The genre of film noir

Haha. Film noir. The favourite starting point for so many directors, Preminger to Nolan. Why 'noir' has established such a solid reputation and its codes and conventions still exist today is a mystery. Ha.

I don't think it is. Noir is, in essence, tradegy. Noir films do not, if they are following strictly the suggested codes of noir, (some argue its not a genre but a list of suggested catagories), anyway, to finish my point, noir ends badly. Which makes it a TRADEGY.

The conflict and resolution result in the hero NOT succeeding and usually dying, or being left in a much diminished state.

However, and this might point to why people keep coming back to it, noir characters were the first tragic characters in the development of popular cinema to be seen SYMPATHETICALLY.

In other words, here is a human being, failing in something badly, as a result of their own actions, in some cases they know what they've done and yet aren't able to stop it and everything will not go well at the end for them but still they go through it.


SCARLETT STREET

In Scarlett Street, the brilliant Edward G. Robinson plays a socially and romantically inept character who happens to meet, and save, a lovely girl one night. They start a relationship but from the outset it is one sided and we, then he, finds out he's being played for a fool and that the girl is keeping up with her boyfriend and doesn't care for poor Edward G at all. That is until he goes biccys and slices her seven ways till Sunday and spends the rest of the film in a horrible slide towards madness.

And yet. Do we hate this murderer? He has the most annoying wife on the planet and works hard and is actually a genius painter who is totally undiscovered.

We don't. We feel for him. He's a man trapped in a crappy situation who wants more, who wants to break free, but goes out of his depth, loses the plot for a moment and commits a horrible crime.

You could argue noirs are films made by social workers who have an eye for murder.



You can't go wrong with the Big Heat either.