Smoky, black & white, crime, mystery, flashbacks. Put them all together and you might have something in the mood of a film noir. This week we explore the classic black and white film genre, film noir, The Killers (1946), directed by Robert Siodmak was screened. But is film noir really a genre?
“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 & mood” -Paul Schrader. We can’t classify film noir as a film genre like how we can do so for most popular genres such as, action, horror, wester, rom-com… due to it’s complexity of visual style and how it was presented back then. Film noir refers to a specific period in film history and only films made and produced during that period could be classified as a film noir film. There are no identifiable elements such as iconography, characters or setting, unlike the western or horror.
Then what makes a film, film noir? As the readings cover, it focuses mainly on the mood and style, as well as the period that it was made. Take swing music for example, some might argue it is a genre on its own, but others might say it is a kind of style or mechanical term to describe a way of playing a groove. Obviously, swing music is predominantly in big band music, but it could also be found in jazz, blues or even electro. And, like film noir, it marks a certain period of music that belonged in the 30s-40s, but composers and songwriters incorporate the key element of swing into modern music. Film noir belongs to a specific period, but filmmakers have definitely explored using elements from the film noir period into modern day films to recreate the film noir mood and style, hence we get genres such as neo noir, sci-fi noir, or western noir.
It is always hard to define something fluid, but it makes it easy to adapt and apply to other genres. We tend to go push boundaries since there is no definitive line drawn to contain what makes a film noir.
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