Film Noir Studies

For anyone interested in further acquaintance with film noir, this website is a good place to start:

Film Noir Studies

The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953)

After coming to America, Fritz Lang exerted considerable influence over film noir--it's not hard to see how its themes and concerns might have presented an American counterpart to Lang's interests in M.
This scene sums up the atmosphere of corruption and duplicity that permeates film noir--and reminds us that, while noir often seems to present central female figures as the source of moral corruption, it also exposes the violence to women in male-dominated social groups--in this instance in a way that is shocking because it's casual as much as because it's so brutal.

Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)

The brilliant opening scene from the definitely sordid, tawdry, practically insane film noir classic Kiss Me Deadly.

A. O. Scott on The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)

The Maltese Falcon is one of the indispensable American films and a big influence on film noir style and themes. Here New York Times critic A. O. Scott suggests a deep connection between noir's exposure of the corruption at the heart of the American romance with wealth and the present crisis of the national economy. (Well, he says as much as he can expect his masters in corporate media to tolerate.)
The Maltese Falcon set the noir theme of the hero who is deeply flawed, cynical, maybe almost entirely amoral--except that he has a job to do; and the treacherous woman who tries to lead him astray. Why would this theme feature so prominently in American popular film?

Road House (Jean Negulesco, 1948)

Many films noirs (well, it's French) of the '40s and '50s not only provide a moral and social counter-tradition to Hollywood cinema, they also provide a production model that paralleled Italian Neorealism--with gritty stories came some gritty production conditions. Film noir to some extent elevated the B picture to a new status (especially as it was discovered by critics of the '60s as a serious American popular art form). It also paved the way for some TV shooting techniques. (Virtually everyone associated with this film ended up doing more TV than film.)

Sunset Boulevard - A Look Back

For anyone really interested in the film, there's a great documentary on Sunset Boulevard, available in three parts on YouTube (and included in the DVD release).

" . . . those wonderful people out there in the dark"

Sunset Boulevard: The End.
There may be no other scene in cinema that presents the relation between audience and film in such a rich, complex, and creepy way. Focusing on the audience's complicity in cinematic illusion--and thus a fundamental cultural dishonesty and inauthenticity--is pretty common these days. But Billy Wilder was certainly one of the hugest influences on the cynical style in cinema.