By Thomas Doherty
Translator: Qin Tian
Proofreading: Easy two three
Source: Holleywood Reporter (December 22, 2021)
"This movie is a completely morbid, dark story." In 1946, Terry Ramsay, editor of the Film Herald, said of Fritz Lang's Blood Red Street (1945), which somehow bypassed censorship in Brin's office and provoked the anger of conservative critics and censors. "Yet dark and morbid stories are often accepted and loved by the public, and in the long run, the results will be disastrous."
Blood Red Street
The tendency represented in Blood Red Streets is clearly moving in the direction of "out of control". The French had called this kind of film "film noir," but American critics at the time didn't know how to call it or understand it.
All they know is that this is a disturbing new trend, a provocation to traditional audiences. Such provocations not only threaten the aesthetics of Hollywood's traditional family audiences, infuriate moral defenders, but also undermine Hollywood's business.
This threat seems to have come after the end of World War II, but film noir came much earlier. In 1972, Paul Schrader, then a theorist (who later became famous for writing the taxi driver's screenplay), published an article in Film Review magazine on the aesthetic origins of film noir—German Expressionist films, Universal horror films, French melodrama, and British horror films, a fusion of which formed the unique style of American film noir. (The term film noir owes its origin to the French critic and screenwriter Nino Frank, who used the term "noir" in Marcel Doumejal's "Black Series" novels.) Raymond Bird and Etienne Shometon used the definition of "film noir" in their seminal 1955 book, The Complete Picture of American Film Noir (1941-1953).
So what defines what's in film noir? "Is this a film noir?" Many people have tried to strictly classify its characters, styles, and themes, and it seems that it can only be called film noir if certain fixed stylistic paradigms and black elements appear in a film.
Are there flashbacks in the movie? Is there any low-light photography? Is there eliza Cook Jr. (starring in "The Maltese Eagle")? For the more sane audiences of film noir, they would follow Justice Potter Stewart's definition of "genre": what you see is what you think. When the audience sees these elements, they know it's a film noir.
Needless to say, the most important aesthetic source of film noir is the German Expressionist film. The gloomy world of expressionist cinema and the coldness of the late Weimar era set the tone for the visual style and tone of film noir: the distorted psychological state in Robert Veneer's The Cabin of Dr. Carrigari (1920), the nightmares awakened in Maunau's Fisnoratto (1922) and Faust (1926), and the crimes committed in Fritz Lang's M is the Murderer (1931) and Dr. Mabus's Testament (1933).
In 1927, when Maunau came to Fox from the German Ufa Film Company in the United States, many Hollywood film directors, including John Ford and Frank Bowsach, came to learn his style of imagery—the way the cameras moved, the lighting effects, and the way multiple exposures were shot.
Dr. Caligari's CabinCurrent page Dr. Caligari's Cabin
The dark style of Nazism also influenced film noir. In film noir, the great forerunners (Fritz Long, Robert Theodmeck, Billy Wilder, Edgar White) G. Umer and Otto Preminger) fled Nazi Germany before the Gestapo arrived.
They were smart enough to perceive the darkness hidden in the corner. Thousands of desperate refugees have joined their escape path. These filmmakers pushed the boundaries of language to find a unique visual medium for their films, perfecting the style of film noir through set design, lighting, photography, and composition.
Hollywood's California is indeed paradise, but their survival is precarious — they are expelled from the country with a single paperwork and an invalid visa. It's no wonder that audiences always feel fear and uneasiness when watching their film noir — no matter how meticulous the murder plot and robbery plan in the film, the characters always succumb to their fate.
Under the influence of the above aesthetic factors, film noir began to breed its unique and sharp style. Boris Angustay's The Stranger on the Third Floor (which, by the way, features "low-light photography," flashbacks and Eliza Cook Jr., is widely regarded as the first true film noir, which exposes only a small number of images).
The Stranger on the Third Floor
Variety magazine once mocked the film: "Fancy cinematography, lighting effects, and pediatric dubbing." You don't need that much money to make a B-movie. It's too artistic for the average audience." The following year, three films noir were released in quick succession: John Houston's The Maltese Eagle, H. Bruce Humberstone's Scream when Awake (the film was originally released under the title "Scorching Focus"), and Orson Wells's Citizen Kane.
Film noir originated during World War II, not after World War II. In The Origins of World War II and Film Noir, film scholar Shirley Chinin Bissen argues that the emergence of film noir in "the bleak reality of the world of war" projects the fear of war people receiving telegrams from the War Department or the Wehrmacht, who know what it's like to live in fear. In the illusory world of dreams and optimism created by wartime Hollywood movies, these films seem to be just humble outsiders.
Like House of Loyalty (1942) and Fire Tree Honeysuckle (1944), the film noir that emerged in World War II was a product of history: Frank Tuttle's The Contract Killer (1942), Fritz Lang's Cabinet of Horrors (1944), Otto Preminger's The Secret History of Rolla (1944), and the undisputed milestone of film noir, Billy Wilder's Double Reparations (1944).
Contract Killer
So many film noirs began to emerge. By 1946, audiences were surprised to find that American cinema began to become darker and unbalanced. The solid foundations of Hollywood's moral world are being subverted and shaken.
Frustrated critics describe the "black wave" this way: full of ugly, dirty, morbid, sensational, sadistic, vulgar, and "simply unpleasant" films. Atlanta's film censor Christine Smith also denounced the postwar trend of films that "featured characters who did cruel and dirty things and were unpopular." Since film noir has yet made its way out of the United States, its opponents have used more words to deny them: "murderer movies," "celluloid dirt," and "films that promote male atrocities."
The Roman Catholic Church's "Good Winds" are a feared group of filmmakers who constantly exert moral pressure on classic Hollywood films. Wearing colored glasses, they strongly criticized the rise of film noir after the war, and blamed their appearance on the emptiness and despair brought about by the war: "Audiences have become accustomed to the violent content of movies, and in order to find alternatives to war films, Hollywood has shifted from showing physical violence to showing the violence of people's spiritual world." 」
In 1946, the group's representative, William H. H. Mullin said. "So the moral leanings of these films are degraded and promote a culture of violence." Mullin was well aware that film noir posed a serious provocation to the Hayes Code and To Catholic fundamentalism. He continued: "The moral problems in movies today are much more serious than before, and this is not a simple problem of bare legs and low-cut dresses, but an affront to the basic moral bottom line."
Joseph Brin, the selfless enforcer of the Hayes Code, is a filmmaker's nightmare. The style of film noir was so dark and decaying that it certainly didn't fool Brin, who knew in his heart that the situation was irreparable. It took more than a decade of back-and-forth tug-of-war before his office approved the release of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), a film based on the novel by James F. Kennedy. M. Kane's novel adaptation of the theme of adultery and murder has survived countless censorships, and the film still has the imprint of James's novel. Peter Harrison, an examiner in Brin's office, commented on the film: "Strictly limit the appeal of this film to groups that pride themselves on being dirty and morally depraved."
"The Postman Always Rings the Bell Twice"
However, the boycott of film noir is not limited to critics and censors. The ornate chiaroscuro and lavish lighting design — elements that today's film noir enthusiasts talk about — have been relegated to "artistic camera effects" by established members of the American Society of Cinematographers, which they consider to be incompatible with Hollywood's "transparent narrative."
The wisps of smoke, the figures reflected in the mirrors, the tilted shots, the dazzling fluorescent lights, and the eerie sense of darkness —how could a moviegoer immerse himself in such a distracting story? In 1947, photographer Russell Maddy (Spartacus, The Flower Drum Song) shouted to his colleagues: "You don't have to complicate your photographic style with fancy photography or strange, surreal lenses, maybe these techniques will attract some art masters, but they are far beyond the level of appreciation of the average fan." 」
More seriously, amid the criticism, film noir was charged with the most horrific crime in postwar cinema: the dangerous elements. A studio director, who asked not to be named, said: "We can't make overseas audiences think that Americans are dirty and despicable people, let alone lower their moral standards and please them with violence." His tone sounded like louis e., in 1946. B. Meyer.
Tellingly, in 1947, more "cold-blooded, immoral" films noir appeared on the screen ("Two Heroes", "Beyond the Whirlpool", "Jade Face Demon", "The Man Who Sold The Soul", "Corpse Changing Doubt", "Born Killer"), the Commission of Investigation into Non-American Activities (HCUA) launched the first round of investigations into the Red Elements in Hollywood, and the practitioners of film noir became the focus of attention.
"Jade Face Love Demon"
In a sense (though not in the sense that investigators think), the Commission of Inquiry into Non-American Activities may be doing something. Film noir tells the story of freedom, individualism, capitalism, the nature of men (not to mention, women), and the dirty truth behind American society, which certainly doesn't fit with mainstream American values. People's imaginations of a better future are wrapped up in a sense of lifeless nothingness, and personal strength and free will are worthless.
Film noir is full of fatalistic shadows — death is not far away, your fate is predestined, and you can't change what happened to you in the past. "No one can quit, we start together, we have to end together, the two of us are completely together, remember?" 」 Phyllis in "Double Reparations" tells Neff that once he gets on the thief's boat, he will be overwhelmed.
"The streets of America are not like 'Blood Red Streets,'" film historian Terry Ramsay warned Hollywood, but it was Hollywood that made box office blockbusters like Blood Red Streets, Double Compensation, The Scarf Masked Thief, Gilda and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Indeed, film noir is far more popular in big cities than small towns, and is more popular with male audiences, and film noir reveals popular resistance to Hollywood narratives. Perhaps, film noir has never been far from American society.
Today, films that inherit the noir gene have more channels and ways of watching than classic film noir – in DVD stores, film noir-themed film festivals, and on tv shows of all kinds.
Eddie Mueller, a writer who studies film noir, calls film noir "the introductory drug to classic Hollywood films." Gen Z will also be attracted to the gloomy, scorpion beauty of film noir, and soon they will be interested in Hollywood black-and-white movies — even those silent films.
While many of the song and dance films, biopics, and social crime films of the classic Hollywood era have faded over time, the tough, sharp film noir never loses its aura. They still have the magic of attracting audiences.