After writing yesterday’s post, The Left Hand Of Noir, which referred to the HUAC Hollwood blacklistings of the 50’s, I recalled the excellent 1992 film Guilty by Suspicionstarring Rober De Niro:

David Merrill, a successful director, has spent the last couple of years working on movies overseas. He returns right in the middle of the McCarthy era Communist witch-hunt that was sweeping through Hollywood. When first approached by the ‘inquisitors’ he rebuffs them, not realizing how much influence they have. He soon finds that he can’t get work, having been blacklisted for failing to cooperate. However, if he will just tell them what they want to know, he can go back to work… From IMDB: Written by Brian W Martz {B.Martz@Genie.com}

The original screenplay was written by Abraham Polonsky, the writer of Body and Soul (1947) and writer/director of Force of Evil (1948), two of the great films noir of the 1940s, which both starred John Garfield, who was also blacklisted.

When the director, Irwin Winkler, decided to rewrite the script by changing De Niro’s character from a Communist to a ‘liberal’, Polonsky had his name removed from the film’s credits. Polonksy said in an interview in the New York Times: “I wanted it to be about Communists because that’s the way it really happened… They didn’t need another story about a man who was falsely accused.“

The careers of Polonsky and Garfield were effectively destroyed by the thugs on the HAUC. Garfield’s already frail health did not recover from the blow and he died two years later in 1952 at age 39.

Lloydville of mardecortesbaja.com has posted another interesting and provocative article on the origins of film noir: MORE ON FILM NOIR AND THE DEATH OF GOD:

...certain modern commentators want to see film noir as a phenomenon with essentially political implications - something that’s not hard to argue given the leftist leanings of many of the great masters of the noir tradition, a number of whom were eventually blacklisted. But seeing film noir as essentially political expression I think sells the phenomenon short… If film noir were simply a reflection of the politics of its leftward-leaning makers, it ought to be terribly dated today, after the demystification of Communism and Stalin, those ephemeral shibboleths for which the Hollywood radicals martyred themselves.

Lloydville’s post has prompted some musings of my own.

The concern with existential angst is what attracted me to films noir, and Lloydville’s recent posts have prompted me to look at certain films in new ways. More particularly, I have always dismissed Detour (1945) as an oddity that I didn’t take too seriously, mainly because the protagonist brought his fate upon himself by his own foolishness, and I saw the plot as too contrived. But now after reading Llloydville’s post I feel that perhaps, Al makes disastrous choices because he has lost a defining paradigm for life and his  immaturity. An indifferent universe may have played a stronger role in his downfall, than I previously thought.

I agree that there are elements of the socio-political in many noirs: Dassin, Lang, and Wilder come immediately to mind, but I disagree with some aspects of Lloydville’s analysis of leftism and film noir. Many of the great European film noir directors that landed in Hollywood, fled fascism, and I see no evidence that they had any Stalinist inclinations. We must be careful not to confuse leftism with authoritarian communism.

The leftist critique of the intellectual left of Europe was a response to existentialism and, as Lloydville says, the death of God. For others the response was an inclination to nihilism, and yes, Stalinism. We can see nihilism too in many noirs.

That said, I agree the political is only one element of many in the film noir genre, and placing exclusive emphasis on this element in a director’s oeuvre is invalid and limiting.

I also cannot agree with Lloydville’s view that “Hollywood radicals martyred themselves.”. They were destroyed for the most part because of past associations or beliefs that they in most cases no longer held, and principally for their innate decency and courage when they placed loyalty and morality ahead of self-interest. If they were martyrs, their sacrifice was for the highest ideals not “ephemeral shibboleths”.

Anonymous film blogger thought crime has posted many thumbnail reviews of films noir at Phoenix Cinema - film reviews from the vault. This guy or (gal) has seen a lot of movies - well worth a visit.

A B- crime movie with noir pretensions. An overblown plot, average acting, and pedestrian direction add up to another camp oddity like Detour (1945), despite a fair effort by Jean Gillie as the maniacal femme-criminale.

Beats me why it has cult status for some.

“My proposal, then, is that noir can also be seen as a sensibility or worldview which results from the death of God, and thus that film noir is a type of American artistic response to, or recognition of, this seismic shift in our understanding of the world. This is why Porfirio is right in pointing out the similarities between the noir sensibility and the existentialist view of life and human existence. Though they are not exactly the same thing, they are both reactions, however explicit and conscious, to the same realization of the loss of value and meaning in our lives. ”

Mark Conard looks at existentialism, definitions and the meaning of Film Noir, in an authorised excerpt from the book The Philosophy of Film Noir: Nietzsche and the Meaning of Noir:Movies and the ‘Death of God’.

Lloydville of mardecortesbaja.com has posted a series of interesting and provocative articles this month on the origins of film noir and a paradigm for classifying noirs:

• THE MESSAGE OF FILM NOIR
• WHAT IS DOMESTIC NOIR?
• ANTI-NOIR: PITFALL
• TRUE NOIR: THE BIG COMBO
• FILM NOIR: A MASTER LIST

Lloydville finds the origins of film noir in post-WW2 disillusionment, while I see the origins as more rooted in European existentialism through the post-war influence of directors such as Wilder, Siodmak, Lang, De Toth, Sirk, Ulmer, Dmytryk, Tourneur, Von Sternberg, and others. I also question the usefulness of developing a schema of sub-genres.

Lloydville is a thinker and his posts go beyond plot outlines and arcane trivia. While I don’t agree with all he says, I have found reading the posts stimulating and thought-provoking.

On Monday Oct 15, Minneapolis’ Parkway Theater begins a five-week tribute to film noir with Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, followed by:

Oct 22 - Kiss Me Deadly

Oct 29 - Gilda

Nov 5 - Pickup on South Street

Nov 12 -The Big Sleep

All films screen at 8 p.m. Details

“if i had been a ranch, they woud have named me ‘Bar Nothing’ …”

Aptly titled, this film is all about Rita Hyaworth’s Gilda: forget the weak story and the plot holes, just marvel at the beauty and charisma of this woman. She dances, she struts, she pouts, and she acts with passion and flair!

And forget it if you are looking for a film noir: it is not. As a film it ranks with flawed gems like Beat The Devil - it just doesn’t add up but you have a helluva time anyway.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite