The Thammasat University Library has acquired a new book that should be useful for students interested in film, media and communications studies, literature, philosophy, sociology, and related subjects.
The Essence of Film Noir: The Style and Themes of Cinema’s Dark Genre by Diana Royer, a professor of film and American and British literature at Miami University in Ohio, the United States of America.
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of film noir.
The term film noir is French for dark film. It was first applied to Hollywood films by the French critic Nino Frank in 1946, to describe darkly lit black and white movies with lots of moody shadows and generally sad stories. Some film noir stories involve private investigators or plainclothes police officers, old professional fighters, low level criminals, honest people who have suddenly turned criminal, and other unfortunate people. Film noir was first used to describe American productions, but now international movies are also referred to in terms of film noir.
The 1940s and 1950s are widely seen as the classic time for of American film noir. The dark visual style is considered to be influenced from cinematography in German silent films of the 1920s and 1930s. Many of the stories and attitudes of classic noir were inspired by so-called hardboiled crime fiction written in the United States during the Great Depression, with tough characters who often said unpleasant things to one another.
Some critics have suggested that film noir includes situations that are dreamlike, strange, ambivalent, cynical, and cruel. Others consider film noir more as a mood.
The French film critic and theorist André Bazin observed: In French pre-war cinema, even if there wasn’t exactly a genre, there was a style, the realist film noir.
Here are some examples of typical film noir dialogue:
“That’s life. Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you.”
- Detour (1945)
“When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.”
said by Humphrey Bogart in Key Largo (1948).
“After all, crime is only…a left-handed form of human endeavor.”
- The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
I shall never forget the weekend Laura died. A silver sun burned through the sky like a huge magnifying glass. It was the hottest Sunday in my recollection. I felt as if I were the only human being left in New York. For Laura’s horrible death, I was alone. I, Waldo Lydecker, was the only one who really knew her. And I had just begun to write Laura’s story when – another of those detectives came to see me. I had him wait. I could watch him through the half-open door. I noted that his attention was fixed upon my clock. There was only one other in existence, and that was in Laura’s apartment in the very room where she was murdered.
[to Laura] Young woman, either you have been raised in some incredibly rustic community where good manners are unknown or you suffer from the common feminine delusion that the mere fact of being a woman exempts you from the rules of civilized conduct, or possibly both.
I don’t use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom…..I’ll neither consider, endorse, or use the Wallace pen. I hate pens. If your employers wish me to publish that statement in my column, you may tell them that I shall be delighted to oblige.
- Laura (1944)
Dr. Soberin to Mike Hammer: Lie still. Why torment yourself? Who would you see? Someone you do not know, a stranger. What is it we are seeking? Diamonds, rubies, gold? Perhaps narcotics? How civilized this earth used to be. But as the world becomes more primitive, its treasures become more fabulous. Perhaps sentiment will succeed where greed failed. You will die, Mr. Hammer. But your friend, you can save her. Yes you can. The young lady you picked up on the highway. She wrote you a letter. In it were two words: ‘Remember Me.’ She asks you to remember. What is it you must remember? [he injects Hammer with a hypodermic needle full of sodium pentothal] And while you sleep, your subconscious will provide the answer. And you will cry out what it is that you must remember. Pleasant dreams, Mr. Hammer.
- Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Harry Lime: Oh, I still do believe in God, old man. I believe in God and Mercy and all that. But the dead are happier dead. They don’t miss much here, poor devils. What do you believe in? Oh if you ever get Anna out of this mess, be kind to her. You’ll find she’s worth it. I wish I had asked you to bring me some of those tablets from home. Holly, I would like to cut you in, old man. There’s nobody left in Vienna I can really trust, and we have always done everything together. When you make up your mind, send me a message. I’ll meet you any place, any time. And when we do meet, old man, it is you I want to see, not the police. Remember that, won’t you? And don’t be so gloomy. After all, it’s not that awful. You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
- The Third Man (1949)
Richard Wanley lecturing: The Biblical injunction “Thou shalt not kill” is one that requires qualification in view of our broader knowledge of impulses behind homicide. The various legal categories such as first and second degree murder, the various degrees of homicide, manslaughter, are civilized recognitions of impulses of various degrees of culpability. The man who kills in self defense, for instance, must not be judged by the same standards applied to the man who kills for gain…There are only three ways to deal with a blackmailer. You can pay him and pay him and pay him until you’re penniless. Or you can call the police yourself and let your secret be known to the world. Or you can kill him.
- The Woman in the Window (1944)
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)