The hardboiled private detective appears in the very first film noir movie, as Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon.” Sam Spade was one of the most popular of the pulp magazine private eyes, and he still exemplifies the archetype.
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There haven't really been that many sci-fi noirs. “Dark City” and “Blade Runner” are the only two that spring to mind, and “Dark City” is hampered somewhat by its nostalgia for the 1940s. Back in the 1940s and 50s, when the original noirs were made, people didn't dress in trenchcoats and fedoras to be cool and retro. If you had gone out on the streets of any American city, you would have seen a sea of trenchcoats and fedoras. That's just how people dressed back then.
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The women of noir were vital to the film and I like to think in some degree to the women of that time and even still today. They inn their own way made those films, in fact, in all honestly where would the plot have gone without them. These women of film noir brought a new vision into public light, a vision I’ll always remember and be thankful for.
Film Noir gave women strength. They left behind their damsel in distress personality and took what they wanted, usually with any means necessary. This film genre showed women everywhere that strength was in each woman if only she would reach down and harness it. Read more about The Women of Noir
“Dark City” is a sci-fi noir from 1998, featuring stunningly impressive visuals of an almost comic-book 1940s-style city that is not even remotely what it seems. One of the basic tropes of film noir is the “wrong man accused” story, in which the hero must solve the mystery to clear his own name. A common twist on this is the “amnesia” story, in which the hero can't remember what really happened and therefore doesn't actually know for a fact whether he's guilty or not.
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Do you have someone on your Christmas list that eats, sleeps and breaths film noir? If so I have you covered. I have searched far and wide for the best Christmas gift ideas for noir fans everywhere.
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A man comes staggering into a police station some time in the 1940s and demands to speak to the homicide desk. When he gets there, he says he wants to report a murder. “Whose murder?” asks the detective. He replies “my own.”
So begins DOA, one of the most creatively plotted of all film noirs. It tells the story of a notary public who discovers someone has slipped a toxic radioactive substance into his drink and he has only about 48 hours to solve his own murder. There is no possible cure.
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I thought just to keep it fun I would share some of my favorite Noir based cartoon shorts. These range in style and are created by several different people. All of them are worth a look.
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David Lynch's “Blue Velvet” is one of the best examples of neo-noir, despite (or partially because of?) the director's obsessions. These include symbolism so heavy-handed it almost feels like he's making fun of you, and the need to interject surrealism into a fairly straightforward mystery for no other apparent reason than to be artsy.
Read more about David Lynch's Blue Velvet