Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site umd5.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!umcp-cs!cvl!umd5!jay
From: jay@umd5.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: film noir - a definition (of sorts)
Message-ID: <510@umd5.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 14-May-85 10:55:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: umd5.510
Posted: Tue May 14 10:55:07 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 16-May-85 06:38:42 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: U of Md, CSC, College Park, Md
Lines: 24

It occurred to me that if a discussion of film noir actually gets started
in this news group, there may be many subscribers who don't know (and
probably a lot who don't care) what this term even means.  Briefly, the
post-World War II French, who had not been able to see American films during
the war, invented this term for a type of Hollywood film that had not
been in existence prior to the war.  American films had turned dark; the
protagonists were no longer heros and the notion of good and evil was blurred.
The typical film noir has the male protagonist fall under the spell of a
femme fatale and, after a torrid romance and some killing, one or both of 
them are destroyed.  Some of the classics in this cycle of films are
'Double Indemnity', 'The Postman Always Rings Twice', 'Murder, My Sweet', 
'Out of the Past', 'Scarlet Street', etc.  There are many, many more.
The films tend to use light and shadow, odd angles, mirrors, claustrophobic
sets, etc., all of which suggest the obsessions of the characters within
the films.  What brought on this cycle of films is still being argued over
but it is generally believed that anxieties produced by the war were
vented in the psychological examinations of the darker side of human nature.

I hope I haven't been pedantic or preachy.  I'm just trying to generate
a little interest in something other than six-sentence reviews of current
films.  I think this group has a place for the old as well as the new,
at least I hope so.
-- 
Jay Elvove       ..!seismo!rlgvax!cvl!umd5!jay