Film Noir as Genre or Movement

Ramrod (1947) - the Film Noir Western

Should you be an academic afficionado of the golden era of Hollywood, or should you be an armchair semiotician, concerned with making the correct arguments on your favourite films, you may want to consider this brief question regarding film noir:

Is Film Noir a Genre or is it a Movement?

As I have suggested this burning issue will not be of importance to many, but for some the distinction may help them not only answer an essay question, but put into proper place many of the productions of the film noir era.

The fact is that film movements occur in relation to specific historical periods and generally also to geographic boundaries too.  Thus we have the films we refer to as being German Expressionist, French New Wave and Soviet Social Realism. The reason these categories are not genres is that as in film noir, these movies are responding to specific national stresses and energies, and in fact as movements cross many different genres.

Thus, a film movement will relate to a spcific time period, just as film noir relfects the concerns, stresses and hopes of the 1940s and 1950s, whereas a genre will exist through time.  As long as there have been movies, as an example, there have been westerns.  they have changed in their popularity, and moved with the times, but the basic features of the genre have remained.   Lookign at the western more closely, you migth take a convention from within that, such as the railroad, and look at how it has changed from say, The Iron Horse of 1924, to Once Upon a Time in the West, in 1972.

Genres then are often typified by subject matter and objects within the stories, and it is this which will lead you to the conclusion that film noir is in fact a movement, and not a genre, as it is characterised by a visual style and a certain type of anti-hero, and actually cuts across genres.

Some of the first film noirs such as Stranger on the Third Floor demonstrate this admirably, by mixing genres such as police procedural, horror and social problem film, presenting them with the unique visuals of film noir.  These characteristics in film noir, are not rules to be enforced as such, and in fact are never the most important aspect of the picture in question.

This would lead me to ask, if film noir is all about tone and style rather than genre, why are there no film noir westerns?

It's a decent question, and the answer has to be that with its particularly urban emphasis, and with its focus on individual failing, often in an otherwise upright suburban male, the underworld and the subjects of passion and greed were especially suited to film noir. 

Veronica Lake in Ramrod (1947)

That said, the film Ramrod (1947) fits neatly into the concept of the film noir western.  

In Ramrod, Veronica Lake, known for several great film noir roles, plays an aggressive and sexual woman who causes several murders, and she is contratsed against Arleen Wheelan, a more traditional stay-at-home woman.  

Likewise, we find another typical noir trope in Ramrod, in that the male lead seems unable to control the action.

As a final noir credential, Ramrod is also directed by a Hungarian émigré  André de Toth, and the basic world view in the film is classic noir - paranoid, hopeless and rather claustrophobic - most unusual stuff for a western.