Euro roots of Amer Film Noir --long
Rick Francis
roots of American film noir in the usual period parameters: 1940 to
the early or mid 50s. I posted this updated version on H-Film more
recently. In both cases the responses were surprising and interesting
to me, so I am posting it here on Cinema-L. Delete if you get H-Film,
or donUt like long messages.
Next semester I will be teaching a course on American film noir,
1940-50, with emphasis (at least for the beginning of the course) on
stylistic, directorial, and technological roots in Europe. It will be
a third-year course in Comparative Literature (which explains in part
the Euro emphasis), cross-listed with our Performing Arts dep't, which
has a film minor and offers intro film courses. Perhaps half of the
students will have had at least an Intro to Film Studies course,
perhaps half will not have had any film course.
As I mentioned in my original query, I think I have rounded up all the
usual suspects -- the readily available books on film noir by Silver &
Ward, Krutnik, Telotte, and the essays collected by Kaplan in _Women
in Film Noir_, in addition to the earlier essays by Schrader, Durgnat,
and so on. I know by heart the often-repeated truisms about German
expressionism, French poetic realism, Italian realism, and the influx
of European directors and cinematographers to Hollywood (Lang,
Preminger, Siodmak, Wilder, Mate', Sirk, et al), but I'm not really
satisfied with what I've read so far. I want to find more detailed
explication, and attribution of specific points.
To give an idea of what I am hoping to find more of, I think that
Bordwell-Staiger-Thomson make an excellent point when they say that
deep focus/deep space is NOT only used in service of Gregg
Toland-esque realism, but that depth can be used "to create contorted,
fantastic perspective" by folks like William Cameron Menzies. There
is a contradiction or at least a paradox here that seems
characteristic of film noir: the simultaneous pull towards
stylization-expressionism and at the same time toward realism.
Result: the most stylized realism, or realism as a quotable style.
Yet most critics assume a deep focus = realism correlation.
(The counter-example I want to use in class in Boris Ingster's 1940
_Stranger on the Third Floor_, which has a whacked-out dreamy horror
courtroom scene.)
Another example: Barry Salt also gets at the kind of SPECIFICITY I'm
hoping to find when he describes the use of Dutch Tilts or off-angle
shots in German films of the forties, and in Carol Reed's The Third
Man (1949). Now there's a technique rare enough to pinpoint, yet
common enough to call a pattern, and it has a traceable history of
use.
Some of the responses I got suggested that I forget European roots,
and that I can find all I need in American gothic, horror, thriller
pictures of the 20s and 30s. For example, for the noir narrative
pattern Brian Taves suggested THE FLORENTINE DAGGER (WB, 1935) by
Robert Florey; and informed me that the venerable William K. Everson
is working on a book on Pre-Noir (!). Another respondent told me of a
forthcoming article by Marc Vernet on early American roots of film
noir, an article apparently written deliberately *against* the Euro
roots cliche.
WHAT I HAVE SO FAR
When I finish the syllabus, with essays & book sections to be assigned
and everything, I'll post it or upload it to the archives. At this
point, I am planning to use Foster Hirsch's book _Film Noir: The Dark
Side of the Screen_, though I recognize its shortcomings. I also plan
to use Dana Polan's _Power and Paranoia_, and at least parts of
Krutnik's _In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity_ (I like
how he deals with _Out of the Past_). Two excerpts from Thomas
Schatz's _The Genius of the System_ will help indicate the role of the
studio production system in the forties, using examples of Warner's
(Maltese Falcon, High Sierra, Mildred Pierce, Big Sleep, Key Largo,
White Heat) and Universal (Scarlet Street).
For use in class to establish Euro roots, I plan to use parts of:
La Be ^te Humaine (Renoir, 1938)
Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1938)
Fury (Lang, 1936)
Ossessione (Visconti, 1942)
The great thing about Ossessione is that I can have the students read
Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, watch the Visconti version,
then watch the American 1946 version.
FILMS. In addition to using excerpts in class, I have slots for 13
films to be shown in full outside of class, one night per week. Here
are my choices:
MOVIE 1: Double Indemnity (1944) [Billy Wilder] or
Mildred Pierce
MOVIE 2: Scarlet Street (1945) [Fritz Lang]
MOVIE 3: The Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) [Boris
Ingster]
MOVIE 4: Laura (1944) [Otto Preminger]
MOVIE 5: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) [Tay
Garnett]
MOVIE 6: So Dark the Night (1946) [Joseph H. Lewis]
OR Crack-Up (1946) [Irving Reis]
MOVIE 7: Gilda (1946) [Charles Vidor]
MOVIE 8: Out of the Past (1947) [Jacques Tourneur]
MOVIE 9: The Street with No Name (1948)
OR Naked City (1948) [Jules Dassin]
MOVIE 10: Caught (1949) [Max Ophuls]
MOVIE 11: Gun Crazy (1950) [Joseph H. Lewis]
OR White Heat (1949) [Raoul Walsh] 435-39
MOVIE 12: D.O.A. (1950) [Rudolph Mate]
MOVIE 13: In a Lonely Place (1950) [Nicholas Ray]
I am making arrangements to have the Student Film Board show one or
two from each of the following groups. Dates are designed to coincide
with what is covered in class.
1) Studio Noir, Literary Adaptations (Feb14- Feb 27)
*The Killers (Siodmak, 1946; story by Hemingway)
*The Phantom Lady (Siodmak, 1944; novel by Woolrich)
The Glass Key (Heisler, 1942; novel by Hammett)
Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, 1945; novel by Cain)
2) Mid 40s (Feb 28- Mar 27)
*So Dark The Night (Lewis, 1946)
Somewhere in the Night (Mankiewicz, 1946)
Ride the Pink Horse (Montgomery, 1947)
Dead Reckoning (Cromwell, 1947)
3) Documentary style, mid to late 40s (Mar 28- April 3 )
*The Undercover Man (Lewis, 1949)
House on 92nd Street (Hathaway, 1945)
T-Men (Mann, 1948)
4) Classic Noir Style, 1949-51 (Apr 4-Apr 29)
Cry of the City (Siodmak, 1948)
*Gun Crazy (Lewis, 1949)
Night and the City (Dassin, 1950)
The Big Night (Losey, 1951)
The File on Thelma Jordan (Siodmak, 1950)
M (Losey, 1951)
Beyond the Forest (Vidor, 1949)
The Crooked Way (Florey, 1949)
I am sticking pretty close to a cut-off date of 1950, mainly to keep
this from flying apart, and to make it easier to focus on post-war
culture and cultural production.
All suggestions welcome.
=========================================
Rick Francis
Comparative Literature, Washington University
rfra...@artsci.wustl.edu
Bob Wells #402
Have you also considered using "La Jour Se Leve"? I seem to remember that this
was
also "remade". Either in England or America, sorry can't remember names though.
It is
interesting, especially when juxtaposed against Renoir's La Bete Humane.
Bob W. (-: Mein zwei pfennigs wert (aber nur ein emphalung).
Rick Francis
and will almost certainly use excerpts to make points about camera angle
and lighting... Thanks, though.
Rick Francis
SAC...@oduvm.bitnet
How about using early Melville films like "Bob le Flambeur" and/or "Le Doulos"?
Iteach a class on French Film Noir and both these movies incorporate many
elements of the traditional americam genre. On another note, Bob Swaim, an
expatriate americam living in Paris made a rather remarkable attempt at a
film noir/gangster flick called "La Balance." Completely off the wall, I also
often use Wim Wenders "An American Friend" when I do this class, especially
when I broaden it to continental filmmaking.
sc.