Noir is the New Black; Why Noir Might Not Be a Genre

Meredith Antley

Film, Noir, and Novel

Prof. Sinowitz

1 November 2017

Noir is the New Black; Why Noir Might Not Be A Genre

            The cinematic uniqueness of a hardboiled detective film, or the literary distinctness of a novel with similar mood, is unlike any other. From the minute the movie begins, or you open the book, automatically you know that the criminals involved are not going to have a happy ending. This mood of these early to mid 20th century pieces are perfectly defined by the French as noir. The earliest of these noir movies and books harnessed this tone and shaped (what some would say) an entirely new genre. The key elements in a classical noir film or book have a crime, cigarettes, rain, California, a visit to Mexico at one point or another, a femme fatale, and a sense of impending doom. Like in any movie or book in any genre, one or two of these key elements can be dropped from the piece, but one characteristic seems to never falter in the work I have experienced within the genre; the sense of impending doom.

            My introduction with the noir began with Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Within the first few pages of this book, there is already a heightened sense of dishonesty, dislike, and a disturbing amount of cigarettes. The femme fatale uses multiple aliases until admitting that her real name is Brigid, and our first description of her is focused around her physical beauty. Instead of falling in love with her, Spade uses her desire for him to extract information and leads her straight to jail. Before she is sent away, Spade says, “I will not play the sap for you.” The importance of this line is that he won’t let himself fall in love with someone that he is unable to trust. Almost immediately after meeting our femme fatale, Samuel Spade’s partner is shot, dies, and he is more focused on rolling his cigarette than investigating the murder of Miles Archer. This reaction is not uncommon in hard-boiled detective novels. In fact, it is very rare for the protagonist to even work with anyone other than himself. Being one of the earliest noir novels, many other writers who wrote within the hardboiled detective genre began mimicking some of Hammett’s work. Samuel Spade seems to always have a witty comeback, a fast arm, and seems to almost have a sixth sense when it comes to liars or anyone that is going to deceive him. Those characteristics happen to be common for detectives in other hardboiled detective novels during this time period.

I am not saying that all noir novels require a detective with a temper and the ability to foil the antagonist’s plan; other popular noir novels during this era include the idea of “the perfect crime.” So, instead of having detectives investigating crimes, we have social outcasts creating these crimes. In these novels, the idea is that the protagonist would commit homicide, or steal, and get off scot-free. In James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, Frank Chambers narrates the story while on death row. He and his femme fatale, Cora, fall in love even though Cora is married to another man. Their plan is to kill Cora’s Greek husband and run away together. Even though the storyline falters from what other noir books contain, the sense impending doom is hard to ignore. Even after Frank and Cora go through their trial and win, their relationship becomes more argumentative and they become borderline alcoholics. At one point Frank even leaves the country to head to Mexico with a different woman while Cora visits her dying mother. His fling eventually ends, he returns to Cora, their drinking continues until Cora admits to Frank that she is pregnant. Because of this news, Frank tries his best to rekindle the love they had. When they take a day trip to the beach, Cora feels like there is something wrong. Frank rushes her out of the ocean, into the car, and to the hospital. Before they could make it, Frank crashes the car and the crash kills Cora instantly. The end of novel reveals that Frank is on death row for the murder of Cora. The entire novel you know that these two won’t get away with it. Even though Cora escaped the law, and Frank is being hanged for unrelated murder, they were still unable to escape the evil they had committed. Their relationship was weak and unstable, and even though Frank did not seem to intentionally kill her, they still ended up being punished.

The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Maltese Falcon have entirely different storylines and characters, but they still are related and considered classical noirs. Even though Frank was a murderer and Spade was a detective, throughout the entire novel you know that something is going to go wrong. Although, in The Maltese Falcon, Spade solves the case, sends the Fatman and his posse to jail, and Spade continues on with his detective practice, while Frank in Postman, is sitting on death row. These are considered classical noirs because there is an inevitable demise for the “bad guys” in the novels, regardless if the protagonist is considered one of these “bad guys” or not. In other words, no one can get away with their crime without some sort of punishment.

The novels I have previously mentioned all take place in California, but there is noir film that’s storyline is set in New York. Laura is a detective movie where detective Mark McPherson is given a case to solve the murder of Laura Hunt. He meets her boss and mentor, her fiancé, and her aunt throughout this movie, and we find out that Laura was never killed. Her boss, Waldo Lydecker, did in fact attempt to shoot her because of his infatuation with her and he felt as if Laura took advantage of his kindness, and overlooked his love, since she was engaged to entirely different man. This movie contains a lot of the key elements of a noir, but lacks an important characteristic. It has cigarettes, rain, a crime, and the feeling that something is not quite right, that something will go wrong. However, it does not take place in California, there is no trip to Mexico, and it is lacking a femme fatale. A femme fatale is a French term, which is a way to describe a woman who is beautiful but will inevitably bring destruction to your life. In other words, a femme fatale is someone you cannot trust. In Laura, the lead female character is not involved in the film until halfway through, and the only destruction she brings with her returning is that Lydecker attempts to murder her. She does not inflict or cause any major pain onto the protagonist, Mark McPherson. This movie qualifies as a historical noir because of the camera angles and lighting. There is a lot of disturbing camera angles, low lighting, and shots that is consistent with other noir films. The story line itself, other than the lack of a femme fatale, also is similar to other noir novels and movies. The crime, the detective, and how the criminal will pay for his crimes. In this case Lydecker’s end is he being shot by the detective to prevent him from murdering Laura Hunt.

It’s hard to say when the first noir film was produced. In James Naremore’s More Than Night, he says, “the last film noir is no easier to name than the first” (Naremore, 39). Even though when The Maltese Falcon was transformed into a movie, many critics claim that that movie was the first noir film. In John T. Irwin’s Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir, he says, “The Maltese Falcon is one of the earliest and best examples of the genre” (Irwin, 208). Although Irwin states here that noir is a genre, I do not entirely agree. My understanding of noir is that it is either a mood, or it is a subgenre of the very popular thriller genre. The inevitable unhappy ending creates a tone that affects the entire story line. From the moment you open the book, or start the movie, you know to trust the protagonist and be skeptical of everyone else. This feeling of impending doom is a mood. When you know something bad is going to happen, you get anxious for the characters, and this impacts the way you view these characters, protagonist and antagonist. This pessimistic view that you acquire while reading or watching anything noir associated is what the author or director wants you to feel through writing, lighting, and camera angles. Since the artist is trying to make their audience uncomfortable, it makes it a mood. While the thriller genre is defined as an exciting story with a detective or a spy, it makes sense to identify noir as a subgenre of this category.

At first glance, however, it is easy to see how many people identify noir as its own separate genre since these plots all contain similar structural elements. However, the components that are supposed to contribute to these noir films and novels are so inconsistent. In Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir, Irwin states, “Film noir is ‘essentially a scholarly discovery’ (Palmer, 141), a category created by critical retrospection. Virtually none of the studio executives, directors, writers, or actors who made these movies in the 1940’s and ‘50s would have even heard of the term film noir; rather, they would simply have described this type of picture as either a detective story, murder mystery, thriller, or crime drama” (Irwin, 208). Since the artists who more or less created noir didn’t even know what the word French word meant in regards to their pieces, then in their minds they created one of four dramas that Irwin had mentioned. In More Than Night Naremore says, “Nothing links together all the things described as noir -- not the theme of crime, not a cinematographic technique, not even a resistance to Aristotelian narratives or happy endings” (Naremore, 10). In a genre, it is normal to omit certain defining characteristics, but since there are absolutely none that are consistent throughout all work associated with noir, it is hard to define noir as a genre.