Editing Film noir (section)

==Identifying characteristics==
[[File:VertigoHangTrailer.jpg|thumb|right|alt=A man, seen from mid-chest up, hangs by his hands from the edge of an apparently tall structure, gazing down in fear. He is wearing a dark suit and an orange tie with a clip. In the distance behind him is a cityscape at night or in the early morning. There is a bluish cast to the background.|Some consider ''[[Vertigo (film)|Vertigo]]'' (1958) a noir on the basis of plot and tone and various motifs, but it has a modernist graphic design typical of the 1950s and a more modern set design,<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/sep/26/poster.vertigo|title=Vertigo: Disorientation in orange|last=Rennie|first=Paul|date=2008-09-29|access-date=2018-04-25|newspaper=The Guardian|archive-date=2023-09-01|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230901080244/https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/sep/26/poster.vertigo|url-status=live}}</ref> which would remove it from the category of film noir. Others say the combination of color and the specificity of director [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s vision exclude it from the category.<ref>Bould (2005), p. 18.</ref>]]

In their original 1955 canon of film noir, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton identified twenty-two Hollywood films released between 1941 and 1952 as core examples; they listed another fifty-nine American films from the period as significantly related to the field of noir.<ref>Borde and Chaumeton (2002), pp. 161–63.</ref> A half-century later, film historians and critics had come to agree on a canon of approximately three hundred films from 1940 to 1958.<ref>Silver and Ward (1992) list 315 classic films noir (passim), and Tuska (1984) lists 320 (passim). Later works are much more inclusive: Paul Duncan, ''The Pocket Essential Film Noir'' (2003), lists 647 (pp. 46–84). The title of Michael F. Keaney's ''Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940–1959'' (2003) is self-explanatory.</ref> There remain, however, many differences of opinion over whether other films of the era, among them a number of well-known ones, qualify as films noir or not. For instance, ''[[The Night of the Hunter (film)|The Night of the Hunter]]'' (1955), starring Robert Mitchum in an acclaimed performance, is treated as a film noir by some critics, but not by others.<ref>Treated as noir: Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 34; Hirsch (2001), pp. 59, 163–64, 168. Excluded from canon: Silver and Ward (1992), p. 330. Ignored: Bould (2005); Christopher (1998); Ottoson (1981).</ref> Some critics include ''[[Suspicion (1941 film)|Suspicion]]'' (1941), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, in their catalogues of noir; others ignore it.<ref>Included: Bould (2005), p. 126; Ottoson (1981), p. 174. Ignored: Ballinger and Graydon (2007); Hirsch (2001); Christopher (1998). Also see Silver and Ward (1992): ignored in 1980; included in 1988 (pp. 392, 396).</ref> Concerning films made either before or after the classic period, or outside of the United States at any time, consensus is even rarer.

To support their categorization of certain films as noirs and their rejection of others, many critics refer to a set of elements they see as marking examples of the mode. The question of what constitutes the set of noir's identifying characteristics is a fundamental source of controversy. For instance, critics tend to define the model film noir as having a tragic or bleak conclusion,<ref>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4; Christopher (1998), p. 8.</ref> but many acknowledged classics of the genre have clearly happy endings (e.g., ''Stranger on the Third Floor,'' ''The Big Sleep'', ''Dark Passage'', and ''The Dark Corner''), while the tone of many other noir [[denouement]]s is ambivalent.<ref>See, e.g., Ray (1985), p. 159.</ref> Some critics perceive classic noir's hallmark as a distinctive visual style. Others, observing that there is actually considerable stylistic variety among noirs, instead emphasize plot and character type. Still others focus on mood and attitude. No survey of classic noir's identifying characteristics can therefore be considered definitive. In the 1990s and 2000s, critics have increasingly turned their attention to that diverse field of films called neo-noir; once again, there is even less consensus about the defining attributes of such films made outside the classic period.<ref>Williams (2005), pp. 34–37.</ref> Roger Ebert offered "A Guide to Film Noir", writing that "Film noir is...

# A French term meaning 'black film', or film of the night, inspired by the Series Noir, a line of cheap paperbacks that translated hard-boiled American crime authors and found a popular audience in France
# A movie which at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending.
# Locations that reek of the night, of shadows, of alleys, of the back doors of fancy places, of apartment buildings with a high turnover rate, of taxi drivers and bartenders who have seen it all.
# Cigarettes. Everyone in film noir is always smoking, as if to say, 'On top of everything else, I've been assigned to get through three packs today. The best smoking movie of all time is ''[[Out of the Past]]'', in which [[Robert Mitchum]] and [[Kirk Douglas]] smoke furiously at each other. At one point, Mitchum enters a room, Douglas extends a pack and says 'Cigarette?' and Mitchum, holding up his hand, says, 'Smoking.'
# Women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa. 
# For women: low necklines, floppy hats, mascara, lipstick, dressing rooms, boudoirs, calling the doorman by his first name, high heels, red dresses, elbowlength gloves, mixing drinks, having gangsters as boyfriends, having soft spots for alcoholic private eyes, wanting a lot of someone else's women, sprawling dead on the floor with every limb meticulously arranged and every hair in place.
# For men: fedoras, suits and ties, shabby residential hotels with a neon sign blinking through the window, buying yourself a drink out of the office bottle, cars with running boards, all-night diners, protecting kids who shouldn't be playing with the big guys, being on first-name terms with homicide cops, knowing a lot of people whose descriptions end in 'ies,' such as bookies, newsies, junkies, alkys, jockeys and cabbies.
# Movies either shot in [[black-and-white]], or feeling like they were. 
# Relationships in which love is only the final flop card in the poker game of death. 
# The most American film genre, because no other society could have created a world so full of doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Ebert |first=Roger |date=January 30, 1995 |title=A Guide to Film Noir |work=[[Chicago Sun Times]] |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/a-guide-to-film-noir-genre |access-date=February 22, 2023 |archive-date=September 1, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230901080239/https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/a-guide-to-film-noir-genre |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Visual style===
The [[low-key lighting]] schemes of many classic films noir are associated with stark light/dark [[contrast (vision)|contrasts]] and dramatic shadow patterning—a style known as [[chiaroscuro]] (a term adopted from Renaissance painting).{{Ref label|C|c|none}} The shadows of Venetian blinds or banister rods, cast upon an actor, a wall, or an entire set, are an iconic visual in noir and had already become a [[cliché]] well before the neo-noir era. Characters' faces may be partially or wholly obscured by darkness—a relative rarity in conventional Hollywood filmmaking. While black-and-white cinematography is considered by many to be one of the essential attributes of classic noir, the color films ''[[Leave Her to Heaven]]'' (1945) and ''[[Niagara (1953 film)|Niagara]]'' (1953) are routinely included in noir filmographies, while ''[[Slightly Scarlet (1956 film)|Slightly Scarlet]]'' (1956), ''[[Party Girl (1958 film)|Party Girl]]'' (1958), and ''[[Vertigo (film)|Vertigo]]'' (1958) are classified as noir by varying numbers of critics.<ref>See Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 31, on general issue. Christopher (1998) and Silver and Ward (1992), for instance, include ''Slightly Scarlet'' and ''Party Girl'', but not ''Vertigo'', in their filmographies. By contrast, Hirsch (2001) describes ''Vertigo'' as among those Hitchcock films that are "richly, demonstrably ''noir''" (p. 139) and ignores both ''Slightly Scarlet'' and ''Party Girl''; Bould (2005) similarly includes ''Vertigo'' in his filmography, but not the other two. Ottoson (1981) includes none of the three in his canon.</ref>

Film noir is also known for its use of [[low-angle shot|low-angle]], [[wide-angle lens|wide-angle]], and [[Dutch angle|skewed, or Dutch angle]] shots. Other devices of disorientation relatively common in film noir include shots of people reflected in one or more mirrors, shots through curved or frosted glass or other distorting objects (such as during the strangulation scene in ''Strangers on a Train''), and special effects sequences of a sometimes bizarre nature. [[Night-for-night]] shooting, as opposed to the Hollywood norm of [[day-for-night]], was often employed.<ref>Place and Peterson (1974), p. 67.</ref> From the mid-1940s forward, [[location shooting]] became increasingly frequent in noir.<ref>Hirsch (2001), p. 67.</ref>

In an analysis of the visual approach of ''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'', a late and self-consciously stylized example of classic noir, critic Alain Silver describes how cinematographic choices emphasize the story's themes and mood. In one scene, the characters, seen through a "confusion of angular shapes", thus appear "caught in a tangible vortex or enclosed in a trap." Silver makes a case for how "side light is used&nbsp;... to reflect character ambivalence", while shots of characters in which they are lit from below "conform to a convention of visual expression which associates shadows cast upward of the face with the unnatural and ominous".<ref>Silver (1995), pp. 219, 222.</ref>

===Structure and narrational devices===
[[File:SorryWrongNumber2.jpg|thumb|right|alt=A man and a woman, seen in profile, starring intensely at each other. The man, on the left, is considerably taller. He wears a brown pin-striped suit, holds a key in one hand and grips the woman's arm with the other. She is wearing a pale green top. Lit from below and to the side, they cast bold, angled shadows on the wall behind them.|[[Barbara Stanwyck]] and [[Burt Lancaster]] were two of the most prolific stars of classic noir. The complex structure of ''[[Sorry, Wrong Number]]'' (1948) involves a real-time framing story, [[multiperspectivity|multiple narrators]], and flashbacks within flashbacks.<ref>Telotte (1989), pp. 74–87.</ref>]]

Films noir tend to have unusually convoluted story lines, frequently involving [[Flashback (literary technique)|flashbacks]] and other editing techniques that disrupt and sometimes obscure the [[narrative]] sequence. Framing the entire primary narrative as a flashback is also a standard device. Voiceover narration, sometimes used as a structuring device, came to be seen as a noir hallmark; while classic noir is generally associated with first-person narration (i.e., by the protagonist), Stephen Neale notes that third-person narration is common among noirs of the semidocumentary style.<ref>Neale (2000), pp. 166–67 n. 5.</ref> Neo-noirs as varied as ''The Element of Crime'' (surrealist), ''After Dark, My Sweet'' (retro), and ''Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'' (meta) have employed the flashback/voiceover combination.

Bold experiments in cinematic storytelling were sometimes attempted during the classic era: ''Lady in the Lake'', for example, is shot entirely from the [[Point of view shot|point of view]] of protagonist Philip Marlowe; the face of star (and director) [[Robert Montgomery (actor)|Robert Montgomery]] is seen only in mirrors.<ref>Telotte (1989), p. 106.</ref> ''[[The Chase (1946 film)|The Chase]]'' (1946) takes [[Oneiric (film theory)|oneirism]] and fatalism as the basis for its fantastical narrative system, redolent of certain horror stories, but with little precedent in the context of a putatively realistic genre. In their different ways, both ''Sunset Boulevard'' and ''D.O.A.'' are tales told by dead men. Latter-day noir has been in the forefront of structural experimentation in popular cinema, as exemplified by such films as ''Pulp Fiction'', ''Fight Club'', and ''Memento''.<ref>Rombes, Nicholas, ''New Punk Cinema'' (2005), pp. 131–36.</ref>

===Plots, characters, and settings===
Crime, usually murder, is an element of almost all films noir; in addition to standard-issue greed, jealousy is frequently the criminal motivation. A crime investigation—by a private eye, a police detective (sometimes acting alone), or a concerned amateur—is the most prevalent, but far from dominant, basic plot. In other common plots the protagonists are implicated in [[heist film|heists]] or [[confidence trick|con games]], or in murderous conspiracies often involving adulterous affairs. False suspicions and accusations of crime are frequent plot elements, as are betrayals and double-crosses. According to J. David Slocum, "protagonists assume the literal identities of dead men in nearly fifteen percent of all noir."<ref>Slocum (2001), p. 160.</ref> [[Amnesia]] is fairly epidemic—"noir's version of the common cold", in the words of film historian [[Lee Server]].<ref>Server (2006), p. 149.</ref>

[[File:PursuedPoster.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Black-and-white film poster with an image of a young man and woman holding each other. They are surrounded by an abstract, whirlpool-like image; the central arc of the thick black line that define it encircles their head. Both are wearing white shirts and look forward with tense expressions; his right arm cradles her back, and in his hand he holds a revolver. The stars' names—Teresa Wright and Robert Mitchum—feature at the top of the whirlpool; the title and remainder of the credits are below.|By the late 1940s, the noir trend was leaving its mark on other genres. A prime example is the Western ''[[Pursued]]'' (1947), filled with psychosexual tensions and behavioral explanations derived from [[Psychoanalysis|Freudian theory]].<ref>Ottoson (1981), p. 143.</ref>]]

Films noir tend to revolve around heroes who are more flawed and morally questionable than the norm, often [[fall guy]]s of one sort or another. The characteristic protagonists of noir are described by many critics as "[[Social alienation|alienated]]";<ref>See, e.g., Naremore (2008), p. 25; Lyons (2000), p. 10.</ref> in the words of Silver and Ward, "filled with [[existentialism|existential]] bitterness".<ref>Silver and Ward (1992), p. 6.</ref> Certain archetypal characters appear in many film noirs—hardboiled detectives, femme fatales, corrupt policemen, jealous husbands, intrepid [[claims adjuster]]s, and down-and-out writers. Among characters of every stripe, cigarette smoking is rampant.<ref>See, e.g., Hirsch (2001), pp. 128, 150, 160, 213; Christopher (1998), pp. 4, 32, 75, 83, 116, 118, 128, 155.</ref> From historical commentators to neo-noir pictures to pop culture ephemera, the private eye and the femme fatale have been adopted as the quintessential film noir figures, though they do not appear in most films now regarded as classic noir. Of the twenty-six National Film Registry noirs, in only four does the star play a private eye: ''The Maltese Falcon'', ''The Big Sleep'', ''Out of the Past'', and ''Kiss Me Deadly''. Just four others readily qualify as detective stories: ''Laura'', ''The Killers'', ''The Naked City'', and ''Touch of Evil''. There is usually an element of drug or alcohol use, particularly as part of the detective's method to solving the crime, as an example the character of Mike Hammer in the 1955 film ''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'' who walks into a bar saying "Give me a double bourbon, and leave the bottle". Chaumeton and Borde have argued that film noir grew out of the "literature of drugs and alcohol".<ref>{{cite book  | last=Abrams |first=Jerold J. |title=The Philosophy of Film Noir| publisher=University Press of Kentucky |date=2006}}</ref>

Film noir is often associated with an urban setting, and a few cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, in particular—are the location of many of the classic films. In the eyes of many critics, the city is presented in noir as a "labyrinth" or "maze".<ref>See, e.g., Hirsch (2001), p. 17; Christopher (1998), p. 17; Telotte (1989), p. 148.</ref> Bars, lounges, nightclubs, and gambling dens are frequently the scene of action. The climaxes of a substantial number of film noirs take place in visually complex, often industrial settings, such as refineries, factories, trainyards, power plants—most famously the explosive conclusion of ''White Heat'', set at a chemical plant.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 217–18; Hirsch (2001), p. 64.</ref> In the popular (and, frequently enough, critical) imagination, in noir it is always night and it always raining.<ref>Bould (2005), p. 18, on the critical establishment of this iconography, as well as p. 35; Hirsch (2001), p. 213; Christopher (1998), p. 7.</ref>

A substantial trend within latter-day noir—dubbed "film soleil" by critic [[D. K. Holm]]—heads in precisely the opposite direction, with tales of deception, seduction, and corruption exploiting bright, sun-baked settings, stereotypically the desert or open water, to searing effect. Significant predecessors from the classic and early post-classic eras include ''The Lady from Shanghai''; the [[Robert Ryan]] vehicle ''[[Inferno (1953 film)|Inferno]]'' (1953); the French adaptation of [[Patricia Highsmith]]'s ''[[The Talented Mr. Ripley]]'', ''[[Plein Soleil|Plein soleil]]'' (''Purple Noon'' in the United States, more accurately rendered elsewhere as ''Blazing Sun'' or ''Full Sun''; 1960); and director Don Siegel's version of ''[[The Killers (1964 film)|The Killers]]'' (1964). The tendency was at its peak during the late 1980s and 1990s, with films such as ''[[Dead Calm (film)|Dead Calm]]'' (1989), ''[[After Dark, My Sweet]]'' (1990), ''[[The Hot Spot]]'' (1990), ''[[Delusion (1991 film)|Delusion]]'' (1991), ''[[Red Rock West]]'' (1993) and the television series ''[[Miami Vice]]''.<ref>Holm (2005), pp. 13–25 passim.</ref>

===Worldview, morality, and tone===
[[File:BigClinch.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Black-and-white image of a man and a woman, seen from mid-chest up, their faces in profile, gazing into each other's eyes. He embraces her in a dip with his right arm and holds her right hand to his chest with his left hand. He wears a pin-striped suit and a dark tie. She wears a white top. On the left, the background is black; on the right, it is lighter, with a series of diagonal shadows descending from the upper corner.|"You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how far you can go."<br/>"A lot depends on who's in the saddle."<br/>[[Humphrey Bogart|Bogart]] and [[Lauren Bacall|Bacall]] in ''[[The Big Sleep (1946 film)|The Big Sleep]]''.]]

Film noir is often described as essentially pessimistic.<ref>See, e.g., Naremore (2008), p. 37, on the development of this viewpoint, and p. 103, on contributors to Silver and Ward encyclopedia; Ottoson (1981), p. 1.</ref> The noir stories that are regarded as most characteristic tell of people trapped in unwanted situations (which, in general, they did not cause but are responsible for exacerbating), striving against random, uncaring fate, and are frequently doomed. The films are seen as depicting a world that is inherently corrupt.<ref>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4; Christopher (1998), pp. 7–8.</ref> Classic film noir has been associated by many critics with the American social landscape of the era—in particular, with a sense of heightened anxiety and alienation that is said to have followed World War II. In author [[Nicholas Christopher (writer)|Nicholas Christopher]]'s opinion, "it is as if the war, and the social eruptions in its aftermath, unleashed demons that had been bottled up in the national psyche."<ref>Christopher (1998), p. 37.</ref> Films noir, especially those of the 1950s and the height of the [[Red Scare]], are often said to reflect cultural paranoia; ''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'' is the noir most frequently marshaled as evidence for this claim.<ref>See, e.g., Muller (1998), p. 81, on analyses of the film; Silver and Ward (1992), p. 2.</ref>

Film noir is often said to be defined by "moral ambiguity",<ref>See, e.g., Naremore (2008), p. 163, on critical claims of moral ambiguity; Lyons (2000), pp. 14, 32.</ref> yet the [[Motion Picture Production Code|Production Code]] obliged almost all classic noirs to see that steadfast virtue was ultimately rewarded and vice, in the absence of shame and redemption, severely punished (however dramatically incredible the final rendering of mandatory justice might be). A substantial number of latter-day noirs flout such conventions: vice emerges triumphant in films as varied as the grim ''Chinatown'' and the ribald ''Hot Spot''.<ref>See Skoble (2006), pp. 41–48, for a survey of noir morality.</ref>

The tone of film noir is generally regarded as downbeat; some critics experience it as darker still—"overwhelmingly black", according to Robert Ottoson.<ref>Ottoson (1981), p. 1.</ref> Influential critic (and filmmaker) Paul Schrader wrote in a seminal 1972 essay that "''film noir'' is defined by tone", a tone he seems to perceive as "hopeless".<ref>Schrader (1972), p. 54 [in Silver and Ursini]. For characterization of definitive tone as "hopeless", see pp. 53 ("the tone more hopeless") and 57 ("a fatalistic, hopeless mood").</ref> In describing the adaptation of ''Double Indemnity,'' noir analyst Foster Hirsch describes the "requisite hopeless tone" achieved by the filmmakers, which appears to characterize his view of noir as a whole.<ref>Hirsch (2001), p. 7. Hirsch subsequently states, "In character types, ''mood'' [emphasis added], themes, and visual composition, ''Double Indemnity'' offer[s] a lexicon of ''noir'' stylistics" (p. 8).</ref> On the other hand, definitive film noirs such as ''The Big Sleep'', ''The Lady from Shanghai'', ''Scarlet Street'' and ''Double Indemnity'' itself are famed for their hardboiled repartee, often imbued with sexual innuendo and self-reflexive humor.<ref>Sanders (2006), p. 100.</ref>

=== Music ===
The music of film noir was typically orchestral, per the Hollywood norm, but often with added dissonance.<ref>{{Cite book |last=BUTLER |first=DAVID |title=Film noir and music |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2016 |isbn=9781107476493 |pages=175–186 |language=English}}</ref> Many of the prime composers, like the directors and cameramen, were European émigrés, e.g., [[Max Steiner]] (''[[The Big Sleep (1946 film)|The Big Sleep]]'', ''Mildred Pierce''), [[Miklós Rózsa]] (''[[Double Indemnity]]'', ''[[The Killers (1946 film)|The Killers]]'', ''[[Criss Cross (film)|Criss Cross]]''), and [[Franz Waxman]] (''[[Fury (1936 film)|Fury]]'', ''[[Sunset Boulevard (film)|Sunset Boulevard]]'', ''[[Night and the City]]''). ''Double Indemnity'' is a seminal score, initially disliked by Paramount's music director for its harshness but strongly endorsed by director Billy Wilder and studio chief [[Buddy DeSylva]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rózsa |first1=Miklós |title=Double Life |date=1982 |publisher=The Baton Press |location=London |isbn=0-85936-209-4 |pages=121–122}}</ref> There is a widespread popular impression that "sleazy" jazz saxophone and pizzicato bass constitute the sound of noir, but those characteristics arose much later, as in the late-1950s music of [[Henry Mancini]] for ''[[Touch of Evil]]'' and television's ''[[Peter Gunn]]''. [[Bernard Herrmann]]'s score for ''[[Taxi Driver]]'' makes heavy use of saxophone.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}}