The Dark Side Of Cinema
In the depths of the January doldrums, I have a few reliable methods for perking up my spirits. High on this list of curatives for the seemingly endless winter is to curl up on the sofa under a duvet and sink into the stylish, murky depths of classic Hollywood film noir.
Throughout the 1940s, Hollywood produced a cycle of films that would later be called film noir, in recognition of their fundamental darkness. They are dark visually but also morally, their view of human nature as dim as the clouds that seem to hover perpetually.
This may not sound cheering, but in the midst of our own gloom, we don’t always want to be tantalized by images of others cavorting in the sun – our lives can seem all the drearier by contrast. One of the pleasures of film noir is that our lives are never as bad as what’s on screen.
Film noir depicts a world populated by corrupt men and duplicitous women who spend a lot of time trying to kill each other, but the best are also dazzling. The visual shading of light and dark suggests the ambiguous morality of shady people doing shady things. And film noir is far more grown-up than today’s movies, with their infantilized women and slacker men. These are films about adults who accept responsibility for their actions, even when they’re evil.
They are also full of strong women breaking out of conventional ideas about marriage and motherhood. These are the original femmes fatales, struggling for independence, resisting control by men. They are fearless, commanding, and ruthless. Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce, Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice – some of the greatest movie stars of all time found their greatest roles in film noir.
The best of all is probably Out Of The Past, a film that explores questions of fate, free will and redemption, with Robert Mitchum at his brooding finest and Jane Greer as the unforgettable Kathie. The femme fatale will resist being trapped to the bitter end – and the end is usually very bitter indeed.
But a handful of film noirs take a slightly less dim view of the possibility of happiness. These films emphasize partnership: the femme is not quite as fatal as she appears, and the man rises to the occasion. We might call them film gris, allowing for a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. My top three are Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep, starring Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart just as they were falling in love off-screen; Hitchcock’s Notorious, with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman finding redemption; and Otto Preminger’s Laura, about a detective who falls for the girl whose murder he is investigating. What these films lack in consoling philosophies, they make up for in atmosphere, style, and flair. These are the most elegant of Hollywood films, as haunting as the women who define them.