One of the questions that came up in our discussion of film noir this week was: “is film noir a genre?”

It seems a simple question on its surface, but it gets at the heart of what defines genre as a general concept and what demarcates one particular genre from another. We discussed it briefly in class this week, and I mulled the question over in my head as I doing my readings, and I still don’t think I have a satisfactorily well-defined opinion on the matter.

Putting aside the “anything can be a genre” argument (which I’ve been fond of pushing in the past), if we say that a genre is only a genre if most reasonable observers would consider it to be one, I think film noir is clearly a genre.

Certain characteristics of the film noir back this up:

• The visual style of noir is so unique and indelible that it’s clear on the surface whether a film is a noir or not.
• Though not completely rigid, there are some narrative elements that recur in film noir: detective stories, flashbacks, narration, femmes fatale.
• So many later works pastiche and parody noir as a genre — this says that most people would recognise it as a genre (and therefore be in on the joke). This is one of the stronger arguments in film noir’s favour for consideration as a genre in its own right.
• Schrader (quoted in House 1986¹) says “Film noir is not a genre… it is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood.” But the same can be said about horror, which is defined by its emotional affect rather than any particular convention of narrative, setting or conflict, and no one denies that horror is a genre.

What about the counterpoint?

• A film’s claims to being a noir are based primarily on visual style, and there are no particularly rigid narrative or emotive requirements like other genres.
• Its mainstream popularity was restricted to a particular time (1940s and 50s), so it could be argued that film noir is really just how detective dramas and thrillers looked in the darkness of the post-war period. Summer camp movies have similar looks to each other and are associated with a particular time period (80s and 90s), but we don’t consider the summer camp movie a genre of its own on par with film noir. (Though maybe we should? Meatballs 4, it’s your time to shine!)

Like I say, I’m not entirely sure which side of this discussion I fall on, and I guess it just illustrates the elastic and difficult-to-define nature of film genre.

Our screening this week, The Killers (1946), was nothing short of incredible. I’ve seen most of the “key” noir films before, but nothing prepared me for the great joy of such a well plotted, tightly scripted and incredibly photographed masterpiece of procedural cinema. It conformed to most film noir genre expectations, but there were a few key areas in which it deviated/innovated, and the result was wonderful. Handing narrative flashbacks off from one character to another, like an athletics relay, gave the story great forward momentum and also helped elevate the exposition to more than just seeing a detective ask someone for information.