When I went back on this site to write my tribute to Kevin Sansom I found this article still waiting in the draft section. I had completely forgotten about it and apparently the last time I worked on it was around June 9th, 2011 at 12:56am. Originally it was going to be a pre-curser to a classic film review V-Log series I was going to start making but ended up indefinitely postponing in favor of using the time I would have spent on it to work on my comic with Lucas Jones instead. I decided I'd show you what I had done on it and then in a different font conclude it for you Enjoy!
-Adam
Thanks to the huge hype that the video game L.A. Noir has been getting lately I have been thinking a lot about the Film Noir genre and watching (or re-watching) some of the ones that I own. I thought it would be good to do a review of some of those films and give you an idea of what Film Noir actually is since many of you have probably heard of it before but never had it explained to you properly.
To understand what it is it helps to understand where Noir came from and how it came to be. Film Noir can trace it's roots back to the late 1800s. Thanks to the industrial revolution many cities had become little more then cesspools. The air was full of ash and soot, the people worked in sweatshops and then went home to their disease filled over crowded slums and open sewage even flowed through the gutters. As a result moral depravity and indecency of all sorts became wide spread. Heinous crimes like London's Jack the Ripper filled the newspaper headlines. Obviously you can't have all that happen without it affecting the culture and soon literature began to reflect more the world around it and became darker and more gritty. For entertainment people began reading pulp magazines which were becoming more and more popular. Pulp magazines cost next to nothing to publish thanks in part to the fact that they were made out of recycled cheap pulp paper (hence the name pulp magazine). The magazines flourished and evolved. Many famous heros and stories of the day were started in the pulps which continued right up to the 1950s. Authors like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler published some of their most famous works originally as monthly pulp novels or novellas (every month the books would release a new chapter like comic books do today). By the 1930s and 40s the predominant hero of the books was the hard boiled private detective. Many of the most famous noir films are actually screen adaptations of pulp stories.
Ok so here's where we come in with the continuation on November 13th, 2011. While the characters of noire may owe their lineage to the British and American pulps of the nineteenth and earlier twentieth century the distinct look and style of the films can trace it's roots to mainland Europe.
Around the same time that Pulps were becoming popular an artistic movement known as Expressionism was coming into prominence. Paintings like The Scream By Edvard Munch, Nollendorfplatz by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner others began using exaggerated shapes and heavy shadows that were far from reality in order to establish mood. The movement became so popular it later went on to influence not only paintings but sculpture, dance, literature, theatre, architecture, music and most importantly of all (to this article) film! Following the first world war new social realities in the Weimar Republic (pre-Nazi Germany) began to seep into art. Filmmakers and filmgoers alike became drawn to the new film movement sweeping Germany. While many of the earlier films of the German Expressionist movement like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari look just like the paintings they were influenced by, later ones such as Nosferatu and Metropolis for example, toned down the surrealist sets in favor of using shadows and weird camera moves to capture the expressionist mood (I acknowledge that there is still a little expressionist influence in the set design though). These films not only influenced German filmmakers but a whole new generation all around the world. Since many artists of all kinds including filmmakers were highly political (or seen to be) and promoted ideas that countered National Socialism (Nazis) many of them had to flee Europe when or shortly after Adolph Hitler came to power. Eventually many of them made their way to Hollywood where they started to work their European (many Czech and other Europeans started copying the German expressionist filmmaking before exile) styles into American films. At the same time the American born filmmakers who were either influenced by imported films when they were starting in their early careers or were later influenced by their peers from Europe were starting to be put in the director's chair themselves. This amalgam of European and American film styles slowly but surely gave birth to the Noire genre we know today.
The term is credited as being first used by Nino Frank, a French film reviewer in 1946. Since there were trade embargoes on the Third Reich, no new American films had been seen in France after it's fall in 1940. Watching a plethora of the Hollywood films that were coming in from the last six years Nino Frank noticed how different the American "Police Drama" films had become since he last had seen any. He called the new style "Black Film" because of its use of heavy over exaggerated shadows and dark cynical subject matter. The term wasn't well known in the States until around the 1970s (prior to that they were just seen mostly as ordinary "melodrama" films).
Originally I was going to end this by mentioning L.A. Noire again and my hopes for that game but since it's already been released and I've purchased and beaten it I can't really write that ending anymore now can I (that game was awesome by the way!)?! So instead I will say that I hope this was interesting and that it was written in a style that I probably won't use as much since it's not exciting or zany enough and I want to attract a wider variety of readers. Oh well this was written and planned while I was still trying to find what tone I wanted to write in and it was an experiment so I don't regret it. I may continue the series (Know Your Noire) at some point but I haven't decided yet. If you didn't get bored and are still reading this and want to see more articles like it you should let me know in the comments section I'm always eager to see people's feedback!
Until next time thanks for reading!
Sincerely,
-Adam Shaughnessy (a.k.a. Adam Dingman)
Ok so here's where we come in with the continuation on November 13th, 2011. While the characters of noire may owe their lineage to the British and American pulps of the nineteenth and earlier twentieth century the distinct look and style of the films can trace it's roots to mainland Europe.
Around the same time that Pulps were becoming popular an artistic movement known as Expressionism was coming into prominence. Paintings like The Scream By Edvard Munch, Nollendorfplatz by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner others began using exaggerated shapes and heavy shadows that were far from reality in order to establish mood. The movement became so popular it later went on to influence not only paintings but sculpture, dance, literature, theatre, architecture, music and most importantly of all (to this article) film! Following the first world war new social realities in the Weimar Republic (pre-Nazi Germany) began to seep into art. Filmmakers and filmgoers alike became drawn to the new film movement sweeping Germany. While many of the earlier films of the German Expressionist movement like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari look just like the paintings they were influenced by, later ones such as Nosferatu and Metropolis for example, toned down the surrealist sets in favor of using shadows and weird camera moves to capture the expressionist mood (I acknowledge that there is still a little expressionist influence in the set design though). These films not only influenced German filmmakers but a whole new generation all around the world. Since many artists of all kinds including filmmakers were highly political (or seen to be) and promoted ideas that countered National Socialism (Nazis) many of them had to flee Europe when or shortly after Adolph Hitler came to power. Eventually many of them made their way to Hollywood where they started to work their European (many Czech and other Europeans started copying the German expressionist filmmaking before exile) styles into American films. At the same time the American born filmmakers who were either influenced by imported films when they were starting in their early careers or were later influenced by their peers from Europe were starting to be put in the director's chair themselves. This amalgam of European and American film styles slowly but surely gave birth to the Noire genre we know today.
The term is credited as being first used by Nino Frank, a French film reviewer in 1946. Since there were trade embargoes on the Third Reich, no new American films had been seen in France after it's fall in 1940. Watching a plethora of the Hollywood films that were coming in from the last six years Nino Frank noticed how different the American "Police Drama" films had become since he last had seen any. He called the new style "Black Film" because of its use of heavy over exaggerated shadows and dark cynical subject matter. The term wasn't well known in the States until around the 1970s (prior to that they were just seen mostly as ordinary "melodrama" films).
Originally I was going to end this by mentioning L.A. Noire again and my hopes for that game but since it's already been released and I've purchased and beaten it I can't really write that ending anymore now can I (that game was awesome by the way!)?! So instead I will say that I hope this was interesting and that it was written in a style that I probably won't use as much since it's not exciting or zany enough and I want to attract a wider variety of readers. Oh well this was written and planned while I was still trying to find what tone I wanted to write in and it was an experiment so I don't regret it. I may continue the series (Know Your Noire) at some point but I haven't decided yet. If you didn't get bored and are still reading this and want to see more articles like it you should let me know in the comments section I'm always eager to see people's feedback!
Until next time thanks for reading!
Sincerely,
-Adam Shaughnessy (a.k.a. Adam Dingman)
