Film Noir is often regarded as a quintessentially American genre defined by enduring Hollywood classics such as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Murder My Sweet and Double Indemnity and the glamorous stars they created. Characterised by sharp, unembellished dialogue and punctuated with slang and sexual innuendo, the genre eschewed the constraints of respectable literary sources and instead took inspiration from the disreputable popular crime fiction of the day.
Ironically, it was European writers, directors and cinematographers who shaped American film Noir, heavily influenced by cultural movements across the pond - not least by German Expressionism, from which Film Noir borrowed its low-key chiaroscuro-effect lighting and stylised Mise en scene. In fact, the term ‘Film Noir’ first appeared in a French Journal in 1946 long before it entered into common use by American critica audiences. This is not say that the basic motifs of the genre- moral ambiguity, violence, crime and passion- were not widely understood and commented upon but rather that the genre was often defined from an external perspective. Many of the genre’s key players such as Billy Wilder and Robert Siodmak were of Jewish origin (Austrian and German respectively) and had enjoyed the creative vibrancy and relative liberalism of 1920s Europe but were forced to flee to America as the spectre of Nazism threatened to overwhelm the continent in the 1930s. Others such as Fritz Lang, Hitchcock and Michael Curtiz as well as English novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler were equally drawn to Hollywood and abandoned the Old world for the New in search of fresh opportunities.
The unique outside perspective of these ex-pats combined with the cheap, sensationalist American hardboiled crime dramas of the depression era to give 1940s Film Noir a new raw flavour; at once American but also defined by a sense of awe at the excesses of an exotic society; a society not only foreign to Europeans but to other Americans as well. After all, the urban disorder of This Gun For Hire (1942) or Asphalt Jungle (1950) was no more familiar to American Film Noir directors such as John Huston (who was raised in the Midwest) than their European counterparts- let alone the majority of American audiences.
"L.A. became a beacon of modernity and opportunity...a city of promise undercut by hard-nosed, uncompromising cynicism"
A strong sense of place was pervasive in the Film Noirs of this period and California- specifically Los Angeles became an illusive, seductive character in its own right in many of the films of this era. The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity and dozens of other films took inspiration from the sprawling city. As a relatively new city in a young state, Los Angeles grew into a booming metropolis in the 1920s and 30s. The city hosted the 1932 Olympics and experienced a raft of new construction projects as a result. Even with the onset of war in 1941 the city continued to grow as a result of aircraft and munitions production so that by the mid-1940s, with its gleaming new public buildings, large Spanish Colonial mansions and wide uncluttered roads, L.A became a beacon of modernity and opportunity. Yet, the city in this period was equally characterised by institutional corruption and organised crime. Civic corruption reached such a low in the 1930s and 40s that the L.A.P.D, Mayor and City Hall were running their own protection rackets with brothel madams and bootleggers; everything and everyone in the highest echelons of government seemed to be for sale.
Subsequently - much like the Femme Fatale - Los Angeles became a city of promise undercut by hard-nosed, uncompromising cynicism. This treatment of the city is especially evident in two classic Film Noirs - Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and Tay Garnett’s The Postman always Rings Twice - both adapted from roman noir crime novels by John M. Cain. In Double Indemnity the scheming Phyllis Dietrichson (played by Barbara Stanwyck) launches into a passionate extramarital affair with naive insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray). Phyllis seduces Frank, persuading him to kill her husband after first taking out a forged Life insurance policy on her husband’s behalf then framing his murder as an accident in order to claim double the insurance payout under the policy’s double indemnity clause. Initially the plan is successful but as Cora’s role in her husband’s death comes under investigation, the affair implodes and the would-be conspirators turn against one another.
The Postman Always Rings Twice follows a similar vein, Lana Turner stars as bored housewife Cora, trapped in a loveless marriage with a domineering alcoholic twice her age and running a dilapidated roadside diner. When Cora’s passion is reawakened by casual labourer Frank Chambers (John Garfield) and their affair is threatened by her husband’s plan to sell the cafe, the couple quickly hatch a plan to dispose of him. Unlike Phyllis Dietrichson, Cora’s ambitions are modest; to work hard, turn the diner into a success and one day “amount to something” but Cora and Phyllis are equally ruthless- willing to dispatch of anybody who threatens to derail their plans. Ultimately- as in Double Indemnity- carefully laid plans soon fall apart and Frank and Cora are severely punished for their misdeeds.
"Like most femmes fatales in American Film Noir, Phyllis is wily and seductive but also desperate, grasping and insecure."
The beautiful, duplicitous and deceitful femme fatale is perhaps one of the most enduring Film Noir conventions; femmes fatales like Cora and Phyllis wielded a mesmerising sexual allure that inspired savage deeds. 1940s Film Noir was so fixated by these women of questionable virtue that it is virtually impossible to identify a Film Noir that doesn’t feature a morally dubious woman. Arguably Barbara Stanwyck portrayed the definitive femme fatale as the deliciously devious Phyllis Dietrichson; having previously dispatched of her husband’s first wife while acting as her nurse (an act that elevates her from nurse to woman of leisure in one move), she not only seduces Walter Neff but her young stepdaughter’s boyfriend as well. Although already married to a wealthy man, Phyllis aspires to even greater heights of bourgeois respectability- but the cheap perfume Walter smells on her in his apartment and her gold anklet belie her less-than-affluent background. Like most femmes fatales in American Film Noir, Phyllis is wily and seductive but also desperate, grasping and insecure. Fearful for her future, with no family and traditional social structures to support her, it is easy to imaging she is a woman who has had to depend on her wits for survival- with murderous consequences. This insecurity is also evident in Lana Turner’s portrayal of Cora who despises her boorish husband but is too fearful of returning to her previous life of penury as a chorus girl to divorce him.
There can be no doubt that the War, the absence of many men from their wives and families and the consequent independence of the women they left behind created a sense of unease at the supposedly corrupting effects of women’s newly-won liberties. Characterised by a savage hardness and lonely vulnerability, women in Film Noir rejected nurturing roles as wives and mothers to chase a life of self-sufficiency.
Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice both illustrate superbly the typically bleak, pessimistic interpretation of human nature central to Film Noir; marriage becomes a trap, passion quickly turns into dangerous obsession and love into bitter rivalry. Often mislabelled as melodrama, the Film Noirs of the 1940s were actually often very understated, demonstrating impressive subtlety while pushing the limits of censorship with their simmering sexuality, innuendo and savage violence.
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