Movie Cheat Sheet: Film Noir

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Movie Cheat Sheet: Film Noir
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If now seems like the perfect time to dig into cinema history, film noir is an excellent place to start. One of the most idiosyncratic genres in Hollywood, it inspired a darker sort of storytelling and gave us conventions that persist to this day. Film noir often takes the form of downbeat mysteries, usually focussing on a shady anti-hero (criminal or detective) who is unwittingly drawn into a dark world, and tends to involve a femme fatale.

By Victoria Luxford

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Culture
Movie Cheat Sheet: Film Noir .
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The term ‘film noir’ was actually coined after many of the original noir movies were made, highlighted by a French film critic who noticed a pattern in US movies that were released during the Second World War, but came all at once to France following the war when American films began showing internationally. As such, it’s a genre that didn’t know it was a genre, at least until the ‘60s when directors started consciously including aspects of noir in their work and tweaking it, creating neo noir and other offshoots. Here, we’ve included 10 films we think would be good places to start exploring film noir, beginning with classic examples and moving into its modern equivalents.

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Movie Cheat Sheet: Film Noir .
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Maltese Falcon (1941) – If film noir had a face, it would probably look like Humphrey Bogart. The star became an icon of the genre, most notably as private eye Sam Spade, thrown into conflict with a series of unscrupulous characters all looking for a valuable statuette named the Maltese Falcon. The film also features Hungarian actor Peter Lorre, another embodiment of what a classic noir character should look like. Throw in Mary Astor as the mysterious Ruth Wonderly, and you have a movie that changed the course of cinema history.

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Movie Cheat Sheet: Film Noir .
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Double Indemnity (1944) – If Maltese Falcon perfects the anti-hero, Double Indemnity offers the prime example of a femme fatale. Barbara Stanwyck plays Phyllis, a wealthy woman who plots to kill her husband and make it look like an accident in order to double her insurance payout. Fred MacMurray plays Walter Neff, the story’s narrator and the insurance salesman lured in to help Phyllis carry out her plan. It’s often used as an example of how film noir tells a story visually, through sharp contrast and titled, disorientating camera angles. If you watch it and feel like you’ve seen this story before, it’s likely because many other films since have imitated it.

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Movie Cheat Sheet: Film Noir .
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The Third Man (1949) – A British film despite its American stars, The Third Man features Joseph Cotten as a pulp fiction author who travels to post-war Vienna to investigate the death of his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to find a sinister truth waiting for him. The morality of a war-ravaged society is laid bare in one of the finest movies to ever come out of the UK. Cotten makes for the perfect noir protagonist, a suspicious and flawed man who fights against an increasingly aggressive web of deceit. Meanwhile, Welles gives one of the most memorable ‘bit part’ performances of all time.

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Movie Cheat Sheet: Film Noir .
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Alphaville (1965) – With the term ‘film noir’ having been coined in France, it’s perhaps appropriate that French filmmakers helped bring about its next evolution. ‘Neo noir’ refers to film noir that has been updated in terms of its themes, violence or setting, in order to bring those principles to modern times. Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville is one of its earliest innovators, bringing the trench coat-wearing secret agent into the brutalist concrete and glass of dystopian city Alphaville. A combination of science fiction and gritty investigation, it shows the influence 1950s American cinema would have on European pioneers, who would then in turn influence those to come.

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Movie Cheat Sheet: Film Noir .
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Chinatown (1974) – If you watch Chinatown and struggle to work out what’s going on, don’t fret. It’s likely it will take four or five viewings to even partially understand Roman Polanski’s labyrinthine story of corruption in Los Angeles, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a wonderful movie that fuses film noir suspense with complicated psychological drama. Jack Nicholson is brilliant as Jake Gittes, drawn into a deep hole of intrigue after taking a relatively innocuous job tailing the husband of new client Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway). You may not follow everything, but hopefully you will get the sense that you’re watching something special.

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Movie Cheat Sheet: Film Noir .
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Blade Runner (1982) – This sci-fi benchmark is the prime example of what’s been nicknamed ‘neon noir’, referring to neo noir stories set within a contemporary or futuristic setting. Ridley Scott’s movie certainly fits the bill – Harrison Ford is the classic gumshoe as a man out to hunt Replicants (androids). The tale leads him on a journey that teaches him what it is to be alive, as he wanders through a world filled with sketchy characters and strikes up a love interest in Sean Young’s Rachael. Even the controversial narration, which featured in the original cut, pointed to an influence from the noir greats.

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Movie Cheat Sheet: Film Noir .
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Seven (1995) – Two detectives meet, at night, in the rain. One is old, tired and worn down by a life of crime. The other is young and energetic, but neither are prepared for a killer who commits heinous crimes, based on the seven deadly sins drawn from Christian tradition. David Fincher brought neo noir into the ‘90s with this nihilistic crime thriller, where no one is innocent and everyone must pay for their sins. Featuring one of the most sensational twists in movie history, the dour look and feel of the film is complemented by a wonderful central pairing in Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt. You’ll never look at delivery packages the same way!

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Movie Cheat Sheet: Film Noir .
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L.A. Confidential (1997) – Curtis Hanson’s Oscar winner drenches itself in ‘50s nostalgia, telling a story that would have been at home in the days of Bogart and MacMurray. A young Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce butt heads as two different cops cleaning up the sleazy underbelly of 1950s Hollywood, complete with yellow journalists (Danny DeVito) and lookalike escorts (Kim Basinger). Harking back to the foundations of film noir, it could almost be seen as a love letter to the art of crime stories that live in the shadows. A profoundly underrated film that’s worth closer investigation.

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Brick (2005) – What if you took the genre and placed it in an entirely unlikely setting, like… an American high school? That’s exactly what happened in Rian Johnson’s (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Knives Out) superb breakthrough film, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing a teenage outsider who pokes around the colourful corners of his neighbourhood to investigate a mysterious call from his ex-girlfriend. The characters and dialogue are purposefully inspired by detective classics, giving what could have been a novel curiosity a sense of purpose and depth. If you want to understand why Johnson is so revered by his fans, this is a good place to start.

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Sin City (2005) – The past combines with the present in Robert Rodriguez’s comic book noir, an anthology of stories set within the grimy, crime-ridden world of Basin City. The adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel had some of Hollywood’s finest playing burned-out anti-heroes: Mickey Rourke’s gnarled heavy Marv, aging Detective Hartigan (Bruce Willis) and private investigator Dwight (Clive Owen). We also get one of the most memorable modern femmes fatales in Jessica Alba’s Nancy. Filled with blood and controversy, it takes the noir principles to its most extreme conclusion.

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Movie Cheat Sheet: Film Noir

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