Some of the great classics of film noir were adapted from s hard-boiled fiction. Dashiell Hammett, a former Pinkerton detective, is credited with having invented the genre with the appearance of his story "Fly Paper" in Black Mask magazine.
The new breed of detective appearing in hard-boiled fiction differed greatly from many of the earlier and even contemporary detective fiction. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey featured upper-class Europeans as the detectives and are set among manor houses and English country villages.
In contrast, hard-boiled fiction tends to have a tough, cynical detective in many stories, the detective is actually a private investigator , who lives in a dirty city. Other features of hard-boiled fiction are that they are told mainly in narrative form, use slang, contain violence murder, corruption , and have sexual undertones. View Full List. Hillis, Ken.
Central Rappahannock Regional Library. Hillis examines how the light in film noir is not only a visual aspect of the films, but is also used as a thematic aspect to portray the post-war despair in the United States.
Naremore, James. Winter , Naremore's article provides an overview of how the films defined as film noir came to be defined as such and how the term came to be. This database is available in-house. Wager, Jans B. Wager's study focuses on the inclusion or lack thereof of African-Americans within film noir and the history of film noir.
Skip to main navigation Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to search Skip to content. Use current location. See all locations. Admin Admin Admin, collapsed. The height of the classic noir period was the simultaneous pinnacle of propriety in media. As a result, noir films of the s portray the seedier sides of life while notably excluding graphic violence, lustful kissing, or even showing men and women sleeping in the same bed.
While many of these films feature adultery, their kisses are more like quick clashes than lingering, amorous gestures, and the adulterers rarely enjoy their affairs before being offed in the end. In , the U. All in all, film noir has left an indelible mark on the medium, and its compelling characteristics will continue to influence cinema well into the future. We and our partners use cookies to better understand your needs, improve performance and provide you with personalised content and advertisements.
To allow us to provide a better and more tailored experience please click "OK". In addition, the French sound films of the 30s, such as director Julien Duvivier's Pepe Le Moko , contributed to noir's development. Another cinematic origin of film noir was from the plots and themes often taken from adaptations of American literary works - usually from best-selling, hard-boiled, pulp novels and crime fiction by Raymond Chandler, James M.
Cain, Dashiell Hammett, or Cornell Woolrich. As a result, the earliest film noirs were detective or crime thrillers. Notable film noir gangster films, such as They Drive By Night , Key Largo and White Heat each featured noir elements within the traditional gangster framework.
The expressionistic film starred Peter Lorre as the sinister, odd-looking 'stranger' cast due to his creepy performance in M , in a story about the nightmarish after-effects for news reporter Michael Ward John McGuire whose courtroom circumstantial testimony during a murder trial was used to convict murder suspect Joe Briggs Elisha Cook Jr. Afterwards, he was haunted in a stunning dream sequence by doubts that his key testimony was inaccurate.
Others claim Orson Welles' masterpiece Citizen Kane was also an early and influential pre-film noir. The first detective film to use the shadowy, nihilistic noir style in a definitive way was the privotal work of novice director John Huston in the mystery classic The Maltese Falcon , from a book by Dashiell Hammett.
The acting duo of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake was first teamed in the superb early noir thriller This Gun For Hire with the tagline: "He's dynamite with a gun or a girl". From the novel A Gun For Sale by renowned British novelist Graham Greene, the moody noir featured Ladd in a star-making role his first lead role as a ruthless, cat-loving, vengeful, unsmiling San Francisco professional hit-man named Raven working for a peppermint-candy loving fat man Willard Gates Laird Cregar and his wheelchair-bound Nitro Chemicals executive Alvin Brewster Tully Marshall - both double-crossers who were selling secrets to foreign agents the Japanese.
Ladd was paired with popular wartime pinup star Lake as nightclub showgirl singer Ellen Graham, his hostage and unbeknownst to him working as a federal agent. Another Dashiell Hammett book of political corruption and murder was adapted for Stuart Heisler's The Glass Key for Paramount Studios - again with the duo of Ladd and Lake, and noted as one of the best Hammett adaptations.
Ladd starred as Ed Beaumont, a right-hand man and political aide attempting to save his employer Brian Donlevy from a murder frame-up, while Lake played the seductive fiancee of the boss. The film was noted for the vicious beating given to Ladd by a crime lord thug William Bendix.
The popular noir couple were brought together again in George Marshall's post-war crime thriller The Blue Dahlia , with an Oscar-nominated screenplay by Raymond Chandler the only work he ever wrote directly for the screen.
Alan Ladd portrayed returning war veteran Johnny Morrison who discovered that his wife Helen Doris Dowling was unfaithful during his absence. When she turned up dead and he became the prime suspect, he was aided in the case by the mysterious Joyce Harwood Lake - the seductive ex-wife of his wife's former lover. Orson Welles' films have significant noir features, such as in his expressionistically-filmed Citizen Kane , with subjective camera angles, dark shadowing and deep focus, and low-angled shots from talented cinematographer Gregg Toland.
Welles' third film for RKO, the war-time mystery Journey Into Fear , was one in which he acted and co-directed uncredited - it was set in the exotic locale of Istanbul. The film's story was inspired by Eric Ambler's spy thriller about the flight of an American arms engineer Joseph Cotten on a Black Sea tramp steamer where he was threatened by Nazi agents intent on killing him.
Its final sequence in a San Francisco "hall of mirrors" fun-house was symbolic and reflective of the shattered relationships between the characters, exemplified by a wounded O'Hara's last words: "Maybe I'll live so long that I'll forget her. Maybe I'll die trying. Welles' Mexican border-town B-movie classic Touch of Evil is generally considered the last film in the classic cycle of film noirs.
The film also featured a comeback appearance by cigar-smoking bordello madam Marlene Dietrich, and a breathtaking opening credits sequence filmed in a single-take. Later, Welles' expressionistic noir and psychological drama The Trial was an adaptation of Franz Kafka's classic novel, with Anthony Perkins as Joseph K - a man condemned for an unnamed crime in an unknown country. Early classic non-detective film noirs included Fritz Lang's steamy and fatalistic Scarlet Street - one of the moodiest, blackest thrillers ever made, about a mild-mannered painter's Edward G.
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