It’s a fair question, but one that usually yields a subjective answer. Recently, in an attempt to make their back catalogs more marketable, major studios have been re-releasing large portions of their 1940s and 1950s titles on home video under the banner of film noir, many seemingly branded as such just because of their black-and-white cinematography. While most cinephiles welcome any access to some of these relative obscurities, whatever they are called, this marketing has only fogged up the face of true noir.
The irony is that during this subgenre’s heyday (roughly 1946 to 1955), no studio ever consciously put any films noir into production. They did, however, make thrillers and contemporary dramas, movies that were subsequently labeled “noir,” or black, by French film critics who noticed widespread use of low-key lighting that made the films literally dark. More important, it was discovered, these films shared a cynical attitude about postwar America, a violent country filled with duplicitous men and femmes fatales who would stab you in the back for a few measly bucks.
Perhaps it is this overall mood, a mood that could even be called despairing, that true films noir have in common, and while the 11 great films selected for this series don’t always have downbeat endings, they generally reflect a chaotic, murderous universe where life is cheap and cigarettes are even cheaper. Even the titles—The Big Sleep, Nightmare Alley, Force of Evil, The Killers—remind us of death. After all, noir protagonists romanticize death; they don’t simply embrace their inevitable doom, they make love to it.
These fatalistic noir “heroes” are generally troubled souls who work after dark in sleazy professions, like the carny played by Tyrone Power in Nightmare Alley or nightclub tout turned wrestling promoter Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) in Night and the City. While not all detective and crime movies from this era can be labeled noir, the private dick, another shadowy profession, was certainly a fixture of the movement. The two classics that bookend the series, The Big Sleep and Kiss Me Deadly, respectively feature two iconic literary characters at the opposite end of the gumshoe spectrum: Raymond Chandler’s somewhat sophisticated Philip Marlowe (embodied by the even more iconic Humphrey Bogart) and Mickey Spillane’s brutish Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker).
Why do we care to spend time in the company of such disreputable souls? Why would we ever intentionally wallow in such depictions of human misery? Whether it’s through shadowy lighting or highly stylized dialogue that revels in the tough guy idiom, the great films noir find a way to elevate the direst elements of life on earth to the level of poetry. When the basically decent character played by Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past willingly surrenders to the temptations offered by beautiful bad girl Jane Greer, even though he knows it will probably mean his downfall, he tells her, “Baby, I don’t care.”
That’s what film noir is all about.
Jim Healy, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Motion Picture Department
Thursday, January 3
THE BIG SLEEP (Howard Hawks, US 1946, 116 min.) New 35mm print!
Thursday, January 10
THE KILLERS (Robert Siodmak, US 1946, 105 min., 35mm)
Thursday, January 17
OUT OF THE PAST (Jacques Tourneur, US 1947, 97 min., 35mm)
Thursday, January 24
NIGHTMARE ALLEY (Edmund Goulding, US 1947, 111 min., 35mm)
Thursday, January 31
7 p.m. THE BIG HEAT (Fritz Lang, US 1953, 90 min., 35mm) and
8:45 p.m. HUMAN DESIRE (Fritz Lang, US 1952, 90 min., 35mm)
Thursday, February 7
NIGHT AND THE CITY (Jules Dassin, US 1950, 101 min.) New 35mm print!
Thursday, February 14
LAURA (Otto Preminger, US 1944, 85 min., 35mm)
Thursday, February 21
7 p.m. FORCE OF EVIL (Abraham Polonsky, US 1948, 78 min., 35mm) and 8:30 p.m. HE RAN ALL THE WAY (John Berry, US 1951, 77 min, 35mm)
Thursday, February 28
KISS ME DEADLY (Robert Aldrich, US 1955, 106 min., 35mm)
All films will be screened in the Dryden Theatre at 8 p.m. unless
otherwise noted. Admission is $6, $5 students, and $4 members.
