IS FILM NOIR: A GENRE OR A STYLE? - Anustup Roy
To identify if Film Noir is a style or genre, firstly they should be defined.
Film Genres are various forms or identifiable types, categories, classifications or groups of films. (Genre comes from the French word meaning "kind" "category," or "type").Genres refers to recurring, repeating and similar, familiar or instantly-recognizable patterns, themes, syntax, templates, paradigms, motifs, rules or generic conventions. That is a specific category of film having a particular set of characteristics.
Film styles are recognizable film techniques used by filmmakers to add specific pattern or value to their work. It can include all aspects in making a film: pattern of visuals, sound, dialogue, editing or attitude etc .
Difference between genre and film style
Film style is distinct from film genre, which categorizes films based on similar narrative structures. For instance, Western films are about the American West, love stories are about love, and so on. Film style categorizes films based on the pattern used in the making of the film, such as in cinematography or lighting. Style can be related with Auteur ship, in which, films bear the signature of the filmmaker .That is ,the style of making film is embodied in the film in very specific manner. For instance use of deep focus in Citizen Kane by Orson Wallse or use of long take of in Electra My Love by Miklos Jancso. Two films can be from the same genre, but they can look different based on the film style, if it is.
Grouping verses Genre
There are other methods of dividing films into groups besides genre. For example, critics group films according to their auteur-directors. Production attributes, can also be considered a grouping. Some groupings may be casually described as genres although the definition is questionable. For example, while independent films are sometimes discussed as if they are a genre in-and-of themselves, independent productions can belong to any genre. Similarly, while art films are referred to as a genre by film scholar David Bordwell, who states that "art cinema itself is a film genre, with its own distinct conventions", an art film can be in a number of genres and can have so many styles.
Film Noir (literally 'black film" or "black cinema') was coined by French film critics (first by Nino Frank in 1946) who noticed the trend of how 'dark', downbeat and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France to theatres, during and following second World War. The term film noir had in fact been employed by French writer of the late 1930s in discussions of these films. Film historian Charles O’Brien points out that in the years immediately before the war, the word noir often had pejorative connotations and was frequently used by the
right-wing French press in their attacks on the “immorality and scandal”
of left-wing culture. Noir was nevertheless embraced as a descriptive
adjective by several writers on the Left (particularly after the war), and the style favoured by the Popular Front, whether it was called “noir” or not, constituted a respectable and quite recognizable type of Film making for most critics.
CHARECTERASTICES
‘Film noir’ are pattern of films which are categorised by its themes were often derived from the plots of cheap, pulp fiction crime novel and characteristics of can be categorised as characters and their accessories, which are:
private eyes,
femme fatales,
snap-brim hats,
trench coats,
snub-nosed revolvers
neon lights,
presence of moral ambiguity,
chiaroscuro lighting,
unhappy endings,
in some cases link with Nazis,
et cetera et cetera, these were backed by deep-focus, depth-of-field camera work, skewed camera angles (usually vertical or diagonal rather than horizontal) and expressionist lighting (light and shadows).
Kiss me Deadly (1955)
Film noir doesn't have a thematic coherence, the term is most often applied to crime dramas, but certain westerns and comedies have been also cited as examples of film noir by some critics. Even such sentimental comedy-dramas as Frank Capra's "It's a wonderful life((1946)" have been cited as "noir-ish" by critics who finds in its suicidal hero and bleak depiction of small town life a tone suitably dismal for film noir. sometimes, such films are designated as "Semi-noir" or grey films, to indicate their hybrid status. Other critics argue that film noir is but an arbitrary destination for a multitude of dissimilar black and white dramas of the late 1940s and early ’50s. Film scholar Chris Fujiwara contends that the makers of such films “didn’t think of them as ‘films noir’, they thought they were making crime films, thrillers, mysteries, and romantic melodramas. The nonexistence of ‘noir’ as a production category during the supposed heyday of noir obviously complicates the history of the genre.” Yet it cannot be questioned that film noir connotes specific visual images and an aura of post-war cynicism in the minds of most film buffs. Indeed, several common characteristics connect most films defined as "Noir". Film noir is also a specific period of film history, such as Italian Neo-realism or French New Wave or Japanese New Wave or German Expressionism. Generally film noir refers to those Hollywood films of the 1940s and early of 1950s that portrayed the dark vision of world, crime, corruption and slick city street. Film noir brings back many previous periods such as 1930s Gangster films, French "poetic realism" ,German Expressionist crime films .
Social construct of the post second world war era was uneven. Due to the World War young male members of the family were sent to the battlefield. Women had to look after the families. As a reaction, to support ends, women started going out to earn their living. While supporting for the cause of family they gained social freedom. But as the male counterparts returned from battlefield mostly devastated due to the war, they didn’t want to allow the newly gained freedom of women. Thus complexities arise, which further fundamentally developed into the characterisation of femme fatal. Women were presented in a crooked way in film industry structure or even in the “Hardboiled Detective” stories. The contradiction of patriarchal dominance and newly gained freedom of Women were subduedly developed in the society, which was virtually represented in the films, later termed as Film-Noir.. Women were not alone in crisis or social dilemma. The whole society was, but the patriarchal forces duped in the presence of women. The profession of detective is also diminished in such scenario. Detectives are coined then as private eyes. The cases they receive now are mostly of adultery. It clearly shows women are made the scapegoat in the realm of cluelessness of moral principles. The shabby atmosphere-Low key setting in lighting of the sequences-Mostly night sequences-Swank night clubs being the majors features of this filmic pattern or film style, i.e., film noir questions the social norms and cause of its presence. If this category of films, i.e., film noir can be grouped as a film movement like German Expressionism or French Poetic Realism then representation of social perspective can be identified as an element of film style. Films of film noir represents the contemporary social perspective in its form, which indicates this category of films more like a film movement. In generally, every film movement has its own style. Which indicates film noir more as a a style rather than a genre.
A Location of film-noir
Critical Comments
According to Paul Schrader, Film noir is not a genre It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film "noir, " as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white. Film noir is also a specific period of film history, like German Expressionism or the French New Wave. In general, film noir refers to those Hollywood films of the Forties and early Fifties which portrayed the world of dark, slick city streets, crime and corruption. This pattern of films exploits people’s rational fears rising mostly from moral ambiguity, political corruption ( as in the case of Roman Polanaski’s “Chinatown”-the Watergate corruption) and effects of war (as incase of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver) even after end of classic noir cycle with Orsen Wells’ “Touch of a evil” in the 1950’s..
Raymond Durgnat in his 1970 article “The Family Tree of Film Noir”, characterises film noir as: The small-time gangster has now made it big and sits in the mayor's chair, the private has quit the police force in disgust, and the young heroine, sick of going along for the ride, is taking others for a ride.
Paul Schrader in “notes on film noir” concludes by pointing out, film noir was first of all a style, because it worked out its conflicts visually rather than thematically, because it was aware of its own identity, it was able to create artistic solutions to sociological problems. And for these reasons films like kiss me DEADLY, KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE and GUN CRAZY can be works of art in a way that gangster films like SCARFACE, PUBLIC ENEMY and LITTLE CAESAR can never be.
French critics often followed Frank’s line, praising noir for its dynamism, its cruelty, and its irrationality; but they also searched the dark Hollywood streets for what Chartier had called “accents of rebellion” against the “fatality of evil.” Some of the reasons behind this potentially contradictory response were evident during a round-table discussion at Cahiers du cinema in 1957, when André Bazin remarked in passing that in the French pre war cinema, “even if there wasn’t exactly a genre there was a style, the realist film noir.”Bazin’s remarks suggest, French discussion of American film noir was conditioned by the prevailing and sometimes conflicting trends in Left Bank intellectual culture. The importance of existentialism to the period has long been recognized; what needs to be emphasized is that existentialism was intertwined with a residual surrealism, and surrealism was crucial for the reception of any art described as “noir.”
Conclusion
Critics provided their own point of view on film noir which established their personal and descriptive definitions and also have superior adjective to defend it. A film features with urban nightlife isn't necessarily to be called as film noir. Similarly crime, thriller, corruption necessarily need not part of it. That's why film noir is defined by tone rather than genre . It's quite impossible to argue one critic's descriptive definition against another. Darkening stain played the most important role in crime thrillers as well as in melodramas also. The French critics also realized that through the lighting, characters and themes of had Hollywood evolved. Characters became more corrupt, lighting introduced darker, themes changed its previous ideology and the most important part was tone which became more hopeless. Film noir had shown the American livelihood as a unique way which was extremely new and nobody (no films) ever dared to do so.
A Western can be identified by people racing on horseback in the West to take revenge-where Red Indians are being portrayed as villains; a musical involves singing mashed with dancing; a war movie shows war. But the directors who worked in film noir didn’t use those typical elements to create their work. The term was later identified with several films of the same pattern and they were grouped as Film Noir or “black Cinema”. This clarifies the point where it doesn’t look like a genre, since films are grouped under the category of Film Noir due to the similarity of the look. They are more distinguishable by their forms rather than their contents, they are more specified by their patterns than the elements used.
Through our studies we came to the conclusion that, though Film Noir neither can be confirmed as genre nor as a style, it more resembles as style as such and moreover it’s a pattern of film.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
o Notes on Film Noir- Paul Schrader
o A companion to Film Noir- Andrew Spicer
o More Than Night- James Naremore
