Editing Film noir (section)

==Definition==
[[File:The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946).webm|thumb|thumbtime=25|''[[The Stranger (1946 film)|The Stranger]]'' (1946), directed by [[Orson Welles]]]]
The question of what defines film noir and what sort of category it is, provokes continuing debate.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 3.</ref> "We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir [[oneiric (film theory)|oneiric]], strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel&nbsp;..."—this set of attributes constitutes the first of many attempts to define film noir made by French critics {{interlanguage link|Raymond Borde|fr}} and Étienne Chaumeton in their 1955 book ''Panorama du film noir américain 1941–1953'' (''A Panorama of American Film Noir''), the original and seminal extended treatment of the subject.

<ref>Borde and Chaumeton (2002), p. 2.</ref> They emphasize that not every noir film embodies all five attributes in equal measure—one might be more dreamlike; another, particularly brutal.<ref>Borde and Chaumeton (2002), pp. 2–3.</ref> The authors' caveats and repeated efforts at alternative definition have been echoed in subsequent scholarship, but in the words of cinema historian Mark Bould, film noir remains an "elusive phenomenon."<ref>Bould (2005), p. 13.</ref>

Though film noir is often identified with a visual style that emphasizes [[low-key lighting]] and [[Composition (visual arts)|unbalanced compositions]],<ref>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4; Bould (2005), p. 12; Place and Peterson (1974).</ref> films commonly identified as noir evidence a variety of visual approaches, including ones that fit comfortably within the Hollywood mainstream.<ref>See, e.g., Naremore (2008), p. 167–68; Irwin (2006), p. 210.</ref> Film noir similarly embraces a variety of genres, from the [[mob film|gangster film]] to the [[police procedural]] to the [[gothic fiction|gothic romance]] to the [[social problem film|social problem picture]]—any example of which from the 1940s and 1950s, now seen as noir's classical era, was likely to be described as a melodrama at the time.<ref>Neale (2000), p. 166; Vernet (1993), p. 2; Naremore (2008), pp. 17, 122, 124, 140; Bould (2005), p. 19.</ref>

{{Quote box
| quote = It is night, always. The hero enters a labyrinth on a quest. He is alone and off balance. He may be desperate, in flight, or coldly calculating, imagining he is the pursuer rather than the pursued.

A woman invariably joins him at a critical juncture, when he is most vulnerable. [Her] eventual betrayal of him (or herself) is as ambiguous as her feelings about him.
| author = [[Nicholas Christopher (writer)|Nicholas Christopher]]
| source = ''Somewhere in the Night'' (1997)<ref>{{Cite book |last=Christopher |first=Nicholas  |title=Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City |date=1997 |isbn=0-684-82803-0 |publisher=[[Free Press (publisher)|Free Press]] |location=New York, NY |oclc=36330881|page=7}}</ref>

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}}While many critics refer to film noir as a genre itself, others argue that it can be no such thing.<ref>For overview of debate, see, e.g., Bould (2005), pp. 13–23; Telotte (1989), pp. 9–10. For description of noir as a genre, see, e.g., Bould (2005), p. 2; Hirsch (2001), pp. 71–72; Tuska (1984), p. xxiii. For the opposing viewpoint, see, e.g., Neale (2000), p. 164; Ottoson (1981), p. 2; Schrader (1972); Durgnat (1970).</ref> Foster Hirsch defines a genre as determined by "conventions of narrative structure, characterization, theme, and visual design." Hirsch, as one who has taken the position that film noir is a genre, argues that these elements are present "in abundance." Hirsch notes that there are unifying features of tone, visual style and narrative sufficient to classify noir as a distinct genre.<ref>{{cite book  | last=Conrad |first=Mark T. |title=The Philosophy of Film Noir| publisher=University Press of Kentucky |date=2006}}</ref>

Others argue that film noir is not a genre. It is often associated with an urban setting, but many classic noirs take place in small towns, suburbia, rural areas, or on the open road; setting is not a determinant, as with the [[Western (genre)|Western]]. Similarly, while the [[private investigator|private eye]] and the [[femme fatale]] are [[stock character]] types conventionally identified with noir, the majority of films in the genre feature neither. Nor does film noir rely on anything as evident as the monstrous or supernatural elements of the [[horror film]], the speculative leaps of the [[science fiction film]], or the song-and-dance routines of the [[musical film|musical]].<ref>Ottoson (1981), pp. 2–3.</ref>

An analogous case is that of the [[screwball comedy film|screwball comedy]], widely accepted by film historians as constituting a "genre": screwball is defined not by a fundamental attribute, but by a general disposition and a group of elements, some—but rarely and perhaps never all—of which are found in each of the genre's films.<ref>See Dancyger and Rush (2002), p. 68, for a detailed comparison of screwball comedy and film noir.</ref> Because of the diversity of noir (much greater than that of the screwball comedy), certain scholars in the field, such as film historian Thomas Schatz, treat it as not a genre but a "style".

<ref>Schatz (1981), pp. 111–15.</ref> [[Alain Silver]], the most widely published American critic specializing in film noir studies, refers to film noir as a "cycle"<ref>Silver (1996), pp. 4, 6 passim. See also Bould (2005), pp. 3, 4; Hirsch (2001), p. 11.</ref> and a "phenomenon",<ref>Silver (1996), pp. 3, 6 passim. See also Place and Peterson (1974).</ref> even as he argues that it has—like certain genres—a consistent set of visual and thematic codes.<ref>Silver (1996), pp. 7–10.</ref> Screenwriter [[Eric R. Williams]] labels both film noir and screwball comedy a "pathway" in his screenwriters taxonomy; explaining that a pathway has two parts: 1) the way the audience connects with the protagonist and 2) the trajectory the audience expects the story to follow.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Williams|first=Eric R.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/993983488|title=The screenwriters taxonomy : a roadmap to collaborative storytelling|publisher=Routledge Studies in Media Theory and Practice|year=2017|isbn=978-1-315-10864-3|location=New York, NY|oclc=993983488|access-date=2020-06-07|archive-date=2020-06-15|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200615120622/https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/993983488|url-status=live}}</ref> Other critics treat film noir as a "mood,"<ref>See, e.g., Jones (2009).</ref> a "series",<ref>See, e.g., Borde and Chaumeton (2002), pp. 1–7 passim.</ref> or simply a chosen set of films they regard as belonging to the noir "canon."<ref>See, e.g., Telotte (1989), pp. 10–11, 15 passim.</ref> There is no consensus on the matter.<ref>For survey of the lexical variety, see Naremore (2008), pp. 9, 311–12 n. 1.</ref>