By Tessa Chudy · May 1, 2015
Film Noir is dark, disconcerting, frustratingly and fascinatingly difficult to define; it creates a world that acts as a dark mirror reflecting a distorted vision of society. The so called classic cycle of film noir is often considered to begin with The Maltese Falcon (1941) and end with A Touch of Evil (1958), and in a simplistic conclusion it was later reborn as neo-noir. Part of the reason that noir is so difficult to define is that it has adapted to incorporate a broad range of genres and styles; it also continues to reappear despite often being considered dead.
The elements of noir include fatalism, a doomed protagonist, the femme fatale, dark highly stylised visuals (which were influenced by German Expressionism), complex narrative structures (including flashbacks and other devices) and a first person voice-over. Classic noir, whether it features the iconic Marlowe style detective or not, is marked by a preoccupation with the dark side and the failure of the American dream. If forties noir is characterised by a kind of bruised romanticism, fifties noir is better described by a hard edged fatalism.
Read More: Behind the Venetian Blinds: A Peek at Great Film-Noir Movies
10. The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
John Huston also directed the iconic The Maltese Falcon early in the noir cycle, but The Asphalt Jungle is a very different kind of noir, a heist movie that embraces the fatalism of noir. A criminal mastermind meticulously plans a jewel heist and assembles a small but select team to pull it off, only to be double crossed by his partner. The Asphalt Jungle is both fatalistic and naturalistic in its representation of the criminal underworld and characters who cannot escape their inevitably tragic fates. There is no romanticism in the portrayal of the inevitable ending and this is a large part of the movies enduring power.
9. DOA (1950)
The title translates to dead on arrival which is the fate of the unfortunate central character. Mild mannered small town accountant Frank Bigelow (Edmond O’Brien) is on holiday in San Francisco, after a night on the town he discovers that someone has slipped him a radioactive cocktail and he is dying. Bigelow investigates his own murder, trawling through the criminal underworld desperately trying to find out why he was murdered. Fast paced, slightly manic, DOA is an illustration of the nightmarish aspect of noir, where characters are destroyed by forces completely beyond their own control.
8. Ace in the Hole/The Big Carnival (1951)
Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas) is a fallen journalist looking for one big story to get him back on top. When he stumbles on a man trapped in a mine Tatum creates not just a story, but a circus. Billy Wilder’s savage blackly comic noir is a remarkably cynical but it also presents a clear eyed and alarmingly prescient story of media manipulation filled with grasping characters. The image of the big carnival, a crowd of tourists and gawkers, consuming both ice creams and information updates with equal enthusiasm is a powerful one.
7. On Dangerous Ground (1952)
On Dangerous Ground is one of the rare noirs that escapes the claustrophobic confines of the city for a wintery rural landscape where the tormented, violent anti-hero Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) is sent to cool off. A girl has been murdered by an unstable boy and a manhunt is underway led by the girl’s father. Wilson meets a blind woman (Ida Lupino) living in an isolated farm house. On Dangerous Ground is also unusual in that it gives its emotionally and psychologically damaged characters the hope for redemption. The contrast between the corruption of the city and the stark cleanness of the country is beautifully handled by director Nicholas Ray.
6. The Big Combo (1955)
The Big Combo is a classic example of the ‘dark’ noir, visually much of takes place at night, its darkness is almost impenetrable, but the visuals are just a reflection of the darkness and perversity of the subject matter. Mr Brown is a smoothly sinister gangster who has seduced socialite Susan Lowell. Detective Diamond is also in love with Susan, and determines to destroy Brown in order to rescue her. Meanwhile Brown’s gay henchmen torture and murder their way through a stream of victims. Filled with psycho-sexual tensions and obsessive tormented characters who are in thrall to either violent or sexual fascinations. Even a seemingly happy ending does little to alleviate the prevailing darkness.
5. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Both savage satire on Hollywood and nightmarish film noir Sunset Boulevard combines cynicism with horror in Billy Wilder’s classic. A down and out screenwriter (William Holden) stumbles into the clutches of a reclusive silent movie star, Norma Desmond, played with grotesque brilliance by former silent star Gloria Swanson. Norma is both the ultimate spider woman/femme fatale and a tragic figure. Sunset Boulevard illustrates the slipperiness of noir where the elements of noir are obvious and central to the construction of the film,
4. The Big Heat (1953)
Directed by German master Fritz Lang, The Big Heat is a harshly lit film, forsaking noir’s traditional shadows for hard edged visuals. Story wise The Big Heat is classic noir, a brutal (in an infamous sequence a character played by Gloria Grahame has hot coffee thrown in her face) revenge saga. An honest cop (Glenn Ford) takes the law into his own hands and goes after the mob following the murder of his wife, his obsession is a stark, harsh thing reflected by the hard edged imagery.
3. Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
A genuine cult classic Robert Aldrich’s adaptation of Mickey Spillane’s pulp fiction, features thuggish two fisted PI Mike Hammer (played with genuine relish by Ralph Meeker) just one of the characters in blind pursuit of the great whatsit, a suitcase filled with radio-active material. Brutal and highly stylised it references both high and low culture and ends apocalyptically, its characters speak in florid prose, punctuated by bursts of violence, in a word – brilliant.
2. In a Lonely Place (1950)
Humphrey Bogart’s image is inextricably linked to that of film noir; he is the iconic jaded PI, with a cigarette dangling from his lips and a surprising moral streak, here he plays against that image. Dixon Steele is a washed up alcoholic screen writer with a violent temper. When the body of a woman that he took home is found, he seems like the perfect suspect and his new girlfriend (Gloria Grahame) finds herself unable to dismiss her suspicions that he may actually be guilty. Bleak and bittersweet, director Nicholas Ray combines a doomed romance with a stark murder mystery. The characters are doomed by their own weaknesses to remain trapped in their own lonely places.
1. Touch of Evil (1958)
Touch of Evil is an incredible nightmare of a movie filled with strange and grotesque characters and jaw dropping visual imagery. Orson Welles directs and plays Hank Quinlan, a bloated corrupt cop who rules his domain on the Mexican border with an iron fist. The arrival of an honest Mexican cop (Charlton Heston) and his American bride (Janet Leigh) threatens both Quinlan and the local drug cartel. Often cited as the end of the noir cycle, Touch of Evil is extreme, in its representation of characters that inhabit a border zone between two countries, but also between right and wrong, its narrative is tortuously complex and visually it is remarkable.
Steph Greegor · April 28, 2015
