Postmodernity is the New Black: The Evolution of American Film Noir David Demers FMST 322: History of Film since 1959 Prof. Marc Steinberg March 31, 2011 There has been much debate about the validity of film noir as a stand-alone genre. Essays and books have debated the term for years using various criteria and rubrics to back up their respective positions on the subject. As the 21st century brings us new and creative trends from screenwriting to post-production and everything in between, the boundaries of noir become even less certain. One may even find a fitting parallel between the noir protagonist’s ambiguous and perilous quest with that of the hapless and naïve academic in search of an unequivocal definition of noir itself. Alas, this is not one of those essays. While it would be a pleasure to jump into the foggy debate of genre legitimacy, the truth is that such a journey will never be accomplished in a ten-page paper. Rather, what will be accomplished in this limited space is a chronological summary of the evolution of American film noir to date by using seminal works to determine how these films have become influenced by American cinematic trends of postmodern narrative structures and subjectivity. For the sake of classification, we will presuppose its status as a genre. The Murky History of Noir The argument to be made (and I assure you that there is one) is that, with the emergence of cinematic technological advances coupled with postmodernism’s abandonment of metanarratives and traditional socio-cultural identities, filmmakers are delving even deeper into the dark recesses of the human consciousness and using noir as a platform. It isn’t very surprising: to date no other genre relies more on the fragility and temperamental nature of the human condition more. Science Fiction is perhaps the only other genre that rivals noir for a study of human psychosis, thanks to the ability of sci-fi to reorder reality as is necessary. It should come as no surprise then that sci-fi noir films that explore the psychology of the human mind have begun cropping up. Blade Runner (1982), Ghost in the Shell (1995), The Matrix (1999), and Dark City (1998), are just a few films that pull from both film noir and sci-fi in an attempt to redefine the human condition. Oftentimes characters in a noir narrative are either vindicated or condemned based on how well they can maintain control over their psychological faculties. Philip Marlowe does not succumb to the wiles of femme fatale Carmen Sternwood and succeeds in his quest (The Big Sleep, 1946). Walter Neff gives in to Phyllis Dietrichson and doesn’t (Double Indemnity, 1944). But first I must backtrack. It is essential to our argument that we firmly place contemporary noir cinema in its historical context. This allows us not only to determine the directional evolution of noir, but also to line it up against its corresponding philosophical and socio-cultural thoughts. Our initial goal is to understand how noir has shifted away from a physical descent into a criminal underworld towards a more psychological descent into the potential corruption of humanity. These two types of descent might seem exclusive at first glance, though Hill would argue that a film’s aesthetical approach is inextricably connected with philosophical and socio-cultural debates that influence and become influenced by each other. Hill, John. “Film and Postmodernism.” In The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, ed. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 265. For contemporary examples, I will pull from films that predominantly display a postmodernism of resistance (i.e. art that challenges social constructs and conventional narratives). Foster, Hal. “Postmodernism: A Preface.” In The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster. Port Townshend: Bay Press, 1983, p. xii. I am very tempted to altar his terminology and create the term “reactionary postmodernism of resistance”, but who would really know what that means. Two such films that fit these criteria (if not neatly, then more akin to a double helix spiraling around them) are Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects (1995) and Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010). And so, working through a very brief history to determine how we arrived at postmodern noir (and, ironically, with a teleology often eschewed by postmodernism), we begin. Classic Noir A period lasting as long as the MPPDA production code (1930-1960s), the classic era of Noir was when it was at its most aesthetically definitive. Films during this time practiced an abundance of chiaroscuro, off-kilter cinematography, detective protagonists, “femme fatales” and “macguffins.” Classic noir films also experimented with the chronology of the plot, using devices such as flashbacks that anticipated the narrative trends of future noir movements (Double Indemnity and Detour, 1945 were prime examples). These films also dealt with a more criminal element in its plots. Stories revolved around insidious organized crime while the protagonist, usually a detective or someone else incidentally thrust into the story, searched for clarity or character redemption. The protagonist’s success depended on whether he (and, incidentally, almost never ‘she’) could resist its lure. The antagonists on the other hand suffer from what Sarah Melzer calls the Pascalian “aporia of desire”, where “the individual is torn apart by competing desires, none of which can ever be satisfied, and all human existence is condemned to the misery of unfulfilled desire and of a perpetually deferred insight into reality.” Melzer, Sara. Discourses of the Fall: A Study of Pascal’s Pensées. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986, pp. 93-94. What connects the bulk of these films is a physical descent into an underworld where the protagonist finds himself overmatched and overwhelmed, but through perseverance and virtue he overcomes his antagonist. The criminal world that the protagonist finds himself in often pulls him to the brink of destruction but ultimately perseveres. This is not to say, however, that classic noir films exemplified happy endings. As Hibbs astutely notes, “whatever redemption there is does not come in the form of cheap grace or a happy ending that heals all scars or eliminates haunting memories. It comes, if at all, mysteriously in and through the noir labyrinth.” Hibbs, Thomas S. Arts of Darkness: American Noir and the Quest for Redemption. Dalls: Spence Publishing Company, 2008, p. 77. An interesting aside: True Grit (2011) is perhaps the least noir film that the Coen brothers have made outside of their comedy pictures, and yet it still contains this classic noir element of a consequential redemption: when the young and innocent Mattie Ross finally exacts her revenge upon murderer Tom Chaney, the kick of her rifle throws her back into a cavernous pit where she is bitten by a snake and eventually loses her arm. In effect, her redemption is a literal and spiritual fall from grace. Whether or not the hero’s quest for redemption was a result of strict MPPDA production code or not is a moot point, as the relative virtue of the protagonist was widely recognized by audiences and film critics as integral to his success. Truffaut himself compliments Hitchcock on his decision to show Fr. Logan in I Confess (1953) always walking in a “forward motion that shapes the whole film” which “concretizes the concept of his integrity.” Truffaut, François. Hitchcock (revised ed.) UK: Simon & Schuster, 1985, p. 204. Neo-Noir Commonly viewed by critics as an update on original noir motifs of human experience as a fabrication of images, Ebert, Roger. The Great Movies. New York: Broadway Books, 2002, p. 105. neo-noir is characterized by an increased analysis of the psychological motivations of its characters and an emphasis on nihilistic tendencies. Silver, Alain and Ursini, James. Film Noir Reader. New York: Limelilght Editions, 1995, p. 284. Films began to self-consciously revive or re-imagine noir conventions and archetypes. Ballinger, Alex and Graydon, Danny. The Rough Guide to Film Noir. London: Penguin Books, July 2007, p. 41. Some strong examples are Godard’s classic Breathless (1960) and Mickey One (1964). With the production code mentioned above finally meeting its demise in the 1968, filmmakers began experimenting with narratives that did not necessarily have pleasant, redemptive endings for their protagonists. As with most artistic shifts, there is some overlap. Some films can be firmly placed in the neo-noir canon even before the complete abolition of the MPPDA production code in 1968. Some examples include The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Brainstorm (1965). The resulting effect was noir films that celebrated characters who were now impervious to the laws of the human condition. In these films, characters exuding criminal behaviour succeeded. This shift presents a growing Gnostic sentiment among postmodern American culture where the human condition is no longer a universal one, but rather one that must be shed in order to rise above the ensnaring noir environment. Those who lack the will power to do so will succumb. Hibbs, p. 94. Where Philip Marlowe’s integrity once acted as a saving grace, the virtuosity of J.J. Gittes in Chinatown (1974) was a liability and he was hapless against the thoroughly amoral antagonist, Noah Cross. Noah Cross (played by John Huston) would presumably continue and succeed at his goal to control the water supply to the San Fernando Valley. His name, therefore, is an inverted biblical reference to his somewhat deified self-aggrandizement and diabolical desires, as well as an appropriate parallel inversion of the noir tenets. It is not surprising then that the heroes or anti-heroes that emerge in neo-noir exhibit a cavalier amorality that immerses audiences in a “depraved point of view.” Hirsch, Foster. Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir. New York: Limelight Editions, 1999, p. 10 While Taxi Driver (1976) isn’t a noir film in the strictest sense, the environment and characters borrow from noir so much so that one must consider it at least peripherally. Presumably suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, protagonist Travis Bickle descends thoroughly into the darkest corners of New York City while also descending into the dark recesses of his mind. Director Martin Scorcese exemplifies this psychotic descent subjectively via frenetic editing, claustrophobic cinematography and removed, Brechtian voiceover narration. Thompson, Kristin and Bordwell, David. Film History: An Introduction (3rd ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010, p. 521. Scorcese cleverly flips Brecht’s technique of encouraging a detached attitude to the film via actors reciting lines as if quoting them to Travis Bickle’s detached attitude to reality via him voicing his journal writing. In true noir fashion, the film culminates in a final showdown between Bickle and the underworld, although this time the protagonist clearly isn’t doing so out of virtuosity. Rather, his need to kill and his self-aggrandizing sense of importance pulls him into a fantasy world that ironically and accidentally transform him into a hero. Taxi Driver also points toward a growing phenomenon among postmodern films: the use of pastiche, or the referencing of works of art from various geographical areas and historical periods, and contrasting it with the art of today to reinterpret this combination as a whole. According to Giuliana Bruno, pastiche is intended as “an aesthetic of quotations pushed to the limit; it is an incorporation of forms, an imitation of dead styles deprived of any satirical impulse.” Bruno, Giuliana. “Ramble City: Postmodernism and ‘Blade Runner’.” In October, Vol. 41. The MIT Press, Summer 1987, p. 62. In this sense, neo-noir films often follow a more strict thematic interpretation of classic noir (namely hardboiled detective tales and blank parody remakes), such as the seminal Chinatown, as well as The Drowning Pool (1975) and Thieves Like Us (1973). Still, it is worth taking note here that neo-noir and postmodernism noir motifs did not begin at the same time. While neo-noir is largely attributed as beginning with the rejection of the MPPDA production code and may show elements of postmodern motifs, Andrew Spicer points out that Body Heat (1981) marks the transition from modernist to postmodern film noir. He goes on to identify postmodern noir as involving a “fundamental shift in the conception of artistic production in which creativity is no longer conceived in terms of pure invention but rather as the re-articulation of preexisting codes.” Hibbs, p. 158. This re-articulation is distinct and what delineates contemporary film noir from its previous incarnations. Postmodern Noir Using this broad rubric of aesthetical and ethical themes, we can begin to distinguish an emerging line between neo-noir and postmodern noir, namely, the introduction of a wide rejection of grand narratives. We may be tempted to lump neo-noir and postmodern noir together since both tend to re-imagine and reinvent classic noir motifs. There is, however, an ineffaceable distinction between noir’s latest manifestation and its previous movements. When comparing neo-noir with postmodern noir, the former attempted to shed their original grand narratives by replacing them with other metanarratives. Chinatown and The Manchurian Candidate (1962) display this by rejecting its original narrative only to provide a newer, objectively clear narrative in its place. In contrast, the latter attempted to respond to this argument by presenting what Lyotard coins as petit récits, or “localized” narratives, and refrain from passing any judgment to the validity or value of each narrative. This type of ‘blank narrative’ is distinct in the sense that multiple narratives are presented and, while they may be incompatible with each other, they still hold equal weight in terms of relativity and subjectivity. Furthermore, with postmodern noir, a narrative might be utterly false from an objective point of view, yet its falsity is a moot point for any character that adheres to it. Hill, p. 266. The Usual Suspects The Usual Suspects (1995) is a prime example and a distinct milestone of this shift. It contains several classic noir elements (criminal underworld, overmatched detective, nihilistic flirtations, chiaroscuro lighting) combined with the explicitly neo-noir trend of the victorious amoral anti-hero. Where it firmly expands into postmodern noir is its clever narrative structure. The film’s primary story arc is an account by the timid and naïve Roger “Verbal” Kint, who tells US Customs officer Dave Kujan about how he and four other crooks were hired by a nefarious criminal named Keyser Söze to carry out a dangerous heist. According to Kint, all the criminals save himself were killed in the process. Kujan, believing he sees through Kint’s problematic account, believes that there is no criminal mastermind named Keyser Söze. Kujan suspects that Kint’s account omits several facts in an effort to hide the real mastermind, one of the other five criminals named Dean Keaton. After extracting as much from Kint, he releases him. The film ends with Kujan discovering that Kint’s account was a much larger fabrication than he had previously realized and that the real mastermind was in fact Kint himself. The film presents three possible narratives: The initial false narrative with an ominous character named Keyser Söze; the second and slightly more erroneous narrative where the criminal mastermind is Dean Keaton (and possibly Keyser Söze); the final and most correct narrative where the criminal mastermind is Verbal Kint (and by most correct, I mean that we now know that much of the previous narratives are simply untrue, yet they are not replaced by any truth, per se). Whether Kint is indeed Keyser Söze or not is the subject of debate. Either he is, or he is merely using the legendary tale as a way to control his criminal empire. In this sense, The Usual Suspects refrains from granting the audience an absolute truth about the identity of Keyser Söze, if there even is one. It suffices to reject the original grand narrative and replace it with localized narratives that are equally valid (or in this case, equally invalid). Regardless, the opportunistic and supreme practitioner of nihilistic irony has once again proven to have the will power to rise above, and control, noir conventions. Hibbs, p. 94. Inception Inception (2010) is the story about Cobb, a dream manipulator who hires himself to multinational corporations in order to steal corporate trade secrets. He is estranged from his children who are in the United States because he is suspected of murdering his wife, Mal. In order to re-enter the U.S. without persecution, he must implant an idea in the mind of a CEO of a rival corporation that would eventually lead him to dissolve his father’s empire. The film must do so by creating dreams within dreams, though doing so is problematic and those entering the multi-leveled dream states risk being stuck there for what will seem like a lifetime. The open ending does not answer the question of weather Cobb still remains in a dream state or finally wakes up to reality. Inception embodies the ultimate evolution in film noir. It contains classic motifs and re-imagines them in true neo-noir fashion: the melancholic protagonist (Cobb), a labyrinth-like underworld (the dream states), a macguffin (readmission into the United States), a femme fatale (the protagonist’ ex-wife, Mal), and extreme off-kilter cinematography (the fight sequence between his sidekick, Arthur and the security guards in the hotel). The dystopian environment is taken to an extreme with crumbling skyscrapers and deserted cities. Cobb’s possible mental dispossession is at the forefront of the entire story and even hinges upon it. Director Christopher Nolan expertly replaces the physical descent into a criminal underworld with a psychological descent into Cobb’s dream state (one obvious parallel being the elevator that his other sidekick, Ariadne rides downward into Cobb’s most personal and morbid desires). But despite its overtly neo-noir approach, Inception firmly situates itself in postmodern noir. The film implements an architectural pastiche found in Blade Runner (1982), a sci-fi noir that puts emphasis on the recycling of styles and creates a blank parody. These two films thematically mirror each other so much so that Bruno’s description of the schizophrenic psychopathology found in Blade Runner could be copied and pasted into a description for Inception: “The psychopathology of [the characters] and the city is the psychopathology of the everyday postindustrial condition. The increased speed of development and process produces the diminishing of distances, of the space in between, of distinction... the ‘real’ is not what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced… the hyper-real… which is entirely simulation.” Bruno, pp. 65-67. Perhaps most indicative of Inception’s postmodernity is the film’s original use of localized narratives. While there is an obvious metanarrative structure (i.e. Cobb is either in a dream state or not), by leaving the film open-ended, Nolan is building a case for a subjective, relative reality that is as valid as (if not more so than) an objective one. The multi-level dream states now become petit récits themselves, each one as legitimate as any other. No Light at the End of the Tunnel Included below is a table providing a general outline of the three noir periods with essential elements and supporting examples (see Table 1). It is interesting to note that, while there has been plenty of analysis of the evolution of film noir, there is little speculation as to the direction that it is headed in. If we were to extrapolate from the progression of aesthetic motifs and narrative trends outlined in this paper, it stands to reason that the strict, classical definition of noir is now defunct, replaced with multi-genre works that utilize noir elements on a peripheral level to portray internal conflict. Films that adhere to the classic motifs tend to be more novel in nature, such as the black-and-white The Good German (2006) and The Black Dahlia (2006). Meanwhile, postmodern noir seems to be heading into localized narrative structures focusing on the diversity of human experience. Perhaps the obvious evolutionary path will lead to experiments in remediation and hypermediacy. If so, we will once again need a new definition for an otherwise indefinable genre. Then again, if it really isn’t a genre to begin with, maybe we won’t. Table 1: Classification of Film Noir movements Common Elements Examples Classic Noir (1930 – 1968) Expressionistic cinematography Nihilistic or opportunistic antagonists Redemption for virtuous protagonists Checklist of narrative motifs The Maltese Falcon (1941) Double Indemnity (1944) The Third Man (1949) I Confess (1953) The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) Neo-Noir (1962 – 1994) Gnosticism Victory for nihilistic or opportunistic characters Reviving or re-imagining noir conventions Focus on mental dispossession Metanarrative structure The Manchurian Candidate (1962) Chinatown (1974) Taxi Driver (1976) Postmodern Noir (1995 – present) Rejection of metanarratives and an embrace of petit récits Pastiche Recycling noir themes into other genres Focus on psychological mastery Body Heat (1981) Blade Runner (1982) The Usual Suspects (1995) No Country For Old Men (2007) Inception (2010) NOTES