Noir and the Necessity of an Unhappy Ending

Shannon Swingley

Noir, Film, and Novel

Professor Sinowitz

November 17, 2017

Noir and the Necessity of an Unhappy Ending

        Curled up in my college dorm cliché of a beanbag chair, I was able to take a more attentive approach to The Postman Always Rings Twice than some of the other films and novels from this seminar because I began reading early for once. The end of the novel was growing more and more uncomfortable in the context of noir than any of the other stories had managed. This wildly dysfunctional thrill seeking couple, who were at each other’s throats for a lack of excitement were going to meet their happily ever after despite venomous arguments, an unplanned pregnancy, and an un-convicted murder hanging over their heads. Our class has foundationally defined noir for its sense of impending doom, so reading the hardboiled character in a baptismal moment where, “all the devilment, and meanness, and shiftlessness, and no-account stuff in [Frank’s] life had been pressed out and washed off” stands out starkly in the genre. After 6 weeks of exposure to noir, breaking that sense of doom was arguably more uncomfortable than the expected impending disaster in these stories. When Cora started to miscarry the familiarity of impending disaster returned, but not in full force until the car crashed. Though I can’t say I was rooting for the pregnant character to brutally die, for once I was surprised by a noir novel, and through that surprise I realized how important recurrence of an unhappy ending is in this genre.

        Noir is defined by a distinct sense of impending doom, and as a natural extension of that, the feeling comes to fruition by having a dark ending. Frank and Cora are no exception. After the baptismal scene with frank, Cora begins to miscarry the pregnancy, and on their way to the hospital, Frank crashes the car killing Cora. Frank is once again accused of murder, though this time it is far less clear if it was his subconscious intention or a horrible accident. Either way it is revealed to the readers that this entire story had been told from death row as Frank spends his final moments convincing himself that he truly loved Cora.  I think if we were to take away the dark ending there would be a sense of let down, or more accurately a feeling that the story is incomplete.

During our discussion of Citizen Vince we discussed that endings are artful or true. Personally, I think this idea is universal, but for the sake of this argument I will say it is especially true for noir, and that I am in complete agreement with the concept. A true ending must be unhappy to reflect how all endings are in real life. Endings are either fabricated and happy to drive a point home, or they are realistic which is always painful. I have always said that “if an ending is happy it is because it’s stopped in the middle of a story” which has caused countless arguments with the optimists of the world. But it is for this reason that the dark endings in noirs are realistic, and though they are painful, it is easy to accept because there are echoes of real life.

I was going on my first date. Ever. I was nervous and excited as most people are before a date. My sister had talked to me the night before saying that I had to think optimistically about these things, and everything would be alright. I took her advice, I sat and drank coffee and had an all around awkward but enjoyable time. We were walking to our next class together and from the other end of the hall I saw my dad standing with our student life coordinator for the dorm we lived in. I immediately knew that something was wrong despite the reassurance from the people around me as I made what felt like a death march to the end of the hall. I found out that my sister, who had preached optimism and happy endings, was in surgery after having her liver eviscerated by the weight of a ¾ ton truck rolling over her midsection. Ironically it was from the person who preached optimism that I learned happy moments will always meet their unhappy end, usually sooner rather than later, and maybe not how you expected.  

Frank and Cora had a moment of calm before the storm that ended their lives. The novel did a fantastic job of convincing us that perhaps just this once someone would find happiness before ripping it away with a miscarriage, death, and execution. Despite this bleak statement, had Frank and Cora successfully pulled off the perfect crime as so many people fantasize about or at least idealize, The Postman Always Rings Twice would not be noir. The fabricated artful ending where the two people who clearly have issues get to raise their child and live happily ever after as murderers who avoided the law would have disrupted the entire mood of the noir story and destroyed the sense of realism that noir uses in conjunction with existentialist ideals.

        Further, had the couple gotten away with murdering the Greek, the sense of justice that has become an important facet of noir would have been ruined as well. Generally, we see a hardboiled detective working outside of the corrupt justice system to enact some single-handed vengeance on people or corporations that have done bad things and gotten away with it in a corrupt world. But in this novel, Frank and Cora really don’t have a good reason to murder the Greek. He’s not like Sam Spade’s partner, or the corrupt insurance company in Double Indemnity, he seems to be a generally good man facing racism and a truly terrible cuckold situation. Had Frank not met some sort of justice, even if it was by the corrupt system, there would have been a failed sense of justice that noir promises to deliver.  

This is bleak, I know. I sound like a terrible pessimist that doesn’t believe in any sort of happiness. Just in defense of myself, I don’t think that is true, I just think happiness would be insubstantial without the knowledge of its demise. This echoes existentialist rhetoric that helped found noir as a genre. If noir didn’t counter the cultural fantasy of the perfect crime with a realistic ending then I think it would take it out of the category noir by ruining the sense of impending doom. Not only that, but it would also make the novel incredibly unfulfilling. Even in the collective american fantasy, people who pull of the perfect crime by murdering an innocent don’t get away with it, a child doesn’t fix an incredibly uncomfortable relationship. An unhappy ending is simply necessary for noir, and this is particularly true of The Postman Always Rings Twice.