'From 'Trance' to 'Spring Breakers,' Is This the Golden Age of Film Noir?'. 52 likes. [22] There is no consensus on the matter. Dargis (2004); Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 234. "A Tale of Three Cities: The Banning of. 107–109. dumb in order to appear a more deserving beggar; Dump: … [179] The Chase (1946) takes oneirism and fatalism as the basis for its fantastical narrative system, redolent of certain horror stories, but with little precedent in the context of a putatively realistic genre. [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. A crime investigation—by a private eye, a police detective (sometimes acting alone), or a concerned amateur—is the most prevalent, but far from dominant, basic plot. 344, 363–73; Naremore (2008), pp. [152] The Animatrix (2003), based on and set within the world of The Matrix film trilogy, contains an anime short film in classic noir style titled "A Detective Story". [178] Neo-noirs as varied as The Element of Crime (surrealist), After Dark, My Sweet (retro), and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (meta) have employed the flashback/voiceover combination. "Introduction", in Silver and Ursini. 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". 16, 91–94, 96, 100; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 33–40. 4–5, 22, 255. Noir Genre Definition – What’s the best definition for the noir genre? [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. Although modestly budgeted, at the high end of the B movie scale, Stranger on the Third Floor still lost its studio, RKO, US$56,000 (equivalent to $1,021,967 in 2019), almost a third of its total cost. See, e.g., Telotte (1989), pp. Couleur noire : Teindre en noir. Guns, dames and hats: you can't have a film noir without them, can you? See, e.g., Biesen (2005), p. 1; Hirsch (2001), p. 9; Lyons (2001), p. 2; Silver and Ward (1992), p. 1; Schatz (1981), p. 112. [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. See more. Lang's follow-up, Scarlet Street (1945), was one of the few classic noirs to be officially censored: filled with erotic innuendo, it was temporarily banned in Milwaukee, Atlanta and New York State. Krutnik, Neale, and Neve (2008), pp. The most famous of classic British noirs is director Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), from a screenplay by Graham Greene. Jones, Kristin M. (2009). occasionally casts Kermit the Frog as a private eye; the sketches refer to some of the typical motifs of noir films, in particular the voiceover. 3, 6 passim. Before leaving for France, Jules Dassin had been obliged by political pressure to shoot his last English-language film of the classic noir period in Great Britain: Night and the City (1950). 17, 122, 124, 140; Bould (2005), p. 19. [15] Alain Silver, the most widely published American critic specializing in film noir studies, refers to film noir as a "cycle"[16] and a "phenomenon",[17] even as he argues that it has—like certain genres—a consistent set of visual and thematic codes. Voiceover narration, sometimes used as a structuring device, came to be seen as a noir hallmark; while classic noir is generally associated with first-person narration (i.e., by the protagonist), Stephen Neale notes that third-person narration is common among noirs of the semidocumentary style. The classic film noirs The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Glass Key (1942) were based on novels by Hammett; Cain's novels provided the basis for Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), and Slightly Scarlet (1956; adapted from Love's Lovely Counterfeit). For the opposing viewpoint, see, e.g., Neale (2000), p. 164; Ottoson (1981), p. 2; Schrader (1972); Durgnat (1970). Significant predecessors from the classic and early post-classic eras include The Lady from Shanghai; the Robert Ryan vehicle Inferno (1953); the French adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, Plein soleil (Purple Noon in the United States, more accurately rendered elsewhere as Blazing Sun or Full Sun; 1960); and director Don Siegel's version of The Killers (1964). Most film noir movies take place in New York City or Los Angeles. Other films from the era readily identifiable as neo-noir (some retro, some more au courant) include director John Dahl's Kill Me Again (1989), Red Rock West (1992), and The Last Seduction (1993); four adaptations of novels by Jim Thompson—The Kill-Off (1989), After Dark, My Sweet (1990), The Grifters (1990), and the remake of The Getaway (1994); and many more, including adaptations of the work of other major noir fiction writers: The Hot Spot (1990), from Hell Hath No Fury, by Charles Williams; Miami Blues (1990), from the novel by Charles Willeford; and Out of Sight (1998), from the novel by Elmore Leonard. Silver and Ward (1992) list 315 classic film noirs (passim), and Tuska (1984) lists 320 (passim). Neon noirs were popularized in the '70s and '80s by films like Taxi Driver (1976), Blade Runner (1982),[128] and David Lynch films such as Blue Velvet (1986) and later, Lost Highway (1997). Not only were Chandler's novels turned into major noirs—Murder, My Sweet (1944; adapted from Farewell, My Lovely), The Big Sleep (1946), and Lady in the Lake (1947)—he was an important screenwriter in the genre as well, producing the scripts for Double Indemnity, The Blue Dahlia (1946), and Strangers on a Train (1951). Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. For overview of Welles's noirs, see, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. Take a look at the Guardian and Observer critics list of the best 10 noirs and you'll realise things aren't that simple … [85], Scholar Andrew Spicer argues that British film noir evidences a greater debt to French poetic realism than to the expressionistic American mode of noir. Where Polanski and Towne raised noir to a black apogee by turning rearward, director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader brought the noir attitude crashing into the present day with Taxi Driver (1976), a crackling, bloody-minded gloss on bicentennial America. Although film noir was originally associated with American productions, the term has been used to describe films from around the world. The Meaning of "Camp," and Why We Like... “Film noir.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/film%20noir. 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. 147–148; Macek and Silver (1980), p. 135. Ticket; For hobos, a union card or card asking for alms ; Duck soup: Easy, a piece of cake; Dummerer: Somebody who pretends to be (deaf and?) This page was last edited on 30 December 2020, at 18:11. [40], Another crucial literary source for film noir was W. R. Burnett, whose first novel to be published was Little Caesar, in 1929. Naremore (2008), pp. English Translation of “noir” | The official Collins French-English Dictionary online. [161] Adapted by director Robinson Devor from a novel by Charles Willeford, The Woman Chaser (1999) sends up not just the noir mode but the entire Hollywood filmmaking process, with seemingly each shot staged as the visual equivalent of an acerbic Marlowe wisecrack. )[89] In Japan, the celebrated Akira Kurosawa directed several films recognizable as film noirs, including Drunken Angel (1948), Stray Dog (1949), The Bad Sleep Well (1960), and High and Low (1963). [171] Some critics perceive classic noir's hallmark as a distinctive visual style. At least one important reference work identifies the latter as a film noir despite its early date. [50] A prime example is Kiss Me Deadly (1955); based on a novel by Mickey Spillane, the best-selling of all the hardboiled authors, here the protagonist is a private eye, Mike Hammer. 1. Night-for-night shooting, as opposed to the Hollywood norm of day-for-night, was often employed. [103] Where Altman's subversion of the film noir mythos was so irreverent as to outrage some contemporary critics,[104] around the same time Woody Allen was paying affectionate, at points idolatrous homage to the classic mode with Play It Again, Sam (1972). [123], Among big-budget auteurs, Michael Mann has worked frequently in a neo-noir mode, with such films as Thief (1981)[121] and Heat (1995) and the TV series Miami Vice (1984–89) and Crime Story (1986–88). Film noir is often associated with an urban setting, but many classic noirs take place in small towns, suburbia, rural areas, or on the open road; setting, therefore, cannot be its genre determinant, as with the Western. Movies of his such as 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) and Private Detective 62 (1933) are among the early Hollywood sound films arguably classifiable as noir—scholar Marc Vernet offers the latter as evidence that dating the initiation of film noir to 1940 or any other year is "arbitrary". 338–39. [90] Spanish author Mercedes Formica's novel La ciudad perdida (The Lost City) was adapted into film in 1960. Still others focus on mood and attitude. Specifically, tales of crime and moral ambiguity shot in black & white with high contrast lighting (bright lights and deep black shadows). [c] The shadows of Venetian blinds or banister rods, cast upon an actor, a wall, or an entire set, are an iconic visual in noir and had already become a cliché well before the neo-noir era. [191], Film noir is often described as essentially pessimistic. Spicer (2007), pp. The signal film in this vein was Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder; setting the mold was Barbara Stanwyck's unforgettable femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson—an apparent nod to Marlene Dietrich, who had built her extraordinary career playing such characters for Sternberg. Characters' faces may be partially or wholly obscured by darkness—a relative rarity in conventional Hollywood filmmaking. [29] Successful films in that genre such as Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1932) demonstrated that there was an audience for crime dramas with morally reprehensible protagonists. 255–61. Learn more. For instance, The Night of the Hunter (1955), starring Robert Mitchum in an acclaimed performance, is treated as a film noir by some critics, but not by others. [155], Film noir has been parodied many times in many manners. Ignored: Bould (2005); Christopher (1998); Ottoson (1981). See, e.g., Naremore (2008), p. 163, on critical claims of moral ambiguity; Lyons (2000), pp. See Palmer (2004), pp. 1–21; Schatz (1981), pp. [34] It also exemplifies the problem of classification: one of the first American films to be described as a film noir, it has largely disappeared from considerations of the field. [141] Writer-director Rian Johnson's Brick (2005), featuring present-day high schoolers speaking a version of 1930s hardboiled argot, won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the Sundance Film Festival. The films are seen as depicting a world that is inherently corrupt. I havent watched any of these (except one) and so cannot vouch for them to be proper noir or neo-noir. 4, 6 passim. [74] Ulmer's other noirs include Strange Illusion (1945), also for PRC; Ruthless (1948), for Eagle-Lion, which had acquired PRC the previous year and Murder Is My Beat (1955), for Allied Artists. 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