Author:
Jaime Wolf
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Date:
4/20/2021 6:42:08 AM
Subject:
RE: Identifying film noir
One of the main differentiators from present day noir to the old 1940s film noir is that, back then, Hollywood had to follow the Hays production code whereby the story and overall content of your script needed to adhere to certain self imposed rules regarding violence, sexual content and use of drugs. This naturally conflicted with the noir genre, and it would always lead to the big bad who commited the big act of highly immoral conduct to be subsequently caught and punished for it, justice served to those affected with a nice, shiny red ribbon to wrap it all up.
Fast forward to present day neo noir when the Hays code is no more, and it's almost always a given that the conclusion to the hero/anti-hero's story arc will be murky, filled with loose ends, possibly ending up dead and a villain "getting away with it". Removing the bits that made film noir what it was is precisely how we end up with a subgenre so broad, it can include everything from Reservoir Dogs, Fargo, Blade Runner, John Wick, Drive, Blue Velvet, Memento, Seven, Nightcrawler and Leon: The Professional; any whodunnit film set in a dark environment that features a hero or anti-hero who portrays the duality of man- where they can be unforgiving one moment, and merciful the next, often seeking some sort of twisted objective while being lead down a path where danger can be right around the corner and the possibility for them to "win" is effectively nil. This description can be applied to thousands of modern movies, which is why I find the label to be entirely worthless as a way to categorize movies.
And now that I look at it with a bigger lens, this whole neo noir thing really did begin with Point Blank and Chinatown, didn't it.
