Essay: "Film Noir"

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Red Riding, a trilogy of British made-for-TV movies that I feel are an excellent example of film noir. This week I thought I'd write a bit about film noir more broadly, because two of my favorite movies of the past few years (I'll Sleep When I'm Dead and Brick) are examples of the genre and I have strong opinions on the subject (although I should note that you can read definitions of film noir online written by people who are much more qualified to speak about the subject than me, and so what follows is my own personal view).


I think its easiest to begin with what film noir is not. Film noir is not a set of what I would call "genre signifiers", by which I mean the things that many people associate with the genre. Fedoras, tommy guns, the name of a private detective appearing backwards through the glass of the door, men using the word "dame", liquor in hip flasks. Film noir isn't uniquely associated with certain settings, such as New York City, or certain times, like immediately before and after the Second World War. Film noir is about a particular attitude, a feeling, a state of mind. Without this ingredient a movie may look like a film noir but it isn't one. That is why, for example, Sin City is really just an action movie with all of its heroes in beige trench coats, and not a film noir.

Film noir is often (and most classically) set in grim urban environments and is associated with a particular kind of cityscape, with fire escapes climbing the side of old buildings, and water towers on the rooftops, and dark alleways across from brightly lit diners. But other locations can also set the scene for film noir just as well. For instance, Red Riding (and before it, Get Carter) was set in the north of England. There were no skyscrapers there, just small, grim and run down industrial towns. Another obvious example is Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, which stars Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe and is set in 1960's California.  The recently-released Winter's Bone, which tells a story of meth dealers, is set in modern Missouri in the Ozark Mountains.  Finally, and maybe most famously, Fargo was set in Minnesota.

I think these kinds of film noir speak us more in modern times. After all, in most Western cities, the downtown core has become an enclave of the ultra-rich. There are very few "slums" in Manhattan or downtown Toronto any more. We associate downtown with condominiums and expensive sushi restaurants. Now we find poverty elsewhere; in the old industrial towns where there are no more jobs, in subsidized housing, in hopeless rural areas where small farmers have been squeezed out by gigantic agribusinesses.

And so what is film noir? I think there are two main "kinds". The first focuses on a moralistic central character who refuses to compromise his or her values in an immoral world (Le Samourai, or Brick, or the other private detective movies). The second focuses on the corrosive effect of secrecy, often involving an ordinarily good person who decides to commit a crime and has to deal with the consequences (A Simple Plan) or the paranoid fear of informers in the world of organized crime (Winter's Bone). Here too, film noir is very moralistic. The message is simple: if you live a good life, you don't need to have a good memory. But once you do one evil thing, you have to live a lie, not just for a little while, but forever. You have to pretend to be someone you're not, you have to make sure every moment that you don't let the secret get out. And so that one crime often leads to other crimes, to conceal the first, and you get led further and further away from the light, down into the darkness.

Some films, such as Red Riding, explore both these types, where an ethical detective figure crashes up against a secret world. The antagonists in Red Riding are desperately trying to cover up a crime committed decades ago, and they are led into some frightful places as a result.

In the end, it seems to me that what defines film noir (other than its subject matter) is its stridently moral nature. This may seem surprising to some, since film noir is associated with corruption (in politics, business, or the police) and the heroes of film noir are often cynical figures. But a cynic is always a disappointed romantic: they see what is but constantly compares it to how it should be (unlike a romantic, who sees what should be, or a realist, who sees what is). The disappointed romanticism of film noir, the contrast with what is and what should be, is the perfect way to express the fine line between living a safe and public life and a dangerous and secret one. Because secrets usually come out, and when they don't, it often would have been better if they had.

As Chief Gunderson said at the end of Fargo: "There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don't you know that? And here you are. And it's a beautiful day"