Film Noir Final Day One: From Noir to Neo-Noir

As promised last night, for the next few days I'll be sharing some thoughts on film noir, courtesy of the final exam for the class. Unlike the last exam, this was a better opportunity to look at the style/genre/movement in a broader context. Accordingly, I had the chance to cover a little more ground on parts of the exam and the ability to really hone in on Point Blank, something I'll share with you guys on Thursday.

To start off, we'll take Question 1, which reads thusly:

Give a brief overview of the development of post-classical or neo-noir (from Touch of Evil to the present). Isolate and explain at least three elements of neo-noir that are characteristic, yet differ from the elements of classic noir.

After Kiss Me Deadly, which French critics considered the "final" classical era noir, there exists merely a two year gap before the birth of the post-classical era, thanks to the perennially ahead-of-his-time Orson Welles. While Touch of Evil retains some of the hallmarks or noir (black and white photography, a murder mystery, and a fixation upon the "lower class"), the film begins changing elements understood to be mandatory for the style.

What Touch of Evil began was a reflexive quality towards the classical era, one that Wilder toyed with in Sunset Boulevard. The post-classical (and later "neos") are aware of the existence of classical noir and do not feel the need to adhere to any or all of the conventions which made a film "noir". There are three key distinctions between "classic" noir and "neo" noir, all linked inextricably to the first wave of "film school auteurs"; directors not of the studio system but instead products of the experience of film.

Revisionism of the past began around the same time that neo-noir truly returned to form, the 1970s. While not unique to neo-noir, it became chic to take conventions of the classical era and openly question them on film. Chinatown is perhaps the first example of post-classical noir functioning as revisionist cinema, something that became a hallmark of almost all neo-noirs.

While Chinatown takes place in the 1930s, Roman Polanski and Robert Towne's film is clearly a product of the post-Vietnam / Watergate mentality. Classical noir involved some degree of criticism towards authority figures (particularly Double Indemnity and The Big Heat), but in the end good always triumphed over evil and the balance was restored. Our hero, often the criminal, went to jail for his crime.

Post-classical noir revisionism removed any sense of "right" or "wrong" from the equation. Take Jake Gittes, a man so disillusioned that he has turned his back on the police to be a private detective sniffing around in other couples' laundry. When even Jake cannot accept the twofold crime of Noah Cross (land theft and incest), his revived idealism is again crushed. Unable to convince his old partners that Cross, a powerful member of Los Angeles' public and social society, is stealing water and his granddaughter/daughter in Chinatown, he watches helplessly while Evelyn Mulwray is gunned down. Noah Cross, rich and powerful, gets exactly what he wants. Evil is systematic, and will always triumph, for good is weak. This opened the door for future neo-noirs to revise, tweak, or even outright contradict elements of classical noir.

Touch of Evil and Chinatown also revise another key element of noir, now one so linked to neo-noir audiences come to expect it in "film noir": the "idiot" protagonist. Classical noir frequently included a protagonist down on his luck that finds himself wooed by a femme fatale and suffers the consequences. Towards the end of the classical era, characters like Dave Bannion in The Big Heat challenge this, but neo-noir often exaggerates the ineffectiveness of the lead character to extremes. While Gittes is a fine example of the protagonist who knows practically nothing from the beginning of the film to the end (and when he thinks he knows something, he is mistaken), he is merely the tip of the iceberg. Consider characters like Red Rock West's Michael Williams or Kiss Kiss Bang Bang's Harry Lockhart, characters so inept that they wander from place to place, often making their predicaments worse by getting involved.

Finally, neo-noir, a product of filmmakers who studied film, is rife with elements of pastiche. It is not enough merely to revise elements of film noir; neo-noir must also continually reference films, through direct references or in subtle visual cues. Martin Scorsese continually draws on films from the past in his films, whether it is lifting images from Godard in Taxi Driver or directly referencing The Wizard of Oz or The Trial in After Hours. A film like Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat relies heavily on reminding audiences of the classic era by giving William Hurt a fedora, or the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing, which lifts wholesale images from the end of The Third Man. Neo-noir must simultaneously remind us of the past, all the while revising it, often parodically.