noir essay

The Concept of Film Noir Essay

One of the most praised and seen movie genres, “Film noir” is considered as a remarkable and classic movie form by the audience. Film noir is that movie form in which dark and criminal events are showed to the audiences.

This form serves as a revolutionary genre in Hollywood movies as it played a vital role in changing the tradition of sunny, optimistic and commercial movies after World War II. The term “Film Noir” was coined by the French critics in order to criticize and evaluate those movies which are dark, pessimistic, negative, and serious i.e. different from the usual commercialized cinema.

There are some of the apparent characteristics of film genre. In particular, film noir has some of its distinctive features as well. In this paper, we shall discuss two silent features of film noir namely style and narrative structure. We shall elaborate such features through the analysis of movie LA Confidential that is categorized in film noir genre.

This was authenticated by Foster Hirsch who is known for his brilliant work as an analyst who used to analyze the most original genre of American cinema ‘Film Noir’ in his classic way. He evaluated that: “ Noir deals with criminal activity, from a variety of perspectives, in a general mood of dislocation and bleakness which earned the style its name.

Unified by a dominant tone and sensibility, the noir canon constitutes a distinct style of film-making; but it also conforms to gender requirements since it operates within a set of narrative and visual conventions…. Noir tells its stories in a particular way, and in a particular visual style. The repeated use of narrative and visual structures….certainly qualifies noir as a genre, one that is in fact as heavily coded as the western” (Conard & Porfirio, 2007, pp. 9-10).

The inventers and those who supported the genre and write many movies on this were strongly opposed by the government in the post war period as there were lots of reasons behind this.

Cain, the writer of Double Indemnity was terribly criticized by the Production Code Administration (PCA) which was against the depiction of lawlessness and acts of demoralization to the audiences. So, in this way the genre of Film Noir was greatly opposed as it was injecting a negative thought in people that one can do anything for the sake of self indulgence and material satisfaction (Staudler, 2005).

The most prominent feature of film noir genre is its style that is influenced by social change in American society in post war era. The stylistic feature portrays doomed heroes, manipulating people, personal and political agendas of characters. Moreover, the stylistic feature projects dark light sets which create long and wide shadows, disturbed and uncomfortable atmosphere and are usually dragged.

Other than this a prominent quality of this genre is the development of negative behaviors in heroes or ant-heroes usually generated by Femme Fatale which is the depiction of Women in Film Noirs in a way which has never seen by the audience previously. This kind of women is different, thrilling and serve as an illicit desire for Men.

Conclusively, these features of Style in Film Noir can be precisely considered as the salient feature used in the story projection of this genre. Stylistic feature is greatly visible in various Film Noirs in the past. One of the most notable examples include “L.A. Confidential” (1997) directed by Curtis Hanson show these features in order to present the original idea of Film Noir.

L.A. Confidential shows the evil and personal desires of different people related to different backgrounds. It bears the characters of a typical film noir which includes criminal activities and lethal women engagements within criminal groups. The city shown in the movie serves as the combating zone of human insights.

The story is about some cops, their crimes and the guilt which they are carrying in their hearts. The style of the film is like a typical film noir i.e. dull and slow but interesting. The cinematographers have done every possible effort in order to bring originality in the movie. The movie atmosphere is dim with fewer colors and the characters have usually awkward gestures and style of clothing. (Arthur, 2008).

Another feature of film noir is the narrative structure which means a lot to a film noir genre. The characterizations are done in such a way that the people who play those characters become the source of story narration.

The narrative structures are different in different movies. Sometimes the screenplay’s voice-over adds a special essence in storytelling which also acts as a source of putting intensity and quality to the movie. Also, sometimes the film’s voice-over addresses are done by a specific person who narrates the story throughout the film. This narration is spoken in a deadpan way by which the story seems more interesting to the audience (Staudler, 2005).

The narrative style used in L.A. Confidential is descriptive and mind captivating. For example, the entry of Ed Exley, an ambitious and concerned cop in a crime scene shows the descriptive narrative structure when the camera focuses on each and every details of the entire grimy objects from ashtrays to the torn register.

Means, the cinematographers have paid attention to every character and even to the minor things which are although not related to the main story theme but they do play an important part in the narration of story. This means that narration in L.A. Confidential is done usually through the visuals of a scene.

By giving importance to the minor things the director has tried to give the whole explanation which is commendable. Another style of narration used in other film noirs is the narration through any of the character. For example in Double Indemnity the voice-over of the story is not the camera but a character from the film. An insurance investigator, Barton Keyes, narrates the whole plot of the story throughout the film (Staudler, 2005).

L.A. Confidential although depicts the confused moods of fifties but it also updates its theme by showing all possible contemporary cultural obsession. It presents government, law enforcement and organized crime as the three interlinked forms. According to the creator of the story these three forms are interconnected with each other and each has common goals and brutal business tactics. They can do anything to victimize the city’s underclass (Arthur, 2008).

The movie L.A. Confidential has all the features of a film noir and presents briefly a clear idea about the style and narrative structure used in the film. The story is quite different from the usual film noirs but it has many variations which and mind captivating characteristics which attract the audience. L.A. confidential has provided information about this genre to the audience by showing them the original features.

The new thing in this movie was the depiction of a brief account of crimes by the government officials not the common people. Other than this, the movie makers like the other film noirs have again incorporated their suggestions about the evil desires of human and their devilish plots in this movie which clarifies the fact that man can descend to any level in order to achieve his goals (Arthur, 2008).

Although this genre of film making was opposed to a high extent but originally it is a way of depicting real life incidents. The stories and characters are made on the basis of real life happenings. Writer Cain (Double Indemnity) has also taken example from his own life and clarified that although this genre seems controversial and is something which is showing things which can have a demoralizing impact on people but in actual these are the hard realities of life which the Hollywood movies are trying to show to the people.

Arthur, P. (2008). L.A. Confidential. New York: Cineaste Publishers.

Conard, M., & Porfirio, R. (2007). The Philosophy of Film Noir. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky.

Staudler, G. (2005). Doble Indemnity, Hard-Boil Film Noir. New York, London.: W.W.Norton&Company.

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• Noir Films Comparison: “Memento” and “Point Blank”
• Sunset Blvd: Women Sexuality in the Dark Side of the Reality and Films Noir
• Interview With Mr. Lee: Action Films of the 1950s
• Movies in the 1960s
• Making the Best Shot of Your Life: Behind the Curtains of Movie-Making
• The Movie Tarnished as a Threat: Did They Fear Egoism, Altruism or What Hid in Between?
• Seeing a Movie in a Movie Theater Versus Watching a Movie on a Television Set
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Bibliography

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How to Write a Film Noir: Utilising the 8 Essential Pillars of Film Noir

This article will delve into what film noir is and its common tropes . We’ll offer pointers on how to write a film noir that both honours the traditions of the genre and puts a contemporary spin on the genre.

Wikipedia defines film noir as…

“a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations”

What Is Film Noir?

It quite literally translates to ‘dark film’ in French. There is often a debate as to whether film noir is a film type or genre.

However, what we do know for sure is that there was a period in American cinema in which there was a series of films which typically adopted a dark, chiaroscuro lighting appearance, a narrative which centres on crime, and a moral lesson.

Film Noir’s Origins…

Film noir dominated the screen in the 1940s-1950s. This was the ‘classical period’ of American film noir.

Despite film noir developing during the classical Hollywood period, there have since been several attempts at reviving the genre. 

In the 1980s there was the reintroduction of these stories through the ‘neo-noir’ genre. These films (often adaptations i.e. The Postman Always Rings Twice ) had similar traits.

They showed graphic depictions of sex and violence and had similar storylines BUT didn’t carry the same emphasis on ideology.

For Example…

• The 1981 remake of, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Directed by Bob Rafelson.
• This film was drastically different to the original. It was in colour and it overtly sexualised Cora and depicted sex as well as graphic violence (as opposed to the hint of such things).
• Despite being the same script, it did not carry the same moral significance.

Additionally, since ‘neo-noir’, it is possible to spot elements of film noir, and in particular, the figure of the femme fatale in current films. Gone Girl and The Favourite particularly stand out – We will discuss this in detail later on in the article.

Film Noir’s Stereotypical Traits and Tropes:

Film noir has an unmissable visual style.

• Black and white (typical of the time)
• Dark, low-key, chiaroscuro lighting
• Harsh shadows
• High-contrast mise en scene
• Ominous cinematography influenced by German Expressionism
• Voice-over narration
• Allusion over depictions (sex, violence etc.)
• Significant and telling iconography
• A femme fatale
• An anti-hero protagonist (typically male)
• Direct, simple dialogue
• Figure of authority (e.g. a police officer or lawyer)

Narrational Devices In Film Noir:

• First-person voice-over narration
• Narrative sequences/events clearly blocked out

Stereotypical Film Noir Characters:

• An anti-hero protagonist
• An investigator (voice of morality)
• A femme fatale figure who is the antagonist
• A husband (who does not fulfil the femme fatale’s needs- she wants to get rid of him and will manipulate the protagonist to assist her)
• An ‘ideal’, submissive female character- ‘ the domestic woman ‘

Film Noir’s Themes and Ideology:

Film noirs ALL have an underlying message. The messages are directly and obviously aimed at 1940s/1950s audiences. They serve as reminders of the male-dominated, patriarchal and misogynistic society which viewed women as domesticated wives or suspicious figures.

This gender clash is central to film noir films. The femme fatale symbolises this as she is a-typical. Other key themes/traits brought to the centre of the narrative of these films are:

• Violence and death
• Power and patriarchy

Notable Film Noir Films:

• Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950)
• The Postman Always Rings Twice (Wilder, 1946)
• The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946)
• Double Indemnity ( Wilder, 1944)
• Gilda (Vidor, 1946)

8 Steps To How To Write A Classical Film Noir:

Below we have listed a few key steps which will help you with writing your film noir.

The stages aren’t exhaustive, but they are important and should be included at some stage of your writing.

For the purpose of the article we will largely refer to The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity

Step One – What’s The Story?

First and foremost, you need to decide on what your narrative is going to be. It might sound an obvious first stage, however it is essential! What is the point of your narrative? What do you want to achieve and is there a message you want to send?

A Few Ideas May Include…

• A wife wanting to escape her mundane life?
• Someone trapped in an unhappy marriage?
• A hitchhiker aspiring for a better life and love?
• Someone is on the run and they stumble into a femme fatale?

Whatever storyline you decide on, there are a few elements (as already mentioned) you must include to make it a classical film noir…

• A murder (typically of the husband)
• A femme fatale antagonist
• An ‘ideal’ woman
• A figure of authority (usually police officer or lawyer)
• Retribution – reinforcement of authority and patriarchy/ moral order typically via the death of the femme fatale

If you include the above elements, you have laid a solid groundwork for writing a film noir narrative by including the main tropes . You can avoid and lose some of these trope but having them as a guide may help lay initial ground.

Step Two – Who’s The Protagonist?

An obvious vital stage is to decide who your protagonist is. Typically they tend to (like most protagonists) desire something:

• A better life
• Work and security

The protagonist is manipulated and seduced by the femme fatale and is almost always an outsider and an outcast.

The femme fatale exploits them and draws them into a murder plot she has concocted in order to improve her life and achieve her want.

As with any character you write, you need to know them inside and out. And remember, they are not a hero .

Questions To Ask of the Protagonist:

• What’s their flaw? And how do you plan to reveal this to the audience?
• What’s their need vs want?
• They need to be seduced and easily manipulated- what is their weakness?
• What is their job?
• What is their background and where are they from?

Of course these are simplistic questions, but it is important to think about your protagonist in detail. Who are they?

• Why is the narrative centred around that specific individual?

The majority (if not all) of film noirs introduce the protagonist through their first-person voice-over narration.

• In The Postman Always Rings Twice Frank is introduced as a drifter looking for work.
• Whereas, in Double Indemnity , Walter is introduced as a man who is an insurance salesman.

Step Three – The Femme Fatale :

The temptress and seductress.

As mentioned, when you write a film noir, one of the main individuals, if not the most important figure, is the femme fatale.

According to Wikipedia…

“A  femme fatale … is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps”.

The femme fatale plays a vital role in impacting the protagonist ‘s arc and actions as well as impacting the narrative chain of events.

From her first introduction her danger must be hinted at. This is often where camerawork becomes extremely important and effective.

• In The Postman Always Rings Twice , Cora is introduced through the camera tracking a lipstick rolling along the floor to her feet.
• Here, the camera tracks upwards along her body to reveal her face. Her introduction centres on her body and her awareness of her sexuality.
• It is important to note that the camera tracks the protagonist’s perspective, reinforcing his desire and interest in her sexually.
• In Double Indemnity , it is similar. Our introduction to Phyllis is sexualised – the camera tracks the protagonist’s perspective revealing her standing at the top of the stairs wearing only a towel.

As discussed, the role and function of the femme fatale is often to seduce and manipulate the protagonist into helping her achieve her goal. This goal typically defies social convention i.e. work, escape marriage etc.

Whilst these characteristics feel outdated and of their time, their narrative function is the lesson to take away. How can these stereotypical characteristics be subverted but still serve a similar narrative function? This is a key question in writing a contemporary film noir.

The introduction to the femme fatale is essential in hinting at the protagonist ‘s weaknesses and flaws. Through her manipulation of the protagonist she will bring out their weaknesses. And this will ultimately have fatal consequences.

You should ask yourself:

• What is her want and desire? Money, love, work, freedom and independence?
• Is she a figure who goes against patriarchy? (Typically, she represents male fears of women dominating and working, disturbing the patriarchal order).
• What’s the end game- how will she get her retribution?
• What about her is so alluring?
• Why is she unhappy in her life?

Step Four – Make The Protagonist and Femme Fatale Compatible (She Needs To Fulfil the Protagonist’s Want):

First of all, you need to create a situation for the two characters to meet. As discussed above, the introduction to these characters is significant for the narrative development and character arcs.

• In The Postman Always Rings Twice , the protagonist is looking for a job and notices the sign for work at the diner and enters and thus, meets Cora, the boss’ wife.
• In Double Indemnity , Walter arrives at Phyllis’ house to inform her husband that he needs to renew his automobile insurance policy (a key element which will play a central role in the murder of Phyllis’ husband).

How are they coming to meet? Is he looking for work? Typically, there tends to be some involvement with the femme fatale’s husband or love interest. What this is, you can decide. However, it is important to create some form of relationship between the protagonist and the other love interest.

Compatibility and The Seduction:

It is important to create an initial first impression that the protagonist and femme fatale are compatible, making their desires and wants seem understandable.

• In The Postman Always Rings Twice , the initial meeting between Cora and Frank is frosty. She ignores him and applies makeup- appearing obsessed with her image and disinterested in Frank.
• Cora tells Frank she is unhappy in her marriage and desires to be rid of her husband. Frank wants to be with her and offers to assist her in getting rid of her husband so they can be together.
• Her aim is to gain control over the Twin Oaks, making it the diner she has always wanted.
• Cora seduces him by claiming she loves him when this is a facade to gain his alliance.
• In Double Indemnity , the two flirt, and Phyllis enquires about getting a life policy on her husband. Walter picks up on her hints at wanting him dead.
• He helps her murder her husband (strangles him) and covers it up by dressing as him then placing his body on train tracks.
• Her aim is to gain her husband’s money and live independently.

A key aspect to remember is that the femme fatale deceives the protagonist and promises if they remove the obstacle (her husband, for example), they will be together. Whereas, she really wants independence.

Step Five – Writing The Murder:

A central aspect to the film noir is the murder and crime aspect. Typically, the protagonist murders the Femme Fatale’s husband, the obstacle in the film.

The below are classic forms of murders from film noirs:

• Strangulation
• In The Postman Always Rings Twice , the initial attempt at murdering Nick fails. Having planned for Cora to hit him on the head with a bag of rocks, a power outage occurs and Cora hits Nick, but not fatally.
• It is only later, when Nick catches Cora attempting to kill herself, he says he will kill Nick himself. The three of them drive to Santa Barbara, and on the way they get Nick drunk. Frank hits him over the head and drives the car off a cliff, with himself and Cora escaping.
• As already discussed, in Double Indemnity , Walter strangles Phyllis’ husband in the back of the car when they are on the way to the station. From here, he adopts his identity and boards the train, later jumping off and placing the real body on the tracks.

As you can see, the murders tend to be similar in practice. You can attempt to make this more complex. However, to write a classical film noir, simplicity is often the key.

Step Six – The Aftermath:

The aftermath of the murder is a key point in the narrative.

Despite appearing to be in the all-clear , the protagonist and femme fatale are always caught by the authorities and morality comes first.

However, the immediate aftermath typically tends to leave the protagonist and femme fatale in the all-clear momentarily.

• In The Postman Always Rings Twice , Cora is held under suspicion and is charged with murder.
• However, Cora’s lawyer prevents her full confession from being released and she is released on probation with manslaughter charges.
• In Double Indemnity , the Chief, Mr Norton, is suspicious of Phyllis and believes she planned the murder and was having an affair.
• Lola, Phyllis’ step-daughter, blames her, so Walter starts seeing her in order to distract her
• A witness claims the person on the train was younger than the body found.
• Lola reveals Phyllis has been seeing her boyfriend, so Walter decides to kill her.

As you can see, it is important to create the idea of a return to normality, the idea that perhaps they will get away with it. However, this will always only last for a short period of time.

However, it is important to add in more layers of drama here:

• Is there another love interest?
• Was one of them hiding something/working for someone else?
• Will one of them die?

These are a few questions you should ask yourself as they make the narrative go from interesting, to compelling. After all, it is always more dramatic and engaging to add another layer to the story.

Step Seven – Retribution – Reinforcement Of Morality: .

The reinforcement of morality and order is conveyed through the villains (the protagonist and femme fatale) getting punished for committing murder.

For Instance This Can Be Seen In…

• In The Postman Always Rings Twice , Cora and Frank begin to run the diner the way Cora had always wanted. However, it stirs suspicions surrounding their involvement in Nick’s murder.
• They marry as a means of protecting themselves in court
• Cora leaves to visit her mother and whilst she is gone, Frank has an affair
• When Cora arrives she is blackmailed by the man who wrote her confession but Frank beats him up
• Frank’s affair comes out and she says she is pregnant
• They make up and go to the beach, but on the way back they have a car crash and Cora dies
• In Double Indemnity , as Walter states his intentions of killing her and framing Nino, he attempts to shoot Phyllis, she retaliates by shooting him in the shoulder, showing her true colours. She says she never loved him and was using him. He hugs her then shoots her dead.

The Take Away…

The Femme Fatale should die.

An important element from the 1940s film noirs is the femme fatale receiving her comeuppance for luring the seemingly ‘innocent’ protagonist to his doom.

Step Eight – How To End The Film Noir:

Typically, the noir follows a cyclical narrative, and ends with the protagonist ‘s first person voice-over narration (the same as the narration at the beginning of the film).

Additionally, the protagonist will pay the price for being manipulated and seduced by the femme fatale.

• In The Postman Always Rings T wice , Frank is convicted for killing Cora. The lawyer says that the evidence proves he was involve in killing Nick so would be sent to death row anyway.
• Through a voice over Frank says how both of them had to accept their fate and pay for their crimes.
• In Double Indemnity , Walter goes to his office and, whilst speaking into his dictaphone, confesses (a return to the film’s opening). He attempts to flee, but collapses as a result of being shot earlier by Phyllis.

The Take Away?

As mentioned above, the protagonist will suffer for their involvement with the femme fatale.

• What has the protagonist learnt? Have they grown and changed throughout the duration of the narrative?
• What message are you trying to convey within the film and its conclusion?

To Summarise…

• Mystery- there needs to be a clear sense of mystery within the narrative
• An outsider and outcast as the protagonist (not a hero)
• The femme fatale
• First-person narrative with flashbacks
• No happy ending
• A sense of the American Dream

But, What About Modern Film Noir and the Femme Fatale?

As earlier discussed, classic film noir is a product of 1940s/1950s society and values. Therefore, there is danger in writing a classic noir today of it turning into somewhat of a parody.

This is the same with 1980s neo-noir, which was very much a product of its time.

However, recent films feature aspects from classical film noirs, such as the figure of the femme fatale, which effectively, yet subtly, revive the genre.

There is no ‘set in stone’ path to follow to write a modern film noir. However, below we have listed a few films and their tropes which may inspire you write your own.

Gone Girl (2014)

David Fincher’s 2014 adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name, is arguably a film noir and most significantly, includes a highly complex femme fatale figure.

The film is structured around dual protagonists, Amy and Nick. The first half of the narrative centres on Nick and is from his point of view, whereas the second half is from Amy’s.

Nick arrives at his house to find his wife, Amy, missing and the house appears to be ‘broken in’.

The missing persons case soon becomes a murder investigation in which he becomes the main suspect (it is revealed he was having an affair, wanted a divorce and didn’t want Amy’s baby).

In the second half of the film it is revealed that Amy plotted her murder, framing Nick because of his unfaithfulness.

She alters her identity and watches Nick’s life slowly fall apart from afar. When she’s ready to return to the spotlight, she cold-bloodily murders her ex-boyfriend and manipulates and threatens Nick into staying with her by saying she is pregnant.

The Key Noir Aspects…

• Murder and the careful plotting
• Betrayal (ironically it is the man who is betraying his wife as opposed to the woman in classical film noir)
• Replacing for a new, younger model (again it is the man not the woman)
• Flashbacks to younger, happier years – the trope of flashbacks is central to classical film noir
• Idealised female through the figure of ‘Amazing Amy’ – in classic noir the femme fatale was presented as the male ideal of a woman
• Nick doesn’t regard Amy as a person in the normal sense – he looks down to her and doesn’t treat her as a person. This is similar to the way men treated women in 1940s noir (i.e. Cora and Nick in The Postman Always Rings Twice ).
• Amy gives up her job for Nick (she moves house for him- her own independence and life is taken away from her).

The Favourite (2018)

Likewise, there are hints at film noir in 2018’s The Favourite through Emma Stone’s character, Abigail.

The film centres on Queen Anne and her two love interests, Sarah and Abigail.

From the offset, we learn Anne and Sarah have a sexual relationship, but also that Sarah advises (tells) Anne how to run the country. This is soon disturbed by the arrival of Abigail, Sarah’s cousin, who has fallen on hard times.

Abigail, witnessing their relationship, decides to manipulate and use Anne as a means of gaining her status and wealth back. She soon wins over the Queen’s affections by becoming her lover, replacing Abigail.

With Anne’s favour, Abigail’s status is restored when she marries Colonel Masham, making her a Baroness again. From here, she uses her status to socialise and have affairs, neglecting Anne. Her evil nature is conveyed when she hurts one of Anne’s rabbits.

The film ends with Anne forcing Abigail to care for her.

• A femme fatale figure who manipulates Anne (in place of a man in classical noir) for her own vested interests of regaining her status and wealth.
• A femme fatale who will go to any lengths to get what she wants (sleeps with Anne, threatens Sarah and marries) and shows her true evil nature at the end of the film (hurts a rabbit).
• There is no real love between Abigail and Anne .

To Die For (1995)

The Gus Van Sant film To Die For centres on Suzanne Stone, a wannabe broadcast journalist who obsesses over fame and celebrity.

At the beginning of the film she marries Larry, who is part of a family restaurant business. She gets a job, having attempted to seduce the boss, at a local cable station as a secretary. She soon manipulates her way into becoming a weather reporter.

However, once Larry tells her to give up her career, she begins to plot how to get rid of him. Having visited a local school to get students to help with her documentary, she seduces and manipulates three pupils to help her with her murder.

She begins sleeping with James, using her sexuality to manipulate him into killing Larry on the basis that they will become a couple. However, as soon as the murder is complete she cuts ties and denies any relationship with the three to the police.

The three teenagers are arrested. Lydia wears a wire and gets Suzanne to confess. However, she is later released on bail.

Released, Suzanne loves the fame and tells fake stories about Larry to gain attention (drug addict etc). The two teenage boys are sentenced to life in prison.

The film ends with Larry’s father using the mafia to murder Suzanne and leave her underneath a frozen lake.

• A leading femme fatale figure who uses her sexuality to manipulate those around her, particularly James, as a means of achieving what she wants.
• A femme fatale who plots the murder of her husband so she has freedom and independence (she craves attention and praise).
• A femme fatale who dies as a result of her actions (manipulation and murder) – there is a clear sense of restoration of morality.
• There is a cyclical narrative.
• The film makes use of voice-over narration, but of the secondary characters not the protagonist
• There are multiple flashbacks (the entire film is a flashback).

Under The Skin (2013)

Under the Skin centres on a woman (unnamed, but played by Scarlett Johansson) who goes around ‘collecting’ men. She lures them by seducing them with her female physique, and then disposes of them into a ‘void’.

She does this throughout the film. However, the film ends with her being attacked in a shelter by a logger. She runs into the woods, but he eventually rips her skin off her body, revealing her true alien form.

The Key Film Noir Aspects…

• The film centres on a femme fatale who uses her sexuality and body to seduce and exploit men.
• She is a deceitful and evil character who murders men she meets- fulfils her want.
• It makes use of dim-lighting and shadows to create an ominous look.
• She is sexualised and appears vampish.
• There is a strong sense of isolation throughout the film.

Ex Machina (2014)

Ex Machina centres on Nathan Bateman, a Programmer who wins a competition to stay at CEO Nathan Bateman’s luxurious, isolated home for one week.

Here, Nathan asks Caleb to judge Ava (a female humanoid robot built by Nathan) and decide whether or not she has a conscience and can think.

As the narrative develops, it becomes clear that Caleb is using her to fulfil his sexual needs. At the same time, Caleb interviews Ava, and the two soon develop a mutual attraction.

Ava expresses an interest to flee to the outside world, but Nathan plans on wiping her memory. After seducing and manipulating Caleb into turning against Nathan (who she later kills after cutting the power out), she escapes having ‘repaired’ herself and abandons Caleb.

• The sense of isolation and ‘no escape’.
• A leading femme fatale figure (Ava) who manipulates and seduces the protagonist by telling him about her desire to escape and be with him if Nathan was gone.
• Nathan has created Ava as the idealised, perfect female form and exploits her to fulfil his sexual needs and desires.

However, unlike classical film noirs, Ex Machina ‘s femme fatale is not punished for her behaviour. Instead, the film ends with her being given a chance at life in New York City.

We know she is evil, but she has gotten away with it. And we almost root for her as she’s taken advantage of the flawed men in her path.

This is a major difference between classical film noir and modern noir, highlighting how a modern film noirs can adapt to reflect more contemporary values.

The Beguiled (2017)

The Beguiled centres on Martha Farnsworth, the Headteacher of a girls school, and her five pupils and one teacher during the American Civil War. When they find a wandering solider on their land, the women decide to care for him.

As the film progresses, he becomes a large presence at the school, gaining the attention of the girls and the teacher, Edwina. They all attempt to out do one another for his affections.

Already having relations with Edwina, one night she walks in on him with a student and in a rage, pushes him down the stairs and breaks his leg. When he wakes the next day, he has had the leg amputated by the women.

In a rage, he gets a hold of a gun and threatens the women. Later that evening, the women poison his food and he soon dies.

The last shot of the film is of the women dragging his body to the road.

• A wanderer/drifter figure.
• The idea of ‘evil women’ through all of the female characters.
• An isolated location (typical of classical noirs).
• Strong undertones of sexuality and the watchful male eye.

However…

The narrative is female-driven and the film does not condone the behaviour of the women- there is no restoration of morality. Therefore, despite it being a period film, it adopts more contemporary values.

So, Now It Is Your Turn To Write…

The above films are examples of modern films which have hints of noir through their employment of classical film noir tropes i.e. a femme fatale, use of location, plot, cinematography and lighting etc.

They are contemporary. They may not be classified as film noir’s but they most definitely fit in with the type and reflect an attempt at reviving the genre and Femme Fatale figure into modern film culture.

How To Write A Modern Femme Fatale:

As the examples show, the character of the femme fatale now goes beyond the film noir genre. She appears in:

• Thrillers (most similar to classical noir)
• Dark comedies
• Action and Science Fiction

What To Consider…

• Why is she there?
• What purpose does she serve?
• What role will she play on the narrative events?
• She doesn’t have to be your stereotypical femme fatale- make her different and subvert stereotype.
• How will she be modern? What will her values be? And will they speak to contemporary audiences?

A Few Final Pointers To Reiterate To Think About Before You Write A Film Noir:

• Why this story?
• Who is your protagonist and what do you want their arc to be?
• What will your femme fatale be like? Will she adhere to the classical film noir character archetype or will she be different?
• What is the message you want to convey with the film? Is there a point you’re trying to make with the film?

It’s a genre with a long and continuing legacy. And writing one requires an all important mix of following well established rules and bleeding in contemporary subjects, contexts and values.

When you write a film noir, use the traditions as guidelines to subvert and freshen up the genre and continue to push it forward.

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This article was written by Milly Perrin and edited by IS Staff

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8 thoughts on “How to Write a Film Noir: Utilising the 8 Essential Pillars of Film Noir”

“reinforcing the patriarchy via the death of the femme fatale who is the antagonist” What Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the femme fatale is more often a tragic character. Usually the rich client and the world of power they represent is the true antagonist (though they’re usually let go because their “punishment” of losing someone important due to their own greed has already happened to serve as the basis and eventual reveal of the plot – and also to reinforce that the world’s corruptness, the reason for the hero’s cynicism, can not be truly defeated.) The femme fatale and their self-destructiveness is presented as a victim of the same “Under The Skin” isn’t even a noir, what the heck? It is however, an excellent satire/sci-fi/(feminist film?) that I often recommend to people. Same goes for Ex Machina. But you can’t shove it into the noir genre just because it has a woman killer or a woman who’s exploited. Those themes are more universal than the unreliable vamp and what they represent. Admittedly I’ve not seen every movie on your list, I’m basing it on Raymond Chandler novels (who we should consider being the “creator” of the noir genre) and other authors after him. So this could be a fair criticism of post WWII cinema, but I think it’s wrong to equate that with the noir genre as a whole.

This was an awesome article, it helped me so much with my university film project. Thankyou!

Most welcome Tahj!

Great article. Is there any way a film noir can end with hope or positively?

Thanks Tee! Tradition would dictate…not…but tradition is always there to be re-invented.

I’d consider Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’ to be a modern noir, and despite the violence and depravity therein, it has a nice, hopeful ending.

The quality of the articles in Industrial Scripts is really good and I enjoy reading them. They’re witty, direct to the point and elucidative. This one helps me a lot. I realized there’s a small, though not harmless error here: The Postman Always Rings Twice was directed by Tay Garnett, not by Billy Wilder.

Congratulations and keep up the high quality work.

Enjoy the article and the insights given. Currently doing the final editing on a science fiction novella with noir aspects.

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Collections of Essays

• Cameron, Ian, ed. The Movie Book of Film Noir. London: Studio Vista, 1992. DAVIS PN1995.9.F54 M68 1992 This collection of essays by eminent British movie critics and historians examines the films, directors and themes of classic film noir from 1945 to 1955. It is illustrated with over 100 stills that capture crucial moments in the films.
• Copjec, Joan, ed. Shades of Noir: A Reader. New York: Verso, 1993. DAVIS PN1995.9.F54 S5 1993 This collection of academic essays examines films from the classic film noir era, as well as more recent pictures such as "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" that arguably contain elements of film noir.
• Kaplan, E. Ann, ed. Women in Film Noir. London: British Film Institute, 1998. DAVIS and UL PN1995.9.W6 W66 1998 This collection of academic essays looks at film noir from a feminist perspective. It includes 80 black and white photographs.
• Palmer, R. Barton, ed. Perspectives on Film Noir. New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1996. DAVIS PN1995.9.F54 P47 1996 This is a collection of critical essays on classic noir films up through more recent neo-noir.
• Server, Lee, et al., eds. The Big Book of Noir. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1998. DAVIS and UL PN 1995.9.F54 B54 1998 This collection of essays and interviews covers classic film noir, as well as related genres such as hard-boiled fiction, comic books, and cartoons.
• Silver, Alain and James Ursini, eds. Film Noir Reader. New York: Limelight Editions, 1996. DAVIS PN1995.9.F54 F57 1996 This book is an anthology of 22 seminal and contemporary essays on film noir, drawing together definitive studies on the philosophy and techniques that have gone into the creation of films from the 1940s through more recent neo-noir films. It also includes many black and white photographs.
• Silver, Alain and James Ursini, eds. Film Noir Reader 2. New York: Limelight Editions, 1999. DAVIS PN1995.9.F54 F58 1999 This follow-up to the Film Noir Reader includes more critical essays on film noir, including several articles by American authors from the 1940s that are among the first writings on film noir in English.

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Noir Fiction: Money, Sex, and Revenge

By Ian Crouch

In the city, two young members of rival street gangs meet in a basement for a game of Russian roulette, a “Smith & Wesson .38 Police Special” set on the table between them. In rural Maine, a disgruntled neighbor murders his enemy and turns him into a scarecrow, leaving him “drying—slowly, slowly in the wind.” And in the suburbs, small animals are turning up dead, finished off “by clean edged rectangular stab wounds.” These bulletins from a world gone mad are just some of the dark pleasures to be found in “ The Best American Noir of the Century ,” a new anthology edited by James Ellroy and Otto Penzler, which features short stories from an eclectic list of writers that includes Jim Thompson, Cornell Woolrich, Patricia Highsmith, Joyce Carol Oates, and Elmore Leonard.

In his introduction to the book, Ellroy writes that noir “indicts the other subgenres of the hard-boiled school as sissified, and canonizes the inherent human urge toward self-destruction.” Noir as an idea and a mood may be familiar to us from its prominent, and easily parodied, place in cinema—the rich black-and-white cinematography, the tough talking dicks and sultry dames, the lines of cigarette smoke that run to the ceiling. But what characterizes the style in fiction? And is there a difference between noir writing and detective or mystery fiction? Last month, I asked Penzler —a writer, editor, and owner of the legendary Mysterious Bookshop in New York—to shed some light on noir.

“Most mystery fiction focusses on the detective, and noir fiction focusses on the villain,” Penzler explained when we met in midtown Manhattan. “The people in noir fiction are dark and doomed—they are losers, they are pessimistic, they are hopeless. If you have a private eye, the private eye is a hero; and he’s going to solve the crime and the bad guy will be caught. That’s a happy ending, but that’s not a noir ending.”

No heroes and no happy endings. Penzler writes in a foreword to the anthology about “the lost characters in noir who are caught in the inescapable prisons of their own construction.” Think of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” or the loveless lovers in James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” or of all that fatalistic doom in Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men.” It’s always the bad guys and gals that stand out. They may, like several of Poe’s more deviant characters, feel the urge to confess, either to prove their demented genius to the world, or to have their outcast urges punished and perhaps corrected. Or, they may just be too dumb, sex-crazed, or down on their luck to pull of their crimes. But there’s a thrill in reading these stories—in the artful plots, the often baroque style, and the thick air of desperation.

[#image: /photos/590953a2019dfc3494e9e453]

Andrew Pepper, in an essay published in “ The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction ,” identifies the central themes of noir: “the corrosive effects of money, the meaninglessness and absurdity of existence, anxieties about masculinity and the bureaucratization of public life, a fascination with the grotesque and a flirtation with, and rejection of, Freudian psychoanalysis.” Camus cited noir as an influence, but this American crime version of existentialism is less rigorous, more vague, like the mumbling of some low-rent hood. Take Evan Hunter’s “The Last Spin,” wherein one of those Russian roulette players twirls the barrel of the gun, and before pulling the trigger, sums it all up: “What the hell’s the difference?”

Noir characters stand alone, outside of civility and outside of society. “Nobody in noir fiction has a mother, nobody has children, nobody has someone that they love and care about. They live by themselves, for themselves.” Cut off from the longstanding values of the human family, these characters turn to immediate desires.

“Noir is about sex and money, and sometimes about revenge,” Penzler told me. These three elements often fuse into a frenzied craving that leads to half-cooked plots doomed to failure. And what about all the sex, and the prominence of the soulless woman, the femme fatale ? Ellroy puts it best in the introduction: “This society grants women a unique power to seduce and destroy. A six-week chronology from first kiss to gas chamber is common in noir.” Many have observed, with good reason, that women are misused by the mostly male writers of the genre. The men may be bad, but the woman are often very bad, and often no more than projections of male desire.

“Yes they are sexual objects, and yes they are dominant,” Penzler said. “Noir fiction was written by men for men. There are exceptions to everything; Patricia Highsmith was written for nobody—for everybody and nobody at the same time; and Dorothy B. Hughes is a wonderful noir writer. But if you look at a kind of literature where the bad girl is the heart of the story, well, those women are not very likable in general.”

Noir fiction came out of the First World War and the Depression but still thrives today, in slightly altered form. Early on it was often produced for the low-paying pulp presses, which valued speed and volume from its writers, leading to uneven output even from the most talented artists. “In recent years, the writing has just gotten so much stronger,” Penzler told me. Indeed, much of the anthology is dedicated to noir writing from the past thirty years, stories from authors such as Dennis Lehane and Chris Adrian , who was recently included in The New Yorker ’ s 20 Under 40 list of best young American writers.

What accounts for the lasting popularity of such dark tales?

“Have you ever lifted up a rock and seen slugs and millipedes and other ugly creatures come out?” Penzler asked me. “We like to watch them.”

For more noir, check out Catherine Corman’s photographs of Los Angeles , with captions by Raymond Chandler, over at Photo Booth.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Film Noir

Introduction, early assessments.

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Film Noir by William Luhr LAST REVIEWED: 28 October 2011 LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0029

Film noir emerged out of a nexus of American sociopolitical crises, including the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. It presented the underbelly of the traditionally optimistic and utopian “American Dream” and drew upon numerous cultural influences, such as German Expressionism, American hard-boiled fiction, French Poetic Realism of the 1930s, tabloid journalism, Italian neorealism and American postwar documentary filmmaking. The formative discourse about film noir appeared in journals such as L’Ecran Francais and Revue du cinema in post–World War II Paris. No new American films had arrived in France during the Nazi occupation; and when, in spring 1946, wartime Hollywood movies became available, critics identified a new and darker quality in them that they termed “film noir.” The first book on the subject, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton’s Panorama du film noir americain 1941–1953 , was published in Paris in 1955. English language discourse on it did not emerge until the 1970s, after the genre had lost its commercial viability: but simultaneously, cinema studies was growing and becoming institutionalized in journals, film clubs, and universities. At this time, film noir held a special appeal for young critics in light of the fact that their elders had dismissed many of the films on their original release; the younger generation tried to overturn these categorizations and embraced film noir in an enthusiastic exercise of rediscovery and of rewriting film history. Early articles in English and American journals sought to define the form. In the 1980s book-length studies appeared and have continued unabated; they range from general surveys to those using newly developing, cross-disciplinary methodologies. These analytical tools include formal, structural, and po ststructural approaches as well as feminist, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered methodologies. There were also masculinity, psychoanalytic, spectatorship, and genre studies as well as approaches linking film noir with American literary and social history, particularly of the Cold War era.

Early assessments sought to identify and define the form. Generally presuming film noir to refer to Hollywood films made during the 1940s and 1950s, they introduced issues that are still being debated, such as whether or not it is a genre, whether it is politically progressive or reactionary, whether or not it is an exclusively American form, and the nature of its canon. Most early commentaries, such as Frank 1995 and Borde and Chaumeton 2002 , appeared in France; English-language discourse on film noir did not appear until the 1970s and included Durgnat 1998 , Schrader 1998 , Place and Peterson 1998 . These early works tended to be typological and structural in approach, and they employ socio-historical contexts and existential thought as a guide to the world of the films. Cawelti 1985 established early contexts for understanding generic transformation and change within film noir.

Borde, Raymond, and Etienne Chaumeton. A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941–1953 . Translated by Paul Hammond. San Francisco: City Lights, 2002.

This first book-length study declares the form’s main characteristic to be the dynamism of violent death and notes its widespread misogyny. Film noir is crime presented from the criminal’s POV; and although individual shots often appear semidocumentary, their cumulative effect is that of a nightmare. First English translation of the 1955 French edition.

Cawelti, John G. “ Chinatown and Generic Transformation in Recent American Films.” In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings . 3d ed. Edited by Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen, 503–520. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Uses genre theory to discuss the shift from film noir to neo-noir and describes genres as constantly evolving entities. The essay contextualizes Chinatown within mythic, literary, and cinematic traditions and sees it as marking a paradigm shift by both invoking and changing the hard-boiled paradigm in narrative, social critique, and character development. First published in 1979.

Durgnat, Raymond. “Paint it Black: The Family Tree of the Film Noir.” In Film Noir Reader . Edited by Alain Silver and James Ursini, 37–51. New York: Limelight, 1998.

British left-wing critic Durgnat rejects castigation of film noir as “Hollywood Decadence” by citing historical precedents such as Greek tragedy, Jacobean drama, and Romantic Agony. It explores film noir’s use of the world of crime for social criticism and a critique of capitalism. First appeared in Cinema in August 1970.

Frank, Nino. “A New Type of Detective Story.” Translated by Connor Hartnett. In The Maltese Falcon: John Huston, John, Director . Edited by William Luhr, 8–9, 14. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.

This groundbreaking essay coined the term “film noir” in its analysis of recent Hollywood films, exuberantly proclaiming them evidence of a fundamental shift in Hollywood cinema and the dawn of a more mature era. Frank conflates the innovations of the films with those of American hard-boiled fiction.

Place, Janey, and Lowell Peterson. “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir .” In Film Noir Reader . Edited by Alain Silver and James Ursini, 65–75. New York: Limelight, 1998.

Place and Peterson laid the groundwork for the assessment of film style based upon the formal specificity of the films rather than upon broad thematic and impressionistic assertions. Beginning with a primer on camerawork and lighting, they identify film noir practices as deviations from the norm in pursuit of viewer destabilization. First published in Film Comment , January–February 1974.

Schrader, Paul. “Notes on Film Noir.” In Film Noir Reader . Edited by Alain Silver and James Ursini, 53–63. New York: Limelight, 1998.

Describes film noir as an American form, not a genre, but rather films defined by tone, mood, and historical era. A major theme is a passion for the past and present but also a fear of the future. He laments the paucity of stylistic studies and presents “notes” on film noir’s techniques.

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The Philosophy of Film Noir

Les reid sees through a lens darkly with mark conard ..

Film noir represents a dark night of the soul in American cinema. In the 1920s and 30s the most popular genre was the Western, with its tales of courage, self-reliance, male toughness and female sweetness. Westerns were infused with the values of the American Dream, and the Western hero was likeable, trustworthy and admirable. By contrast, the films made in the 1940s and 50s referred to as ‘film noir’ convey dark feelings of disillusionment, pessimism and cynicism. Recurring characteristics of these films are that the whole society portrayed seems corrupt; the protagonist is more anti-hero than hero; a femme fatale lures the protagonist into crime; crime is presented as a cunning exploit; and fatalism rules as plans go awry. The expressionistic use of black/white photography which gives film noir its name emphasises the bleak reality of urban life and the disillusionment it brings.

Film noir has been written about extensively since Borde and Chaumeton first analysed it in 1955. This new book brings together thirteen essays on philosophical aspects of the genre, covering a wide range of issues, from ontology (is film noir a genre or what?) to aesthetics (does its fatalism equate with tragedy?) to the meaning of life (is its cynicism founded on a moral crisis, such as existential angst?) and more. Among the philosophers mentioned, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer feature most often, with Plato and Aristotle close behind. Thomas Nagel, Paul Edwards and Charles Peirce are the most popular modern philosophers cited. I found the references clearly explained and effectively used, adding considerably to the interest of the discussions.

The phenomenon of film noir invites sociological speculation. For example, in a well-known essay on its social context, ‘Notes on Film Noir’ in Film Noir Reader 2 , Paul Schrader emphasised the trauma of World War 2 and the difficulties encountered post-war when the survivors tried to resume normal life. Film noir gave expression to those social problems.

Such speculations are tempting, but they are methodologically dubious since they make broad sociological comments usually with little empirical data to support them. For the most part, the contributors to this anthology avoid such speculation and concentrate on the films rather than on the society in which they were made.

The essay by Steven M. Sanders is a case in point. He examines the fatalistic outlook found in many classic noir films, and compares it to the concept of absurdity in existentialism. He uses Vertigo and The Third Man as his main examples, but Double Indemnity , The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Asphalt Jungle are also obviously fatalistic. In these films, the protagonist seems doomed: plans do not work out, human relationships are flawed and unreliable, and society seems biased in favour of others. That combination of fatalism and alienation has some kinship with existentialism. The existentialist is alienated because he or she refuses to accept as given the moral codes of others. According to Sartre, anyone who denies his or her own freedom by following a received moral code (eg by being an orthodox Catholic) is guilty of bad faith. Freedom however brings absurdity in its wake, because the world is indifferent to the hopes of humanity. Hence the pointless toil of Sisyphus, which is celebrated as heroic by Camus.

Such existentialist defiance of the absurd world is expressed in the dark wit which is a feature of film noir. However, Sanders concludes that film noir and existentialism are fundamentally different in their attitude to human freedom. Both recognise that our freedom is bounded by physical limits; but existentialism emphasises the capacities that humans have – the scope of our freedom – whereas film noir sees only contingency, failure and fate.

A similar analysis of the fatalism in film noir leads Ian Jarvie to conclude that despite the combination of flawed heroes and pessimistic outcomes, the narratives do not attain the status of tragedy. In Aristotelian terms, film noir is low drama . Jarvie says that the stories are “morally incoherent.” They provide glimpses of personal integrity, but no clashes of principle which test the moral fibre of the protagonist, thus falling short of tragedy.

Those arguments I found quite persuasive, but there were others which were much less so. I was assured by J. Holt that the pessimism of neo-noir is one of its strengths because pessimism is more realistic than optimism. That assertion is contentious in itself; but it was also at odds with the critique offered by P.A. Cantor, in which he claimed that the pessimism of film noir is the product of a distorted view of the USA which 1930s European émigré directors like Ulmer, Wilder, Siodmak and Lang conveyed through their films. I was left wondering whether pessimism is realistic, distorted, or both.

Equally debatable was the identification of a lack of religious faith with meaninglessness, alienation or a lack of moral values (the world of film noir is largely God-free). Sometimes such false assumptions have been inherited from earlier philosophers. Conard, for example, accepted from Nietzsche the assertion that the death of God entails the death of meaning, as if no-one could find a purpose in life without belief in the supernatural. No doubt Nietzsche is a fitting source to quote, as his rhetorical excesses match the melodramatic expressionism of film noir; but I would not take anything he wrote as gospel.

Discussion of film noir is often too narrowly focused, in my opinion. Precursors in the pulp fiction of the 1920s and 30s are acknowledged here, but earlier prototypes are rarely mentioned. Consider Hamlet, certainly a film noir anti-hero: alienated, cynical, and abrasive in his wit, hostile to the society in which he lives, shrewdly intelligent in his pursuit of his enemy and ruthless when others block his path. His black attire, specified in Shakespeare’s text, suits his dark broodings and the pessimistic outcome of the play. Hamlet deals with all forms of killing: accidental manslaughter, deliberate murder, impulsive killing and suicide. Hamlet ponders on the morality of the killings, but events often outstrip his philosophising, and the audience are swept along in his wake. Emotions run high, and the interludes of rational thought are brief and ineffectual. At the end we feel sobered by a grim pursuit of justice in which many innocent people have been killed. Hamlet dies, and “the rest is silence.”

The classics of film noir stir the emotions in the same way. Killings happen, and we are morally implicated by our sympathy for the wrongdoers. We feel more sympathy for the killers than for their victims. Ordinary moral reasoning seems to be undermined.

Hume argued quite convincingly that morality ultimately rests on our emotions of sympathy and compassion. Those feelings provide the ‘ought’ – the basic moral values – from which all our complex moral reasonings are derived. But Hume assumed our sympathies would follow a conventional path and cherish our common humanity. The challenge of film noir is to deny that assumption and depict a world where our sympathies take a different path that leads us down darker alleyways. Perhaps that is part of its attraction. We enter a world where our moral bearings are lost, and we allow ourselves to side with amoral people living in a world quite like our own, but with all its ugly, unjust defects emphasised. We cannot tell how well we shall cope, confronting murky situations with our moral complacency switched off, but that uncertainty grips our conscience and our attention and carries us into the story.

Philosophy is the art of putting our thoughts in order. But doing that requires us to scatter the pieces sometimes, just to see how we again arrive at order from the disorder. Film noir performs such a function for our moral thinking, and does so in a most engaging way. This collection of essays, delving into the films and elucidating their philosophical depths, is also challenging and engaging. Read it and prepare to be provoked.

© Les reid 2008

Les Reid is Chair of the Belfast Humanist Group : belfast.humanists.net . You can find a list of classic noir films at imdb.com/chart/filmnoir .

• The Philosophy of Film Noir , edited by Mark T Conard, published by the University Press of Kentucky, 2007, pb, 248 pages, $24.95. ISBN 978-0-8131-9181-2.

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Narrating the City in Film Noir

• Reference work entry
• First Online: 30 October 2022
• pp 1379–1386
• Cite this reference work entry

• Simão Valente 2  

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The first film critics to study film noir emphasized the interplay between its formal characteristics and the cynical worldview of plot and character development, underlining the influence of German Expressionism, particularly concerning lighting and camerawork, and the bleak outlook on life resulting from a post-war context. Pursuing the literary lineage of this genre, the American hardboiled style of crime fiction, pioneered by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain during the 1920s and 1930s has also been seen as its direct precursor. Urban settings are the norm in film noir , framing the exploration of themes of moral decay and corruption.

In Narrative Discourse (1983), Gérard Genette introduces the concept of external focalization to describe a narrative voice that emphasizes the actions of characters, rather than their thoughts, giving Hammett as one of the foremost practitioners of this literary technique in the twentieth century. The term would go on to be incorporated in the field of film studies, and it is taking this into consideration that this entry surveys how opening scenes of major examples of film noir, The Maltese Falcon , Double Indemnity , and The Naked City , portray the urban environment into more than a backdrop, shaping the construction of main characters and, occasionally, turning cities themselves into characters. As film noir became international, the depiction of American settings and American characters influenced stories set in other cities, as can be seen in Odd Man Out (1947), Stray Dog (1948), The Third Man (1949) , and Elevator to the Gallows (1958).

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Valente, S. (2022). Narrating the City in Film Noir . In: Tambling, J. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62419-8_127

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What The Best Film Noir Movies Can Teach Every Filmmaker

Even in the age of color, lessons from the best film noir movies can ignite inspiration and captivate audiences..

'Double Indemnity'

I'm sure we've all met people (you might be among them!) who espouse a distinct aversion to black and white films, for whatever reason.

But according to this video essay from Jack Nugent of Now You See It , not only are they some of the most important movies, they can "do just as much if not more than color." Check it out below to learn how the techniques of black and white filmmaking can be just as important to cinematography in the age of color film.

Learning From The Best Film Noir Movies

The essay lays its case primarily by looking at monochromatic filmmaking through the lens of film noir , as film noir is one genre where black and white cinematography is put to its full use (a handy guide to the stylistic elements of film noir can be found here ).

"Black and white can do just as much, if not more than color."

But that begs the question...

What is film noir?

The classic film noir period is considered as being from the early 1940's until the late 1950's. The films that qualify as film noir cinema feature low-key, black and white photography inspired by the chiaroscuro lighting of renaissance art and German Expressionism.

Many film critics and historians have cited Citizen Kane and T ouch of Evil as the bookends of the film noir era in Hollywood, of course both of those films were directed by Orson Welles.

Film noir movies were as much a moment in history as they were a look created by a lighting style. It was the post-war era in America. The world, and particularly the returning veterans, had seen horrors the likes of which they'd never imagined.

They'd killed, seen friends killed, liberated concetration camps, witnessed first hand the horrors of a world war. The men who came back had a unique view of the world. One that they were not equipped to talk about.

How did this manifest?

One way was in classic film noir cinema. Picture Humphrey Bogart playing Phillip Marlowe. Or Sam Spade. In either case he was a man with a past, and man capable of violence. A man unsure of right and wrong until the final moment.

This was the hardboiled detective, and the film noir detective is a large part of the genre.

Many famous film noir films weren't detective stories.

Classic Film Noir Examples

The stark contast and low key lighting complimented the inner state of the primary characters.

They were living in a world that felt enveloped by darkness. Sometimes they were criminals trying to go straight after one last heist. Check out John Huston's Asphalt Jungle , which also featured Marylin Monroe in an early role.

Huston was something of a film noir movie mainstay as he also put out genre definer The Maltese Falcon , and the star-studded Key Largo .

Key Largo takes place almost entirely in a hotel in the Florida Keys, but the tension sizzles the entire time. Bogart, Bacall, and gangster movie icon Edward G. Robinson are all there, but the scene stealer is Claire Trevor as Robinson's drunk and miserable moll.

Bogart is a veteran, come home to visit the family of a man from his platoon that died in action. He brings with him the jadedness, and the events of the movie test his jadedness, and question if his inner hero will come out.

The Postman Always Rings Twice is another classic film noir example, starring Lana Turner in the defining execution of the femme-fatale. She practically burns the celluloid. One of cinema's most enduring entrances of all time:

Poor John Garfield. He never stood a chance.

Another classic entry into the film noir cinema hall of fame? Out Of The Past starring Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas. Mitchum is running from the past. But the past catches up. Out Of The Past features the kind of tough guy inner monologue running through the action that is also a beloved film noir convention.

The best film noir movies aren't all from the United States, however. Cinematic master Akira Kurosawa had his own entry, Stray Dog , which uses many of the same motifs but of course it takes place in Japan and is influenced by the Japanese side of the WW2 experience. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's not all that different.

Stray Dog stands as one of the greatest film noir movies of all time because it presents audiences with two reactions to the horrors of war. It changed some men for the better, and some for the worse.

In the end, everyone was a victim.

A nice companion piece to Stray Dog is Kurosawa's much later film High and Low . Again shot in beautiful black and white, the film has very noir sequences and undertones as it explores morality.

It honestly doesn't get much better than High and Low .

Learning From More Modern Film Noir

Nugent begins his examination by showing what film noir is not, or rather, by showing what happens when, in his words, "black and white is done wrong."

To wit, the essay looks at some film noir examples done in parody , specifically this skit from Saturday Night Live , a parody of the classic Casablanca , a film that, while not rigorously adhering to the thematic tenets of film noir (primarily in its lack of the doomed cynicism endemic to the genre), employs many of its most important visual elements.

And, yes, Nugent does admit that it's perhaps unfair to compare a classic film to a TV parody of said film, but parody does, in a multiplicity of fruitful ways, have a way of throwing difference into sharp relief.

The point is that in the parody, the contrast is extremely low. And contrast, it is argued, is a central element of skillful black and white cinematography. In the skit, there "isn't much difference" between the darkest and lightest shades. Compare this to the same scene in Casablanca, where "The darkest shade on screen is nearly black, while the brightest shade on screen is nearly white."

Nugent's thesis is that, when done well, the "simplicity of black and white means that the eye can observe more key features in the shot." But the video essay isn't a polemic on the virtues of black and white over color cinematography.

Rather, it is that by carefully using elements of black and white cinematography, filmmakers who are working in color, but going for a film noir feel , can achieve greater results than by ignoring the simple tenets of excellent black and white cinematography.

As examples of color cinematography that successfully achieve a noir-ish feel, the essay cites, among others, the work of David Fincher and cinematographer Darius Khondji in 1995's Se7en, a modern film that uses many elements of classic film noir, from its doomed mood to, in Roger Ebert's words , "locations that reek...of shadows, of alleys, of the back doors of fancy places, of apartment buildings with a high turnover rate." Verily. (Please note, this clip is a great demonstration of film noir techniques, but it is also pretty yikes , so, you've been warned.)

The essay also cites the cinematography of Breaking Bad , which is full of high-contrast lighting, as well as examples of film noir's ubiquitous "blinds shot," where a character is seen through the slats of venetian blinds, with the alternating points of contrast providing visual storytelling.

A good example of this would be where the image on the screen splits the characters and provides a visual metaphor for their two sides, the good and the bad, the visible and the hidden.

The effect can be seen in the above clip from Se7en, in the apartment of a man who is simultaneously a criminal, as well as the victim of John Doe's plan to teach the world his twisted black and white morality, where there are no shades of grey, only sin and virtue. It can also be seen in the following clip from the classic film noir example, Double Indemnity :

This is a fascinating essay that makes the case, not just for black and white cinematography in and of itself, but as an aid to storytelling in all filmmaking, and any filmmaker interested in the art of light and shadow would do well to give it a look.

What We Learned From Film Noir Cinema

The movies of the past have value. The photograhic tools available to us now when we create content certainly give us more rang,e and far more color, than the film noir classics had.

But they can still teach us how to compose an image that pops, draw our eye to the right place, and use light to reveal who are characters are, and who we are. All the while leaving some of the truth forever shrouded in pools darkness.

Source: Now You See It

• 10 Writing Prompts in the Film Noir Genre ›
• Neon Noir: The Dopest Film Genre You’ve Never Heard Of ›
• The Stylistic Elements of Film Noir, Explained In One Handy Infographic ›

Seth Rogen Delivers a Rallying Cry for Cinema

The actor, writer, and director emphatically states, "movies are not dead".

I'll be perfectly honest: 2024 has been a really hard year in Hollywood so far. It feels like every other day, we're getting a depressing story about layoffs, the shrinking industry, contractions, and they all can really kill your spirit.

Most of us are doing this because it's our heart's work. We have to—otherwise, a part of us will shrivel up and die.

So it's nice to hear someone come out and deliver the motivational rallying cry we all need to hear.

In a recent interview with Variety , our stoner savior Seth Rogen stepped into the spotlight and delivered something I think we all need to hear right now. Mr. Rogen said:

“Last year, lots of movies did very well. I think if movies were going go away, they would have a long time ago. Paintings are still around. People still go to museums! There’s things flashier or more ‘interesting’ than then oil on canvas, but people still flock from all over the world, enough to keep museums open. Not a ton of people have to like movies to keep movies going. It’s always been a very small percentage of the population that actually goes and sees movies.”

For me, I felt like he was delivering this on horseback before leading me into battle, man.

I have to admit: parts of this year have gotten to me, and we're not even halfway through yet. But I think all of Hollywood needs to be reminded that if we build it, they will come. If we continue to make things and put them in theaters, we will get an audience to watch.

And if we make great things, those audiences will multiply.

Let me know what you think of this great quote in the comments.

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Embrace Noir Conventions To Improve Your Writing

• by Fred Johnson
• May 15, 2017

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Few genres have such a distinctive look and feel as noir fiction. A successor of ‘hard-boiled’ or ‘pulp’ fiction, you’ll know the conventions of noir even if you’ve never read  The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep – seedy urban underbellies, trench-coat-clad PIs, cigarettes, femme fatales, whiskey, flickering streetlights casting white pools on Chicago streets, nihilistic emptiness, loveless sex, unhappy endings. It’s a real barrel of laughs.

Today, noir stands as the slightly smug older brother of the crime genre . He’s smart, philosophical, literary, engaging, and incredibly unpleasant. He’s not much fun at parties. But he can teach you a thing or two.

Even if you like your stories cheery and your characters pleasant, noir’s methods of storytelling, its history, and its cohesive merging of thematic and formal concerns can help make you a better writer. Here’s what noir can teach you about storytelling.

Protagonists don’t have to be heroic (or even likeable)

Let’s look at one incredibly beloved fictional protagonist: Harry Potter. Harry, at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone , is immediately introduced to the reader as a sympathetic character. We learn early on that his aunt and uncle are incredibly unpleasant, that his parents are dead, and that he sleeps in a cupboard. As J.K. Rowling’s series continues, Harry develops, makes friends, becomes a wizard, and, though he has a few moments of brattishness, remains a pleasant, easy-to-root-for hero. He defeats evil, stays loyal to his friends, and does what’s right.

Now, what if instead of all that, Harry was a philandering alcoholic with a history of drug smuggling? What if the first thing he did when he arrived at Hogwarts, age eleven, was isolate himself from the other children and smash in Malfoy’s skull, just because he felt like it? What if he refused to fight Lord Voldemort because good and evil are arbitrary and idealistic judgements that have no relevance in a vast and uncaring universe? What if the story wasn’t so much about Harry overcoming evil as it was about Harry getting wound up in some vague and violent domestic mystery and ultimately spending most of his time drinking, smoking, stewing in self-loathing, and entering destructive, hate-fueled relationships with other selfish, morally bankrupt characters? What if, instead of seeing Harry develop into a proud and noble wizard, we instead witnessed his moral, psychological, and physical decline?

Well, this abandoned plan for Harry Potter and the No-Good Dame may not have made it past editing, but that’s not to say it wouldn’t have been an effective piece of writing. The great thing about noir is that you’re challenged as a writer to craft characters who are irredeemably unpleasant and yet also compelling – characters who the reader is simultaneously repelled by and drawn toward. If you can make a reader root for your troubled, violent, and cynical protagonist despite themselves, then you’ve succeeded as a noir writer.

Noir presents the logical extension of the Byronic hero template and offers a chance for writers to focus on humanizing someone who, in a non-noir story, would likely be an antagonist or a monster. It forces writers to think about the conventions of heroic storytelling in new ways and, through its various subversions, muddies lines between the standard character archetypes. If you’re thinking about this sort of stuff, noir has already helped you develop as a writer.

Endings don’t have to be happy

You’ve probably guessed this already, but my re-written Harry Potter book doesn’t look to be headed anywhere happy. Endings in noir fiction are interesting because, like Shakespeare’s plays, they don’t tie up the loose ends – major plotlines are often relegated to the shadows behind the foregrounded moral/psychological/physical states of the characters, and even characters who succeed in their goals can find they’ve actually lost out in an existential sense.

In The Maltese Falcon , for example, Sam Spade manages to solve the book’s central mystery through coercion, bullying, and seduction. It turns out his love interest is the murderer, and he hands her over knowing it could easily mean her death. Even the police are a bit taken aback, and Sam’s adoring assistant sees him as a monster. Then the story ends. Hooray?

As with the genre’s love for unpleasant characters, the real fun here comes in trying to craft a story that doesn’t build toward climactic success . When the world is acknowledged as a dark and unjust place, there’s no victory in re-establishing the status quo. Noir characters often find that achieving their goal is just another form of defeat, while those who do ‘win’ tend to find salvation in escaping – maybe they give up on the case, run off with the murderer, or kick the bucket.

Frank Miller’s Sin City series is so noir that it’s nearly pastiche, but That Yellow Bastard is a great example. Here, hero ex-cop Hartigan accepts death, and the ruination of his reputation because it’s the only way to keep his lover safe.

Obviously, this is hardly a new phenomenon – Greek mythology has been murdering its heroes for centuries – but in crime fiction (a genre known for its adherence to commercial conventions), hollow victories, shattered protagonists, and the success of the villain can reframe standard narrative structures and subvert reader expectation in startling and memorable ways.

As a writer, the knowledge that your ending doesn’t have to be happy, or even climactic, allows for a tremendous sense of freedom. Crafting a lose-lose situation as an ending allows you to double down on your book’s dominant themes without worrying about sacrificing integrity for the sake of placating readers .

Better, unhappy endings force you to think about why endings work (or don’t). Why is it that some of our most famous and celebrated works of fiction – Hamlet , The Grapes of Wrath , Anna Karenina , Jude the Obscure – end in tragedy? What is it about tragic or nihilistic endings that strikes such a resounding chord?

Form and style can reflect themes

All the best works of art unify form and theme in a cohesive manner. There’s a reason Nabokov’s Lolita works best as a book, why Pollock’s paintings don’t work on-screen, why Breaking Bad would make a lousy film, and why Dark Souls could never be anything but a game. Exploring how form and style can reflect theme is one of the best things you can do to improve as a writer.

In written fiction, noir conventions manifest in several ways: prose is often sparse, stilted, and to-the-point; narration is often first-person, allowing authors to play around with unreliable narration; sex and violence are often portrayed matter-of-factly and without adornment; descriptions are physical and neglect flowery language; metaphor and simile conjure crude or profane images; and use of dialect helps root characters in deep, urban underbellies they have little chance of ever escaping. Smart noir writers play on the genre’s preoccupation with cyclical or stagnant human movement in interesting formal ways – as in a good sitcom, characters will often end the book where they began (only sadder and more alone than ever).

Embrace the deep end

One of the great joys of noir characters is their detachment from the regular social forces that keep us in check. The isolation of your typical alcoholic noir detective or gambling-addicted prostitute allows you to let your characters grow organically – you’ve taken everything from them and backed them into a corner – now let them loose.

Andrew Pepper, in an essay in The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction , put it best:

Nobody in noir fiction has a mother, nobody has children, nobody has someone that they love and care about. They live by themselves, for themselves.

Lots of writers’ advice regarding character development focuses on ensuring your characters have believable motivations – Kurt Vonnegut famously advised, “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” – and how better to boil this down than to enlist a cast of characters who fight only for themselves?

The genre’s bleak conventions allow you to mercilessly throw your characters into the deep end to see whether they’ll sink or swim. You don’t have to carefully balance a character’s good and bad traits or ensure they have a viable means of narrative progression – let them fight for it, kill for it, betray their own mothers for it. Noir allows you to push past the cosmetic façade of your characters – their jobs, their family, their dreams, their magical adventure, that fight with Susan from the office they had – and go straight for the throat. This is a great thing to keep in mind for fiction of all types; after all, it’s only when your characters have suffered that you can really know them.

Applying the lessons of noir

Noir is, in many ways, a bit of a relic. It was parodied almost as soon as it emerged in the 1940s and has remained in the public consciousness mainly due to neo-noir film and TV (most recently in shows like True Detective and the TV adaptation of Fargo ) . That said, noir seems to inexorably attract some of the best and most accomplished writers of crime fiction – its foregrounding of setting, philosophical preoccupation, edgy nihilism, and tortured antiheroes invites a daring and intelligent approach.

Even if you have no interest in writing noir, writing a few short stories in the genre can be a great way to learn more about how plots are structured, how characters develop, and how form and style can reflect theme. You’ll find that you’re more conscious of genre conventions, narrative templates, and character archetypes, more suspicious of traditional heroes, and less sold on the idea of an unambiguously happy ending. It’s also a great genre to explore in terms of the relationship between written and visual art – it’s not often a genre appears so cohesively across film and literature, with each medium influencing the other.

For more on how unfamiliar genres could elevate your writing, check out Why Is Steampunk So Popular? and The 3 Golden Rules Of Writing A Western . Or, if you want to try your hand at noir, try How To Write A Better Murder Mystery Victim and How To Write A Damn Good Man . What’s your favorite noir fiction, and in what works or genres do you see its influence at work? Let me know in the comments!

• Action , Antagonist , Case study , Characters , Dialogue , Exercises , Fiction , Genre , Murder , Mystery , Story settings , World building , Writing tools

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Fred Johnson

4 thoughts on “embrace noir conventions to improve your writing”.

Loved this article. So where does noir start in terms of age group writing? I write YA, which I think is an ideal point as many teenagers like to imagine themselves as isolated lowlife and turn themselves into anti-heroes even if just to preserve their sanity, and teen-fatales haunted me through high school, along with permanent suspicion and a rejection of happy endings. I don’t think we’re far from Gothic here either.

Hi Pete, I’m really glad you enjoyed the post. I think you’re right to think that noir would appeal to teen readers, but I think the difficulty comes in finding the balance between the edgy, dark, teen-friendly aesthetic of noir and the genre’s overtly mature themes and sometimes complex philosophical preoccupations. Sad endings, dark themes, sex, violence, and nihilism are certain to appeal to teens (despite what their parents say), but teen protagonists also tend to have to be at least a bit “cool” (at least in my experience!). I definitely think you’re onto something!

This was great, Fred! Informative and comprehensive. I tend to write in this style a lot and never knew that it was expressly noir. While looking around for examples of noir dialogue, I ended up here. Do you have any favorites in this genre you could recommend? I just finished Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey and want more. Anyway, great post and keep it up with the great content.

Hi. Thanks for writing this. It was very informative. My history in writing is based on 30+ years of playing and running D&D games. I don’t consider myself a “DM” but a “Storyteller where my Players are Characters in the story that is writing itself.” I do have plans to write a novel based on my games, but currently that is a bit more than I can chew right now. I recently got a spark of inspiration to dabble in Noir. I have some seeds of a Noir type Horror short story rattling around in my noggin. It may also have some Lovecraftian elements, with a trip to Egypt and a Mummy and the main Character being a Sacrifice at the end. There may also be a Succubus involved. I just started typing all these ides up so there may be some elements being cut.

This is the first time I have thought about going “Full Noir” as a genre. For my D&D Games I have added in Horror Elements as I grew up watching the old Hammer Films on Saturday Afternoons.

My question is how well does Noir marry with Horror and Lovecraft in particular. When I read his stuff it seems it feels almost like Noir. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.

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Vague Visages

Movies, tv & music • independent film criticism • soundtrack guides • forming the future • est. 2014, beat cops: police brutality and film noir.

Though the main concern of the Hollywood Motion Picture Production Code might best be considered the regulation of sexuality and nudity on screen during the Classic Hollywood period, its restrictions on stories set in the criminal underworld are just as impactful. In the Code’s vision of the world, criminals are justly punished for their transgressions against law and morality. Likewise, the public servants of law and order — whether they be police officers, district attorneys, judges and others — are in general meant to be portrayed in a positive light. Above all, the Code seeks to enforce a vision of the world where justice is served and the law is upheld; under the heading Plot Material in the original Code written in 1930, point 7B expresses how seriously the censors took this responsibility: “ Law and justice must not by the treatment they receive from criminals be made to seem wrong or ridiculous.” In other words, the American legal system must never be seen as unfair — such portrayals would undermine the public’s confidence in the moral certitude of the law. This regulation applied similarly to the individual characters within these stories. Under Plot Material, the Code singles out vigilantism in particular in section 6C: “ Killings for revenge should not be justified, i.e., the hero should not take justice into his own hands in such a way as to make his killings seem justified. This does not refer to killings in self-defense.” For characters to work outside the legal system might likewise do damage to its reputation among ordinary citizens; the system must be portrayed as fair and above all, working efficiently to bring about justice — it is not the role of individuals to secure justice, but the system within which they work. The advent of film noir in the 1940s presented particular challenges for the censorship regime, as a number of the movies made in this style were set in the criminal underworld, featuring crooks looking to make a quick buck, ordinary citizens drawn into committing terrible crimes and police officers pushed to the dark edge of the night. The Code’s prohibitions against frontal assaults on the justice system were quite strong, but individual films in the noir period did their best to negotiate one of its longest-lasting flaws — police brutality. Though seemingly in direct violation of the Code’s restrictions, noir is littered with corrupted officers and other members of the justice system — crooked lawyers , unsavory judges and, yes, cops who are all too comfortable using their fists on suspects. Otto Preminger’s Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) and Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground (1951) gesture towards the difficult conditions under which police labor while turning a critical eye on the brutally violent detectives who abuse their power.  

In many noir films, the police loom as an ever-present threat to the conniving protagonist’s criminal plots . Where the Sidewalk Ends and On Dangerous Ground are each set amidst the police department, their titles both suggesting the paths that officers walk — the authority of the officer on the beat, drawn from the combination of the uniform, a visual representation of the state and the regular patrol of a jurisdiction. The officer’s power is geographical — like traveling salesmen, they have to know the territory and the people within it. In On Dangerous Ground , the film’s central cop Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) has been worn down by overfamiliarity with a fallen world . Like the lonely cabbie of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), Wilson sees a city infested by human garbage; the voice over spoken by Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) in Scorsese’s film wishes for “a real rain” that will “come and wash all this scum off the streets,” a sentiment no doubt shared by Wilson in Ray’s film. As he enters a dive bar to search for a lead on a suspect in the murder of a police officer, Wilson resists the pleading cries of a heroin addict complaining about feeling sick, fends off the sexual overtures of an underage prostitute, and rejects a bribe from an eager crook. His world-weariness weighs heavily on him, a burden remarked upon by his two partners , both older and seemingly on the other side of the disillusionment that has befallen Wilson. Detective Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews) in Where the Sidewalk Ends has similarly turned away from a world that has broken faith with him; haunted by the specter of a father who lived outside the law, Dixon is single-minded in his desire to get a minor gangster, Tommy Scalise (Gary Merrill), by any means necessary. Scalise is no New York kingpin; he is a petty thief who runs a gang of six, skimming profits from a floating crap game, a profile seemingly incompatible with the level of Dixon’s hatred for him. The film suggests that Dixon will easily move to a new target once Scalise is dead or behind bars , pursuing him with the same dangerous ardor that often tilts into full-blown recklessness. Wilson and Dixon are each given cautionary lectures by their respective superiors, warned about the sheer number of complaints against them for brutality. Each detective is dismissive of the possible consequences of their actions, believing (rightly, perhaps) that their abilities to “get results” will protect them from such charges ever sticking.

More by Brian Brems: The Neorealist Connection: Italy’s Polizieschi

Both Where the Sidewalk Ends and On Dangerous Ground were made in the early 1950s, some 15 years before the 1966 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Miranda V. Arizona, which created a sea change in the ways police were allowed to treat suspects in their custody. Though the case did not directly address issues of police brutality, the familiar Miranda refrain made ubiquitous by thousands of episodes of television producer Dick Wolf’s Law and Order franchise and its many imitators is seen as a counterweight against police using excessive force to obtain confessions from those in their custody. In the police force at the time of Preminger’s and Ray’s films, police brutality is an accepted tactic, so long as the officers do not cross the line. When one of Wilson’s partners, the 16-year veteran Pop Daly (Charles Kemper), complains of a sore shoulder, Wilson cracks “you shouldn’t try to knock out a guy with one punch.” Daly, who is more well-adjusted than the temperamental Wilson, corrects him — he sustained the injury through repetitive motion while working in his garden , a domestic role that contrasts mightily with the job he does on the city’s streets at night. Wilson believes in the necessity of police violence, taking it for granted that Daly might have injured himself while taking part in it. In Where the Sidewalk Ends , Scalise’s gang has to make a run for it from their hideout when they find out that one of their men has cracked under a police beating and has revealed their location. Dixon, the film’s egregious example of a brutal cop, has not participated in the beating — he is at the moment, the gang’s prisoner — but his fellow officers have revealed that they have no reservations about pressing a suspect physically in order to get the information they need. Both Wilson and Dixon are brutal, but their violence has resulted in little more than light reprimand. Dixon’s chief, Inspector Foley (Robert F. Simon) reads him the riot act and knocks his detective grade down to second; the scene plays like a heart-to-heart between a disappointed father and his errant son, with Foley contrasting Dixon unfavorably to the department’s straight arrow, Thomas (Karl Malden), recently made a lieutenant. Foley warns Dixon that too many more brutality complaints — there have been 12 in one month — will hamper his career, perhaps permanently. In On Dangerous Ground , Captain Brawley (Ed Begley) issues a similar warning to Wilson in a quiet conversation over breakfast. “You let yourself get out of hand,” Brawley says, informing Wilson that there is a developing legal problem — his beating of a suspect landed the man in the hospital with a ruptured bladder. In both films, the representatives of the police department’s power structure do everything they can to nurture and protect their violent officers, often gleefully trading the arrests that result from their brutal investigations for a trail of beaten suspects. Foley eagerly reinstates Dixon’s grade after Scalise is apprehended in Where the Sidewalk Ends , even boasting that he plans to recommend him for promotion — he will presumably reach the rank of lieutenant like Thomas. Brawley decides to respond to a subsequent instance of Wilson’s brutality, even after their breakfast chat , by sending Wilson out of town on a case to let the heat cool down. In both Ray’s and Preminger’s portrayals, the police department is content to moralize about its officers’ violent methods, but stops well short of meting out consequences.

The hypocrisy of the police department is especially stark in Where the Sidewalk Ends . In Dixon’s furious pursuit of Scalise, he visits one of the gangster’s associates, the aptly named Kenneth Paine (Craig Stevens), who Scalise has attempted to frame for a murder. In Paine’s apartment, the drunken suspect first mouths off to Dixon and then takes a swing at him; after a close-quarters struggle, Dixon delivers a brutal uppercut to Paine’s jaw that levels him. When Dixon kneels down, urging the man to get up, as he has no doubt done countless times before to other beaten and brutalized suspects, he is surprised to discover that Paine is dead. He has finally, at long last, found the line — too late. When the initial shock wears off, Dixon begins to work to cover his tracks, a prospect complicated when he answers the ringing phone in Paine’s apartment, only to hear his partner Paul Klein (Bert Freed) on the other end; he can no longer slip out the back and pin the crime on Scalise, but must instead concoct an elaborate scheme to dispose of the body and throw his fellow officers off his scene. He dons Paine’s overcoat and hat , quickly packs a bag, and applies a telltale bandage that had been resting on Paine’s wounded cheekbone before calling a cab bound for Penn Station. He buys a ticket out of town and then races back to Paine’s apartment, arriving just in time to stop the snooping Klein from finding the dead man in the closet — Dixon looks instead and, knowing Klein trusts him, insists it is empty. The coldness with which Dixon is able to manipulate the crime scene, aligning it with his chosen narrative , reveals the danger of a cop who knows how to tell the story the right way, allowing him to evade punishment. Dixon’s lies come easy , but his conscience begins to weigh heavily once the intrepid Lieutenant Thomas, the department’s fair-haired boy, begins to see through the ruse. Even Thomas is not imaginative enough, however, to assign guilt to Dixon, but instead tries to pin the crime on Jiggs Taylor (Tom Tully), the father of Paine’s estranged wife Morgan (Gene Tierney). As Dixon develops a fondness for Morgan, the idea of allowing her father to take the fall for his crime becomes too much to bear , and he endeavors to get Scalise, even if he has to force the gangster to murder him to do it. Preminger, who favored long takes and a highly mobile camera, uses a number of highly compact close-ups to maximize the dramatic pressure on Dixon as his guilt threatens to overwhelm him. The physical blows between Dixon and Paine, and then later between Dixon and other members of Scalise’s gang, land hard in these tight close-ups, somewhat in contrast to Classic Hollywood’s tendency to portray such close-quarters fight scenes in wider shots.  

More by Brian Brems: The Man Who Laughs: Richard Widmark’s Early Noirs

As Dixon, Dana Andrews demonstrates why he is one of noir’s most affecting actors. Given Dixon’s penchant for beating suspects, one might be inclined to call him a sadist — Foley as much as states it, suggesting that Dixon “gets fun out of it.” He doesn’t seem to enjoy it, however; Dixon’s violence is a product of total insecurity about who he is. His crooked father, dead trying to shoot his way out of jail, he confesses, looms large. He struggles to reconcile the inherent violence that he is convinced must be his birthright with his role as an officer of the law — each hood he beats is a reflection of himself. Every punch is really directed at a mirror . When crafting his postwar asylum thriller Shutter Island (2010), Scorsese modeled the federal marshal-turned-mental patient Teddy Daniels, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, on the characters Andrews played for Preminger — especially the wounded detective at the heart of the oneiric Laura (1944) and the razor’s edge Dixon. Daniels’s combination of romantic desire for an unattainable woman and his penchant for brutal violence are a hybrid of Andrews’s characters in these two Preminger films and are quintessential noir. In both Shutter Island and Where the Sidewalk Ends , the effects of violence are psychologically corrosive — they destroy the men who commit such brutal deeds. Though Dixon expects to die at Scalise’s hands in the movie’s climax, and writes a confession to Foley “to be opened in the event of my death,” he survives and the gangster is apprehended. Dixon, unable to live with the consequences of his actions, rejects Foley’s offer of promotion and urges him to read the letter anyway. As the Production Code dictates, Dixon’s crime is punished, and the law is upheld — however, the lingering effect of a system that tolerates, and even rewards police brutality is an overwhelming one. Such is the case with many film noirs, which technically adhere to the letter of the Code’s law in punishing criminals , but simultaneously suggest so much is rotten at the heart of the American experiment that the whole thing may be beyond saving — a far more despairing and subversive thought.

On Dangerous Ground ’s Wilson does not go so far — he does not commit a murder, either intentionally or unintentionally. However, his on-screen violence seems more sadistic than Dixon’s, a fury that Ray emphasizes through a consistent, if not quite Bressonian, focus on the impact of hands throughout the film. In one moment, Wilson corners a suspect in his dingy apartment, and Ray shoots the scene hip-high, with the suspect fearfully sitting on a chair, in focus in the shot’s background, with Wilson’s clenched fist looming out of focus in the foreground. A low angle from the suspect’s point of view stares up at the ominous Wilson as he blames the victim: “You’re gonna make me crack you, aren’t you?” he says, eagerly anticipating the outcome. “Why do you make me do it? Why do you make me do it?” he shouts, his cries indistinguishable from those of a serial killer who abdicates his own responsibility for his actions. Wilson is volatile, which Ray captures stylistically throughout the film’s first half, which is set in New York City. Bernard Herrmann’s score rumbles low and then explodes like a fuse being lit before its thunderous payoff, matching Wilson’s slow-burn intensity that, when triggered, threatens to consume everyone around him. Ray also adopts a highly unconventional technique for a Hollywood film in 1951, switching briefly to a handheld camera as Wilson chases a suspect down an alley and then again in the film’s second half as he fights off a violent assault by a vengeful father. Ray’s stylistic unpredictability goes one step further than the documentary realism then becoming more common in crime films , many of which followed in the near-newsreel style of Jules Dassin’s The Naked City (1948). Though Ray does seek to provide an immersive, city-streets experience in the film’s first half, the sudden switch to handheld is less cinéma vérité than an expression of Wilson’s combustible temper.  

The film’s pastoral second half takes place in upstate New York, as Wilson is sent out of town to lend a hand in a murder investigation; a girl has been killed and the local police seem overmatched, a fact confirmed when Wilson arrives and meets the mild-mannered Sheriff Carrey (Ian Wolfe), who is struggling to contain the vigilante rage of the murdered girl’s father Brent (Ward Bond). Brent wields a scattergun and vows to murder the perpetrator when he finds him, rather than letting justice be served through traditional, official means. Though Brent initially assumes Wilson will be inclined to trials and lawyers — “city stuff,” Brent calls it — On Dangerous Ground mines dramatic irony from the reality; there is apparent compatibility between the rural father bent on revenge and the disillusioned police detective eager to mete out physical punishment. Wilson must officially counterbalance Brent’s bloodthirsty animus, but it seems clear that Wilson will likely let the man kill the suspect when they find him. Plans change when their car crashes on an icy road and they seek shelter in the home of Mary Malden (Ida Lupino), a blind woman who seems to be living alone. Ray once again emphasizes hands, but this time , it is Mary’s gentle, practical groping for familiar objects and pieces of furniture in her home — while Wilson uses his hands to punish the guilty, Mary uses hers to see. Stricken by a vulnerability he seems barely to understand, Wilson’s hands soften from clenched fists to open palms . When it becomes clear that the man he and Brent are hunting is Mary’s mentally ill brother, he even promises to her that he will not let Brent hurt him — instead of becoming the man’s executioner, he vows to become his protector. When faced with the real possibility of brutal, extralegal vigilantism in the form of the single-minded, grieving father Brent, Wilson makes a choice, deciding to pull back from the brink. Though Mary’s brother is killed in a fall while Wilson and Brent chase him, Wilson finds solace in Mary’s arms, their hands joining together without a hint of the violence he has used them to commit. Wilson, despite his sins, is not beyond redemption, even in the eyes of the restrictive Production Code.

More by Brian Brems: One Country’s Trash: Enzo G. Castellari and Exploitation

Noir was especially suited to tackle these kinds of live political and social issues because these films were willing to confront social problems and present a vision of the world gripped by existential dread. The aftermath of the social upheaval of the summer of 2020, a seeming culmination of outrage against an American policing system that seems to have lost all claim to its moral authority, revealed to many that these problems have long been allowed to fester — far too late, of course, for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and the countless other victims of police brutality. Police officers who abuse their authority, as agents of the state imbued with the right to commit violence, are no less common in contemporary cinema. In fact, there may be more than ever. As in their noir predecessors, contemporary films likewise choose between punishing these cops, as in Where the Sidewalk Ends , and offering them redemption, as in On Dangerous Ground . Few 21st century movie cops have made a bigger on-screen impact than the villain of Training Day (2001), Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington), who beats suspects, blackmails his rookie partner (Ethan Hawke) into smoking PCP before setting him up to be murdered by drug dealers, and robs a corrupt former police officer of a stash of ill-gotten money under the guise of a routine raid. He rationalizes his actions as the necessary requirements of life on the street — “a wolf,” as he sees himself — but such protestations ring hollow, mere cover for the life of a desperate criminal who needs money to pay back a gambling debt incurred to a mob of deadly gangsters. Harris is punished at the film’s end when the gangsters ride up on his car and blow him away in a fusillade of gunfire, a worthy recompense for his many sins. Far more complicated morally is the on-screen redemption of Sam Rockwell’s racist cop (also named Dixon) in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017). Rockwell’s Dixon is an overt bigot who is finally suspended from the small-town police force after he tosses a businessman out of a second-story window in broad daylight; the film’s rehabilitation of him brings him into alignment with Mildred (Frances McDormand), who seeks justice for her murdered daughter — the pair heads off together in a vigilante quest to kill the alleged perpetrator when the film ends. Dixon changes, the film would have us believe — it is a reflection of the change in times that a reprehensible character can be redeemed by agreeing to participate in a vigilante murder of a man who may not even be guilty, a far cry from the strictures of the Code. And yet, each of these films reveal a similar unresolvable tension at the heart of American society that has lingered since noir began: what do we do with cops who betray their oaths? In the face of a political system that has more or less chosen to do nothing at all, noir, both past and present, offers punishment and redemption.  

Brian Brems ( @BrianBrems ) is an Assistant Professor of English and Film at the College of DuPage, a large two-year institution located in the western Chicago suburbs. He has a Master’s Degree from Northern Illinois University in English with a Film & Literature concentration. He has a wife, Genna, and two dogs, Bowie and Iggy.

Categories: 1950s , 2020 Film Essays , Crime , Drama , Featured , Film Essays

Tagged as: Brian Brems , Crime , Drama , Film Noir , On Dangerous Ground , Where the Sidewalk Ends

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Off The Deep End: Noir Cinema's Eternal Fascination with Swimming Pools

Halley sutton dives into the crime genre's obsession with the ultimate hollywood symbol.

You could call it Chekhov’s swimming pool: catch sight of a pristine , turquoise pool in the first act of a noir or crime film, and you’re likely to find a corpse floating in it by the third.

Noir has long had a special relationship to water. As Chinatown makes abundantly clear, whoever controls the water supply controls a city. But unlike the free-flowing ocean or even the trickle of the Los Angeles river, pools are stagnant, claustrophobic. They’re a status symbol. They summon images of luxury, and class, and wealth, and Alain Delon in tight-fitting swim trunks. But pools are also a trap. There’s nowhere for all that water, or those swimmers, to go. There is no escape.

As the summer heats up and we head into pool season, I thought it might be a worthwhile dive into noir film to explore some of the most memorable and deadly pools the genre has to offer—not unlike an online article version of Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer darting from pool to pool to pool , only with slightly fewer Speedos and definitely more dead bodies.

Let’s start with an American classic. While The Great Gatsby is not technically a noir novel according to most high school English teachers, it certainly flirts with the genre, particularly in its last third. Gatsby’s wealth and status do not protect him from closing the  novel murdered in a pool. All that wealth, all his striving, and still: he’s facedown in the American Dream. The only thing Fitzgerald could’ve done to hit the nail a little harder on the head would’ve been to throw some of those cool, crisp, money shirts into the pool with him.

Jay Gatsby dead in his little-used swimming pool may have been the original man dead in a puddle of the American Dream, but he was far from the last. Arguably the most famous pool in noir cinematic history—maybe all of cinematic history—is Joe Gillis narrating the start of the story of his own demise in the opening shots of Sunset Boulevard (1951). “The poor dope…always wanted a pool,” Gillis says of himself in a voiceover monologue opening the film. “Well, in the end, he got himself a pool—only the price turned out to be a little high.” The pool is both the end and the beginning of the story here.

By the 1960’s and 1970’s, swimming pool as dark metaphor were popping up all over the movie theater. There’s Dustin Hoffman, slowly sinking his future in chlorine in The Graduate (definitely not a noir, although the dramatic irony of its famous end shot makes you think…maybe?), Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer , and of course, The Drowning Pool, where Paul Newman, as Harper the private investigator, tries to keep his head above literal water in the adaptation of the Ross MacDonald novel.

But perhaps the most influential cinematic swimming pool of this era comes from France: La Piscine , the 1968 psychological thriller directed by Jacques Deray, and starring Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet, and Jane Birkin. In La Piscine, the swimming pool represents the erotic lull of summer, so steamy you may feel compelled to wipe your screen off a few times while watching. It’s also the site of a murder—initially passed off as an accident. The Guardian ’s 2011 review of the film noted: “Something in the very lineaments of the pool itself creates their own awful destiny: it is a primordial swamp of desire, a space in which there is nothing to do but laze around, furtively looking at semi-naked bodies.”

(In a twist of the “life is stranger than art” variety, Delon’s friend and bodyguard, Stevan Markovic, was found murdered during the course of filming. If you’re unfamiliar, the Markovic Affair, as it became known, makes for fascinating reading: there’s gangsters, alleged kompromat of the First Lady of France, and a still-unsolved murder.)

La Piscine ’s sultry mix of psychosexual drama and murder set a template that inspired at least two other films that center around a swimming pool: Swimming Pool , the trippy 2003 film from Francois Ozon and starring Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier. Rampling plays Sarah, a crime writer, whose creative retreat to the South of France villa owned by her publisher (and sometime-lover) is interrupted by Sagnier, the publisher’s daughter (or is she?), a sexually voracious young woman whose character was definitely written by a man (or was she?).  Once again, the eponymous pool—where Sagnier frequently swims in the nude, which Sarah first encounters as cluttered with debris, perhaps a metaphor for her own writer-blocked state—is also the site of violent death.

Also inspired by La Piscine, perhaps even more directly, was the 2015 film, A Bigger Splash , directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Dakota Johnson. The setting is shifted to Italy, but much of the film’s plot mirrors La Piscine. And to double down on the noir swimming pool motif, the film draws its title from one of David Hockney’s (arguably one of the most noir-coopted artists of the midcentury) famous pools.

By the release of Wild Things in 1998, the swimming pool, where Neve Campbell and Denise Richards tussle and make out (undoubtedly the most famous scene in the film), had become erotic camp. Roger Ebert accurately described the film as “like a three-way collision between a softcore sex film, a soap opera, and a B-grade noir” but I think there’s more to it than that. By this point, the pool in a crime thriller had become shorthand for sexy sleazy summer fare. Like all the best soapy thrillers, Wild Things knows this, and isn’t afraid to take the point to the extreme. This pool isn’t high art; it is almost literally a cesspool.

Sexy Beast , Jonathan Glazer’s 2000 directorial debut starring Ray Winstone and Sir Ben Kingsley, opens with a retired gangster absolutely roasting poolside. The pool is very clearly gangster “Gal” Dove’s retirement treat, a supposed symbol of the luxury he’s now attained, having gotten out of the game. Except if you know anything about noir pools—well, and movies—you know that retirement is about to come to an end. The pool is never, ever a symbol of happily ever after; it’s a destination only for corpses. This turn is perfectly signaled by the film by the introduction of an enormous, immovable boulder crashing into the pool. Gal’s days of danger are, in fact, not over.

Finally, let’s not overlook the great noir pools of television. By the 2000s, several memorable swimming pools would connect premium crime television to the best of the genre. It’s with the ducks in his pool that we open the story of Tony Soprano and his therapy sessions. Despite all of his wealth and power and status, for which the swimming pool is a stand-in, Tony still can’t keep the family of ducks from flying away.

Breaking Bad, too, is full of contaminated pools, standing in for the guilt Walter White is suppressing over his drug kingpin life. In particular, the singed pink teddy bear that falls into Walt’s pool and recurs as a motif throughout season two elegantly showcases Walt’s submerged guilt over the human cost of his actions. Walt’s inability to reckon with how much damage he’s caused eventually begins to drown his family, with his wife Skylar, now Walt’s accomplice, fully walking into the pool in season five.

Splashing around in a pool is one of the high points of summer, if you can swing it. But never forget: murder may smell like honeysuckle, but it tastes like chlorine.

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Halley Sutton

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14 Model essays on La Haine

Subject: French

Age range: 16+

Resource type: Unit of work

Last updated

21 May 2024

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Attached are 12 model A Level essays on La Haine on themes, characters and techniques between 400 and 1000 words each. Here are the titles covered are: 1.La représentation de la police 2. Similarités et les différences Vinz et Hubert 3. similarites et différences entre Said, Vinz et Hubert 4. Le titre du film La Haine est bien choisi car il reflète exactement le thème principal du film’. Dans quelle mesure êtes-vous d’accord avec ce jugement? 5. L’exclusion sociale 6. Le Mal-être des banlieusards 7. La société française fracturée 8. Vinz est le moins raisonnable des trois jeunes 9. la Haine La technique du Noir et Blanc 10. personnages réalistes ou des stéréotypes 11. La représentation de la famille dans La haine 12. Eprouvez-vous de la compassion pour Vinz ? 13. Examinez le rôle des personnages secondaires 14. Les trois jeunes banlieusards sont en partie responsables des problèmes qui leur arrivent au cours du film.

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The Morning

Smellmaxxing, explained.

Some teenage boys have grown obsessed with designer fragrances that cost hundreds of dollars.

By Callie Holtermann

Reporter on the Styles desk

There’s something going on with the way teenage boys smell.

It’s become a cliché for adolescents to douse themselves in Axe body spray at the first sign of puberty. But lately, teen and even tween boys with money to spare are growing obsessed with designer fragrances that cost hundreds of dollars.

Ask a teenager why he wants a $200 bottle of cologne, and he might tell you he’s “smellmaxxing,” a term for enhancing one’s musk that is spreading on social media. “I started seeing a lot of videos on TikTok and thought, I don’t want to miss out,” said Logan, a 14-year-old in Chicago who has been putting his bar mitzvah money toward a collection of high-end colognes.

He displays bottles from Valentino and Emporio Armani proudly, in front of his lava lamp, and considers his nearly $300 bottle of Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille to be his signature scent. “I don’t think I’ve ever smelled Axe,” he said.

Some teens are buying fragrances with their allowance money, while others request them as birthday or holiday gifts from their parents (with varying levels of success). But they’re moving the needle: Teenage boys’ annual spending on fragrance rose 26 percent since last spring, according to a recent survey by an investment bank.

For a story in The Times’s Style section, which was published this morning, I talked to adolescents and their parents about the rise of young scent hounds , and why the cosmetic products of adulthood seem to be catching on earlier than ever.

Notes of honey

I spent a few months speaking to teenagers at fragrance counters around New York and in online cologne forums. What struck me most was the language they used, which sounded more like the stuff of sommeliers than middle schoolers.

The scent Le Male by Jean Paul Gaultier has “a really good honey note,” said Luke Benson, a 14-year-old who lives in Orlando, Fla., and says he talks about fragrances with his friends at sleepovers. Tom Ford Noir Extreme, on the other hand, is “a lot spicier and a little bit darker.”

“I’d never heard him say a designer name of anything,” Luke’s mother, Brooke, told me.

Other teenagers name-checked obscure legumes used in perfumery or informed me of their distaste for the scent of oud . One paused our conversation to make sure I was familiar with “sillage,” a French term for how heavily a fragrance lingers in the air. (Now I am.)

For many boys, the appeal of designer fragrances is in the air of maturity they confer upon their wearer. Young people say the scents make them feel more adult and talk about them in a manner that emulates the older fragrance influencers they follow online.

The influencer effect

Over the decades, trendy scents like Drakkar Noir and CK One have gone in and out of vogue among late teens and twenty-somethings. But TikTok influencers appear to be motivating even younger boys to seek out more expensive scents.

“Social media and TikTok make people want to be more grown up,” Luke said.

TikTok’s fragrance influencers recommend scents for different occasions; date night, going to the gym, attending middle school. Most prominent among them is Jeremy Fragrance, an often-shirtless German with nearly nine million followers. In his videos, he sniffs his fans , trying to guess which scents they are wearing.

And a younger generation inspired by Jeremy Fragrance is coming up behind him. Jatin Arora, 18, shares daily fragrance reviews with more than a million followers. His collection of nearly 400 bottles includes many free products from brands, which seem to be catching on to the fact that these influencers can get their products in front of younger buyers.

Hannah Glover, a middle-school physical fitness teacher in South Carolina, has been a little bewildered to see her 11-year-old students coming to school with $160 bottles of cologne. “These middle school kids are so impressionable,” she said. “I mean, you can sell them anything.”

Glover banned spritzing in her classroom, but it wasn’t enough: Glass bottles keep shattering in students’ backpacks and unleashing their scents upon the entire school. “Sometimes I’d rather take the B.O.,” she said.

THE LATEST NEWS

Israel-hamas war.

Benny Gantz, a centrist member of Israel’s cabinet, threatened to leave the government unless Benjamin Netanyahu answered questions about the future of the war , including a postwar plan for Gaza.

Thousands of demonstrators in Tel Aviv called on the Israeli government to negotiate a hostage deal with Hamas. Ambassadors to Israel from the U.S. and other countries gave speeches.

A marketplace for survival supplies — including entire aid parcels — has emerged in Gaza.

War in Ukraine

Russian forces have moved closer to the outskirts of Kharkiv , raising fears that the northeastern city — Ukraine’s second-largest — could soon be within artillery range.

The new Russian defense minister is a technocrat with no military experience . He is also a true believer in Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical moves.

More International News

“It is a lifeless life”: Indian Muslims grapple with vilification under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Unchecked urban sprawl and poor infrastructure have strained Mexico City’s water supply. This summer, one critical system may stop working .

In Pakistan, where people are particularly suspicious of the security services, a conspiracy theory took hold that gold-painted street performers in Islamabad were spies.

France has issued scratch-and-sniff baguette postage stamps ahead of the Olympics.

Increased threats of violence are changing how public officials in the U.S. do their jobs : Some say they are reluctant to take on contentious issues.

President Biden will deliver a commencement speech at the historically Black, all-male Morehouse College. The audience represent a slice of the electorate that is drifting toward Donald Trump.

The Pentagon is expanding its capacity to wage war in space , a response to advances by China and Russia.

Other Big Stories

Last year, Tommy Rath was beaten and taken away from a homeless encampment in New York. His vanishing has haunted his family and the city of Ithaca .

A record number of migrants to the U.S. has left many with legitimate asylum cases unable to find a lawyer .

The Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk defeated the British fighter Tyson Fury in Saudi Arabia to become the undisputed heavyweight champion.

THE SUNDAY DEBATE

Who has the advantage in the presidential debates?

Trump. That the debates are occurring at all shows that Biden, trailing Trump in the polls, is desperate. “Time is running out to turn around the public’s dismal view of his presidency,” Liz Peek writes for The Hill .

Biden. The low number of debates the candidates agreed to leaves Biden with fewer opportunities to meaningfully gaffe, especially so far out from November. “The guy whose name is on the cover of ‘The Art of the Deal’ just got outmaneuvered,” Jim Geraghty writes for The Washington Post .

FROM OPINION

We dont always need to use an apostrophe , John McWhorter writes.

A.I. chatbots designed to provide lonely people with companionship only discourage them from forming human connections , Jessica Grose writes.

Bring back movies dedicated to making us cry , Heather Havrilesky writes.

Here are columns by Nicholas Kristof on an invasion of Rafah , and Ross Douthat on Trump’s Manhattan trial .

MORNING READS

Bouncing: As New York’s Mexican population has grown, lowriders have put a vivid stamp on the city’s car scene .

Renters: Many people have decided that renting forever is their best — or only — option.

Food fight: Is a taco a sandwich? It depends on the law .

Buzz, chirp, wee-oo: Cicadas sing at volumes similar to an airplane. Listen to some species .

Vows: Captain Sandy of Bravo’s “Below Deck Mediterranean” finds love on land .

Lives Lived: Brig. Gen. Bud Anderson single-handedly shot down 16 German planes over Europe during World War II. After the war, he became one of America’s top test pilots during the “Right Stuff” era. He died at 102 .

THE INTERVIEW

By David Marchese

This week’s subject for The Interview is the marine biologist and climate policy expert Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, author of the coming book “What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures.” We talked about how individuals might change their thinking about the climate crisis.

Is it your sense that there are people who want to be involved in climate but are paralyzed by fear or despair?

First of all, I don’t think there’s any one way we should be communicating about climate. Some people are very motivated by the bad news. Some people are overwhelmed by that and don’t know where to start.

I just saw a study that said if we follow the most plausible possible path to decarbonization by 2050, the amount of carbon emissions already in the air will result in something like $38 trillion worth of damages every year. A future like that is going to involve sacrifices. Whether we choose to embrace it as a sacrifice or reframe it like, No, we’re actually helping —

What is it that you don’t want to give up?

I don’t want to give up the range of possibilities for my kids.

I assume you care about other people on the planet, besides your children.

You know, I just don’t know how to think about the future. I’ve done a handful of interviews with people who are thinking about the climate crisis, and the fundamental thing I’m trying to understand is how to think about the future, and I don’t feel like I understand.

Perhaps it’s worth saying it’s OK not to be hopeful. I feel like there’s so much emphasis in our society on being hopeful, as if that’s the answer to unlocking everything. I’m not a hopeful person. I’m not an optimist. I see the data. I see what’s coming. But I also see the full range of possible futures. I feel like there’s so much that we could create, and the question that motivates me right now is, ‘What if we get it right?’

Read more of the interview here .

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

Click the cover image above to read this week’s magazine.

Intelligence: In “The Light Eaters,” the climate reporter Zoë Schlanger looks at how plants sense the world .

By the Book: The most interesting thing the artist Kara Walker recently learned from a book? How to skin a man alive .

Our editors’ picks: “The Weight of Nature,” about climate change’s impact on our brains, and five other books .

Times best sellers: The celebrity memoirs “You Never Know,” by Tom Selleck with Ellis Henican, and Whoopi Goldberg’s “Bits and Pieces” are new this week on the hardcover nonfiction list .

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Embrace the dark side. Try a goth cake .

Go bold with a yellow bag for summer.

Treat your acne .

Hang outdoor string lights .

Read this before deciding to track your child.

THE WEEK AHEAD

What to Watch For

Trump’s defense team presents its case tomorrow in his trial in Manhattan.

Taiwan inaugurates Lai Ching-te as president tomorrow.

The French Open begins tomorrow.

A British court will hear the appeal of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, against extradition to the U.S.

Primary elections in Idaho, Kentucky and Oregon are on Tuesday.

Kenya’s president begins a state visit to the U.S. on Thursday.

Idaho’s Democratic presidential caucus is on Thursday.

The Cannes Film Festival announces the winner of its Palme d’Or award on Saturday.

If, like the Cooking editor Margaux Laskey, the weather where you are is unpredictable, you may want to prepare dishes that work whatever the forecast. In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter , Margaux offers such recipes, including a shrimp pasta and grilled soy-basted chicken with spicy cashews.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

Here is today’s Spelling Bee . Yesterday’s pangram was tributary .

And here are today’s Mini Crossword , Wordle , Sudoku , Connections and Strands .

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times.

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox . Reach our team at [email protected] .

Callie Holtermann reports on style and pop culture for The Times. More about Callie Holtermann

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/photos-whats-on-the-menu-for-the-white-house-state-dinner-honoring-kenya

PHOTOS: What’s on the menu for the White House state dinner honoring Kenya?

Here’s what cooking for Thursday’s White House state dinner honoring Kenya .

White House executive chef Cris Comerford and White House executive pastry chef Susie Morrison discuss the menu for the Kenya state dinner during a preview on May 22, 2024. Photo by Leah Millis/ Reuters

White House executive chef Cris Comerford says the main course is a “best of both worlds” combination of smoked short ribs and lobster.

First Course

A chilled heirloom tomato soup with sourdough crisps and Arbequina olive oil. Photo by Leah Millis/ Reuters

• Chilled Heirloom Tomato Soup
• Sourdough Crisps
• Arbequina Olive Oil

Main Course

Fruitwood-smoked beef short ribs with butter-poached lobster, citrus butter, baby kale and sweet corn puree at the White House in Washington on May 22, 2024. Photo by Leah Millis/ Reuters

• Fruitwood-smoked Beef Short Ribs
• Butter-poached Lobster
• Citrus Butter
• Baby Kale, Sweet Corn Purée

A white chocolate basket with banana ganache, raspberries, peaches and candied lime zest. Photo by Leah Millis/ Reuters

• White Chocolate Basket
• Banana Ganache
• Raspberries, Peaches, Candied Lime Zest
• Hartford Court Chardonnay “Four Hearts Vineyard” 2021
• St. Innocent Pinot Noir “Shea Vineyard” 2019
• Iron Horse Classic Vintage Brut 2020

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