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She's a paranoid woman but she's not alone. They are all over film noir, and not just in The House on Telegraph Hill (1951).
The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)
Dark Waters (1944)
Dark Waters (directed by André De Toth, 1944) doesn't follow the obvious conventions we associate with the film noir style, such as the long shadows, the urban setting, the tough guy talk, the femme fatale and the cruelty of fate.
But these weren't the only aspects of the movement, and although it's not overt in the more traditional noir crime stories of the 1940s and 1950s, Freudian psychology looms large in the cycle, and is pressed to the fore in such hits as The Woman in the Window.
Dark Waters also tips it hat to Freudian therapy, but that should be obvious from the title. It follows patterns largely established in the hit film Rebecca, and is typical of the paranoid woman film of the time.
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall at HUAC
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| Danny Kaye, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall protest at the HUAC Hearings |
Some notes on Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and their 1947 trip to Washington to present their case to HUAC, on behalf of the Committee for the First Amendment.
A bitter young blogger, intent on bringing to light the connections between film noir and the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee, visits his local library to see what books they have on offer on the awful years of HUAC.
In the library, this bitter young blogger is interested to note, that on the cover of both the books he find, is Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
The Birth of Film Noir
In Paris in the 1940s there were many cinema clubs at which audiences could view a good variety of films and then discuss them all night long.
The Cinematheque was for many young people a place of learning as much as it was a place of entertainment, and although they were generally small, these clubs were popular because they weren't owned by any studios and didn't feature tiresome newsreels, or the more well-known presentations that packed out the larger movie-houses.
During the Occupation of France by the Nazis, the import of Hollywood films was banned, which meant that that the French missed out on an amazingly fertile period of Amercian cinema, and this included many of the early crime-thrillers we now call film noir.
How Did Walter Neff Change His Mind in Double Indemnity?
Few people in the golden age of the silver screen had screen-writing so neatly nailed as did Billy Wilder.
A great example crossed my mind the other day when I was considering Double Indemnity (1944). I recalled that when Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson first approaches Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff, and she suggests that they get involved in a murder plot, he rejects her suggestion out of hand.
And yet, only one and a half minutes of screen time passes, before he has changed his mind.
How did Billy Wilder achieve this, and to any convincing degree?
I loaded the film to find out, and so began a masterclass in screenwriting economy.
I loaded the film to find out, and so began a masterclass in screenwriting economy.
Before I show you how it goes, I should warn you budding scriptwriters not to try this at home. Such miraculous and tight storytelling is only safe in the hands of the masters of the 1940s and 1950s. Films are generally an hour longer today than they were then anyway, so you maybe don't need these object lessons in brevity and control.
HOW WALTER NEFF CHANGED HIS MIND
by BILLY WILDER
THE SCENE: Billy Wilder's DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) about 20 minutes in.
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| "You bet I'll get outta here, baby. I'll get outta here but quick!" |
James M. Cain and the Boom of Sex and Violence in 1940s Film Noir
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| JAMES M. CAIN |
It hadn't always been that way. Back in the very earliest days of cinema, the films themselves had been novelties, simplistic selections of short scenes, and often quite random.
On many occasions, the film wasn't even the main attraction, but having said that, the content of the films began to come to the attention of the more morally minded members of society.
A good example from this time might be Carmencita (1894), a 21 second film directed and produced by Edison employee William K.L. Dickson.
On many occasions, the film wasn't even the main attraction, but having said that, the content of the films began to come to the attention of the more morally minded members of society.
A good example from this time might be Carmencita (1894), a 21 second film directed and produced by Edison employee William K.L. Dickson.
In the film, shot in New Jersey, a Spanish dancer named Carmencita was quite possibly the first female to appear in a US motion picture. In some states, the projection of this scandalous film was forbidden, however, because it revealed Carmencita's legs and undergarments as she twirled and danced - - making this one of the earliest cases of censorship in the moving picture industry.
Detour (1945)
Detour (1945) is high noir, low budget and endlessly fascinating. Like many of Edgar G. Ulmer’s films Detour was shot in 6 days; ‘Just visualise it,’ said Ulmer, ‘eighty set-ups a day.’
It’s hard to visualise, but it sure is heroic. Normally, this approach would produce a clunky and directionless mess, but occasionally as here, it can still produce a gem. It's what they used to call a 'poverty row quicky', for the high-speed and low-expense of its production, and there is something about this format that really lets the subversive implications of noir rise to the surface.
Detour is a fatalistic road-movie featuring the broke, the dissatisfied and a spade of bad luck. At heart it’s a tense anti-buddy relationship, between actors Tom Neal and Ann Savage. It turns out that Detour is also many people's favourite noir, given how bleak and cheap and evil it is. It's twisted in a way that is hard to achieve these days, and what buffs call a 'low-rent masterpiece.'
Detour is a fatalistic road-movie featuring the broke, the dissatisfied and a spade of bad luck. At heart it’s a tense anti-buddy relationship, between actors Tom Neal and Ann Savage. It turns out that Detour is also many people's favourite noir, given how bleak and cheap and evil it is. It's twisted in a way that is hard to achieve these days, and what buffs call a 'low-rent masterpiece.'
How to Title Your Film Noir
Some of these pictures I'm watching might be film noirs. It's all in the title.
Certainly there are thematic areas that are undubitably gloomy, paranoiac and criminal. And I think that yes, there are some pictures out there that you can tell are going to be film noir just because of how the title sounds.
For example, in film noir titles we often find the recurrence of one of several key words, such as street, dark and night. Often such titles feature a reference to roads, or travel, or simply to the dead-end and paranoiac suburban streets where they are set.
The Dark Corner
The Night Has 1000 Eyes
So Dark The Night
Street of Chance
Man in the Dark
Night Without Sleep
The Night of the Hunter
Crime in the Streets
Clash by Night
A Cry in the Night
The Midnight Story
Drive a Crooked Road
Side Street
Scarlet Street
Sometimes, in the titles of film noirs, we find an expression from the lingo familiar from hard-boiled school of fiction writing of the day. Examples might be:
Raw Deal
Framed
The Set-up
Decoy
At other times, film noir titles are constructed from a general combination of death, sexuality and violence.
Murder, My Sweet
Kiss of Death
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands
There are also film noir thrillers with titles suggestive of fatalism, or somehow containing a mood of anguish or despair. These titles sum up in a couple of words some of the great themes of noir, which are hopelessness, paranoia, and fate grabbing you by the scruff of your suit and calling you a heel. Examples of this type of title would include:
They Won’t Believe Me
I Walk Alone
Blind Alley
Criss-Cross
Desperate
Sudden Fear
No Questions Asked
Without Warning
Fear
Good film noir titles are suggestive, and not always explicit. There has to be something in the title alone that is going to pull you in, something that would have alerted the subconscious minds of the cinema-goers of the 1940s and 1950s.
This was an era when an American may have gone to the cinema three or four times a week and in most cases the title and a couple of images on the poster would have been enough to demonstrate what was going to be on offer.
And some of the film noir titles I've seen, seem to repeat certain keywords, which definitely alert a viewer what was up. Regard these titles which riff on the word strange which are all from 1946:
Strange Impersonation
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
Strange Triangle
The Strange Woman
The Stranger
Love from a Stranger
Finally, there is a paradigm in film noir titles which uses the confessional first person, promising much degradation of morality, and the plumbing of certain criminal depths.
This is probably my favorite title combination as it attempts in one pithy phrase, to capture the whole dangerous shebang with one lurid image:
I Love Trouble
I Walk Alone
I Was a Communist for the FBI
I Wouldn't be in Your Shoes
I Married a Communist
The Man with My Face
I Confess
One Girl's Confession
I, the Jury
Please Murder Me
I Want to Live!
Possibly one of the bluntest of all film noir titles is that of the 1952 Warner Brothers film noir THIS WOMAN IS DANGEROUS.
I've not seen it but I think I get the picture . . .some guy is going to fall for the wrong person and end up neck deep in a murder rap. That's usually the story in film noir.
IMAGE ATTRIBUTION: "Posterthiswomanx". Via Wikipedia.
This Gun For Hire (1942)
This Gun For Hire (1942) — one of the finest of the early film noirs out there — and the first to show off the mutual talents of Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd — is a classic of its kind, which much to interest the casual movie buff, the armchair semiotician, or anybody with an interest in the golden age of the silver screen.
This classic film noir features a troubled protagonist, a strange mix of genres, and a mean streak that has you questioning its cruelty from the off.
This Gun for Hire might be the title, in fact, but I would on occasion simply like to refer to it as Psychopaths of 1942 — because that is what it is like at times.
The psychopath was fairly new to the cinema at this stage, and Alan Ladd here plays 'Raven', a pscyho that quickly turns to hero.
Mildred Pierce (1945)
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A classic film noir indeed, and also a great melodrama, a story which from the off when it bangs iunto beach house action followed by a suicidal moment at the docks, this melodrama is not a film noir in its immediate sea-sweeping seconds, and the theme music is that of a woman's picture, that so-called real entity of the era, the project that is detoruned ce noir la.
Murder, My Sweet (1944)
Director Edward Dmytryk is something of a film noir hero. Born in Canada in 1908, the son of Ukranian immigrants, he was raised in California and began working in the Hollywood studios as a teenager. From 1935 to 1942 he directed a few B-pictures, but his breakthrough came in 1943 with the anti-Nazi propaganda piece, Hitler's Children.
The two noirs he made after this, Murder, My Sweet (1944) and Cornered (1945) secured his home in the noir canon, and this was followed by the excellent Crossfire (1947), possibly the first Hollywood picture to deal with the subject of racism.
As a left wing liberal however, Edward Dmytryk was one of the first to fall foul of film's furious foes at HUAC, and he became one of the Hollywood Ten for refusing to testify about his so-called un-American activities.
Destination Murder (1950)
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In the 1940s and 1950s, the female seeker hero was a new twist in storytelling, and she was
unique to film noir.
Destination Murder (1950) is a good time. It is a film of stupidity greed and fo sho sho fire murder. It is not possible to relate any information regarding this cine-fayre without mention of the player piano which is a large part of its attraction.
Film Noir Detour (1945)
What is so good about Detour, and why is it one of the best film noirs? It could all be in the outrageous coincidences which power this best film noir to its crazy end, as summed up in the film's final words:
Fate or some mysterious force can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all.
Detour is tawdry, complex and revels in pessimism and doom, and the incessant confessional narrative just ramps all of this up into something that is fascinating, simply because the characters are so hopeless, and so vile.
The low budget as it happens makes it all the better, with most of the action taking place within the claustrophobic confines of a car, and then a hotel room. It's a story of failure, told by a failure, and the darkest noir elements can surface freely and float in this environment, like turds on the surface of a swamp.
Just look at that hangdog expression that Tom Neal wears. It never leaves his face throughout the picture, and that indecision, the fate that leads him into the truest of film noir territory, is one of the best examples of noir out there. Time after time, he redirects his repressed emotions into crime, and if there is a message, a doom-laden and typically film noir directive, it is that morals are not as simple as they are often made out to be in the glorious tapestries (of lies) that Hollywood presents.
Al and Vera are the very opposite of what an American couple should be. They are deceitful, in denial, and play off each others' hate so much that it becomes a tense race to the bottom, to see who is going to crash first, whose greed and weakness is going to result in death, or arrest. Both Al and Vera, bound by their chains of guilt and greed, drag each other down, making Detour not so much a detour as a descent into the blackest heartland of film noir.
Read More about Detour (1945)