Plagiat Merupakan Tindakan Tidak Terpuji Plagiat Merupakan Tindakan Tidak Terpuji
PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
The Development and Metamorphosis of American Noir Sentiment Beginning in the 1940s: A Black Age of Frustration
A THESIS
Presented as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Magister Humaniora in English Language Studies
by Andrew Thren 126332039
THE GRADUATE PROGRAM OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2015
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE ………………………………………………..………...... i
APPROVAL PAGE …………………………………………………….. ii
ACCEPTANCE PAGE ………………………………………………… iii
STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY …………………………………… iv
LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA
ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS…………………... v
TABLE OF CONTENTS ………………………………….…………... vi
ABSTRACT …………………………………...……………………….. ix
ABSTRAK ………………………………………………………………. x
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ……………………………………..... 1
1. Background of the Study ……………………………………….... 1 1.1 What is American Film Noir? ………………………………….... 3 1.2 Noir as a Genre …………………………………………………... 4 1.3 Noir as a Mood/Style …………………………………………...... 6 1.4 Interest in the Study …………………………………………….... 10 1.5 Integrity of the Thesis as a Literary Work ……………………….. 12 1.6 Importance of the Study …………………………………………. 15 1.7 Research Questions ………………………………………………. 17 1.8 Methodology ………………………………………..……….....… 17 1.9 1940s American Sentiment ………………………….…………… 19
CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW …………………………….... 25
2. Review of Related Studies ………………………………………... 25 2.1 Effects of the World War II Period on American Society ………… 25 2.2 Post World War II Condition ……………………………………... 30 2.3 Noir Production and Censorship Restrictions …………………...... 34 2.4 European Influence of Noir ………………………………………. 54 2.5 Noir as a Reflection of American Societal Concerns …………….. 56 2.6 Traditional Gender Roles and the Femme Fetale ………………… 66 2.7 Film and Storyline Variations in Depicting Societal Problems …... 76 2.8 Noir Detective Stories ……………………………………………. 80 2.9 Theoretical Framework …………………………………………… 88 vi PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
2.9.1 Existentialism at a Glance ………………………………………. 88 2.9.2 Arthur Schopenhauer and Existentialism ……………………… 93 2.9.3 Friedrich Nietzsche and Nihilism ………………………………. 96 CHAPTER III AMERICAN FILM NOIR AS AN EXTENSION OF EXISTENTIALISM …………………………………………………...... 105
3. Albert Camus and Existentialism ……………………………….... 105 3.1 Albert Camus’ The Stranger……………………………………... 105 3.2 Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus………………………...... 114 3.3 Fatalism and Predetermination ………………………………...... 119 3.4 Fatalism and Voiceover Narration ………………………………....121 3.5 Existentialism and Male Protagonists …………………………...... 122 3.6 Material Items and Existentialism ……………………………….... 122
CHAPTER IV THE SPIRIT OF NOIR AS EXPRESSED IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY ………………………………………………... 129
4. The Spirit of Noir ………………………………………………..... 129 4.1 Post WWII Neo-Noir TV Shows ………………………………..... 132 4.2 Neo-Noir Anti-Establishment Depictions ……………………….... 133 4.3 Modern Societal Issues Expressed through Noir …………………. 134 4.4 Neo-Noir Femme Fetales …………………………………………. 136 4.5 Neo-Noir Anti-Heroes …………………………………………….. 139 4.6 Existentialism and Neo-Noir Today ………………………………. 140 4.7 Three Types of Neo-Noir …………………………………………. 141 4.8 Portrayals of Classic and Neo-Noir ……………………………….. 143 4.9 Manifestations of Noir Today …………………………………...... 145 4.9.1 Modern Cultural Manifestations of Noir …………………...... 145 4.9.2 Expressions of Noir in the Media Today and in the Future….... 146
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION AND LIMITATIONS, SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 152
5. Conclusion and Limitations, Suggestions and Recommendations for Further Research ……...... …… 152 5.1 Conclusion and Limitations ……………………………………...... 152 5.2 Suggestions and Recommendations for Further Research ………... 155
REFERENCES ………………………………………………………...... 159
APPENDICES …………………………………………………………… 165
1. Appendix 1: Biography of James M. Cain (1892-1977) ………….. 165
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2. Appendix 2: Biography of Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) ……... 167 3. Appendix 3: Synopsis of The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain …...... 170 4. Appendix 4: Synopsis of Double Indemnity by James M. Cain …... 171 5. Appendix 5: Synopsis of Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain ……... 172 6. Appendix 6: Synopsis of The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler …. 173 7. Appendix 7: Synopsis of Farewell, My Lovely (Murder, My Sweet)...... 174
TABLES ……………………………………………………………...... 175
1. Table 1: Common Characteristics of Noir Films ………………..... 175 2. Table 2: Posters Depicting Positive Propaganda for the WWII War Effort ……...... 176 3. Table 3: The Detective Model ……………………………………. 177
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ABSTRACT
Andrew Thren (2015). The Development and Metamorphosis of American Noir Sentiment Beginning in the 1940s: A Black Age of Frustration. Yogyakarta: English Language Studies, Graduate Program, Sanata Dharma University.
American noir can be seen as being a certain mood or tone of literature and films that developed in the 1930s and continued until the 1950s. It is part of the same “genre” of a literary aesthetic product with a darker mood in the film adaptation. There are various definitions of noir and what characteristics comprise a work as being noir. Film noir possesses specific characteristics, moods, and attributes of its time period. Many of these thematic elements can be seen as being a reflection or extension of American sentiment in the World War II era, as America was facing a troublesome and uncertain future in the aftermath of the war. Many characters in film noir have a cultural and theological nihilism prevalent in their lifestyles. With differing opinions as to the rise and spread of noir literature and movies in the mid 20th century, I am interested in exploring two research questions. The research questions are 1) To what extent is American film noir an extension of existentialism? 2) How is the spirit of film noir still expressed in modern American society? Through examining existentialism primarily from the perspective of Albert Camus, this thesis strives to reveal the degree of pessimism, alienation, inhumanity, and overall frustration of the time period as portrayed through the main characters of the films under analysis and the extent to which a noir sentiment is found today. The results of the study reveal that noir is a particular style that has undergone various transformations over time and has made significant contributions to literature and pop culture.
Keywords: American noir, American sentiment, alienation, nihilism, existentialism.
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ABSTRAK
Andrew Thren (2015). Perkembangan dan Perubahan Sentimen Noir Amerika Mulai Tahun 1940an: Era Hitam Kekecewaan. Yogyakarta: Magister Kajian Bahasa Inggris, Program Pasca Sarjana, Universitas Sanata Dharma.
Noir Amerika dapat dipandang sebagai suasana atau kesan tertentu dari sebuah karya sastra dan film yang berkembang tahun 1930an dan berlangsung hingga 1950an. Ini merupakan bagian dari ‘genre’ yang sama dari sebuah produk estetis kesasteraan dengan suasana yang lebih gelap dalam adaptasi film. Terdapat berbagai definisi mengenai noir serta ciri-ciri apa yang menjadikan karya tersebut menjadi noir. Film noir memiliki ciri, suasana, dan atribut tertentu dalam periode waktunya. Banyak elemen tematiknya yang dapat dipandang sebagai sebuah refleksi atau ekstensi sentimen Amerika dalam era Perang Dunia II, ketika Amerika menghadapi masa depan yang penuh kekacauan dan ketidakpastian sebagai akibat dari perang. Banyak karakter yang ada dalam film noir memiliki nihilisme budaya dan teologi yang lazim dalam gaya hidup mereka. Dengan berbagai pendapat yang berbeda mengenai perkembangan dan penyebaran karya sastra dan film-film noir pada pertengahan abad 20, saya tertarik untuk menggali dua pertanyaan penelitian. Pertanyaan tersebut adalah 1) Dalam cakupan apa film noir Amerika menjadi ekstensi dari eksistensialisme? 2) Bagaimana semangat film noir masih terlihat dalam masyarakat Amerika modern? Dengan menguji eksistensialisme terutama dari sudut pandang Albert Camus, tesis ini berusaha mengungkap tingkat pesimisme, pengasingan, kekejaman, dan rasa frustrasi atas periode waktu tersebut seperti yang digambarkan dalam karakter utama film noir melalui analisis. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa noir adalah gaya khusus yang sudah mengalami berbagai perubahan dari waktu ke waktu dan sudah membuat kontribusi signifikan kepada sastra dan budaya populer.
Kata kunci: noir Amerika, sentiment Amerika, pengasingan, nihilisme, eksistensialisme.
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1. Background of the Study
“The streets were dark with something more than night.”
This sentence, taken from Raymond Chandler’s The Simple Art of Murder (1944), aptly conveys the sentiment and mood of noir literature and film productions in the 1940s. In thinking of what comes to people’s minds when trying to describe what film noir is, James
Naremore (in More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts) mentions various generic, stylistic, and fashionable traits that are commonly associated with it.
There are, for example, noir characters and stories (drifters attracted to beautiful women, private eyes hired by femmes fatales, criminal gangs attempting to pull off heists); noir plot structures (flashbacks, subjective narration); noir sets (urban diners, shabby offices, swank nightclubs); noir decorations (venetian blinds, neon lights, “modern” art); noir costumes (snap-brim hats, trench coats, shoulder pads); and noir accessories (cigarettes, cocktails, snub-nosed revolvers).1 Therefore, all of these aspects can be combined to create a nuance that gives an overall dark effect and mood that is not just relegated to night scenes. With this in mind, it is pertinent to consider the relation of the manifestation of noir through movies and society.
Movies are often a reflection of the society into which they were created. What people do or see in reality is more often than not found on the movie screen. This can be substantiated through the social reflection theory, which puts forth the idea that there is “a relationship wherein one aspect of society is considered the reflection of another. It will usually attempt to demonstrate this relationship through a causal relationship whereby a
1 Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2008), p.1. 1 PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 2 privileged term representing a part of society either gives rise to, imprints itself upon, influences, or determines a second term.”2 This theory goes on further to state that there is also a second relationship where the reflection is turned back on the first term to depict how a society recreates, reinforces, or changes through a process of dynamic reciprocity.
As literature continuously changes as new movements develop over time, it gives rise to social criticisms by varying groups of people in particular historical periods. The 1940s is one such period that facilitated a modernistic movement due to the pervading threats of the
World War II era and uncertainty of what the future might bring. This movement was significant to literature as it refuted the notion that literature had to be realistic, naturalistic, and deterministic. In many respects, the noir movement is similar with the absurd literary movement often expressed in the theater. A couple of the most famous literary works regarding this absurd movement are Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” (1948) and
Edward Albee’s “Zoo Story” (1958). The absurd and noir movements believed more in the concept of producing art for its own purpose without necessarily having a higher moral calling attached to them, as in previous literary movements. Both of these literary styles convey a lack of purpose and illogical actions of characters that are sometimes reflected in human life. These literary movements showed narratives that were not necessarily clear-cut, characters with obscure psychological motives, and a lack of emotional catharsis. Dashiell
Hammett, James Cain, Raymond Chandler, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as to a lesser extent Ernest Hemmingway, George Orwell, and William Faulkner all contributed to the modernistic movement in this decade of trauma and transformation.
Therefore, varying film styles and periods can depict the societal metamorphoses that occurred within the society at different times. The cinematic versions of literary works can
2 http://www.ehow.com/about_5444124_social-reflection-theory.html. “Social Reflection Theory”. Accessed on February 12th, 2014. Web. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 3 accurately mirror the state of affairs of a society at a particular historical period by encouraging viewers to identify with particular characters in a film. This is especially true for film noir, which often reflects a dark, gloomy, and sadistic side of humanity. Political and economic changes are frequently expressed in a film production that can especially reveal society’s psychology at a certain period. As movies are often based on literary works, storylines are more certainly affected by such societal transformations. Therefore, movies have an important place in societies all over the world. Through movies, viewers can see how the ways they were created reflect trends, changes, and calls for alterations in society. To be considered great, movies can be radical, moving, and extreme to initiate particular societal changes. However, movies can also simply draw a mass following to reflect the spirit of the time without encouraging any great shifts in societal beliefs. Through existentialist viewpoints, this thesis puts forth the concept that film noir shows the fears of 1940s
American society in the wake of a changing post-war civilization and the concerns and criticisms of modern social institutions.
In considering the gap in the scholarship of noir literature and films, this thesis strives to convey that the existentialist viewpoints found therein are not only applicable to past society but can also be applied to modern societal conditions. As most of the current literature on this topic deals with noir in a past context related to noir era films in general or to specific films related to a certain social condition, I decided to examine the primary literary works of
James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler and their film versions while linking the sentiment revealed in those works with modern society. Only a limited number of sources discuss the concept of neo-noir and its evolution from classic noir.
1.1 What is American Film Noir? PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 4
American film noir is an American crime/gangster and detective/mystery genre or mood/style mostly from the 1940s and 1950s. This type of movie is in black and white, as the mood will lose its effect if it is in color. For that reason, this kind of film is generally not colorized. This style of film has particular characteristics and attributes. Next, there are various debates about whether noir is best classified as a genre or as a mood/style.
In examining the difficulties of classifying film noir according to certain standards and traits, a comparison can be made with Michel Foucault, who wrote about the complexity of classifying biological organisms. “The biological classification systems attempt to tame the wild profusion of existing things. The classical field of natural history is nothing more than the nomination of the visible. Everything that presents itself to our gaze is not utilizable.”3 He elaborates further by stating, “The very category of natural life is relative, like all the other categories, to the criteria one adopts. And also, like them, subject to certain imprecisions as soon as the question of deciding its frontiers arises.”4 Foucault’s points about grouping biological organisms, then, can be applied to noir as well, as noir changes and shifts over time depending on the social and cultural factors that it interacts with. This quandary with classifying is evident in films like High Noon, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, among others, which have varying noir characteristics but cannot be definitively put into a noir category by many film scholars and critics. Therefore, it is important to examine the generic categories that are used to classify films as being noir or part of another mood, style, or genre, and realize that there may not be a perfect classification that can be applied to all noir films.
1.2 Noir as a Genre
3 Foucault, Michael. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), p.133. 4 Ibid. p.161. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 5
There are various debates about whether noir is a genre or a mood/style. According to
Foster Hirsch, it is a genre because of various reasons. “A genre is determined by conventions of narrative structure, characterization, theme, and visual design.”5 Since noir meets the criteria of this definition, Hirsch considers it a genre. Hirsh elaborates further by stating,
Noir deals with criminal activity, from a variety of perspectives, in a general mood of dislocation and bleakness which earned the style its name. Unified by a dominant tone and sensibility, the noir canon constitutes a distinct style of filmmaking; but it also conforms to genre requirements since it operates within a set of narrative and visual conventions. Noir tells its stories in a particular way, and in a particular visual style. The repeated use of narrative and visual structures certainly qualifies noir as a genre, one that is in fact as heavily coded as the Western.6 Next, Aeon J. Skoble defines film noir as a genre with various stylistic conventions like “unsettling or otherwise odd camera angles, the dramatic use of shadow and light, hard- boiled dialog, and settings that emphasize isolation and loneliness. Thematically, film noir is typically said to be characterized by moral ambiguity: murky distinctions between good guys and bad guys, ambivalence about right and wrong, conflicts between law and morality, unsettling inversion of values, and so on.”7
Additionally, Robert B. Pippin classifies film noir as “a group of films, called by some a genre, produced roughly between 1941 and sometime around the mid to late 1950s.
Many of what we now, still somewhat controversially call the ‘authors’ of these films, the directors, were European and some of the most important were very influenced by German expressionist filmmaking.”8
5 Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 2006), p.9. 6 Hirsch, Foster. “The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir”, qtd in Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.10. 7 Skoble, Aeon J. “Moral Clarity and Practical Reason in Film Noir”, from Conard, Mark, The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.41. 8 Pippin, Robert B. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy. (Virginia: The University of Virginia Press, 2012), p.4. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 6
Similarly, Read Mercer Schuchardt also considers noir to be a genre by commenting on the essential ingredients of noir themes as “a spiritual medium that moves and talks; the discovery of a murder without the discovery of a corpse; power and dominance; a bleak, melancholic atmosphere; anxiety; dark lighting; action taking place in the city at night; foul play; and moral ambivalence.”9
Another perspective considers noir as being not a genre per se, but more between a genre and a mood or style. Kaplan considers noir films as a genre in terms of thematic concern, narrative structure, iconography, etc., because there are a number of recognizable conventions in them.10 However, Janey Place argues that, “Because of the highly specific visual style and narrative concerns of film noir, its relatively short period, and its appearance at a historical moment of crisis (post WWII), these films – rather than constituting a genre, which is rarely defined in terms of a recognizable visual style and whose conventions very much bend with societal changes – instead represent a movement.”11 In countering Place’s argument, Christine Gledhill illustrates how traditional aspects of noir films have been applied in conjunction with European films to match with modern topics.
This particular trend within the thriller genre can be seen in other 70s films and can be distinguished from the different permutations of the genre, of which Clint Eastwood’s police thrillers are an example. In other words, film noir can perhaps better be seen as a sub-genre or a generic development emerging from the earlier gangster genre than is a genre by itself.12 1.3 Noir as a Mood/Style
In contrast to those critics who consider noir a genre, there are also scholars who do not share this perspective. Andrew Spicer believes that noir does not fit into this classification
9 Schuchardt, Read Mercer. “Cherchez La Femme Fetale: The Mother of Film Noir”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.50. 10 Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.15. 11 Place, Janey, qtd in Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.15. 12 Gledhill, Christine, qtd in Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.16. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 7 because it is “a discursive critical construction that has evolved over time.”13 This essentially means that the term “noir” was applied retroactively after undergoing various developments.
Spicer goes on further to state that noir plots are quite different. “Any attempt at defining film noir solely through its essential formal components proves to be reductive and unsatisfactory because film noir, as the French critics asserted from the beginning, also involves a sensibility, a particular way of looking at the world.”14 Spicer essentially means that you cannot just look at the studio effects in how the noir visual style is created, but you have to look deeper at how these films convey a certain perspective on the world and humanity. In this way, the moods found in the early noir literary and film works can be applied in future noir works of various genres. Raymond Durgnat supports Spicer’s argument by claiming that you have to classify noir based on its motif and tone. Durgnat conveys that the tone is bleak and cynical, and the dominant motifs are related to crime and social criticism, gangsters, private eyes and adventurers, middle-class murder, portraits and doubles, sexual pathology, and psychopaths.15 Besides these characteristics, other traits that can be found are a feeling of loss, nostalgia, and insecurity. R. Barton Palmer also uses the term “transgeneric” to describe noir because it can be expressed through various genres like melodramas, thrillers, Westerns, horrors, etc. Usually it will deal with a breakdown in society and some kind of criminality.16
J.P. Telotte supports this position by stating that noir does not use a conventional narration because these kinds of stories are in a third-perspective, have characters with specific goals that are logical, and have a finality or everything tied up at the end. Instead, Telotte states that
13 Spicer, Andrew, qtd in Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.11. 14 Spicer, Andrew. Film Noir, qtd in Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.11. 15 Durgnat, Raymond, qtd in Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.11. 16 Palmer, R. Barton, qtd in Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.12. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 8 noir stories are unconventional and deal with problems of truth, objectivity, and the ability to understand reality.17
In trying to come up with a proper definition for noir, Naremore claims, “Film noir belongs to the history of ideas as much as to the history of cinema; in other words, it has less to do with a group of artifacts than with a discourse—a loose, evolving system of arguments and readings that helps to shape commercial strategies and aesthetic ideologies.”18 Naremore goes on further to say, “Noir is not merely a descriptive term, but a name for a critical tendency within the popular cinema—an anti-genre that reveals the dark side of savage capitalism.”19
Similarly, in defining noir, Steven M. Sanders claims, “Noir themes and moods include despair, paranoia, and nihilism; an atmosphere of claustrophobic entrapment; a nightmarish sense of loneliness and alienation; a purposefulness fostered in part by feelings of estrangement from one’s own past even as one seems driven to a compulsive confrontation with that past. Film noir presents us with moral ambiguity, shifting identities, and impending doom. Urban locales give noir films authenticity, adding texture to their psychologically dense and convoluted plots.”20
Next, Jason Holt defines noir as “characterized in terms of its bleak existential tone, cynically pessimistic mood, stylistic elements inherited from German expressionism (low-key lighting, deep focus, subjective camera shots, canted angles, and so on), and stories and
17 Telotte, J.P., qtd in Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.13. 18 Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir Film Noir in its Contexts. (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2008), p.11. 19 Naremore, Ibid, p.22. 20 Sanders, Steven M. “Film Noir and the Meaning of Life”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.92. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 9 narrative patterns adapted from American hard-boiled fiction.”21 Holt also likes to think of noir as being “stylized crime realism”, meaning that the crime elements can happen in real life to morally ambiguous characters but the filming style accentuates the storyline. Likewise,
Paul Schrader denies that film noir is a genre. He argues that noir films can “be roughly grouped together only by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood.”22
In Table 1 (pg.175), the commonalities of film noir characteristics are outlined.
Therefore, for a noir movie to be considered as a true noir it must contain most of the following elements: it should be dark, shadowy, and have contrasting images; it should be in black and white; the characters are hard and disillusioned with a degree of likeability; a male character faces a moral dilemma; there is a woman who is dangerous, alluring, and independent; it is a crime or detective story; there are flashbacks, voice-over narration, one- liners, witty dialog, angst, paranoia, betrayal, insecurity, and no happy ending. The movies are often shot or influenced by German directors. Many kinds of novels and movies have been made in a noir style, including Sunset Boulevard, The Maltese Falcon, Double
Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Gilda, Mildred Pierce, Murder,
My Sweet, The Killers, The Postman Always Rings Twice, among others).
Related to the use of one-liners often found in a noir work, oftentimes one-liners can traverse time and become memorable associations with noir productions several decades later. Some famous one-liners that are still well-known today from the 1942 movie
Casablanca include “Here’s looking at you, kid”, “Play it again, Sam”, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”, “We’ll always have Paris”, and “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine”. These are easily identifiable in the film
21 Holt, Jason. “A Darker Shade: Realism in Neo-Noir”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.24. 22 Schrader, Paul, qtd in Pippin, Robert B. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy. (Virginia: The University of Virginia Press, 2012), p.5. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 10 or through the movie script.23By being able to recognize one-liners in noir literature and movies, it can be seen how famous phrases are still integrated and engrained into society today. One-liners are often re-cycled in later literary works or films and even found in the advertising industry.
American noir literature and film noir also has a specific style of dialog. There are many kinds of idiomatic expressions used that are explicit to this particular mood. In the films, it is also necessary to pay attention to the tone, body movements, and character interactions. This type of dialog affects the interactions between the characters in a noir literary work or film. The ways the characters in these novels and movies converse reflect the historical backdrop of World War II themes, fear of foreigners, alienation, etc. Therefore, the style of dialog can be considered a representation of the mood of the World War II period.
As the characters of these kinds of movies generally have certain traits, it is pertinent to be able to get inside the characters’ heads and know how to empathize with various predicaments that the characters may be facing. The dialog, interactions, character traits, settings, among other aspects can familiarize viewers with the time period and main concepts found in the movie. These kinds of literary works and movies are also beneficial to promote cultural understanding of the time period when the novels were written and movies were made. The noir period is very fascinating to study as it encourages one to be engaged authentically with the language use of 1940s and 1950s noir movies and noir literature.
Numerous cultural insights can further be contributed by analyzing a noir literary work from one of numerous literary theoretical perspectives.
1.4 Interest in the Study
23 http://screenplayexplorer.com/wp-content/scripts/Casablanca.pdf. “Casablanca”. Accessed on February 12th, 2014. Web. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 11
I am interested in exploring the development of American noir literature and movies in the 1940s and how that development came about as a reflection of societal beliefs and changes in the wake and aftermath of World War II. Two of the most prolific writers of
American noir literature of this time are James M. Cain (see Appendix 1) and Raymond
Chandler (see Appendix 2). I have decided to focus on a few of the more well-known works by James M. Cain: The Postman Always Rings Twice (see Appendix 3) – same title as in the film version, Double Indemnity (see Appendix 4) – same title as in the film version, and
Mildred Pierce (see Appendix 5) – same title as in the film version); and Raymond
Chandler: The Big Sleep (see Appendix 6) – same title as in the film version, and Farewell
My Lovely – called Murder My Sweet (see Appendix 7) in the film version to compare the themes and character traits as a reflection of societal beliefs at that time.
There are also other important writers of this genre, but they are from outside the period I would like to research. Dashiell Hammett is an important writer of this genre, but his more significant works are from the 1930s. He is equally as famous as Cain and Chandler, but since most of novels were written before World War II, I decided not to cover his works, as the society sentiment between his literary works and the 1940s film adaptations are slightly different. However, he had a great influence on Cain and Chandler. Cornell Woolrich is an important crime writer of the mid-20th century that had many of his short stories and novels turned into noir films as well. Mickey Spillane is another noteworthy writer popular for the
Mike Hammer character in many of his works. I did not opt to write about him as most of his literary accomplishments are from the 1950s and 1960s, although he is also considered a prominent figure of American noir literature. Many other significant (such as David Goodis) and lesser known writers are also part of American noir literature. Even Joseph Conrad,
Ernest Hemmingway, and William Faulkner contributed several noteworthy novels during PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 12 the classic noir period. However, Cain and Chandler are more well-known and have even had several of their works turned into screen adaptations. Cain’s and Chandler’s literary works and the film adaptations are more closely related with the World War II era.
1.5 Integrity of the Thesis as a Literary Work
As film studies and pop culture are also accepted in literature, I believe that my topic is also relevant. However, my topic is not merely about film studies and pop culture. It is clearly in the literature field. The theoretical framework I used was mostly based on Albert
Camus’ literary and philosophical works. Also, I compared five film versions of five literary works by Cain and Chandler. These five films are not merely adaptations of their novels that are only loosely based on the actual stories, but in fact they are truly representative of the novels. In discussing the various works of Cain and Chandler here, the original novels and the film versions are discussed simultaneously. If there is a difference between the novel and film versions, I mention that in my analysis. Cain and Chandler were also actively involved in the screenplays of their movie versions. Besides being writers, Cain and Chandler were also talented screenwriters (especially Chandler). Interestingly, Chandler was also the primary screenwriter in the movie version of Double Indemnity, which was actually written by James M. Cain. Furthermore, another great writer, William Faulker, was also involved in screenwriting for James M. Cain’s film version of Mildred Pierce and Raymond Chandler’s
The Big Sleep. Therefore, when considering that great literary writers were also screenwriters of the five films under analysis, it is clear that the integrity of the original literary works is maintained in the film versions, as prominent writers of the period ensured that the narrative and noir elements of the novels were also depicted on the Big Screen. Films of this time period generally did not deviate much from the novel versions as artistic integrity was important in the filming process for James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 13
An example of James M. Cain’s writing style in his novel The Postman Always Rings
Twice can be seen in the excerpt below taken from pg. 3.
They threw me off the hay truck about noon. I had swung on the night before, down at the border, and as soon as I got up there under the canvas, I went to sleep. I needed plenty of that, after three weeks in Tia Juana, and I was still getting it when they pulled off to one side to let the engine cool. Then they saw a foot sticking out and threw me off. I tried some comical stuff, but all I got was a dead pan, so that gag was out. They gave me a cigarette, though, and I hiked down the road to find something to eat. That was when I hit this Twin Oaks Tavern. It was nothing but a roadside sandwich joint, like a million others in California. There was a lunchroom part, and over that a house part, where they lived, and off to one side a filling station, and out back a half dozen shacks that they called an auto court. I blew in there in a hurry and began looking down the road. When the Greek showed, I asked if a guy had been by in a Cadillac. He was to pick me up here, I said, and we were to have lunch. Not today, said the Greek. He layed a place at one of the tables and asked me what I was going to have. I said orange juice, corn flakes, fried eggs and bacon, enchilada, flapjacks, and coffee. Pretty soon he came out with the orange juice and the corn flakes.
This is typical of James M. Cain’s writing style in all of his novels as an American hard-core crime fiction writer. His writing style is sparse in a first-person perspective, as a reflection of the Great Depression. As he was a newspaperman, he writes in a reporting style.
This first-person perspective was also used to depict how they characters themselves would write as if they were telling their own stories in a sort of confessional perspective relaying the events that unfolded leading up to their demise. Cain avoided having a moral tone or message to his writing style to convey a gritty and dark side of living during the Great Depression. He writes in a minimalist writing style only conveying the most essential information with straightforward and oftentimes brutal simplicity. This writing style is also carried over to the
Big Screen as a first person narrative in the same mold as the novel version.
The jargon and word choice that Cain uses in his novels is also done in the same style as in the film versions. His characters are also self-destructive losers and everyman characters, generally because of a femme fetale. He also wanted this style of writing to be PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 14 conveyed to the Big Screen in his major works such as Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce, which along with The Postman Always Rings Twice, were shown in movie theaters during the
World War II era. Cain originally considered movies to be an inferior art form to the printed form. However, this is ironic as Cain eventually wanted to pursue a career as a scriptwriter also. He worked on several scripts, but he was not as successful as Raymond Chandler in scriptwriting. As Cain and Chandler were actively involved in the screenplays for their own novels turned into films, with the exception of Double Indemnity, in which Chandler primarily was the screenwriter, they strived to keep the particular mood and writing style of their dime-store novels the same on the Big Screen.
Chandler’s writing style is similar to that of Cain in that Chandler also writes in a terse and hardboiled fashion about a male protagonist in a first-person perspective. The difference is that Chandler writes from the perspective of a detective, Philip Marlowe, who is an everyday man with a distrustful and jaded perspective of those around him. Chandler uses many wisecracks to defy authority figures like police officers and political figures in his novels that are also transferred to the Big Screen. His use of similes in a negative sense is also found in the film versions as in the novels, such as found in The Big Sleep. Marlow is very clever in using his similes by saying such things as:
(1) The heat made me feel like a New England boiled dinner. (2:46). (2) Her eyes became narrow and almost black and as shallow as enamel on a cafeteria tray. (12:56). (3) She was as limp as a fresh-killed rabbit. (14:72). (4) The boy stood glaring at him with sharp black eyes in a face as hard and white as cold mutton fat. (18:10). (5) You leak information like a radio announcer. (23:29). (6) Her eyelids were flickering rapidly, like moth wings. (25:12). (7) I was as empty of life as a scarecrow's pockets. (25:1). (8) There was a dry click, like a small icicle breaking. I hung there motionless, like a lazy fish. (26:9). (9) The purring voice was now as false as an usherette's eyelashes and as slippery as a watermelon seed. (30:44). PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 15
All of these examples show what a clever and gifted writer Chandler was in showing how Philip Marlowe had to maneuver and survive in his noir world. Marlowe makes many biting and witty remarks in his interactions with other characters in Chandler’s novels, such as The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely (Murder, My Sweet – film version). The wry personality of Philip Marlow is found in the first paragraph of the novel The Big Sleep, as he says, “I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.” The wisecrack remarks of Marlowe are found in Farewell, My Lovely also as Marlowe talks about
Moose Malloy and says he looks “about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of an angel food”. Then when a person gives Marlow a picture of a blond-haired woman, he says, “A blond to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.” Therefore, these examples show that Chandler, like Cain, was also a gifted writer in making witty dialog and clever phrases that he could also transfer to a movie format with ease as a talented scriptwriter. Both writers used the same literary styles in their novels as they did in their film versions as scriptwriters.
1.6 Importance of the Study
The study is significant to examine the emergence and development of noir literature and its screen adaptations, as well as to consider how this style and/or theme is still present in modern day literary works, the film industry, and society in general. An in-depth analysis of the noir style and characters’ psychology is essential to measure the degree of societal reflection and sentiment expressed through film noir.
After World War II, Americans had to come to terms with how to deal with their futures. One of these means was through cinematic portrayal, such as in film noir. Noir was PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 16 the primary film style and narrative style of this time. Some of the movie styles have French and German influences, but noir itself is considered to be more American in substance, as it was influenced more directly by writers such as Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Raymond
Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Ernest Hemmingway, Mickey Spillane, among others. Most of the noir actors and cameramen were American, even though some of the directors were
German. The dark moods of this genre can be seen to have arisen from the general mood of the country after the War. There seems to be a disillusionment found after WWII when servicemen returned home and housewives and businessmen had to change their lifestyles.
Urban crime increased and poverty was on the rise. The films showed an antagonism toward
American society. Some of these movies showed problems lingering from soldiers returning home, the effects of the atomic bomb, McCarthyism, and communism in Korea. Despite these problems, there were also many other types of movies, books, and TV shows that had a positivistic image of American society with an improving middle class.24 Therefore, it is interesting to research various aspects of noir literature and its film adaptations to fathom its relationship with American society in the mid- 20th century.
Several questions can be put to the forefront regarding film noir, such as: Did it just rehash the same styles of the prewar crime films? Did American society need melodramatic illusions to overcome disillusions about the society or giving in to prosperity? Or was it just a cycle that Hollywood embraced for a short time and then just abandoned it like any other genre? These kinds of factors can be considered to see how they influenced the popularity of noir literature and films at the time. Various perceptions can be made about what noir literature and films reflected about American society in the 1940s era. After several decades
24 Schickel, Richard. “Rerunning Film Noir”. The Wilson Quarterly. (Vol. 31, No. 3, 2007), p.36. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 17 have passed, it is also interesting to address the presence of this noir style in literature and films of today.
1.7 Research Questions
The research questions I am interested in exploring related to film noir are: 1) To what degree is American film noir an extension of existentialism? 2) How is the spirit of film noir still expressed in modern American society?
1.8 Methodology
In conducting the research, I will first scrutinize the sentiment of American society during the World War II period by examining various historical texts and noir literary works.
Then I will conduct a background study on American noir and its development. Next, I will observe the prominent American noir literature and screen adaptations of the 1940s. After that, I will conduct a study of American noir characteristics in pre-determined Cain and
Chandler literary works. As significant contributors to noir literature, Dashiell Hammett has written many works that preceded those of Cain and Chandler and had a great influence on the two writers in the 1930s. Some of his more noteworthy literary works that have a noir mood include Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, and The Maltese Falcon. From these novels it is possible to examine the thematic continuity of Hammett’s, Cain’s, and Chandler’s works from the 1930s to the 1940s. As a comparative work, I will also read Patricia’s Highsmith’s
Strangers on a Train, which is considered a valuable work in the noir tradition with its own screen adaptation.
After these steps have been completed, I will conduct a literary criticism analysis of existentialism from various perspectives. First, I will explore Schopenhauer’s standpoint on existentialism through his essay On the Vanity of Existence. As a founding existentialist, PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 18
Schopenhauer had a great influence on Friedrich Nietzsche. In examining Nietzsche’s existentialism perspective, several of his works will be briefly analyzed. One of these works is Human, All too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. This book gives an insight into his way of thinking and affinity for Voltaire. This is divided into numerous aphorisms and related to various aspects of human philosophy. Another work that will be delved into is The Portable
Nietzsche, which is a compilation of Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Nietzsche Contra
Wagner, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This compilation contains some of his basic beliefs on existentialism that will be used to analyze several noir literary works and their film versions.
This work is also essential to explore Nietzsche’s rejection of Western thought related to belief in God and overall concept of good and evil. He thinks of the Christian world as being full of a false piety and infected with a slave morality. This notion can be used in investigating its application to noir literature. The last book of Nietzsche to be explored is On the Genealogy of Morals. This work deals with the interpretation and history of ethics in relation to violence. This can also be connected with the themes of noir literature. In Hammer of the Gods: Apocalyptic Texts for the Criminally Insane, Nietzsche discusses his various futuristic and apocalyptic philosophies against society, including the state and the masses.
Although Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s works are written before the advent of noir literature, the basic philosophical concepts can be applied to it. After that, I will analyze
Albert Camus and his perspective of existentialism from two of his prominent stories: The
Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus is a significant bridge from Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche, because he shared many of their philosophical positions and was influenced by the
American hard-boiled crime stories during the 1930s and 1940s, as Camus lived during the same period as Cain and Chandler. Therefore, between the traditional existentialists and the modern crime writers, Camus was able to reveal existentialism as found in American society from the past to the present. Finally, I will report on the spirit of noir still present in modern PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 19
American literature, film productions, and pop culture, as well as what the future holds for noir sentiment in the entertainment industry.
1.9 1940s American Sentiment
The dark moods of this genre can be seen to have arisen from the general mood of the country after the war. There was a disillusionment found after WWII when servicemen returned home and housewives and businessmen had to change their lifestyles. Urban crime increased and poverty was on the rise. The films showed an antagonism toward American society. Some of these movies showed problems lingering from soldiers returning home, the effects of the atomic bomb, McCarthyism, and communism in Korea.
A common theme in noir films is of an individual striving to reinvent oneself but ultimately failing. Film noir can be seen as being against the American Dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. During World War II, many Americans had a dream of improving their status, obtaining liberty, getting equality, and engaging in free enterprise.
Materialism and individualism were increasingly prevalent during the period.
In relation to film noir and the American Dream, one can analyze the relationship between one’s personal background and current personality. In looking at film noir, it is pertinent to consider whether one’s identity is permanent from birth or whether the person can better himself. Associated with this, it is important to think about the possibility of a person escaping from his/her past.
Many Hollywood movies deal with the theme of achieving the American Dream, which centers on improving one’s social position, equality, home ownership, and Western ideals. This theme is underlined in the Declaration of Independence, which was drafted by PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 20
Thomas Jefferson in June of 1776.25 The concept of individualism even supersedes the belief of pursuit of happiness. Individualism basically means that regardless of one’s status, race, gender, or background, the person can achieve a better life through endurance and self-effort.
In many film noir stories, and Mildred Pierce in particular, the characters counter and clash with their struggle to reach the American Dream.
Various historical figures are representative of individuals who have succeeded to reach the American Dream through their own determination. One such individual is
Benjamin Franklin. He reinvented himself several times through various entrepreneurial endeavors like being a printer, publisher, inventor, scientist, ambassador, military leader, legislator, among others. Franklin can be seen as being an example of how one’s past does not necessarily affect success in the future. By looking at Franklin, one can see how all you need is a will to find a way to reach your goals.
A different train of thought can be seen from the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who believes you cannot simply reinvent yourself, but rather have to discover and refine your true nature by looking within.26 Essentially, this means that you cannot escape from your past but must rely on your “aboriginal self”. Emerson believes that your true nature will greatly affect choices or changes you make in the future, as you always have to look back to your past.
Emerson believes that you must “Insist on yourself, never imitate.”27
Even though the philosophies espoused by Franklin and Emerson are slightly different, they both deal with the concept of individualism, which is strongly related with
25 http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration.html. “The Charters of Freedom”. Accessed on March 2nd, 2014. Web. 26 Osteen, Mark. Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012), p.3. 27 http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/12080.Ralph_Waldo_Emerson. “Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes”. Accessed on March 12th, 2014. Web. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 21 achieving the American Dream. If you do not have a strong desire, you cannot reach your goal.
In Franklin’s mindset, a person needs to balance individual and community interests to successfully reach one’s dream. In noir films, the characters are often unable to reach this balance and succumb to their own fate. The characters are unable to control the events in their lives and face many hindrances from their own character shortcomings to societal constructs. Therefore, “noir protagonists come to recognize the difficulty – if not impossibility – of achieving modernity’s implicitly cosmopolitan promise than an individual, by dint of hard work, education, and reason, can develop a politically robust subjectivity.”28
This infers that even though characters can obtain social mobility or achieve success in certain aspects, it is often short-lived or not as what they had previously imagined. The characters come to the realization that their lives are not in their control and they cannot ultimately reach the American Dream.
Noir films can be seen as being contrary to the concept of equality. Made in the
World War II era, the movies are an extension of society struggling to achieve its own national identity, in conflict with the ideas put forth by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. These kinds of movies are often against Franklin’s and Emerson’s concept of identity. “The films are disguised parables of social mobility as a punishable deviation from one’s assigned place.”29
28 Osteen, Mark. Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012), p.3. 29 Ibid, p.4. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 22
Many noir films show traumatized veterans, missing or displaced characters, women stressed because of their roles in the workplace and domestic arena, fear of communism, and characters with psychic disorders, in response to the effect of the war period.30
It is also necessary to point out that noir films were not called as such at the time period they were made. They were considered more as melodramas. Only in recent times has the term been used in looking at the time period in retrospect. The movies can be seen as being reflections of concerns of an American society that was in transition.
In the 1940s, the societal expectations of women changed. On the one hand, women were supposed to play a domestic role. Their entire worth and value was based on their domestic prowess. However, in the World War II era, a sense of urgency emerged for women to abandon or compliment their traditional roles of being homemakers to having to seek gainful employment, as much of the male workforce had to fight in the war. A struggle ensued between traditional beliefs and modern aspirations through materialism. Women were divided through societal expectations of being a homemaker and having a desire to pursue non-traditional lifestyles. During the war, these traditional expectations shifted as women were encouraged to gain skills and do non-domestic jobs to help boost the war effort.
The time that noir films were made was during a great tumultuous period which changed all citizens’ lives. There were many problems with people having to adapt to those changes, which caused gender and racial problems. Film noir often shows expressionistic visual styles and pessimistic or doomed worldviews in American cinema during the World
War II era. World War II caused many Americans to feel anxious about their lives and question the traditional identity of what being an American is and should be in the future.
There was some discord and confusion about where America was going in the future.
30 Ibid, p.11. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 23
Americans had to reconsider whether the established American ideals during the foundation of the nation still applied or not. This identity crisis can be seen in the noir characters’ personalities as well.
Americans during World War II also experienced a sense of need for authenticity related to modernity. This means they wanted to experience new things and escape from their boring and mundane lives.31 This need for authenticity is seen through the eyes of various characters in film noir as well. Several of the main characters strive to achieve wealth, personal sexual experiences, and new adventures, often at the detriment of others. The characters link authenticity with the pursuit of happiness through materialism. Many of the characters in film noir, like Mildred Pierce, have a deep-seated obsession with a particular goal or object. Concerns about identity crisis and authenticity can be seen in the nature of femme fetale characters. Some film noir reveals the difficulty of social mobility during the
1940s and a critical viewpoint of capitalism. Consumerism can be seen as a means of dealing with the anxiety of the time period.
Related with existentialism, film noir can be considered as a reaction or reflection of this belief and how people see the world. By thinking in these terms, various commonalities can be found in analyzing a film noir, and Mildred Pierce in particular. The characteristics found within this noir style reflect the loss of value and meaning in human lives.
Therefore, by looking at the characters’ traits and their relations to the general traits of a noir film listed above, they can illustrate how existentialism can be applied to this particular style. It shows the nihilism and lack of morality or conflicting morality present in the characters. Even though America was built on a Puritan foundation, the noir style can be seen as being counter or opposite to that particular way of believing. Maybe from an existentialist
31 Ibid, p.5. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 24 perspective, this story can be seen as a way to depict how through modernism people have lost their morality, here in response to World War II fears and alienation, and perhaps more generally to the realization that people are nowadays disoriented, not knowing the meanings in their lives or how to live at peace with themselves.
In summary, then, films can be considered as having a very influential role in society, whether as an active or reflective function. Films can act as a permanent record and preserve a particular language. It will be preserved from one generation to the next to show how society has changed over time. Movies can be a social construct of the family, community, and a particular institution. Films can reveal how a society was shaped and the morals and values found within it. In a time of war, villains can be painted as an enemy nation like with the Cold War and Communism in various film noir works. These beliefs can be transferred into a film noir and used as an instrument to teach society about the present, show its connection with the past, or reveal where it might be heading in the future. Films are essential to portray how individuals interact with each other in various social situations and what kinds of social constraints or dilemmas they are faced with. Therefore, it is essential to realize the significance of film noir to show how the ideas and themes found within it can influence a person’s ideology as well as how the values are reflected in society at that time. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
2. Review of Related Studies
The 1940s noir era is rich in existential concepts and characteristics as a reflection of the societal constraints of the period. Various articles and books have been written about the topic ranging from the development of noir, the concept of whiteness in noir, the historical context of noir, the economic conditions of the period, the various films belonging to that genre, the characteristics of these films, the philosophical connections, and the shifts in sentiment over time.
2.1 Effects of the World War II Period on American Society
Before the war, Americans were used to having easy access to food and material items. These shortages had a psychological effect on people’s mindsets. The deprivations during the war shocked many people who were unaccustomed to living in such a way. For example, Raymond Chandler stated about the shortages of meat in Los Angeles,
The meat situation would make you scream. On Wednesday morning the guy opens at 7 AM and all the desert rats are there waiting for him to give out numbered tickets. Anybody who delays long enough to wash his face is automatically classed as parasitic and gets a high number, if he gets one at all. On Thursday at 10 the inhabitants bring their bronchitis and halitosis into the store and park in front of the meat counter and the numbers are coonshouted. When we, having a very late number, kick our way up to the collapsed hunk of hamburger we are greeted with a nervous smile that suggests a deacon caught with his hand in the collection plate, and we leave bearing off enough meat for the cat. This happens once a week and that is all that happens in the way of meat … I should be out in the desert trying to dig up a dead gopher. We happened on a rib roast a couple of weeks back, just walked in and said hello, and there the damn thing was. We ate for six nights running, behind drawn curtains, chewing quietly, so the neighbors wouldn’t hear.1
1 Chandler, Raymond, qtd in Selected Letters, from Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.65.
25 PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 26
Therefore, some of the anxiety of the period was due to rationing. Besides food, movie studios had to cut back on electricity, equipment, and film in making pictures. Even gasoline and motor vehicles were restricted. This meant that studios had to limit the amount of travel they did in the daytime. It became more practical to shoot movies at night.
As the war went on, Americans were more reluctant to save and give up on essential or luxurious things. Even for attire, cloth became a wanted commodity and clothing was made shorter and skimpier. However, by doing this it eroded some of the traditional values and women were not as modest in their attire.
The consequences of a war that had eroded the moorings of family, church, and community were frightening. In just four years, truancy and juvenile crime had increased by more than twenty percent, the divorce rate by more than sixty percent. Cultural changes during the war unleashed forces that Hollywood could not ignore. The 1930 proscriptions against violence and murder, and especially adultery and illicit sex, now seemed outmoded; the endless stream of movies about fearless warriors and faithful wives old-fashioned. Just beyond the door of the Production Code Administration on Hollywood Boulevard, sex was in the ozone.2 The wartime deaths also had a significant effect on the American psyche.
Paul Fussell wrote in Wartime that people in America hadn’t been told about even 10% of the horror of this war. The real war was tragic and ironic, beyond the power of any literary or philosophic analysis to suggest, but in un-bombed America especially, the meaning of the war seemed inaccessible. As experience, thus, the suffering was wasted … America has not yet understood what the Second World War was like and has thus been unable to use such understanding to reinterpret and redefine the national reality and to arrive at something like public maturity.3 This essentially means that America had a more romanticized and patriotic notion of war and death. Being far from the warfront, Americans did not really comprehend the atrocities and horrible suffering involved with the war. Many of the deaths were paid respect in ceremonies, and the mantra ‘No man left behind’ was used throughout the war and is even applicable today. When corpses were brought back to America, they were even put on special
2 Leff and Simmons, “Dame in the Kimono”, from Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.65. 3 Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. (New York: Nation Books, 2012), p.54. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 27 ships as if they were living passengers instead of cargo. This denial and unwillingness to accept the true war situation can be perceived as being manifested in noir films. The mass deaths of Americans overseas may represent people’s own mortality at home, especially when those who die are relatives or friends. Related to the film industry, most war movies traditionally showed patriotic and noble efforts of people fighting for their country. The noir film era put a different twist on this notion by showing the grim realities of death and war that can happen at your own doorstep or in your own backyard. As Sigmund Freud suggested, “At bottom no one believes in his own death … in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality. We attribute deaths to normal causes (accident, disease, infection) and muffle its import in stylized rituals and religious consolation. This is done to modify the significance of death from a necessity to an accident. But in war death comes in great numbers, overwhelming our emotional defenses; thus, we think about war deaths as exceedingly terrible.”4 Therefore, noir films with violent deaths can symbolize the lingering realities of wartime deaths for all those involved.
In relating the damage that was done by the Pearl Harbor attack, a World War II veteran, Paul Fussell, wrote, “The damage the war visited upon bodies and buildings, planes and tanks and ships, is obvious. Less obvious is the damage it did to intellect, discrimination, honesty, individuality, complexity, ambiguity, and irony, not to mention privacy and wit.”5
This quotation reveals how the society changed in its outlook to be more anxious and pessimistic. This concern was transformed to the big screen through the jaded and troubled characters in film noir. Americans were overcome with worries and concerns that pervaded many aspects of their lives.
4 Ibid, p.57. 5 Fussell, Paul, Wartime, from Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.59. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 28
Another effect of the war was that many individuals involved in the movie industry enlisted in the Armed Forces, resulting in a shortage of actors, studio executives, movie producers, and screen writers. This opened opportunities for those who were unable to fight or too old to enlist. This also affected the type of scripts being written, which provided more opportunities for Chandler and other writers of crime and detective scripts.
The shortage of story materials and writers now has film companies seriously ogling the pulp mag scripts and scripters. It marks the first time that Hollywood has initiated a concerted drive to replenish its dwindling library supplies and its scripter ranks from the 20 cent-a-word authors of the weird-snappy-breezy-argosy-spy-crime-detective mag school.6 Even though there were many shortages during the war period, it did not have a negative effect on noir film productions. Fewer films were made but ‘A’ level films were shown longer in theaters, resulting in higher profit.
Another pertinent effect of the war was related to women’s involvement. The WWII era was significant for the advancement of women’s causes in a shifting of gender roles. As many men in the film industry went to fight the war overseas, it provided women with an opportunity to fill some of their roles. Besides filling acting roles, women also became writers, producers, and directors. This enabled women to partake in addressing various concerns about gender issues. Traditionally being homemakers, now they had more power as active members of the workforce. Women were no longer just confined to the home to rear children and engage in household activities. “The films on which these women worked furnish complex, critical, and generally progressive analyses of American mores and institutions. While facing the same obstacles dramatized in the films, these female filmmakers nudged Hollywood toward more enlightened views about gender and, in one
6 Variety Magazine from Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.67. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 29 case, helped to redefine cinematic authorship.”7 As a consequence, more feminist perspectives were able to be introduced into this genre that was previously male-dominated.
Angela Martin commented about the effect of the war on women and soldiers. “Over
4 million women were working in 1943 … coinciding with the peak of woman’s involvement in the labor force, the armed services began, in late 1943, discharging psychoneurotic veterans at the rate of 10,000 cases a month, leading to the hospitalization of 850,000 soldiers and the addition of 2,500 army medical officers to the 25 thus far working in psychiatry.”8
This was also compounded with a sharp increase in the divorce rate due to the effects of the war. There was disillusionment among the people about the war and concerns for women about having to leave the workforce towards the end of the war.
Woman played an instrumental role in making noir films, both as actresses and behind the scenes in assisting the filmmaking process. They were able to bring to light alternate realities of gender roles in the 1940s and beyond and show the oppressive conditions faced by women during this period. Noir films were essential in depicting the cultural shifts transpiring in a changing world that gave a glimpse into various hopes and fears in the minds of
Americans post WWII.
The change in gender roles had a significant impact on American society in WWII.
“More than six million took new jobs, increasing the female labor force by more than 50 percent. By 1944, women composed more than 36 percent of the total labor force, up from 25 percent in 1941. Defense jobs spelled significant social mobility, as many women traded low- paying employment in restaurants or laundries for wartime production work that as much as
7 Osteen, Mark. Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012), p.185. 8 Martin, Angela, qtd in Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.203. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 30 doubled their wages.”9 Nevertheless, it still had contradictions in society, as women were still expected to maintain their traditional roles and only work out of necessity until the male workforce was reintegrated with society. This viewpoint was even more prevalent among war veterans when they returned home after the war. Many war veterans still kept their traditional pre-war viewpoints about traditional gender roles or even felt more strongly about them.
As women also made up a greater viewership in movie theaters during the war, more films had to be produced that were appealing to them. As a consequence, more melodramas were made with stories that female moviegoers could relate to. Therefore, “Femme noirs – noir films written, produced, or directed by women – share many traits with the woman’s film: female protagonists; gender anxiety; and ambivalence, or downright cynicism, about marriage. In addition to treating women’s issues, then, these films blurred generic boundaries and brought strong women characters into formerly male territory.”10
2.2 Post World War II Condition
Wheeler Winston Dixon detailed the effects of the war for veterans when WWII was over. “They returned to a world transformed into an alien landscape, something they didn’t understand and didn’t recognize as home, a place full of new and strange social customs, in which the fabric of prewar society had been torn asunder by massive social, economic, and political change.”11 In essence, post-war noir films depicted the realities of the new world they had to adjust to.
In the mid-1940s, many of the noir films reflected cynicism by a society that was suspicious of others, even though the USA had won the war. These kinds of films depict a
9 Osteen, Mark. Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012), p.186. 10 Ibid, p.187. 11 Wheeler, Winston, and Dixon. Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), p.9. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 31 kind of nostalgia for a past time in the wake of a changing society. People felt insecure and mistrustful of others as they lost their sense of security and innocence from before the war.
This kind of nostalgia is evident in the film The Postman Always Rings Twice. Most movies produced during the time were family films and escapist musicals. The noir films made in the mid to late 1940s wanted to express what the undercurrent feelings and realities were really like of the period. These films tried to convey a darker perception of American life, not just the happy endings of family films. “At their peak in the late 1940s, these crime films comprised as much as 16% of Hollywood’s annual output.”12 Many of these films were made as social criticisms of one form or another, depending on the year they were made.
The cynicism and concern regarding the post-war society was due to many factors occurring simultaneously. For example, the big band music of the 1940s started to be replaced by rhythm and blues and later rock and roll. Television became more important as people prioritized family life and did not congregate with their friends as much in movie theaters or other social functions. People were also focused more on material possessions. As society was continuously changing at a rapid pace, the small-town living conditions were not applicable anymore. The end of the war, in fact, also signaled the end of past times as
America was thrust into a new unpredictable future. The feeling of uneasiness about the future was exposed when Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945. “That same night the War
Department dispatched 37,300 telegrams to war contractors canceling 83,000 uncompleted munitions contracts worth $17.5 billion ($209 billion in 2009 purchasing power), thus saving the last possible defense dollars.”13 As soldiers would be returning home and women not sure of their places in the workforce, this created much uncertainty and concerns about a recession that are depicted in this style of film.
12 Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. (New York: Nation Books, 2012), p.190. 13 Ibid, p.17. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 32
For Lingeman, noir films remind him of what life was like in the WWII and post-
WWII era. Many of his experiences while serving in the Army in the late 1940s in Japan provided insight into the general sentiment of the period.14 According to Lingeman, “Those films seemed to catch the paranoia, the deception, the mendacity of the cold war. The films served as divining rods for subterranean memories.”15 For Lingeman, these movies evoked the mood of the period leading up to the Korean War. Although Lingeman focuses more on the aftermath of WWII and the relation with noir films, similar dark themes are found in the early 1940s films as well. As many of the post-WWII films are reflections of subconscious reactions like the increasing tensions between the USSR and the USA, the Red Scare, the blacklists, and the loyalty investigations, the films reveal a common theme of despair and fear of Communism that was felt by society at large. This theme of despair and fear is also prevalent in early 1940s films, but more related to fear of Germans and uncertainty about the future. Therefore, whether looking at pre or post WWII noir films, the psychological effects that were prevalent during the various periods reveal how movies can be a reflection of society.
After many people lived through the Great Depression and found an economic boom during WWII, they became more materialistic. “Young people, especially young servicemen and their girls, wanted to have fun, forget the war, bury the pledges of monogamy, and enjoy the sexual freedom that followed the relaxing of Victorian morals under the pressures of transient wartime encounters.”16 After WWII, people were torn between relief that the war had ended and worry about what the postwar world would bring. The war was able to bring people together to fight against a common enemy. People would pull together and had a collective purpose. After the war was over, the most pressing issue was would peace bring
14 Ibid, p.13. 15 Ibid, p.14. 16 Ibid, p.74. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 33 prosperity or another depression. People who were optimistic only could look to the near future and were very cautious as they were still worried about Germany and Japan starting another war or tensions increasing with the Soviet Union. Anxiety about the future is conveyed by Edward R. Murrow (1945). “Seldom, if ever, has a war ended leaving the victors with such a sense of uncertainty and fear, with such a realization that the future is obscure.”17
Wartime propaganda movies planted in American minds two ideas. One was the division of the world into slave and free, representing either the forces of evil or those of righteousness. And the other was a universalized version of the idea of regeneration through war,” which united Americans in patriotic oneness, unmarred by class, race, or other social barriers. War would bring internal and international harmony the films taught.18 This propaganda would also aid Americans in getting ready for the cold war. This kind of pro-America propaganda is seen in Table 2 (pg.176).
Next, Dennis Broe’s Film Noir, American Workers, and Postwar Hollywood explores the lives of workers and how the work sphere has changed over the years, especially since the end of World War II. Through an analysis of film noir, he looks at how cultural productions were affected by society and political matters. Broe considers the period after the war as one in which people should have faced optimism but instead dealt with various pressures at home and the increased tensions with Russia overseas. In discussing noir films, Broe states, “The form itself becomes a lament for a broken promise of a hoped-for social change after the war that was never realized.”19 The effects of people losing their jobs after the war due to government war contracts being cancelled had a negative perception about the future among
17 Murrow, Edward R., (1945) qtd in Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. (New York: Nation Books, 2012), p.62. 18 Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. (New York: Nation Books, 2012), p.32. 19 Broe, Dennis. Film Noir, American Workers, and Postwar Hollywood (Working in the Americas). (Florida: University Press of Florida, 2010), p.1. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 34 many Americans. “A Gallop poll showed that 62% of the public feared a serious depression in the next 10 years.”20
Broe claims that film noir was developed after World War II due to when Americans had many hopes and dreams that were about to be realized, but then they were taken away.
Related with this, he says film noir is a longing for a desired change that did not come to fruition. At a class level, this is found in the union struggles after the war to improve worker livelihood. The position of the union worker fighting against a big corporation is similar with a fugitive going against the law. Likewise, Lingeman claims that film noir was born at the end of the war, and the product of several social, political, and artistic developments; however, many other sources point to its beginning much earlier.21
Broe considers film noir to be primarily an expression of class, and particularly of postwar American class tensions and class struggle.22 During the war, prices and wages were frozen and unions were not allowed to strike. In practice, especially after the war, strikes were more common. The noir character can be representative of this as a counter to government regulations. Therefore, in the period during and after WWII, many social, cultural, economic, and political factors played significant roles in societal perceptions and their portrayals through entertainment media.
2.3 Noir Production and Censorship Restrictions
In examining the popularity of crime novels in the 1920s, pulp magazines were printed in bulk and there was a sharp increase in a literate American society. Readers interested in the crime and detective stories of writers like Cain, Chandler, and Woolrich
20 Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. (New York: Nation Books, 2012), p.78. 21 Ibid, p.193. 22 Broe, Dennis. Film Noir, American Workers, and Postwar Hollywood (Working in the Americas). (Florida: University Press of Florida, 2010), p.1. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 35 could purchase their stories for relatively cheap prices. As this writing genre gained popularity, it opened the door for Hollywood to turn their literary works into film versions that gained the interest of a society that was increasingly interested in topics of violence, sexuality, and criminality.
One of the influences that affected the development of noir was the background of the writers and filmmakers. For example, in making the film Double Indemnity, it relied on the journalistic experience of James M. Cain as the novel writer and Billy Wilder as the producer and screenplay writer (along with Raymond Chandler). As Wilder and Cain were both interested in tabloid journalism, it influenced their writing styles in creating the novel and film versions.
Cain’s novel was inspired by one of the most sensationally publicized and photographed murder cases of the 1920s, in which Ruth Snyder was convicted of bludgeoning, strangling, and poisoning her unwanted husband. Snyder became the first woman to be executed in the electric chair, and as the fatal switch was thrown, a reporter from the Daily News used a hidden camera strapped to his ankle to snap her picture. The headline on the next day (Friday, January 13, 1928) was a single word— “DEAD!”—accompanied by a full-page, low-angle photo of the youthful Snyder in a dark, open-necked dress, her body fastened to the chair. ‘This is perhaps the most remarkable exclusive picture in the history of criminology,’ the caption read. ‘It shows the actual scene in the Sing Sing death house as the lethal current surged through Ruth Snyder’s body at 11:06 last night. Her helmeted head is stiffened in death, her face masked and an electrode strapped to her bare right leg. The autopsy table on which her body was removed is beside her’.23 The fact that Cain was inspired by this story shows his interest in a kind of realism that is often found in news stories. This is also reflected in his writing style, as it resembles a news story more than an elaborately descriptive novel.
James Naremore also postulates that the style of classic film noir can be attributed to the trend of urban street photography in the 1940s and 1950s. Naremore claims that this was a “period associated with tabloids such as PM, with slick-paper magazines such as Life and
23 Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2008), p.280. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 36
Look, and with the photographic movement known as the ‘New York School’.”24 Therefore, this interest in night urban street scenes was heightened through its visual style on the big screen.
During the war, the Office of War Information (OWI) regulated the content shown in films through the Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP). The movie industry had more pressures placed on it as it had to conform to the BMP’s guidelines and sometimes change the storylines. The BMP wanted to unite the American people in supporting the war effort for an
Allied win, so it devised several themes that were deemed appropriate. These topics included the issues and why we fight, the enemy that we fight, united nations and allied peoples, work and production, the home front, and the fighting forces.25 The purpose of this was to unite
Americans through pro-US propaganda. By showing violence in newsreels that supported the war, it eventually opened the door for noir storylines depicting violence and crime after censorship was not as strict. The film Double Indemnity was particularly influential in leading the way for other noir films to be produced and released with the true characteristics of noir.
The shortage of movie production materials was significant during the early years of
WWII. In 1941, Harry Warner elaborated on this by saying to various movie industry practitioners, “The thoughtless waste of one hundred feet of film may cost the life of an
American soldier who may be your son or your brother. Waste is more deadly than sabotage.”26 These kinds of constraints not only forced actors and movie producers to reduce the number of takes in making films, but it also forced the movie industry to reduce the amount of lighting, which promoted more dark and nighttime scenes as are often found in
24 Ibid, p.281. 25 Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.69. 26 Ibid, p.72. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 37 noir pictures. Besides this, filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock reverted to using actual towns for film locations instead of elaborate studio sets to save money and reduce waste.
Contributing to the tendency to do more noir pictures was that quicker technological advancements were devised as a direct result of the war. For example, in documenting the war it was necessary to make lighter equipment with better camera lenses that could be used for nighttime viewing. This, in turn, allowed for better filming of night and dark scenes for noir pictures. As a consequence, noir films were able to emulate the way war newsreels were filmed, creating a more life-like atmosphere. This realistic aspect is an important feature of the noir moods.
For the film settings, in many of the classic noir films, the settings are in an urban Los
Angeles landscape. For example, The Big Sleep has an LA locale, as Philip Marlowe (played by Humphrey Bogart) is a detective who goes around the city trying to find clues about who committed a crime. He walks around dark and lonely streets at night interrogating suspects and considers them mostly deceitful. Murder, My Sweet, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and The Postman Always Rings Twice also have LA settings.
Next, when America entered the war, various social, cultural, and economic factors contributed to making film noir prominent during and after the war years. This is due to inconsistencies in enforcing movie content regulations and the censorship was not clear-cut.
For example, un-American gangster films depicting violence were not permitted but movies that supported the war effort through violence and atrocities were allowed. These inconsistencies paved the way for hard-boiled novels to be turned into films by simply reforming gangsters and promoting an American sentiment for the war. But by 1943
Hollywood stopped mentioning the war as related with patriotism and just focused on the hard-boiled aspects that were often reflections of societal concerns. More stylistic variations PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 38 were found in the filming that better supported the thematic elements of noir films.27 As coastal cities often experienced blackouts at night, so that the anti-aircraft weapons and the army could better foresee and target an enemy attack, it had an adverse effect on its citizens.
It created an atmosphere of bleakness, isolation, claustrophobia, and alienation, which are all found in varying degrees in a noir film.
Hollywood, according to present indications, will depend on so-called ‘red meat’ stories of illicit romance and crime for a major share of its immediate non-war dramatic productions: the apparent trend toward such material, previously shunned for fear of censorship, is traced by observers to Paramount’s successful treatment of the James M. Cain novel, Double Indemnity, which was described by some producers as ‘an emancipation for Hollywood writing’.28 The documentary technique, or newsreel style, was cheaper to make and seemed more realistic. This filming style using a dark style and black-white contrast reflected society’s wartime setting. For example, in various cities like Los Angeles, there were frequent blackouts in effect. The mood of this condition was relayed to the big screen. James M.
Cain’s novels were banned for over 10 years from being turned into films due to the harsh subject matter. But by using the documentary technique, the novel Double Indemnity was able to be turned into a motion picture. By using the black-and-white coloring schemes, dark lighting, and stark camera angles, the movie version was even better able to convey the deprived, hopeless, and anxious conditions that were conveyed in the novel. After the success of Double Indemnity on the big screen and the ability to avoid censorship, it allowed for two of Cain’s other famous novels The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce to be turned into film adaptations as well. Another hardboiled crime/detective writer, Raymond
Chandler, would also benefit from the easing up of censorship, as he soon followed in making two of his most famous novels Farewell, My Lovely (re-titled as Murder, My Sweet in the film version to avoid seeming like a musical production) and The Big Sleep into
27 Ibid, p.93. 28 Stanley, Fred, New York Times (1944), from Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.96. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 39 successful film adaptations. These films were greatly influential in kick-starting the popularity of noir films and literature well into the 1950s.
Originally Cain’s novel Double Indemnity was rejected to be turned into a film in the mid-1930s. The reason was because it did not conform to production code standards of the time as Cain’s work was seen to be immoral by the censorship committee. It dealt with such topics as cold-blooded murder, deception, a sexual relationship that encouraged the two people (Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson) to kill the woman’s husband, the two lovers committing suicide (in the novel), and other such unwholesome topics. The censorship committee worried that by seeing these kinds of actions and behaviors, it would encourage moviegoers to do the same. Therefore, the story was unable to be turned into a film until several years later. In the meantime, Cain published his short novel in various literary sources, making his story even more popular over the years. Only after he resubmitted his story to the censorship committee and made several changes to the screenplay was it finally approved and turned into a movie. Some of the changes he had to make were not mentioning what kind of poison was used to kill the husband (Mr. Dietrichson), making the woman
(Phyllis Dietrichson) wear clothing that covered more of her body, not giving explicit details about how the crime was committed, not using rude language, among various other restrictions.29
In response to all the censorship hoops Cain had to jump through to finally get Double
Indemnity approved for filming, he stated,
What about the ban on my other stories? For example, The Postman Always Rings Twice is still gathering dust at MGM, which could be a fine movie if handled as adroitly as Double Indemnity. What about Mildred Pierce which I am told has favorable Hays comment? What about Serenade with which obvious changes could become an excellent picture? I’m getting sick of the Hays office and I’m not in the
29 Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.101. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 40
least bit amused at the money it is costing me ... I am perfectly frank to say ... It is not only the principle of the thing with me but the money.30 With the release of the movie Double Indemnity, Cain became a prominent and well- known writer of hard-boiled literature. Chandler also became more famous as he wrote the screenplay for Double Indemnity and became more involved in screenwriting than detective story writing.
Another aspect of a noir film that was prominent in its production was the use of witty dialog and innuendos that sometimes had sexual undertones. The purpose of this kind of writing style was to avoid being censored before the film release. In the film Double
Indemnity (but not the literary work), the use of witty dialog is visible when the protagonist
Walter Neff is engaged in a conversation with the femme fetale Phyllis as he is flirting with her in her house:
Phyllis: There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour. Walter: How fast was I going officer? Phyllis: I’d say around ninety. Walter: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket. Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time. Walter: Suppose it doesn’t take. Phyllis: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles. Walter: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder. Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband’s shoulder. Walter: That tears it. Then before Walter leaves Phyllis’ house and says he will come back to discuss an accident insurance policy with her husband, they say to each other:
Walter: Will you be here ... same chair, same perfume, same anklet? Phyllis: I wonder if I know what you mean. Walter: I wonder if you wonder.
30 Hanna, “Hays Censors Rile Jim Cain”, from Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.102. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 41
By writing a script like this with hidden meanings, Chandler and other script writers later could get approval for their movies while still defying the moral clause that the censor committee upheld.
In making Double Indemnity, a voiceover narration and flashback sequence was used, which also became a trademark of these kinds of films. The reason for this is the films were supposed to have some morality attached to them like by showing the characters getting caught or killed for a crime they committed and then going back over the details from the beginning. The voiceover narration is often the protagonist’s voice of reason telling about the events that unfold in a matter of fact manner. The characters are doomed, fatalistic, and divided between doing different things, similar to the obstacles that were placed on writers during the war and due to the psychological trauma people experienced during the early
1940s.
Although there were restrictions on the script and scenes, the director was free to use any kind of sound, lighting, or photography to create the desired effect he wanted. The dark and menacing style of these films became a trademark feature for noir films produced in later years. Therefore, the chiaroscuro lighting and use of shadows can be considered as responses to the censorship and how directors tried to get around that to express their creativity as well as the effects of the wartime situation. Manipulating the lighting became the key to make a film look as realistic as possible while conveying the appropriate messages and mood.
As Cain used to be a journalist, he writing style supported the gritty and realistic style that was apparent in his noir literary works. He did not use magical, flowery, or poetic writing but wanted to convey the real mood of the time. It was different with many musicals and uplifting dramas that were made during the war that did not really reflect what was especially felt by the people of the period. In filming Double Indemnity, it utilized a newsreel PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 42 style that mirrored that used for war propaganda films. The character Phyllis was more realistic in her appearance as she was not as glamorous looking as the Lana Turner character in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Lana Turner’s character was perhaps too glamorous looking for a noir film as she realistically would not look that glamorous just being the wife of a diner owner. Therefore, realism is pertinent to many aspects in the literary and film versions of Cain’s and Chandler’s works. In their film versions, the writers did not want to have everything completely neat and organized in the scenes, as in real life it is illogical to expect everything to be glamorous and organized.
Using enclosed rooms and tight spaces is another aspect of noir films that contributes to a claustrophobic feeling. This is felt in various scenes throughout the various movies as the characters are in cramped spaces. For example, in Double Indemnity, Phyllis and Walter meet in a crowded small grocery store that conveys a sense of claustrophobia and symbolizes that the characters will not get away with their scheme. This kind of filming emphasized the notion that if you do the crime, you pay the crime. Additionally, this scene serves as a criticism of materialism and loss of traditional values, as the characters are surrounded by tall stacks of canned goods on all the shelves.
After Cain’s novel Double Indemnity gained great success in the movie theaters, it facilitated Chandler to make his novel Farewell, My Lovely into the film Murder, My Sweet.
The novel was immediately approved to be turned into a film, whereas before the success of
Double Indemnity it would have been rejected. However, there was still censorship on harsh language, sexuality, sadistic violence, and suicide. Nevertheless, its instant approval to be made into a film showed that by 1944 America was becoming more tolerant of and desensitized to scenes of violence due to in large part being in the midst of World War II for the past few years. Murder, My Sweet also had to deal with budget restrictions and material PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 43 limitations in making the movie due to the war. But the role of femme fetales and the use of their sexuality to gain more power or favors was more noticeable in advertisements and posters for the movie. This can also represent society’s concerns about women being unfaithful to their significant others fighting overseas at the time, as well as the shifting roles of women in society to become more independent.
As Double Indemnity and Murder, My Sweet gained national and international recognition, not to mention hefty profits, it encouraged another of Cain’s novels, The
Postman Always Rings Twice to be turned into a film. Since Double Indemnity set a president for noir films, this movie was able to be produced, despite having a criminal and sexual theme. After this film was given the green light, Cain’s novel Mildred Pierce and Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep soon followed to become film adaptations. The Postman Always Rings
Twice was Cain’s first novel. It was banned for film adaptation for so many years due to its story about two people having an affair and wanting to murder the woman’s husband. The theme dealt with violence, sex, and money. Cain’s narrative style was found in this novel and subsequent ones because he wrote in a concise manner and used first person narration. The dialog was also acidic and tough. By the mid-1940s, this novel was able to be made into a film as people recognized its artistic merit. The acceptance of this novel, as with Cain’s and
Chandler’s other works, is reflective of the war situation.
In filming The Postman Always Rings Twice, several concessions had to be made to gain censorship approval. For example, the femme fetale’s clothes are mostly white, so she does not look so sinister. Also, the lighting is brighter with more high key lighting than that found in Double Indemnity. Next, the film did not use the newsreel style like that is found in
Double Indemnity, but used a more modern filming style which detracted from the realistic effects of the newsreel style. Also, to meet the censorship standards, if the characters are PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 44 criminals or adulterers, then they have to die, be imprisoned, or repent. This is to dissuade people in real life from getting any ideas to do a similar illegal or immoral act. The censorship people wanted common citizens to be aware that all crimes are punishable, and they should not imitate what is shown on the screen. Like Double Indemnity, this film also has flashbacks done in a narrative style to show the protagonist’s psychological state of mind and eventual fall due to his criminal actions. Here, also, the narration serves as a voice of reason and sense of morality.
Double Indemnity’s dark story of homicide and adultery marked not only a stylistic breakthrough for filmmakers but also signaled some relaxation in the Hays Office’s moral patrol of the screens. It was encouraging news to Wald and other producers who wanted to take more risks. Murder could make money, murder spiked with love and lust could make twice as much. With such ingredients added to Mildred Pierce, Wald deduced that he would have a hot property on his hands since the film would appeal to more than just the women’s audience.31 Otto Friedrich stated, “At Warners, a studio so frugal that some of its employees called it ‘San Quentin’, shooting a film in moody darkness and rain tended to disguise the cheapness of the sets.”32 Therefore, because of budgetary constraints and the fact that many of these films were not allowed to be shot outdoors if they were made near coastal areas (due to the World War II environment), oftentimes those films settled with what they had for financial allocations and were attributed as “B” movie status because of their low budgets.
These movies relied on various kinds of lighting like chiaroscuro, no lighting, or very bright lighting to get the special effects desired. Various camera angles were also used to convey the desired psychological effects like high, low, oblique, among others.
The heyday of the noir era did not last very long because too many films saturated the market. People became bored with the depressing themes and the studios ended up losing
31 Francke, Lizzie, Script Girls, from Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.142. 32 Friedrich, Otto, qtd in Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. (New York: Nation Books, 2012), p.197. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 45 money as there was a reduction in moviegoers. In addition, the theme was considered unpatriotic and subversive. Movie producers could be blacklisted for showing pessimistic or critical films of American society. It was eventually more popular to make upbeat films about religious themes.
Many noir films do not make a specific reference to WWII, but the cynicism, brutality, and black-and-white visual style reflected the grim realities of living during the war. At the time Double Indemnity was produced in 1943, there was already a 10-year ban on
Cain’s novels from being turned into screen adaptations due to the harsh and negative sentiment the novels conveyed. Hollywood wanted to produce films that were more positive in outlook and reflective of American ideals, such as that portrayed in movies like The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945, with Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman).
Noir films of the World War II era often “portrayed a world of menace and urban deviance, featuring rain-slicked city streets and murderers lurking in back alleys, seductresses bathed in the haze of cigarette smoke, detectives covered in the barred shadows of venetian blinds, crooked cops, and the sound of gunfire. Enhancing the distinctive look and cinematography of film noir, moody lighting and camerawork emphasized heavy expressionistic shadows, stark visual design with low-key chiaroscuro pools of light, claustrophobic interiors and confined spaces, high-contrast black-and-white photography, oblique camera angles, and asymmetrical compositional framing.”33
According to Biesen, “The bleak vision in these films grew out of wartime American culture, the realities of making films in Hollywood during this time, and the way home-front
– and battlefront – audiences saw these pictures.”34 Furthermore, “The noir aesthetic derived
33 Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.2. 34 Ibid, p.2. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 46 from wartime constraints on filmmaking practices. Brooding, often brutal, realism was conveyed in low-lit images, recycled sets (disguised by shadows, smoke, artificial fog, and rain), tarped studio backlots, or enclosed sound stages.”35
Related to the psychological effects, “These early noir films created a psychological atmosphere that in many ways marked a response to an increasingly realistic and understandable anxiety – about war, shortages, changing gender roles, and a world gone mad
– that was distinctive from the later postwar paranoia about the bombs, the cold war, HUAC, and the blacklist, which was more intrinsic to late 1940s and 1950s noir pictures.”36
As the war progressed, Hollywood was unable to sensor as much of the violence and sexuality as in previous years. In the past, violence was found in films, but it was still allowed as long as there was a moral message and a positive conclusion to the story. However, as society became more aware of violence and atrocities committed in the war, the realistic aspects affected the film industry. There ended up being more stories adopted from novels and stories about affairs, crimes, murders, and so on. In the 1930s, James Cain was unable to have his literary works made into films, but in the 1940s the social climate changed, facilitating Cain’s works to be adapted into screenplays.
During the war there was still censorship but more in terms of promoting a positive wartime image. However, it made it easier for film noir as the violence from the war became more commonplace for people to see. Therefore, people became more numb and tolerant to violence due to the wartime images they were used to seeing in wartime newsreels.
Hollywood lighting grew darker, characters more corrupt, themes more fatalistic, and the tone more hopeless. By 1949 American movies were in the throes of their deepest and most creative funk. Never before had films dared to take such a harsh
35 Ibid, p.3. 36 Ibid, p.3. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 47
uncompromising look at American life, and they would not dare to do so again for twenty years.37 This infers that living in a wartime atmosphere had a great effect on American mentality. Film noir was able to grow during and after the war due to the realism of the time combined with changes in masculinity and the male psyche as gender roles shifted during the war.
The mood from film noir can also be examined from the era in which these movies were made. The mood was also established because of the material limitations from financial constraints. Also, travel was limited and many indoor sets were used. The budgeting reduced the lighting as well.
In the early years of the war, RKO had to focus more on making films that appealed to domestic audiences because of the bombings and instability in Europe. As a result, it produced more films like musicals, comedies, and escapist melodramas that had more of an
American flair. “In accordance with the general industry trend, RKO eschewed any stories based on contemporary world problems. Thus, even though the European conflict was wreaking havoc on company commerce, the production philosophy was to pretend that World
War II did not exist.”38
Raymond Chandler and James Cain wrote stories that were based on a primary masculine point of view. Chandler wrote more about moody detectives, and Cain wrote more about protagonists who were actually criminals.
37 Schrader, Paul, qtd in Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.9. 38 Jewel and Harbin, qtd in Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.34. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 48
In 1948 Chandler wrote, “I did not invent the hard-boiled murder story and I have never made any secret of my opinion that Hammett deserves most or all of the credit.”39
Essentially, Chandler was involved in the big box office productions of Double Indemnity and Murder, My Sweet, which led to him being recognized as a leader in hard-boiled crime stories, as they were previously low budget productions. These hard-boiled themes are a reflection of America’s hard-working culture at home and defense emphasis during the war, as well as people’s lives were being turned upside down during the war years.
Although censors grew more tolerant of violence depicted in movies during WWII, they still opposed gangster films as they were seen as anti-American and could be used as
Nazi propaganda. Therefore, “Hollywood transformed criminals into more patriotic, guilt- ridden, unstable, and self-destructive proto-noir protagonists – a variation on mobsters – combating espionages and sabotage; in doing so, studios succeeded in evading censorship.”40
Related to society and the government in the 1940s, leftist filmmakers used noir to critique particular American values and promote alternative American values that focused on equality, sympathy for the oppressed, and collectivity over capitalism and rampant individualism. These filmmakers criticized materialism and the upper class hypocrites. They also called the media out for not reporting about cases of oppression that often occurred.
Various noir films deal with the topic of secrecy, paranoia, betrayal in response to the House
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and its censorship and suppression of anything deemed as being unsupportive of the American war effort. Blacklists were also made by this government committee for filmmakers who did not support pro-government ideals. The
39 Chandler, Raymond, qtd in Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.42. 40 Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.49. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 49 filmmakers were against big corporations and self-interest. They also believed in liberty and equality, which are values espoused by American society today.41
In considering the different types of noir, May divides noir into two kinds. “One set focusing on authority figures who demolish evil doers, cure pathology, or ease adaptation to the middle-class dream, and a second group (created by the Left) that celebrates non- conformism and perpetuates the ideal of the hybrid rebel in a quest of wholeness against an alienating society.”42 The leftist perspective of the late 1940s changed to be more conservative in the 1950s with the increased threat of communism. “The leftist films of the
1940s primarily explored the class system, capitalism, and the ideology of the American
Dream.”43
Another kind of noir prominent during World War II was related with detective stories. Broe looks at the similarities between detectives who obeyed the law and then went out of it, as well as factory workers who obeyed the law and then engaged in going on strikes to contest the law in the post-war society.
Labor and businesses were very strong during the war. “Not only profits but also business power grew during the war as business and government interests overlapped ever more tightly. Corporate profits during the war were 250 percent higher than before the war, averaging $22 billion per year during the war, a figure which exceeded that of 1929, until
41 Osteen, Mark. Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012), p.221. 42 May, qtd in Osteen, Mark. Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012), p.225. 43 Osteen, Mark. Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012), p.225. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 50 then the most profitable year for the American industry.”44 This is due primarily to cost increases but with wages frozen.
During the World War II era, workers were forced to accept the wage freezes, even though they felt that they were sacrificing much and that the companies were getting all the profit. The government was also involved in businesses and workers who did not abide by the company regulations would be seen as being unpatriotic or even treasonous in not supporting the war. Therefore, the government and businesses worked hand in hand to encourage workers to abide by their regulations. In general, workers supported the war but had to suffer from the effects of it like low wages and unsafe working conditions. This eventually led to disillusionment about wanting to be independent but having to toil while working for big businesses. It is different from the frontier days where people could buy a plot of land and have a means to support themselves. Now they were dependent on government controlled or influenced businesses. This theme of disillusionment is present in many noir films as well, as characters realize their lives are not what they expected.
Thus, in Hollywood as in the nation as a whole, the wartime anti-fascist consensus by the middle of the war and increasingly from then on collided with the sense that, under the guise of patriotism, the law was increasingly being used as a device to bludgeon working people into participating at no benefit to themselves in the increased prestige, profits, and power of American business.45 “Films made immediately before and during the war tended far more than in the period of the mid to late 1930s to deal with contemporary subjects, but they put a patriotic gloss on the treatment of those subjects.”46
“As America became more heavily involved in World War II, hard-boiled serie noir crime fiction made exemplary screen material. Its stark vision, minimal style, fast pace,
44 Broe, Dennis. Film Noir, American Workers, and Postwar Hollywood. (Florida: University Press of Florida, 2010), p.2. 45 Ibid, p.9. 46 Ibid, p.14. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 51 graphic sex, life-like violence, and cynical edge suited the bleaker experience, raw realities, and lean, no-nonsense filmmaking climate of wartime Hollywood.”47
In Los Angeles, especially, as the movie capital for the majority of films, the Pearl
Harbor attack resulted in anxiety for people along the coast. As a result, there were many blackouts and bomb worries as people were concerned about being bombed by the Japanese.
This altered the way movies were made and contributed to the film noir mood in movie making.
Even Raymond Chandler in writing Farewell, My Lovely (which the movie Murder,
My Sweet was based on) wrote about the insecurities brought by the war. “The effort to keep my mind off the war has reduced me to the mental age of seven. The things by which we live are the distant flashes of insect wings in a clouded sunlight.”48 Even in writing about what it was like to live in Los Angeles during the war, Chandler stated, “There is a touch of the desert about everything in California, and about the minds of the people who live here.
During the years when I hated the place I couldn’t get away, and now that I have grown to need the harsh smell of the sage I still feel rather out of place here.”49
The urban setting in film noir is also a result of the war situation in actual reality. As
America became increasingly involved in the war, people from rural areas moved to cities and bigger towns to work in factories to support the war effort. Consequently, factories were producing 24 hours a day to make weapons and other items necessary for the war. This kind of a night life made people accustomed with the atmosphere, which was transformed into noir film settings that were often at night or in dark or dimly lit locations.
47 Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.58. 48 Chandler, Raymond, qtd in Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.60. 49 Ibid, p.60. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 52
Another reason for the increase in noir films after the war was that some studio bosses were in partnerships with various mob leaders of a studio union (IATSE). Even Raymond
Chandler who wrote many private detective stories and eventually turned to screenwriting noticed this. He stated, “They looked like a bunch of topflight Chicago gangsters moving into read the death sentence on the beaten competitor. It brought home to me in a flash the strange psychological and spiritual kinship between the operations of big money business and the rackets. Same faces, same expressions, same manners. Same way of dressing and same exaggerated leisure of movement.”50
When noir films were at the height of their popularity the fears and anxiety associated with the war were transposed to movies that dealt with themes like crime, violence, and brutality. To avoid censorship in dealing with these themes, some movie producers would disguise them under the theme of patriotism.
As censorship restrictions became more lax, the use of crime and violence increased in noir films. Raymond Chandler’s involvement in writing screenplays as well as his and
Cain’s novels becoming increasingly popular for film adaptations contributed to this shift. It also became trendier to use actual real-life urban settings at night instead of tarped studio settings during the war. These real-life settings are obvious in such films as Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce, as they were filmed directly in Los Angeles. These local settings were combined with violence, crime, and sexual undertones.
Related with the shift in film content, Raymond Chandler wrote,
The studios have gone in for these pictures because the Hays office is becoming more liberal ... okaying treatments now which they would have turned down ten years ago, probably because they feel people can take the hard-boiled stuff nowadays. Of course, people have been reading about murderers, cutthroats and thieves in the newspapers
50 Chandler, Raymond, qtd in Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. (New York: Nation Books, 2012), p.187. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 53
for years, but only recently has the Hays office permitted the movies to depict life as it really is.51 Film noir became much more popular overseas after the war ended as European countries that were previously cut off from the entertainment and literary developments in the
USA, now gained exposure to these trends. France was especially impressed with the noir style, as the American film industry and literary world had developed it so much, in keeping in mind that originally the noir style was borrowed from France. French critics claimed that the American picture industry “boasted an unusual and cruel atmosphere ... one tinted by a very particular eroticism. What used to be known as the detective genre ... from now on we’d be better to call ‘crime adventure stories’ or, better still, ‘criminal psychology’.”52 Therefore, the noir style was able to develop and be influenced by various wartime conditions.
Before the war started, the trend was to make more gangster and horror type films.
But as the war became a part of American lives, the government banned these types of films from being shown or drastically altered them to conform to censorship standards. During the war, it was preferred to make more patriotic and combat films to support the Allied effort overseas. But after the war, the trend changed again to make more criminal psychology films.
The purpose of this was to show that not everything is good (allies) or bad (axis – Germany and Japan), but that people have varying degrees of goodness and badness in them. Besides being based on crime and detective novels, many noir films were also developed from news or tabloid stories.
Many war-time and early post-war noir films conveyed a social message. Many times they dealt with underlying themes of veterans with psychological problems who cannot adapt with regular society after leaving the war, criminality in their surroundings because of the
51 Chandler, Raymond, New York Times, from Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.189. 52 Borde and Chaumeton, Panorama of American Film Noir, from Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.189. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 54 war, wartime atrocities, or other social problems resulting from the wartime conditions. The primary focus was on being realistic.
After the war, the themes and elements of noir films started to change. Facing a communist threat and the Cold War, the messages conveyed through these films varied. The political, economic, and social issues were different from those themes during World War II.
To compound this, bigger budgets were allotted for the film industry and Technicolor films started to replace the black-and-white ones. The wartime constraints and materials were also lifted and the filming industry became more technologically advanced. During the Cold War period, the cultural anxieties were based more on such themes as the atomic bomb, communism, xenophobia, organized crime, among others. The filming was also different as it was more grayish than the traditional black/white contrast of the World War II era. The location shootings also changed to more suburban or small town settings. Eventually as the threat of communism became more intense, many topics became blacklisted for noir films and even various writers, directors, producers, and actors. To add to that, the market was already saturated with the noir style of film and viewers became bored. This led to the rapid decline of noir films by the mid-1950s. Films of the 1950s preferred to use brighter scenes, colored images, and positivistic themes with an emphasis on religion and the family.
Therefore, many places of worship and anti-communist messages were conveyed through films of this era. The style of filming shifted to escapist and non-political stories, westerns, melodramas, science fiction, fantasy, musicals, as well as police movies and TV shows.
2.4 European Influence of Noir
Traditional noir films had European influences from Weimar Germans who produced more gothic horror, criminal psychology, and conspiracy films. French films also influenced PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 55
American noir films through their working class crime stories. Even British films influenced later classic noir films with the Hitchcock style of international intrigue stories.
Paul A. Cantor has a different perspective on how noir films reflect American societal concerns of the era.
In short, in viewing film noir, we may not be getting, as some critics have supposed, an unmediated look into the heart and soul of America. Rather, because in film noir we are often looking through European eyes, we may be getting an unduly negative and pessimistic view of the American way of life. Film noir may be one more example of a long tradition of European anti-Americanism, or at least a tendency to fault the United States for failing to measure up to European standards of civilization and culture.53 This interpretation can be made due to the fact that many of these films were directed and/or produced by Europeans, especially German expressionists. He wants to espouse the idea that noir films may tell more about European culture than American culture due to the people behind the camera.
The sensibility of the films which would later be labeled noir certainly entertains close affinities to the sense of loss and cultural despair which many German language exile filmmakers experienced in 1930s and 1940s America. These films frequently revolve around questions of (war) trauma, psychosis, memory, and amnesia, split or doubled identity, featuring men driven from their homes, outsiders who cannot comprehend the political and social forces that determine their existence.54 Various expressionistic filming aspects were also very important to the noir atmosphere like subjective camera angles, distorted angles, chiaroscuro lighting, elongated shadows, urban realism, moral decay, sexual temptation, and femme fetales.55 Expressionism was important to elevate the mood the director wanted to convey. For example, if a director wanted to signal fear and menace, he would use dark lighting.
53 Cantor, Paul A., “Film Noir and the Frankfort School”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009), p.157. 54 Germunden, Gerd, qtd in Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. (New York: Nation Books, 2012), p.195. 55 Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. (New York: Nation Books, 2012), p.196. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 56
Another aspect that contributed to the noir thematic elements was in the writers and directors themselves who had experienced firsthand the horrors of the war. This was especially true among the Jewish writers and directors who emigrated from Germany. One such example is Billy Wilder, who was responsible for directing the film Double Indemnity.
His whole family was killed in Auschwitz. This tragedy and living during the horrors of the war contributed to the dark themes found in the film. Many similar examples can also be found, as noir films have a strong German influence due to the German Jewish expatriates.
The pessimistic and politically provocative themes of noir crime films were due to
German Jewish émigré directors who liked to use psychological themes, expressionistic visual styles, and doom-laden worldviews as WWII broke out. Noir’s origins and themes can also be linked to American hard-boiled detective and crime story writers like Hammett,
Chandler, Cain, and Woolrich. However, these writers are all different in their writing styles and themes. It also reveals that literary works combined with particular directors and screenwriters were significant in creating the particular noir style during and after WWII.56
2.5 Noir as a Reflection of American Societal Concerns
In American society throughout the years, a common goal of people has always been the pursuit of happiness through one’s own self-effort, whether that be for wealth, fame, power, or some other objective. In the film and novel Mildred Pierce and many other noir films of the type, these personal ambitions often swallow the characters as they fall deep into an abyss that they cannot crawl out of. In Mildred’s case, she is obsessed with wealth to the point where she keeps expanding her restaurant business and is never satisfied with her personal achievements. This issue about striving for happiness and trying to attain more in one’s life leads one to examine the question of whether one’s personal background can affect
56 Osteen, Mark. Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012), p.11. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 57 one’s present or future or whether people can indeed better their lives or obtain a certain goal through hard work, no matter what personal or social background they may have. Related with noir literature and films, the pursuit of happiness or individual goals is limited to forces outside of the character’s control. Therefore, characters have hopes of reaching their dreams but ultimately fail, leaving them despondent and disillusioned. Characters are generally unable to make social advancements like from being poor to rich, but when they do accomplish moving up into another social class their efforts are all in vain. In other words,
“Noir registers a postwar crisis of national identity related to the dissolution of the myth of
Jeffersonian democracy. Noir posits an inversion of equality whereby almost everyone is equally trapped.”57
“Made during a period marked by social and political upheaval, film noir tested and critiqued both the principles of the American Dream – individualism and self-determination, liberty, equality, upward mobility, capitalist enterprise – and their practice.”58
Gangster films and literary works were instrumental in developing the noir style and characteristics. These kinds of stories are caught between the Franklin and Emerson concepts of identity, meaning that characters can survive for a goal but then it ends up being wrong. Or it may be alright to be individualistic but then a catastrophe may occur. These kinds of themes represent the notion that people have assigned places in society and are not supposed to escape from their pre-determination, as if individuals are in a caste system.
In considering the societal effects of the war on noir film and literary productions, many war-related themes and messages are found throughout like the criminal violence of the films and novels reflecting the real-life violence of the war. There are also displaced war veterans that show the psychological effects of the war. Next, numerous noir works depict the
57 Ibid, p.4. 58 Ibid, p.4. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 58 tensions between women being in traditional homemaker roles and independent as working women. Furthermore, in post-war noir works, there is often a strong anti-communist sentiment during the Cold War. Numerous cultural transitions were apparent in the 1940s.
Noir both reflects this postwar hangover (residual anxieties about identity, gender disability, and labor) and registers new fears about race, representation, capitalism, technology, privacy, and security. Amid this turmoil, noir films ask whether the American Dream of liberty and democracy is still viable and, if so, how it may be altered or fulfilled.59 The threat to achieving the American Dream and being able to live one’s own life based on traditional American values became apparent to many small business owners as they had to struggle to survive and lost faith in the American ideals. “With the increasing size of corporations, the growth of monopolies, and the accelerated elimination of small businesses it became increasingly hard for even the petit bourgeoisie to continue to believe in certain dominant myths. Foremost among these was the dream of equality of opportunity in business, and of the God-given right of every man to be his own boss.”60 As small business owners could not survive on their own and had to close their doors and work for big enterprises, they felt disillusionment, alienation, and helplessness in living their lives. These feelings, then, were also shown on the big screen as reflections of what Americans had to endure during and after WWII.
In terms of the popularity and influence of noir, not all critics and scholars consider it as necessarily being a true reflection of society when these films and literary works were made. Mike Chopra-Gant argues that noir is overrated as a sign of postwar America’s mood.
He points out that noir films and fiction works were not the most popular of the time. He thinks it is better to look at the hit movies of the era to see what the real mood was. Although he admits that it is impossible to know how many films were viewed by how many people, he
59 Ibid, p.12. 60 Harvey, Silvia, qtd in Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.39. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 59 says that just because someone watches a film, it does not mean that the film lingers in the individual’s mind, reflecting the person’s mood or behavior.61
Nicholas Spencer, in quoting historian William Graebner, reveals that America had to deal with two conflicting trends during the 1940s. “On the one hand, culture was characterized by nostalgia, sentimentalism, a belief in scientific progress, and a pervasive yearning for a culture of the whole. On the other hand, it was a time when irony, historical contingency, a feeling of historical exhaustion and cultural fragmentation, and an attraction to existentialism borne of a sense of meaningless were evident.”62 This last statement best conveys the sentiment of noir.
Noir films and literature can be considered as echoing America’s unconscious sentiment during the times they were produced. In considering the relationship of noir films with society, Pippin states, “Movies have often been important pieces of evidence for sociological and historical interpretations of the temper of the times.”63 These films can show the anxiety and social dislocation of the time when hundreds of soldiers returned home after fighting a dangerous war for several years and having to readjust to a boring, monotonous, and domestic style of living. Even the directors and others involved in the film industry that escaped the horrors of the war by emigrating to the USA had to deal with survivor guilt, and they expressed this feeling through their film productions. After the war, there was also the problem of high unemployment, financial problems, and high crime rates.
The realism of film noir developed from American popular culture. Crime was expressed through various cultural outlets like in radio drama programs, magazines, stories,
61 Chopra-Gant, Mike, qtd in Osteen, Mark. Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012), p.13. 62 Osteen, Mark. Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012), p.13. 63 Pippin, Robert B. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy. (Virginia: The University of Virginia Press, 2012), p.7. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 60 comics, dime novels, and hard-boiled crime novels that depicted Jazz age crime with realism.64 Some of the prolific crime writers that had an effect on film noir were Dashiell
Hammett, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, and Cornell Woolrich. They mostly wrote about tough characters in violent environments. Many of the settings were also similar with noir films like in seedy locations, bars, jazz clubs, and other nightlife settings. “Liberal and conservative writers used crime movies as vehicles for social commentary and were just as critical of society. The Right portrayed crime as a symptom of social disintegration, the Left presented it as a form of capital accumulation.”65
The noir films conveyed anxieties about the 1940s, through a lack of common purpose after the war was over, worry about losing financial gains made during the war, materialism, consumerism, difficulties in readjusting with a peacetime society, veterans having to adapt to a post-war lifestyle, increasing tensions with the USSR, sadness for those who died in the War, and other kinds of uncertainties due to the anxiety of the war and what would happen afterwards. The moods found in noir films were opposite to those generally associated with traditional American society of being optimistic and having faith. In noir films, “The no exit conclusion is a recurring motif: whenever the hero and heroine try to escape a condition of life in which they no longer believe … helplessness overwhelms them.”66
Therefore, noir films best reflect the personal anxieties of people in the 1940s than other film types. “They vacuumed up the psychological detritus swirling in the air, the vellieities, secret wishes, criminal thoughts, unspoken fears, dream images of the times.”67
64 Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.17. 65 Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. (New York: Nation Books, 2012), p.189. 66 Ibid, p.60. 67 Ibid, p.190. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 61
Feminist film scholar, B. Ruby Rich, writes, “Noir etched a metaphor of light and shadow into the popular psyche. Rain-slicked streets, feelings of loss, fear and betrayal, male bonding, femme fetales, postwar malaise, atomic pressures, Communist threats, melodrama, and gangsters all coalesced under its banner.”68
One of the main elements of a noir film is about a man being alone and not in touch with the real world. Usually this kind of character is vulnerable to a woman who may have bad intentions (femme fetale). Usually this male character is alone because he represents a soldier who returned from a war and cannot reintegrate with society. Even Raymond
Chandler was a World War I veteran who would never talk about his experiences and did not get over what happened during the war. So, as a crime writer, he would write about murder mysteries and hard-boiled crime stories of a veteran returning home from a war (like the movie script for Blue Dahlia).
In Chandler’s film adaptation of The Big Sleep, the movie was made at the end of
World War II, and the characteristics of the protagonist started to change as the movie industry wanted to portray characters that were in non-war settings. As a result, Humphrey
Bogart’s character did not have the personality of an unstable patriotic war hero anymore but was more about a character who was hard and had to live in the mean streets of an urban setting. His character was also very cynical in this film, which can be related with the uncertainty many Americans felt at the time in a post-war era. Lauren Bacall played the femme fetale as there was a sort of switch in sexual dominant roles from previous noir films.
Bacall’s character was the pursuer and very aggressive and assertive. This difference in gender roles is reflective of the way men had to readapt their relationship roles with women after fighting in the war for so long. Many men had emotional scars that made it difficult for
68 Ibid, p.190. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 62 them to be in emotional relationships upon returning home. The role of women in films can also be seen as being a reflection of society. In noir films there was a femme fetale type of character who was given more control, sexy deadly, would be undone by her own demise, and played active roles in determining the outcomes of events. This kind of woman went against the societal standards of what a traditional woman should be like. In the 1940s, men were concerned about women leaving their traditional roles as homemakers and not returning to them after the war was over. When men were away fighting, women were taking their jobs and abandoning their traditional roles in the home as well as having sexual relations with men while their boyfriends or husbands were away fighting in a war. Consequently, the theme of jealousy is also found in many noir films as it reflects the feeling of veterans that many of their wives or girlfriends were cheating on them when they were fighting in the war.
These femme fetales can depict male anxiety and ambivalence as seen through the novel and film Mildred Pierce. This literary work and movie convey the image that women should be loyal to men and not be too independent or financially driven or it will lead to her own self-destruction. Femme fetales are physically and psychologically strong, but these traits are seen in a negative light in 1940s society, which leads to them self-destructing.
The various “B” noir films are typically crime films based on crime or detective novels. These kinds of films were made to make more realistic, mature, and serious films instead of just appealing to the movie industry’s desire for escapism type films. As the
Hollywood Box Office level of films did not generally support noir films and would try to sensor or change the plots, these movies could be best filmed as “B” movies. The realism can be seen in movies like Double Indemnity that was made in a documentary style to make it look more real and used settings with dim lights and lifeless settings to convey the cold reality that the characters faced. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 63
However, not all people agree that crime films or film noir were “a symptom of a deeper malaise afflicting American society.”69 For example, the critic James Agee wrote that films of the noir canon were “nostalgic and amusing, if far from original melodramas, which
Hollywood’s creative artists, trapped in the studio system, amused themselves by making. It was wrong to regard such harmless little slumming parties a sinister mirror of American morals, psychology, society, and art.”70
The producer John Houseman also found these films morally troubling not because of the violence, which is a basic element in American life and often found in American entertainment, but because the private-eye heroes “have ambitions no higher than a skinful of whiskey and a good sleep. In all history, I doubt there has been a hero whose life was so unenviable and whose aspirations had so low a ceiling.”71 What he meant by this was that the characters were not really realistic because they did not have moral traits and they were always listless and fatalistic. The crime films in the 1930s were more positivistic, in that if someone committed a crime then the character would have to make amends. However,
Houseman did find the lack of morality reflective of American society. In relation to the alienation and despair of many noir films, he stated, “The tough movie is without personal drama and therefore without personal solution or catharsis of any kind. It almost looks as if the American people, turning from the anxiety and shock of war, were afraid to face their personal problems and the painful situations.”72
The war effort had a significant effect on American culture that was portrayed through noir films. The dark aspects were brought about by wartime uncertainties and fears due to German spies, Japanese threats, and the loss of American lives. American culture
69 Ibid, p.221. 70 Ibid, p.222. 71 Ibid, p.222. 72 Ibid, p.222. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 64 would become obsessed about these concerns and the threats of invasion or hardships in daily life. Some of these hardships were in the form of government rationing of basic essentials, shortages during the war, and people being deprived of basic needs. People could even relate with the nighttime scenes in these movies, as many factories had three shifts, and people were able to relate with working in this kind of an atmosphere. The darkness in film noir could also be related to the wartime as there were often blackouts in certain coastal cities, so that the military could better react to an attack if they could see the enemy approaching.
The seductive world of film noir captured wartime fears and anxieties through violent actions in unglamorous or disreputable working-class settings. As life on the home front became increasingly hard-boiled, so too did American film. America’s involvement in the war penetrated every facet of daily life. Nearly everyone knew someone killed or wounded in combat.73 This is a significant concept conveyed by Biesen, as the USA was shocked by the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Also, Americans had to do without many necessities that were previously available to them. Before this incident, there was a glorified image of the war and what it was like to fight as an American.
Watching a newsreel or flipping through an illustrated magazine at the beginning of the American war, you were likely to encounter a memorable image: the newly invented jeep, an elegant, slim-barreled 37-mm gun in tow, leaping over a hillock. Going very fast and looking as cute as Bambi, it flies into the air, and behind, the little gun bounces high off the ground on its springy tires.74 Essentially this portrays that with the horrors of the war becoming more real, people’s perception about the war also changed. It was not as romanticized as it previously used to be, resulting in a change in societal portrayals as expressed through film noir. Perhaps separated by great distance from most of the war action, Americans did not experience many of the realities of war firsthand like European countries did. This change in sentiment spilled over
73 Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.5. 74 Fussell, Paul, qtd in Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.5. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 65 into the movie industry. Therefore, film noir was able to develop based on noir influences like cultural disillusionment, German expressionism, realism, and hard-boiled fiction.75
The dominant world view expressed in film noir is paranoid, claustrophobic, hopeless, doomed, predetermined by the past, without clear moral or personal identity. Man has been inexplicably uprooted from those values, beliefs, and endeavors that offer him meaning and stability, and in the almost exclusively urban landscape of film noir (in pointed contrast to the pastoral, idealized, remembered past) he is struggling for a foothold in a maze of right and wrong. He has no reference points, no moral base from which to confidently operate. Any previous framework is cut loose and morality becomes relative, both externally (the world) and internally (the character and his relations to his work, his friends, his sexuality). Values, like identities, are constantly shifting and must be redefined at every turn. Nothing – especially women – is stable, nothing is dependable.76 Film noir portrayed how women in the work world were considered during the War period. Women in the workforce made them seem more sexual and tough compared to traditional perceptions as homemakers. For example, in The Postman Always Rings Twice, female sexuality was more emphasized for veterans and as a reflection of working women who had to improve their toughness and be more independent during the war. This resulted in the femme fetale often found in film noir. “The femme fetale was deviant, a spider woman, frustrated and guilty, half man-eater, blasé and cornered, she falls victim to her own wiles.”77
In Double Indemnity, it shows the harshness of life during the war time. The male protagonist character (Walter Neff) is misogynistic, reflecting the true life perception of society’s concern over changing gender roles. The story was more true to life in the psychological aspects it conveyed and how the violent death was prevalent during the war era. It shows that if you commit a crime, you will be caught in the end.
Double Indemnity was significant to the development of film noir because it was able to use a story about crime that was previously not allowed. It could combine the realism of
75 Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.5. 76 Place, Jane, qtd in Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.51. 77 Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War 2 and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), p.7. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 66 the war and the psychological aspects as a result of living in this period. It also showed how
American culture, economic constraints, and the Hollywood institution affected its development.
Noir can also represent the middle-class struggle of resistance to corporatization.
During the war, this is reflected in people having to conform to factory regulations and working conditions, unable to work independently. In Double Indemnity this feeling of being controlled is realized through the protagonist Walter Neff, as he has to deal with the mundane lifestyle of being an insurance salesman with every day being the same.
In examining how film noir became relevant, one needs to look at the period in which it was produced.
Film movements occur in specific historical periods – at times of national stress and focus of energy. They express a consistency of both thematic and formal elements which makes them particularly expressive of those times, and are uniquely able to express the homogenous hopes (Soviet Socialist Realism and Italian Neo-Realism) and fears (German Expressionism and film noir) brought to the fore by, for example, the upheaval of war.78 This concept of fear is significant as it conveys the primary feeling of the war time.
This feeling of fear was manifested through losing one’s identity, instability, and a lack of security.
2.6 Traditional Gender Roles and the Femme Fetale
Another effect the war had was in the viewership of movies. Noir films primarily targeted men fighting overseas and women in the workforce. This changing demographic in society subsequently affected the types of characters shown in films. This is especially true for femme fetale characters. Angela Martin states, “The literal translation (and meaning) of the French term ‘femme fetale’ is the ‘fatal woman’; dictionary definitions of ‘fatal’ include:
1) causing or capable of causing death, 2) ruinous, disastrous, 3) decisively important, 4)
78 Place, Jane, qtd in Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.49. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 67 destined, inevitable. The femme fetale carries all these levels of meaning, hence the easy slippage from deadliness to sexuality as a weapon.”79 As women were more independent and autonomous during the war, this spilled over into the big screen. The femme fetale characters also embodied these traits. Next, as men faced life-or-death situations in the war, the male protagonists in noir films also lived in violent surroundings and had to defend their lives.
The roles of females in the movie industry as well as the female actors in noir films changed during this time. As many prominent male actors went to fight in the war, it left a vacuum for established people to fill this vacuum. As women were becoming more popular as movie stars, it gave many of the famous female actors of noir films a chance to show their acting abilities. The female characters even became more complex like in the movies Mildred
Pierce and The Big Sleep.
During the war, then, women were given greater and more prominent roles in noir films and even some titles were named after a female character (like Mildred Pierce, Gilda, and Rebecca) to show that they were the main attractions of the movies. Mildred Pierce reveals how women were given increasingly bigger roles on the movie screen. It portrays the conflict between women’s traditional domestic roles and their newfound roles in the wake of the war. The femme fetale characters were a threat to traditional male masculinity. In line with this increased presence on the screen, the movies became less masculine. However, after the war was over, the trend became more masculine again as soldiers returned home.
In Mildred Pierce, it shows the effect society had on pulling between traditional and modern gender roles in a war-torn society. Mildred is very ambitious and works as hard as she can to improve her financial position and support her two daughters after her husband leaves her for another woman (Mrs. Maggie Biederhof). Although Mildred would be admired
79 Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.206. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 68 and considered courageous in today’s society, at that time and in the film, no one helps her in the upbringing of her children. Mildred’s daughters, Vera and Kay, are vehicles for Mildred to express her inner longings. But the efforts that Mildred puts forth end up backfiring on her, as Kay dies while Mildred is having a romantic liaison with another man (Monty Beragon), and Veda turns into a spoiled rotten teenager and has no respect for everything her mother has sacrificed for her. The underlying message in the film is that women should not be too ambitious and look after their families first. The business world is best left to men. The film strives to convey a message that women should not convert their maternal energies into something business-related. The husband is the breadwinner and the wife only works to supplement her husband’s income.
In the noir mood/genre, usually a femme fetale acts as a challenge to the patriarchal world view. In traditional patriarchal novels and films, females are generally placed in safe or traditional gender roles and men are their protectors. The femme fetale challenges this role and is characteristically in an unsafe or dangerous position. For noir films, the male protagonist will succeed in his quest if he can destroy the femme fetale and put the traditional gender roles back in their proper place. If he does not succeed, he will meet his own demise
(like in Double Indemnity) and the femme fetale will die or be imprisoned. When females do not act in their traditional roles as housewives, then it allows for their sexuality to surface and threaten traditional gender roles in a patriarchal society. This is found in Mildred Pierce, as
Mildred becomes the head of the family when her husband leaves her. It disrupts the balance of a family head being a male and results in many problems for Mildred until she decides to get back together with her husband and the proper gender balance is restored. Next, in
Double Indemnity, Phyllis Dietrichson causes havoc with the traditional patriarchal family structure by killing the wife/mother and replacing her. Then she conspires in the killing of her husband, Mr. Dietrichson, all the while not being a motherly figure to her step-daughter. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 69
Since Phyllis destroys the family and does not act as a proper woman should, she eventually meets her own demise at the end of the novel and film. Therefore, knowing one’s position is important; if you dare to go outside of your predetermined place, you will be met with calamity. When looking at the role of the femme fetale in a classic noir work, it can be done by examining the patriarchal ideology and importance of adhering to it during the WWII crisis. Or one can also examine the attitudes of a patriarchal society and bring to the forefront criticism about it to give females better standing in society.
In its connection with society, film noir can be analyzed in relation with its presence or absence of a stable family unit. In traditional American values, the harmonious family unit is important, consisting of a husband, wife, and children, with the husband the breadwinner and the wife the dutiful homemaker. This perception was promoted through various forms of media as a core American value. These traditional roles were disrupted with the onset of
WWII, and the changes were highlighted through noir films. “Like an echo chamber, film noir captures and magnifies the rumbles that preceded one of those earthquakes in human history that shift the hidden foundations of a society, and which begin the displacement of its characteristic and dominant systems of values and beliefs.”80 This essentially means that noir films show the displacement and changes in American values during the WWII era. The abnormal or undesirable behaviors and characteristics of various characters in noir literature and screen adaptations are the manifestations of undesirable changes attacking the traditional core of American family values.
Noir films are different from common stories that have a diffusion of tension, plot resolution, and completion of an individual quest. In noir films there is generally no problem resolution or completion of a goal. The characters typically fail to achieve their desired
80 Harvey, Silvia, qtd in Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.35. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 70 objectives, or they reach their goals at great sacrifice. In a sense, there is disequilibrium throughout that is conveyed not only in the plot but also in the visual and sound styles with disturbing visual schemes, angles, frames, light contrasts, and unsettling sound effects that become the norm of this particular film style. This particular world view is different from
American films in general. As many films contain particular values of a society, when these beliefs are violated or subverted in some way, it is generally easy to recognize. This is especially true when these values deal with the family institution and violate family values in some ways, which is the case of noir films.
A typical family in a Western industrialized nation values love for one’s father, family members, and country. There are established dominant and submissive roles within the family that characterize the society at large. Film noir is different in its representation of the family as it “presents family relations as broken, perverted, peripheral, or impossible; and founds itself upon the absence of the family. In certain ways, the representation of women in this group of films reflects the ‘normal’ status of women within contemporary social relations. The two most common types of women in film noir are the exciting, childless whores, or the boring, potentially childbearing sweethearts.”81 As a result, common family relations and values are disrupted in noir literature and films. This disruption is visibly apparent in Mildred Pierce. Mildred prioritizes her career and business over her children. She is also not warm or friendly with her husband or boyfriend and seems detached. In Double
Indemnity, Walter Neff is seen as having a boring and mundane life, which attracts him to the femme fetale Phyllis Dietrichson, who is more of a sexual object of desire for him rather than someone he considers as a lifelong partner or with whom he can share his innermost thoughts. Oftentimes, femme fetales only provide temporary satisfaction for the male protagonist. Femme fetales are considered as prized possessions for men only, and ultimately
81 Harvey, Silvia, qtd in Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.38. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 71 they cannot own these women as the male protagonists are deceived, used, or thrown to the wayside, ending in mutual destruction for both characters or a life of unhappiness if they do not change their negative behaviors. However, Walter does not get Phyllis, as he states in the movie, “I didn’t get the woman and I didn’t get the money.” This is a common reoccurrence in noir films for the male protagonists. They ultimately fail in achieving their goals and live a life of unhappiness and despair or ultimately die before their dreams are realized.
In noir films, the characters often find sexual gratification outside the confines of marriage and are not actively involved in their family lives. In Double Indemnity this is apparent as Phyllis wants Walter for financial reasons and because of boredom with her husband, while Walter wants Phyllis because she is sexually stimulating. However, as the
HUAC and the censorship bureau did not support the depiction of un-American ideals such as adultery, the characters ultimately succumbed to their sins and died. The censorship bureau wanted to emphasize that all couples should be monogamous and not engage in illicit affairs.
If spouses are not faithful to each other, it will result in their mutual destruction. Therefore, the absence of normal family relations in noir films serves as a reminder of how people should conduct themselves and adhere to the proper social values.
In traditional family values, it was desirable for Americans to get married and have a harmonious life through having children and owning a house. In noir films these values are often subverted or the characters that do have families live together unhappily. This is due to the fact that there was some discord and confusion about where America was going in the future. Americans had to re-consider whether the established American ideals during the foundation of the nation still applied or not. This identity crisis can be seen in the noir characters’ personalities as well. In Mildred Pierce, Bert loses his job in the real estate agency he created with Wally, showing society’s uneasiness about their futures after the war PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 72 is over. During the war many jobs were created to support the war effort. After the war, these jobs were no longer necessary, making people worrisome about what the future held for them. Mildred Pierce reflects the identity crisis she faces as she reveals early on that she seems to be in a rut with her domestic role and aspires to achieve more but does not have the necessary skills to do so. She supports this belief at the beginning of the film by saying, “I was always in the kitchen. I felt as though I had been born in a kitchen and lived there all my life, except for the few hours it took to get married. I married Bert when I was 17. I never knew any other kind of life, just cooking, cleaning, and washing.” So, Mildred sells pies to try to connect the domestic world with the business world. Therefore, this movie depicts the changing gender roles during WWII and the difficulties people had in knowing their roles in a changing society.
Film noir is important in terms of gender roles because it shows women can be more than just housewives and obedient to their husbands. Although these films are not necessarily progressive in their depictions of women, they do at least show that women can use their sexual wiles to achieve money, power, or favors. Furthermore, women play active roles, whereas in previous films they were not lead characters and only played passive roles. This is related with the changing roles of women in society during the war.
The film industry was significant in conveying the proper ideologies of the noir period as women were thrust into the workforce during WWII. “Mythology is remarkably responsive to changing needs in the society; in roles for example – when it was necessary for women to work in factories during World War II and then necessary to channel them back into the home after the war.”82 Related to noir films in the 1940s, the femme fetales and criminals would always be destroyed if they did not reform, thus supporting the myth of the
82 Place, Jane, qtd in Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.47. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 73 time about proper social conduct. In discussing the character Phyllis Dietrichson, played by
Barbara Stanwyck, she said, “It is not their inevitable demise we remember but rather their strong, dangerous, and above all, exciting sexuality.”83 This is a valid observation because even though Phyllis Dietrichson dies, she is more remembered for the femme fetale persona rather than her ultimate death.
Although the femme fetale is commonly associated with noir films and literature as a reflection of societal concerns about changing gender roles, these entertainment formats also portrayed women in a different light based on their actual functions in society.
Noir does offer its share of amoral seductresses and conniving criminals, but it also give us wives, mothers, and nurses; businesswomen and writers; secretaries, singers, sleuths, and social workers; psychologists, physicians, prison guards, wardens – and even professors. In fact, most women in film noir work, and their forms of labor closely reflect the actual postwar US female workforce.84 The femme fetales are characterized as having traits that are contrary to those expected of women in the 1940s who maintain their traditional values. As America was a society in transition, these femme fetales personify the changes that were happening during this turbulent time. Femme fetales displayed their sensuality by smoking cigarettes with trails of smoke emanating from their cigarettes. They also could be found in dark, seedy, and undesirable locations for women who do not hold on to their traditional values. Femme fetales also wear less clothing than traditional “good” girls. This perception can be seen when
Velma in Murder, My Sweet first appears in the movie. She is proud to show off her long, sensuous, and sexy legs, which threatens traditional American values about how a proper lady should conduct herself in public. The focus on sexy clothing is further found in the character Cora (played by Lana Turner) in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Here the camera intentionally focuses on her bare legs, then moves to her whole body, back to the
83 Place, Jane, qtd in Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.48. 84 Osteen, Mark. Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012), p.185. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 74 male protagonist, and then to Cora’s face to show that she can seduce him. Phyllis
Dietrichson’s legs (in Double Indemnity) are also a point of observation for the male protagonist (Walter Neff) as he pays close attention to her legs when he first sees her at the top of the stairs of her house as she slowly walks down them to greet him. He even makes a comment about the gold anklet that has her name engraved on it. Phyllis is first shown just wrapped in a towel, which is not acceptable attire to meet a stranger. The camera angles, lighting, and movement are further manipulated to emphasize the sensual nature of these women. In comparing these femme fetales with the socially preferred “good” girls, the
“good” girls generally do not have the camera shots focus on specific parts of their bodies or follow their movements. The camera does not move, reflecting that these women are just plain or uninteresting characters. Femme fetales are also obsessed with their beauty and enjoy admiring themselves in mirrors while ignoring or teasing other men. The traditional “good” girl is not narcissistic and tends to dote on the men in her life (father, brother, husband, and boyfriend). These movies convey the impression that women who flaunt their sexuality are dangerous to men and themselves, as well as if women in the real world imitate this kind of behavior then it will lead to erosion of these traditional values.
Mildred Pierce is an interesting reflection of society in that it depicts a failing patriarchal societal order, which is due in large part to women’s significant increase in the labor market. The film conveys a conflict of past and present ideals as well as confusion for what the future will hold for family values. Even Mildred’s daughter, Veda, is an extreme example of what can happen when they abandon the traditional patriarchal values that society has set for them to adhere to. Veda is a rotten, deceitful, self-centered, greedy, promiscuous, and emotional girl, who gets worse with age. Veda becomes increasingly money-oriented as all her humanity is drained from her. She can be considered as a negative reflection of her mother’s strong desire to improve her social standing. Veda commits many inhumane acts PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 75 throughout the movie like being insensitive to her mother’s struggles. Veda is never seen helping her mother develop her business or assisting with making pies or helping out around the house. Veda also often ridicules and snickers at her mother for how she earns a living.
Veda blackmails her rich boyfriend, claiming to be pregnant to get his parents to come to a
$10,000 financial settlement, and then laughs about it later. Veda has an affair with Beragon, even though he is married to her mother at the time. Veda murders Beragon and goes to jail with no remorse, but later blames her mom by saying, “It’s your fault the way I am.” The worst parts of Mildred’s social and financial ambitions seem to be manifested in Veda, who becomes more horrendous as time passes. The movie conveys that this will be the state of modern women if they do not return to their motherly roles post-WWII. At the end of the film, Mildred goes back to Bert again. The last scene depicts Mildred and Bert walking out of the police station together under an arch-shaped doorway that is made to look heavenly, and they pass two women cleaning the floor on their knees. Perhaps this can depict a sort of reminder for women that they are condemned to be in a traditional household role and should not try to penetrate a male-dominated business world. The film seems to show females in a disadvantageous position no matter what decisions they make. The film tries to convey that when women neglect their traditional female roles as being nurturing and maternal for professional careers, it causes havoc in their personal and home lives.
The misogyny and fear of women pictured in many noir films is an extension of the problem of women not being faithful to their spouses or boyfriends fighting in the war as well as women who enjoyed a sense of independence by earning their own paychecks during the war and not wanting to return to the domestic sphere just to be homemakers again.
Therefore, the femme fetale plays an essential role in affecting the morality and psychology of the male protagonist. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 76
Characters who had been righteous, stable, and paragons of responsibility all their adult lives were seamlessly and quite believably transformed in a few seconds into reckless, dangerous, and even murderous types, all suggesting that anyone, in the right (or wrong) circumstances, was capable of almost anything and that one’s own sincere avowals of one’s own basic principles could be ludicrously self-deceived.85 2.7 Film and Storyline Variations in Depicting Societal Problems
Like Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice also uses voiceover narration. The story also resembles Double Indemnity, in that when the male protagonist
Frank Chambers (played by John Garfield) first gets a look at the bare legs of the femme fetale Cora Smith (played by Lana Turner), he becomes infatuated with her, which eventually leads to them killing Cora’s older husband, Nick Smith (played by Cecil Kellaway). This film has many of the characteristics of a typical noir movie of the WWII era like the storyline, the doomed and alienated antihero, the femme fetale who meets her own demise for her bad behavior, and a scheme to commit a crime that eventually backfires on them when Cora is killed and Frank is imprisoned. This film also rejects traditional concepts about morality and has a strong degree of pessimism. The flashbacks are also combined with the voiceover narration.
The non-traditional narrations are obvious in many noir films. For example, in The
Postman Always Rings Twice flashbacks are used to tell the story. Next, in The Big Sleep the plot is sometimes confusing as many characters are involved in various subplots that do not seem to be interrelated at first. Also, the way the characters act and what motivates them seem to be illogical to how most people would act. This is seen in The Postman Always Rings
Twice when Frank and Cora fail to kill Nick the first time as he recovers in the hospital and is sent home, and they try to kill Nick a second time, not considering the risk involved in being found out by the District Attorney. Besides that, Frank is very easily taken in with Cora as
85 Pippin, Robert B. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy. (Virginia: The University of Virginia Press, 2012), p.7. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 77 when he first meets her in the diner, he is immediately infatuated with her and kisses her, knowing that her husband is in the next room.
The pessimism found in noir movies can be traced to the hard-boiled literary works that preceded the films. Many noir movies that are not based on particular crime/detective stories still borrow from the mood and style found within them. The hard-boiled style is often apparent in the beginning of the story as in the beginning of the novel Strangers on a Train
(1950, which was later turned into a noir film) by Patricia Highsmith.
The train tore along with an angry, irregular rhythm. It was having to stop at smaller and more frequent stations, where it would wait impatiently for a moment, then attack the prairie again. But progress was imperceptible. The prairie only undulated, like a vast, pink-tan blanket being casually shaken. The faster the train went, the more buoyant and taunting the undulations.86 Or classic writers like James M. Cain would write their novels in a short non-descript style with a 1st-person narrative in a reporting form. These writing styles would be carried over into the film versions in a more extreme and exaggerated manner in conveying the tone and mood of the novels and short stories. Therefore, the existential outlook on life and mood is primarily transferred from the literary works to the films, while the filmmaking techniques are extensions to heighten the mood and tone in noir films.
Double Indemnity is a unique film in starting the film noir movement in several ways.
Although it contains no explicit sex or violence, it defies the PCA in at least three ways, which were spelled out by the Breen Office in a March 15, 1943, report to Paramount: first, it depicts an attractive pair of murderers who cheat the law and die at their own hands; second, it deals ‘improperly’ with the theme of adultery; and third, it is replete with explicit details of the planning of a murder.87 In analyzing the character of Walter Neff, he is portrayed as someone who is obsessed with sex and money, as he is easily manipulated by Phyllis Dietrichson. In addition, Walter
Neff is seen to be not very clever, dependent, and lacking heroic qualities. In this film and
86 Highsmith, Patricia. Strangers on a Train. (USA: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001), p.1. 87 Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2008), p.82. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 78 others of the type, they offer a negative view of modernization and industrialization. The characters are seen as lacking humanity and their surrounding environment supports this with a lack of human feeling in the props used in the settings. It creates more of a lifeless and cold environment. For example, in Walter Neff’s office, the only decorations are just statistical charts related to the business; there is nothing there to reveal what the insurance company agents are like on the inside or details about their personal lives. Even Walter’s apartment has a cold and detached feeling to it with no decorations anywhere. It is almost like he does not really live there.
The correlation with social problems and noir can be seen in Chandler’s novel
Farewell, My Lovely (1940) and its screen adaptation Murder, My Sweet. Here Chandler shows how an ex-convict named Moose Malloy kills a black man in a bar with all black patrons in LA. The police do not seem to care about the case, because a black man is killed.
Philip Marlowe realizes that blacks do not hold the same standing in society as whites. Later in the novel many white people are killed, so that the black person killed initially is forgotten.
Chandler does this intentionally to show that you have to pay for justice. Black people live in a lower-class neighborhood and do not have as much financial pull as white people; this makes their livelihood not as important. However, crime is actually found all over. This is considered as being more of a social realist type of film for the time it was made.
In defining film noir, Broe believes it arose due to middle-class anxiety over increasing corporatization. He states that “film noir denotes the moment in the history of the crime film where ideas of the left dominated and, for a brief moment, dictated the structure of the genre. This left hegemony, in one genre of the culture industry for one short period (1945- PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 79
1950), represented on the screen the coming together of a dominant bloc of working – and middle-class interests.”88
Noir’s alienated characters act out antisocial urges shared by their audiences. These characters – amnesiacs, ephebes, cynical men on the make, convicts, feckless adventurers, gullible youngsters, detectives enticed by mysterious women, gangsters and thieves, traumatized veterans, female professors, boxers – become sites where anxieties about identity, class, agency, individualism technology, consumerism, race, gender, and trauma are played out, thereby reflecting and shaping the consciousness of a culture.89 In essence, Osteen claims that noir films enabled issues to be brought to the forefront of a society in transition.
Osteen goes further by showing the correlation between dreams and films. He claims that “If films are dreams, so dreams are often films.”90 He elaborates further by stating that some cinematic dreams are mise en abyme: dreams within a movie that allude to other movie dreams.91 Vicky Lebeau notes, “Because dreams inevitably partake of the culture at large, dream theory supports a psychoanalytical study of culture.”92 Osteen believes this perspective applies to noir films, because they often deal with bad dreams. Therefore, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts are often found in these films. This can also represent the real-life psychological problems veterans had in readjusting with society after the war and the psychological traumas and turmoil they had to endure. Osteen states that various noir films want the viewers to examine characters as dreamers and analysts in a psychological perspective.
Disabilities and trauma are also themes found in noir that parallel the real-life disabilities and emotional traumas experienced by WWII veterans. In Murder, My Sweet,
88 Broe, Dennis. Film Noir, American Workers, and Postwar Hollywood. (Florida: University Press of Florida, 2009), p.31. 89 Osteen, Mark. Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012), p.15. 90 Ibid, p.21. 91 Ibid, p.21. 92 Ibid, p.21. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 80
Philip Marlowe is temporarily blind, which can signify his moral flaws. He is unable to realize that Velma Valento has turned herself into the wealthy Helen Grayle. A common noir narrative for detectives is that of a quest for truth and identity. Marlow pursues Velma which symbolizes his own search to discover himself by encountering alter egos like Moose Mallow and Lindsay Marriott. This is similar with American veterans who are emotionally or physically scarred trying to find themselves and reestablish their masculinity after the war and reestablish their places in society.
Another aspect of noir that is occasionally present is that of a drifter. These films were made mostly around the end of World War II and generally involve gambling. In The
Postman Always Rings Twice, the protagonist character is a drifter who comes into town and gets involved with the power structure there. Related with the societal situation at the time, this film depicts class conflicts as the protagonist represents the working class, and the power structure represents the upper class. “With their protagonist on the outside looking in, these films present highly charged class conflict, since the disparity between the protagonist and his or her wealthy patron or opponent (or patron revealed to be an opponent), whose riches have often been acquired illegally, forms the central and very explicit tension of the film.”93
Usually the protagonist commits a crime because of desperation, while the upper class foe of the protagonist engages in criminal actions to make a profit.
2.8 Noir Detective Stories
The detective genre is one kind of theme that is commonly used in noir literature and films. Raymond Chandler is one such detective writer that wrote from the perspective of
Detective Philip Marlowe. Usually the storylines deal with a criminal underworld, crimes related to passion and greed, and characters that are outside mainstream society. The
93 Broe, Dennis. Film Noir, American Workers, and Postwar Hollywood. (Florida: University Press of Florida, 2010), p.63. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 81 characters are commonly portrayed as being tortured, paranoid, harsh, and doomed. The femme fetale best lives in this kind of an environment. The good, nurturing, and traditional woman sometimes is sacrificed for the protagonist.
For classic noir detective stories, the most popular private dicks are Sam Spade,
Phillip Marlowe, and Mike Hammer. Some of the primary characteristics of them are as being cold, expressionless, detached, and not really caring about their environment since they cannot find any redeeming purpose. They usually meet criminals who are self-absorbed and overcome by their own worries. These detectives find the culprits in the end, as they are undone by their own criminal actions. The criminals are unable to escape from the mazes in which they live as they are ultimately caught. This concept of being in a maze and the detective having to traverse the noir world going down different paths is a common theme.
The maze can be literally going through the city landscape but also related to the human condition or a self-discovery as characters try to find themselves on a quest.
In comparing Sherlock Holmes with the classic detectives, Porfirio gives a unique perspective.
The pre-existential world of the classical detective was ordered and meaningful; social aberrations were temporary and quickly righted through the detective’s superior powers of deductive reasoning. A product of a rather smug Western society, such a world reflected a Victorian sense of order and a belief in the supremacy of science. The hard-boiled writers replaced this with a corrupt, chaotic world where the detective’s greatest asset was the sheer ability to survive with a shred of dignity.94 This essentially means that there is a way out in Sherlock Holmes’ stories but not in classic noir detective stories.
For all detective characters, starting from Edgar Allen Poe’s Monsieur C. Auguste
Dupin to Sherlock Holmes to Sam Spade to Phillip Marlowe to Mike Hammer, etc., they deal
94 Porfirio, “No Way Out”, from Abrams, Jerold J., from “Sherlock Holmes to the Hard-Boiled Detective in Film Noir”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.75. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 82 with detectives that are between the world of the police and the world of criminals. Usually detectives can think more like criminals; this makes them smarter than the police in solving crimes. They use non-standard methods to solve cases which put them at odds with the police. Usually detectives are isolated from their surroundings and enjoy living like that.
However, when examining noir detectives more closely, they are even more alone than their predecessors. This makes them even more anti-social. They are generally angrier, feel hopeless, and amoral. They do not necessarily care if other characters like them or not.
This is evident in the film The Big Sleep when Phillip Marlowe says, “I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. I don’t like them myself. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them long winter evenings.” Usually classic noir detectives wear trench coats, work at nights, are not very conversational but clever in using words, have deadpan expressions, are strong, but are not very big or tall. Even Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep remarks about not being too tall,
“Well, I try to be.” Philip Marlowe as a detective is smart, independent, and heroic with his own way outside of the law.
These characteristics are different from Sherlock Holmes, who is tall and lanky.
Usually Sherlock Holmes has time to rest and enjoy himself, but classic noir detectives always seem to be stressed and in a hurry. Classic noir detectives do not like to make small talk or beat around the bush as it wastes their time. Sherlock Holmes has Watson as his trusted companion, but classic noir detectives do not trust anyone and are always very suspicious of others.
The classic noir detectives are considered as being more familiar with common people as they have more traits that ordinary people can relate to. It is different with Sherlock
Holmes who is smarter and more gifted than anyone he encounters, as he can solve crimes PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 83 with much less effort than classic noir detectives. For classic noir detective films, common people can better imagine themselves doing some of the same actions.
Another difference is seen in what motivates classic noir detectives and their predecessors. For classic noir detectives, they are motivated by money. As they are common working-class people, they need money for their livelihoods. Therefore, Phillip Marlowe will only take a case if there is a financial incentive for him to do so. In contrast, Dupin and
Holmes are higher class individuals who take cases because they are intellectually challenging and stimulating. They consider solving crimes as more of a game.
The primary differences between noir detectives and their predecessors are depicted in Table 3 (pg.177). The change in detective stories from Sherlock Holmes to become more noir-like is seen in the American working-class pulp fiction stories that became quite popular in the early 20th century. These stories were interesting for the middle and lower classes, so the detectives had to be molded to fit the preferred trend in the literary style of the period.
In examining the role of private detectives in film noir, Deborah Knight elaborates.
Private detectives have a privileged place in the world of film noir, a genre itself identified with stories that take place down dark streets, skirt the edges of the law, and involve deception and double-crossing. Film noir private detectives typically operate among a host of morally dubious characters pursuing their own gain at whatever cost. They are hard-boiled – that is, they are tough, cynical individualists who have a history of ill-will toward more obviously legitimate, although invariable plodding, representations of the law, such as police detectives and district attorneys. They must inevitably – considering the petty criminals and other lowlifes with whom they associate – look out for themselves.95 Film noir detectives are different from classic detectives, in that noir detectives enter a situation in media res, which means in the middle of an ongoing problems or action. In contrast, classic detectives are hired to solve a case where the crime has already been committed, and they just need to retrace the events leading up to the crime. Noir detectives
95 Knight, Deborah, “On Reason and Passion in the Maltese Falcon”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.208. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 84 are in a more chaotic or unstable situation, since the story can proceed in a number of ways based on their direct involvement in it. Noir detectives have to be suspicious of their clients, so they do not get tricked by them. However, General Sternwood (played by Charles
Waldron) in The Big Sleep is not a deceitful client. He is an elderly and sick man confined to a wheelchair that does not have any bad intentions toward Phillip Marlowe. But Sternwood is not completely sure of what he wants Marlowe to discover, which puts Marlowe in a precarious position as he does not know what possible dangers or obstacles that he may face.
Since film noir detectives have to face uncertain circumstances, they have to possess a certain tough guy image and be cynical of those people they encounter to avoid being tricked.
Another difference between film noir detectives and classic ones is that noir detectives are more involved emotionally and morally in their cases, whereas classic detectives just consider the facts of the crimes that have already been committed.
Related with detective stories in novels by classic writers like Hammet and Chandler, the detectives changed from being upper class characters like Sherlock Holmes to more working class detectives (like Philip Marlow in Chandler’s novels) that demand getting paid for cases, use direct and harsh language, and are contrary to the law. This characterization is also reflective of detective characters in Chandler’s film adaptations as a result of societal constraints during the war.
The Philip Marlowe character created by Chandler has some of his same social views.
Philip Marlowe is also cynical of the law and big businesspeople and thinks they are mostly corrupt. Many of the movies with Philip Marlowe deal with the themes of corruption, the law, decency, and chaos with the tarnished persona of Marlowe having to live in this kind of a world. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 85
In considering the typical characteristics of the male hero in this kind of film, he was usually a tough character that had equally tough dialog, as portrayed in Humphrey Bogart in many of his movies during the 1940s. As biographer Stefen Kanfer wrote, “His characters usually showed a combination of bitterness and amusement at a world of duplicity; they were men whose great expectations had been defeated by events. Bogart’s face was a mask, a carapace meant to cover the psychic injuries of a decent man trying to forget the past.”96
Humphrey Bogart became a popular actor for the noir type of film because he had a tough, introspective, and emotionally repressed persona who enjoyed drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. These are common traits of noir male protagonists during the 1940s. Therefore,
Humphrey Bogart can be considered the iconic figure in film noir. His characterization also reflects the many concerns and doubts about the people living in that period and uncertainties about the future. Many of these characters have flatness in their voices and cynicism in their outlooks.
In Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Philip Marlowe works alone. He has his own personal code of honor and justice system. In this kind of a detective story, there is a usually a lot of corruption and the upholders of the law are incompetent. The private eye has to use violence and his street smarts to be able to solve a case. He will fail to change the world around him because of his idealism, and will eventually just solve the case he is working on and then wait for the next case without making a real difference in the world he lives.
Raymond Chandler’s Murder, My Sweet also deals with the theme of a hard-boiled detective who works alone and goes up against the law. This trend for detectives was common during World War II, as a reflection of societal conditions at the time. In Murder,
My Sweet, Philip Marlowe aligns himself with the working class society and is always
96 Kanfer, Stefen, qtd in Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. (New York: Nation Books, 2012), p.200. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 86 concerned about making sure he gets paid for the cases he takes. It is different with Sherlock
Holmes or other wealthy detectives of upper class society who have a romanticized notion of solving crimes just for the betterment of society and not necessarily due to some kind of financial motivation.
Marlowe shows his concern for economic matters in Murder, My Sweet by saying,
“I’m just a small businessman in a very messy business, but I’d like to follow through on the sale.” He also only works because he has to, not because of some higher calling or societal concern. He relays this viewpoint when the film begins. He does not want to take a divorce case but is forced to do it because he is low on money. He supports this by saying, “The only reason why I took the case was that my bank account was trying to crawl under a duck.”
Later on, he depicts his fixation with money by canceling a date because someone gives him
$20 to go find a person at a bar. There, a police officer comments to Marlow, “You’re not a detective, you’re a slot machine.”
“One of the most pronounced characteristics of the World War II and immediate postwar crime film was that the criminal is frequently a person of considerable political and social influence.”97 This refers to the fact that in certain crime or detective stories and their film adaptations, organized crime, business, and politics are intermingled. Murder, My Sweet has a similar theme but it deals more with police inaction, Marlow’s corrupt higher status boss, and how the upper class take control of their surroundings. This relates with the situation felt by workers at the home front during WWII being in a disadvantageous position due to government and business control. In Chandler’s other novels, there is a general criticism of the rich. In The Big Sleep this position is conveyed through General Sternwood and his daughters. Marlowe is distrustful of the wealthy and the way they live their lives.
97 Broe, Dennis. Film Noir, American Workers, and Postwar Hollywood. (Florida: University Press of Florida, 2010), p.22. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 87
Marlow shows his strong dislike for the wealthy in Murder, My Sweet by looking at the Grayle mansion and remarking, “The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than
Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California and probably had fewer windows than the
Chrysler building.”98 This is from the book version Farewell, My Lovely. In the film, the same sentiment is conveyed but in a slightly different manner. Referring to the house in the same scene, Marlow says, “It was a nice little front yard, cozy, only you’d need a compass to go to the mailbox.” Inside the house Marlowe further shows his dislike for the wealthy by stating, “It’s like waiting on a crypt in a museum” and asking the servant, “How do you get out of this box?”
Marlow’s dislike of the upper class is also apparent in Murder, My Sweet in how he views the psychiatrists and doctors. He finds them to be corrupt and fascist similar to the condition of WWII with the government overseeing the actions of the working class.
Marlowe accuses Dr. Amthor, a psychiatrist, of blackmailing. He also has a thick German accent, which is characteristic of the time for bad people, as Germany was the enemy of
America. The other primary doctor is named Sonderberg, which is German-sounding, to suggest he also has bad traits.
Usually these kinds of detectives try to make sense of the world they live in, similar to what American citizens experienced during the war. Another parallel of the early 1940s detective character in novels and films with real people of the period was that they generally felt targeted by the law. In Chandler’s novels, Marlowe develops his own sense of moral code because he does not have any faith in that of the society he lives. Real people of the war era felt targeted because the government limited them and threatened them as being un-American if they made any waves in the workplace. In Murder, My Sweet Marlowe gains the sympathy
98 Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep and Other Novels. (USA: Penguin Classics, 2000), p.122. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 88 of viewers from the beginning as he tells his story while being interrogated by the police as a sort of wronged man. The viewers can associate with Marlowe’s predicament better than that of the police. Marlowe is considered as a good guy in a tough predicament fighting against the government apparatus, being law enforcement here, just as common people of the early
1940s could relate to. Another characteristic of film noir is the voiceover narration. In this film, viewers will be more supportive of Marlowe as they can feel actively involved in the story as he is telling it firsthand.
Therefore, in looking at the correlations between noir films of the early and mid
1940s, in the early years the detectives are more representative of law enforcement. Likewise, common people were more apt to follow government and company regulations. However, as the war dragged on, the detective was made to be more of a disillusioned character who struggles against the system. This was also the case for regular Americans after years of hardships, rising prices, fixed wages, and unsafe working conditions, they started to become restless and eager for changes that matched their hopes for the future.
In summary, the World War II era had a great effect on the film industry and how hardboiled crime and detective literary works were converted to film adaptations. The social, cultural, and political factors of the time affected the individuals, materials, storylines, and censorship of noir films.
2.9 Theoretical Framework
2.9.1 Existentialism at a Glance
In relating Schopenhauer’s concept of life, Porfiro explains what is meant by existentialism. “Existentialism is an outlook which begins with a disoriented individual facing a confused world that he cannot accept. It places its emphasis on man’s contingency in PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 89 a world where there are no transcendental values or moral absolutes, a world devoid of any meaning but the one man himself creates.”99 From The American Heritage Dictionary, existentialism can be considered as “a philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts.”100
“The term existentialism was coined toward the end of the Second World War by the
French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, as a label for the emerging ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre, whose ‘Being and Nothingness’ was first published in 1944.”101 Related with this, William
Barrett states that it is a philosophy for modern experiences and can “cross the frontier from the Academy into the world at large.”102 Barrett argues the main characteristics of existentialism are “alienation and estrangement; a sense of the basic fragility and contingency of human life; the impotence of reason confronted with the depths of existence; the threat of nothingness, and the solitary and unsheltered condition of the individual before this threat.”103
This is also in line with Sartre’s famous saying “Existence precedes essence”. This essentially means that there are no transcendent values or moral absolutes, which is counter to the traditional Puritan values that America was founded on. Sartre believes that people are always trying to define themselves and make their own identities based on all the experiences they accumulate over the years.
99 Porfiro, “No Way Out”, from Schuchardt, Read Mercer, “Cherchez La Femme Fetale: The Mother of Film Noir”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.59. 100 http://ahdictionary.com/. Accessed on April 6th, 2014. Web. 101 Cooper, David E., “Existentialism”, from Spicer, Andrew, “Problems of Memory and Identity in Neo-Noir’s Exitentialist Hero”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009), p.48. 102 Barrett, William, “Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy”, from Spicer, Andrew, “Problems of Memory and Identity in Neo-Noir’s Existentialist Hero”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009), p.48. 103 Ibid, p.48. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 90
Most scholars generally agree that French existentialist philosophy did not directly influence the noir literary works and films, but there are still parallels that can be seen in the themes, outlook, and tone. Some of the philosophical themes present in noir works include pessimism, moral ambiguity, acting out of passion instead of reason, and debating the meaning of life. Although there is no direct proof that noir ideals were influenced directly by existentialism or certain existentialists, this framework can be applied to examine the general sentiments of America beginning in the early 1940s in relation to wartime worries and the changing cultural climate brought about by the war and capitalism. Alan Woolfolk had an idea about the connection of noir with society. “The desolate urban landscapes of classic film noir complemented a societal backdrop of dead and corrupt purposes, ranging from middle- class conformity and faceless bureaucracies to corruption at the top among social and political elites.”104 The biggest writers to influence this way of thinking to the noir mood were Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Cornell Woolrich, as well as to a certain extent Ernest Hemmingway and William Faulkner.
The existentialism mindset prevalent in noir works is contrary to the philosophical position of Immanuel Kant, who was a moral idealist. He believed that people as rational individuals had to have a deep understanding of their moral obligations. Kant believed that people clearly know the difference between right and wrong, even if circumstances sometimes prevented them from acting in the proper way. Kant believed that people would innately turn to their moral code of justice and duty when needed. Kant was convinced that all people could judge between moral and immoral actions. However, in noir films and literature this positivistic approach is put to the test as characters may kill, maim, or commit some other heinous crimes just because they enjoy it without any sense of remorse or guilt for
104 Woolfolk, Alan, “The Horizon of Disenchantment: Film Noir, Camus, and the Vicissitudes of Descent”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.107. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 91 what they have done. In his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant wrote, “Thinking about the moral law within me was the most elevating of all natural and human wonders.”105 Kant was basically trying to say that people can get the most enjoyment from realizing their own mistakes or carefully thinking about something before taking an action to ensure that they act on their own moral principles. Kant believed that people could control their desires by using reason first. Kant tried to use reasoning skills through a set of maxims about reaching one’s desired goals, meaning if you want “X” then you must do “Y”. For example, if you want to get a good grade, then you should study hard. Kant tried to use practical reasoning and moral reasoning to show how humans think in striving to achieve particular goals. However, he did not consider if someone was completely without moral or practical reasoning. There may be serial killers or other kinds of vicious criminals who do something wicked just because they enjoy it and have no morality in them (like in Kalifornia (1993), The Silence of the Lambs
(1991), and Seven (1995)). It is this dark side of humanity that existentialism explores in noir films and literary works. The characters have varying degrees of morality but generally tend to convey an existential mindset. Kant thought that the only way a person would not feel guilt or responsibility was that if the person suffered a mental defect or had some kind of a major trauma that affected the person’s moral or reasoning skills.
Although the Enlightenment philosophy of Germany and France was existentialism in the 19th and early 20th century, it can still be applied to America in the mid-20th century.
During the Enlightenment period, there were noteworthy advancements in science, technology, and education. As the world was moving away from a religious foundation and more to a scientific one, there were concerns that this would lead to an increase in crime, greed, self-centeredness, various kinds of oppression, and war. Some of the noteworthy
105 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Practical Reason, from Berger, Douglas L., “The Murder of Moral Idealism: Kant and the Death of Ian Campbell in The Onion Field”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009), p.69. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 92 existentialists that examined the dark side of humanity were Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Sartre,
Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Heidegger, Camus, Jaspers, and others. When applied to the mid-
20th century, the various threats that supported an existential perspective were the Great
Depression, WWII, the atomic era, the nuclear era, and Communism.
An existential philosophical perspective can be applied when considering the social conditions of a particular era like WWII or any other time where the dark side of humanity is more prone to surface. Related to noir films, the dark styles and themes of the WWII era were not identified by Americans themselves as necessarily being noir. Perhaps this is because they were living in the time and became accustomed to this style of filming. At the time,
Americans considered them crime, detective, or melodrama films. Only several years later after the war was over and these films were able to be shown in French cinemas were the
French able to provide illumination and insight into the style of filmmaking, which they then referred to as noir. The philosophical themes that had emerged in noir films were centered on greed, anxiety, corruption, violence, and oppression, which were increasing societal problems at the time. As alienation is a primary theme of noir, it can be aptly applied to the societal condition of the World War II era. Alienation is essentially a feeling of being out of place in society. It can relate to nostalgia and thinking about how a lifestyle used to be, and then coming to the realization that one will never be able to return to that time or something resembling that lifestyle. It is a sort of displacement and feeling of insecurity about the current state of affairs, realizing that the future is bleak with no way to escape from one’s current situation. Alienation goes hand-in-hand with modernity, as people are disillusioned about what they expect and what the world actually is like. In this sense, an existential perspective can be applied at different times in a post-Enlightenment period when considered with the undercurrent of a particular social problem. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 93
2.9.2 Arthur Schopenhauer and Existentialism
In analyzing the philosophical aspects of noir productions, a common theme is that life has no meaning. This is portrayed as a permanent condition, not just something temporary that will get better after time or from a conflict resolution. Therefore, noir protagonists always face a major crisis because the essence of life is meaningless in a noir world. Many of the characters are in a state of anxiety because they have no real purpose in their lives. This belief that existence has no meaning is reflected in the writings of various existentialists over time. For example, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) wrote negative essays about the Enlightenment goals of human progress, contentment, and self- improvement. In his essay On the Vanity of Existence in The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer:
Studies in Pessimism by T. Bailey Saunders, Schopenhauer contemplates the meaning of life.
The philosophical ideas and attitudes espoused by Schopenhauer in On the Vanity of
Existence give insight into the universal stresses found in the human condition over time, as his essay was published about a century and a half before the advent of noir but still holds true at that time. He conveys the position that life is void of meaning, which the protagonists in noir novels and films also reveal through their anxieties and problems. In the opening of his essay, Schopenhauer claims,
This vanity finds expression in the whole way in which things exist; in the infinite nature of Time and Space, as opposed to the finite nature of the individual in both; in the ever-passing present moment as the only mode of actual existence; in the interdependence and relativity of all things; in continual Becoming without ever Being; in constant wishing and never being satisfied; in the long battle which forms the history of life, where every effort is checked by difficulties, and stopped until they are overcome.106
106 Saunders, T. Bailey. The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: Studies in Pessimism. (Penn State: Pennsylvania State University, 2005), p.18. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 94
Schopenhauer cites these characteristics as being at the heart of the human condition, which allows pessimism to gain a foothold and expand.
Schopenhauer then states that people are in a never-ending cycle where they try to fulfill their own needs and desires. With each second that goes by, people are decaying and that much closer to death. Humans do not have intrinsic value because they have a finite existence. Only things which last through eternity carry value. Schopenhauer then reveals that humans should realize all the meaninglessness around them. The fact that people become bored just shows how empty their lives are and how they do not really deserve to exist. We will lose everything we know and care about in the world. We are always in a state of motion but unable to escape from our daily routines. Schopenhauer believes that this is terrible because we can never rest and there is no finality in things. This concept can be thought of like a hamster in a wheel running around but never really accomplishing anything.
Schopenhauer thinks of living as just related to change, decay, unrest, frustration, and boredom.
Schopenhauer continues by stating that vanity is found in all things. It can be seen in all our actions like wanting new things and feeling dissatisfied with our lives. Vanity results in people having difficulties in facing their daily routines as they try to get by various hindrances. Time passes us and any efforts we make to accomplish something are useless.
Also, when time passes us it does not exist anymore, so it is like a fleeting moment and once it goes by we cannot get it back. When things that have meaning to us in the present go by, they stop having meaning and have no more true value.
Schopenhauer also thinks it is a mistake or coincidence that people exist at all. In the grand scheme of things, the universe is bigger than all of us. We are just a small insignificant part of it. When we die we will just return to nothingness. He also compares this to a person PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 95 running down a hill and the motion of moving his legs forces him to keep going. If he stops he will fall and die. So it is essentially like the person is a slave to this action. When we are in a constant motion like this, we can never attain happiness. We always want more and are not satisfied once we get something. He claims that life is just a series of moments joined together that disappear in front of us.
Since man’s existence is finite, we always need things. Since a finite existence has a beginning and an ending, life is really meaningless. Our lives are only driven by hunger and sexual impulses. These impulses are influenced by boredom. Schopenhauer believes that we always have to get better things and look to the past and repent to have what is no more.
When we are continually nostalgic about the past, then our present escapes from us and eventually we just die longing for things of past years. When man plants seeds of desires, they grow and blossom into more desires which in turn become more desires in a never- ending cycle. People are driven to fulfill their individual desires, and when they cannot achieve all of them it results in a lifetime of misery.
Schopenhauer states that because people have to work to fulfill their needs, it becomes tiring and burdensome. This will cause people to become bored and try to escape from their bored states. Even if we are temporarily satisfied, boredom is still there, which confirms that life is meaningless. By revealing this, Schopenhauer wants to emphasize that it is pointless to struggle in life, because people lead vain and empty lives and never really accomplish anything. Schopenhauer then concludes his essay by saying,
If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, and, in particular, the generations of men as they live their little hour of mock-existence and then are swept away in rapid succession; if we turn from this, and look at life in its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how ridiculous it all seems! It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with infusoria; or a speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the naked eye. How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly, and struggle PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 96
with one another in so tiny a space! And whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect.107 By saying this, Schopenhauer strives to put forth the notion that life is nothing but a chance mistake.
A religious perspective will counter Schopenhauer’s arguments by claiming that the good deeds you do on Earth will be remembered when you try to get to heaven, and humans have the opportunity to live in heaven or another kind of otherworldly existence based on how they live their lives on Earth. However, noir literary and film works prefer to view the world from Schopenhauer’s perspective. In a noir world, characters generally do not take solace in religion. The world is viewed in a pessimistic manner, which becomes a characterization of the noir world. Film noir characters are easily influenced by or dependent on others as well as vulnerable to their desires, irrationalities, and wiles. This is seen with
Walter Neff in Double Indemnity as he is easily infatuated with Phyllis Dietrichson and does whatever she wants with the hope of possessing her but to no avail. In The Postman Always
Rings Twice, Frank Chambers can gain solace in religion at the end of the story only after confessing to his crimes. However, Frank does not regret killing Nick Smith; he is more concerned with receiving absolution from God for not being guilty of murdering Cora Smith as a result of the car accident. As long as the priest understands he did not play an intentional role in Cora’s death, Nick is willing to go to the gas chamber for her murder. Legally Frank is guilty of the death of Cora, but spiritually is guilty for the death of Nick.
2.9.3 Friedrich Nietzsche and Nihilism
Nihilism is a philosophical doctrine that suggests the negation of one or more reputedly meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning,
107 Ibid, p.22. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 97
purpose, or intrinsic value. Moral nihilists assert that morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived.108 Therefore, in a nihilistic society, there is a general feeling of despair and uselessness to go on living after a person realizes the society in which he lives lacks norms, rules, and laws. This sentiment is also prevalent in numerous noir pictures, including the WWII era.
When Nietzsche claimed “God is Dead”, he does not think that God has suddenly died but rather that God is made by people for certain purposes and in a modern technological age has less importance. As in the definition of nihilism, Nietzsche is not just thinking about
God but all things that are considered meaningful to people like truth, justice, and love do not really have significance anymore. When relating these aspects with morality, there is no longer a certain moral code as people act and believe as they wish.
Connected with the belief of various scholars that noir cannot be a genre because it covers various genres and changes throughout the years based on various social trends,
Nietzsche’s perspective on flux metaphysics can be applied (different from Plato’s position that all things are stationary and can fit into categories) in examining how noir is better classified as a mood or style. The reason for this is that things are always in motion and changing over time. Nietzsche believes there is not a constant self or object that is separate from certain actions. He confirms this by saying, “There is no such substratum; there is no
‘being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely a fiction added to the deed – the deed is everything.”109 He basically means that in an ever-changing world, people are what they do. Nietzsche claims there is no such thing as a constant self; all things are in a continual movement and change.
108 http://www.iep.utm.edu/nihilism. “Nihilism”. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed on December 28th, 2014. Web. 109 Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p.45. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 98
We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things – only thereby does it first create the concept of ‘thing’. Everywhere ‘being’ is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows and is a derivative of the concept of ego.110 Even though Nietzsche claims that things cannot be truly defined, by looking at his perspective in terms of noir, perhaps broad generalizations can be made during specific periods to find common themes or moods that can group particular literary works or films as noir.
One of Nietzsche’s most interesting quotations is that “God is Dead”.111 When he says this, he is being critical of Christianity as well as the metaphysical system. The metaphysical system relates to the constants of objects in the world (like Plato believed). Meanwhile,
Nietzsche is critical of Christianity because of its perspective of God and heaven as always being the same. The world around us is always changing, so the physical items and otherworldly things must also be in a fluctuating state, according to Nietzsche. He thinks that traditional religious beliefs and metaphysical beliefs are counter to a modern society. In the
19th century, there were many scientific and technological developments that made Nietzsche consider traditional religious and metaphysical beliefs as being outdated. He would consider that as being even more applicable during the WWII era or in today’s society. As science and technology is continuously replacing the need for outdated religious beliefs, people eventually lose their faith in God. Nietzsche thinks science can explain otherworldly things.
Nietzsche considers that as people gain a greater understanding of science, they will not need their religious convictions any longer and will not believe in a traditional metaphysical world.
110 Ibid, p.45. 111 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Madmen, from The Gay Science, from The Portable Nietzsche. (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), p.181. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 99
Therefore, the old value system and beliefs will be replaced with a modern outlook on life that turns to science and technology instead of religion.
When this happens, it will have a kind of catastrophic effect. People will not realize why they exist and not have a value system or ethical principles, thus making it difficult to care about good or bad and right or wrong. People who live Christian lives understand how they have to act to lead righteous lives by following Bible teachings. When people lose their moral anchor, they will drift away and become lost souls without a clear purpose for living.
This will make people become alienated, confused, and unstable, as their reason for living becomes pointless and the world is full of chaos. This concept is what is seen as happening in noir literary works and films. These negative attributes are the result of living in a God-less society where individuals do not have moral convictions to guide them to lead honorable or pious lives. This, in turn, can lead to an existentialist perspective. Noir films of the 1940s can be viewed as being existentialist in nature because the WWII society was in flux between traditional and modern values. As there was a technological boom due to the war effort and people started to have their faiths questioned due to all the death and uncertainty of the period, it was reflected through noir films. The transcendental values of colonial times were put in a precarious position with all the chaos and upheaval that ensued during and after
WWII. As people’s perception of the world around them began to change as they realized nothing is constant or stable in life, it led to this sentiment being portrayed in noir films.
People could change the world according to their own whims and needs without the interference of God. People began to have more importance than religion as their value system and meaning to live became challenged.
By considering noir as being a response to a God-less society, it aids in showing how the common elements of noir novels and film productions like nihilism, pessimism, PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 100 alienation, lack of morality, confusion, harshness, bleakness, and other typical noir characteristics can be related to an existential perspective like that espoused by Nietzsche.
When Nietzsche talks about the death of God, it does not only entail religion or morality but also an upheaval in the order of things, meaning in living, and meaning in the outside world.
Traditional American values hold the American spirit, God, and advancements in high regard. Noir actually shuts down all these beliefs through an existential perspective to convey fear, distrust, and anxiety in a changing world where traditional values may not hold as much stock or significance as they used to have (like in the face of modernization, changing gender roles, wartime adjustments, Communism, the atomic age, the nuclear age, terrorism, etc.).
When societal incidents arise and put people’s traditional values into question, it can give rise to an existential mindset, like that found in noir films of the mid-20th century.
Nihilism is related to a loss of value and meaning in one’s life. When Nietzsche made his famous statement that “God is Dead”, he was referring to the notion that Christianity as a guiding force or foundation was gone and there was nothing to substitute it. After people started to lose faith in their religious convictions because of all the scientific advancements, they believed that man could overcome nature and circumstances alone without the help of a higher power or an otherworldly being. As people lost their spiritual values and moral code, all that was left was nihilism. This perspective is also present in the WWII era, as depicted through noir films, as the characters cannot find true meaning in their lives. The characters seem to be lost in a labyrinth with no way to find a hidden door to escape.
Nihilism occurs when a society’s previously highly held values lose their significance.
In Nietzsche’s analysis of nihilism, he is not claiming that all values no longer hold significance but that a modern way of thinking related to science and technology has planted the seeds for a nihilistic thinking pattern. In the preface to The Will to Power, Nietzsche PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 101 conveys, “What I relate here is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. This future speaks even now in a hundred signs, this destiny announces itself everywhere.”112 Nietzsche is basically prophesying what the state of the world will be like as science and technology gain a stronger foothold in society. The next century after this was written, then, his conception of nihilism is a prominent mood of noir films, which confirms that Nietzsche’s belief that modernity can lead to nihilism is true. Nietzsche claims that the highest values of Western society are based on and refer to a Christian morality viewpoint of living. All fields of study like politics, economics, science, art, history, and philosophy have referred to a metaphysical perspective worldview that has God in control of everything. Therefore, Nietzsche’s “God is Dead” expression revolves around the loss of all higher values. So not only is belief in the existence of God for Christianity in jeopardy but also for all other metaphysical explanations of life.
Nietzsche believes modern society’s search for truth undermines its faith in God. For example, when it was previously found that man and the Earth are not at the center of the universe, it raised doubts in various people’s minds about the significance of God. Next, when Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory gained wide acceptance it questioned the need for God as a creator of all things. As a result, when a scientific worldview is given prominence, it threatens a religious worldview in a modern society.
In the 19th century, most Europeans still believed in God, but even those scholars and artists who claimed to be atheists still followed Christian moral values in how they conducted their daily lives. Nietzsche believed that not only a belief in God should cease to exist but also all Christian values. Therefore, the death of God is related to the death of all metaphysical beliefs, proof that metaphysical beliefs cannot be supported, and argument that
112 Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Will to Power, from The Portable Nietzsche. (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), p.2. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 102 there is no other world (heaven, Plato’s metaphysical conception, etc.). When all of these factors are in sync, then the values of society will hold no more worth (like morality). This transformation is what is often seen in a noir world as the protagonist characters are often amoral (do not care about right or wrong) or immoral (corrupt, wicked, self-indulgent).
In the Gay Science found in The Portable Nietzsche (1977), edited by Walter
Kaufmann, Nietzsche makes a claim that “God is dead! And we have killed him! How can we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers! The holiest and mightiest thing the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood from us? With what water could we clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what holy games will we have to invent for ourselves?” This is an important philosophical belief of
Nietzsche that has had various interpretations over the years in its relation to Christianity.
Some people have believed that it refers to breaking down the concept outside of Christianity and then reinventing it, while others think it is related to a new Christ, like in Nietzsche’s work The Antichrist (2000). However, here I will look at it from an atheist perspective in its relation to the characters and storyline of the film noir under examination.
In The Antichrist, Nietzsche also makes various claims against Christianity. A few of the many claims he makes opposed to the religion of Christianity are such as “You should put on gloves before taking up the New Testament. The presence of so much uncleanliness almost forces you to.”113 Another such idea is “The Christian idea of God, God as a God of the sick, God as Spider, God as spirit, is one of the most corrupt conceptions of God the world has ever seen, God as declared aversion to life, to nature, to the will to life! God as the formula for every slander against ‘the here and now’, for every lie about the ‘beyond’! God
113 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Antichrist. (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2000), p.46. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 103 as the deification of nothingness, the canonization of the will to nothingness!”114 In his Laws against Christianity in The Antichrist, he also states, “The words ‘God’, ‘savior’, ‘redeemer’,
‘saint’ should be used as terms of abuse, to signify criminals.” Another similar sentiment is,
“I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost corruption, the one great instinct of revenge that does not consider any method to be poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty enough. I call it the one immortal blot on humanity.”115 Many other such statements are made within The Antichrist regarding Christianity, God, and the institution of religion.
Nietzsche is opposed to Christianity and theology in general. He exhibits a kind of cultural and theological nihilism that is also expressed in film noir. Nietzsche devalues the highest values of Western culture through nihilism. Nietzsche wants to show that modern thinking has produced the seeds for devaluation. He considers modern society to have a sickness in it. In his concept of nihilism, the main points are that there is a radical repudiation of value, meaning, and desirability; the highest values devaluate themselves; and man moves from the center towards X (to overcome nihilism). His view of nihilism can be best seen as being opposed to Plato’s concept of metaphysics. Nietzsche considers heaven and Plato’s metaphysical forms as not being something that is superior to the world we live. He says we should not condemn or devalue the world in which we live. Nietzsche believes if you put your faith in a metaphysical world it is nihilistic because it considers the current world as being inferior to the metaphysical one; it devalues our lives compared to the otherworld. He thinks that religion and philosophy all revolve around a metaphysical view of the world where God is the controller and creator of a structured world. Nietzsche is opposed to this, as he thinks of the world as being in flux, ever-changing.
114 Ibid, p.18. 115 Ibid, p.62. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 104
In relation to a true world, Nietzsche is opposed to the concept of a metaphysical
construct of a ‘true world’. He considers a true world as being religious nihilism. He does
not see a cosmic order, a network of rules and laws, or an underlying reality. Nietzsche
rejects the interrelation of science, philosophy, and morality. Instead, he believes that an
untruth is what really allows us to live. He thinks that everything created in the world is
by human creation. The world is chaotic and dynamic, not static and without a kind of
permanent order. Nietzsche also does not believe that humanity progresses towards some
kind of a goal. This is against the idea of Marx or others during the Enlightenment period.
In The Will to Power), Nietzsche states “becoming aims at nothing and achieves
nothing”.116 He does not believe that humankind progresses from one century to the next
or builds upon something. He thinks people have lost their faith in the true world. This
loss of faith is connected with the “death of God”. When the true world is abolished, then
all the values with it are also abolished. This results in a state of weakness and despair.
Only total nihilism can result in purging decadence and restore strength and vitality to a
Western culture. This stage of nihilism (between partial and total) and its relation with the
“death of God” can be seen in the characters of film noir.
116 Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Will to Power, from The Portable Nietzsche. (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), p.12. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
CHAPTER III
AMERICAN FILM NOIR AS AN EXTENSION OF EXISTENTIALISM
As we thus reject Christian interpretation and condemn its ‘meaning’ as counterfeit, Schopenhauer’s question immediately comes at us in a terrifying way: Does existence have any meaning at all? A few centuries will be needed before this question can ever be heard completely and in its full depth.1 This quote by Schopenhauer best describes the condition of noir characters in a noir world. As noir and the philosophy of the absurd gained more prominence during the 1940s, one of the more prominent writers of the time was Albert Camus. He asserted that life has no real rational meaning. He thought of existence as being absurd, particularly in considering the fact that he lived during the horrors of Nazi occupation and all the hardships that came along with it. He wanted to convey that people should keep their dignity whenever they are faced with a cold and uncaring world. He does this using an absurdist style.
3. Albert Camus and Existentialism
Albert Camus was a prominent French literary writer who was directly influenced by the hard-boiled American novels and short stories from the 1920s and 1930s. He was even inspired to write The Stranger after reading Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. The influence of hard-boiled American novels is seen in some of Camus’ other literary works as well.
3.1 Albert Camus’ The Stranger
Various parallels are obvious in existential philosophy and literary works compared with noir movies. One such popular existentialist novel that was written in Europe in 1942
1 Schopenhauer, Arthur, qtd from Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Gay Science, in The Portable Nietzsche. (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), p.357.
105 PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 106 was The Stranger by Albert Camus, who was a philosopher as well as fiction writer that wrote most of his prominent novels in the mid-20th century. This novel was only able to be translated and published in the USA in 1946 after the war was over. Although existentialist philosophers like Camus and Sartre did not have a direct impact on WWII noir films per se
(due to Europe being cut-off from the USA during the war and the war taking more precedence than artistic or literary works), similar ties are found in the mood and style of
Camus’ first prominent novel, The Stranger, with the mood and style of noir literature and movies at the same time.
The existentialist perspective of The Stranger is visible in the first paragraph of part 1.
“Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says:
YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY.
Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.”2 The person telling the story does not seem too interested with getting the news of his mom dying. The character seems to be disinterested, detached, and lacking sympathy. Even his employer is irritated for having to give him 2 days leave from work to arrange the funeral matters. The main character even apologizes to his boss by saying, “Sorry, sir, but it’s not my fault, you know.”3 In a transcendentalist society, the main character would feel deep grief and be incensed at his boss for being upset for taking funeral leave. The boss would also show more compassion in a society with moral values and care for others. In this story, however, the funeral is an inconvenience at best. The indifference of the main character can also be attributed to the fact that it was the beginning of the war with France in the middle of the war with Germany. So,
French people were probably used to seeing death and war atrocities, which could have numbed their feelings toward the death of others from non-war related incidents. As the war
2 Camus, Albert. The Stranger. (New York: Vintage Books, 1942), p.7. 3 Ibid, p.7. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 107 progressed, people were more desensitized to the death and suffering around them, just like what was happening overseas in the USA at the same time. With so much death around them, people began to question the concept of God and wonder how a God could allow so much suffering to ensue for such a long period.
Even the doorkeeper of the retirement home says to the main character, “Madame
Meursault entered the Home three years ago. She had no private means and depended entirely on you.”4 He was basically insinuating the main character did not provide much care for his mother, which in a transcendental society would not have happened. The doorkeeper also implied that he did not like it when old people died because it meant “extra work and worry for our staff”.5 Instead of showing concern for the death of an elderly person, he is more bothered by how it disrupts the routines of the nursing home employees. In arranging the funeral, the main character, Monsieur Meursault, even admitted that his mother never gave any thought to religion in her whole life, which causes him to wonder about the necessity of having the rites of the Church with the funeral. Next, in the mortuary, Monsieur Meursault is not even interested in having the coffin lid unscrewed one last time to say goodbye to his mom. The people in the story are insensitive to the fact that Madame Meursault has passed, and the worker is more concerned with burying her corpse quickly because the warm weather will make it decay faster and they do not want to be bothered by the smell. Even the main character is interested in the decaying process and does not give much thought to the soul of his mother. He even smokes a cigarette and drinks café au lait in his mother’s presence like he is having an enjoyable time at a café or on a picnic.
Monsieur Meursault refers to the people in the retirement home as “old people” which is rather disrespectful and does not consider them to be people at all really as he thinks, “The
4 Ibid, p.7. 5 Ibid, p.8. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 108 old people, Mother’s friends, were coming in. I counted ten in all, gliding almost soundlessly through the bleak white glare. None of the chairs creaked when they sat down. Never in my life had I seen anyone so clearly as I saw these people; not a detail of their clothes or features escaped me. And yet I couldn’t hear them, and it was hard to believe they really existed.”6 At the funeral wake, the main character feels sleepy and has negative opinions about the physical appearances of his mother’s friends in attendance. He is also annoyed by one woman’s crying. He does not converse with any of his mother’s friends and no one has any kind words or condolences to say about his mother, as people would normally do in a transcendental society. After the funeral wake, he decides to take a walk on a nice day and thinks that his mother’s death has ruined his countryside walk. Monsieur Meursault also makes several references to the nursing home director and the residents as the “warden” and the “inmates”, which is rather dehumanizing and shows his lack of morality or sympathy for the elderly living there. Even after his mother dies, he goes back to his apartment and spends the weekend just looking at the passersby and admitting that his life has not changed at all.
He even starts dating a girl, Marie, the day after his mother’s funeral.
The characters generally have an existential perspective about their surroundings and do not have much true concern or feelings for others. His neighbor in the building, Salamano, is also harsh and swears at his dog all the time for the past 8 years and does not have any real compassion for it. After Salamano’s dog runs away, he conveys his lack of compassion for living beings by replying to Monsier Meursault about the likelihood of the dog being kept in a dog pound at the police station, “Is it likely I’d give money for a mutt like that? No damned fear! They can kill him, for all I care.”7 Next, another neighbor, Raymond, works as a pimp and treats his women like objects and wants to beat them if they get out of line or show
6 Ibid, p.10. 7 Ibid, p.26. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 109 ingratitude. Raymond shows his lack of morality by saying to his prostitute, “You let me down, you bitch! I’ll learn you to let me down!”8 Then there are some thud sounds and a piercing scream from the prostitute. Monsieur Meursault is even rather indifferent to his girlfriend, Marie, as she asks him if he loves her and he replies that the question has no meaning. These characters are all typical kinds of personalities one might expect to find in an existential noir society.
The existential mindset in terms of motivation found in this story is the same as that seen in noir characters. When Monsieur Meursault is asked by his boss if he would like a transfer to Paris, he reveals his lack of motivation for a better life. “I told him I was quite prepared to go; but really I didn’t care much one way or the other. He then asked me if a
‘change of life’, as he called it, didn’t appeal to me, and I answered that one never changed his way of life, one life was as good as another, and my present one suited me quite well.”9
The characters in the novel all lack any real human connections and only have superficial relationships. Even in marriage the main character is proposed to by Marie but he again admits that he does not really love her but is willing to marry her or another woman for that matter who wants to get married for no particular reason. Also, when Monsieur
Meursault has dinner alone at Celeste’s, a woman joins him at his table but they never engage in any dialog, as the woman is self-absorbed with checking all the radio programs she wants to hear in her radio magazine, and Monsieur Meursault is just amused watching her. He does not seem to think of her as a real person but rather as a source of temporary amusement.
A further instance of a lack of morality is demonstrated when the main character approaches an Arab who had previously cut his “friend” Raymond’s arm with a knife as
8 Ibid, p.24. 9 Ibid, p.28. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 110 revenge for mistreating the prostitute. Monsieur Meursault could have just walked away when he sees the Arab on the beach or reported him to the police for the altercation, but instead he approaches him closer and closer, prompting the Arab to flash his knife. Monsieur
Meursault subsequently takes out Raymond’s revolver from his pocket and shoots the Arab 5 times with no remorse or for no real reason. He is not bothered at all for killing the Arab. He even does not think it is necessary to have a lawyer defend him in court. He considers his action and case as being rather simple. He even considers the interrogation as a kind of formality and is ready to say “goodbye” after it is over when he remembers that he is being interrogated for killing a man.
Monsieur Meursault’s lack of humanity and ambivalence is obvious when his defense attorney is curious why he was so callous at his mother’s funeral. “I answered that, of recent years, I’d rather lost the habit of noting my feelings, and hardly knew what to answer. I could truthfully say I’d been quite fond of Mother – but really that didn’t mean much. All normal people, I added as on afterthought, had more or less desired the death of those they loved, at some time or another.”10
As he is in the courtroom the Magistrate is confused why Monsieur Meursault fired one shot and then waited a while before firing four more shots from the gun. As he cannot give a satisfactory answer, the Magistrate takes out a crucifix and says he must repent for his sins to God. The accused finds this childish and answers that he does not believe in God. At this, the Magistrate replies, “I, anyhow, am a Christian. And I pray Him to forgive you for your sins. My poor young man, how can you not believe that He suffered for your sake?”11
However, Monsieur Meursault finds him boring and just agrees to make him be quiet. He later says he does not regret his action as much as feels a kind of vexation.
10 Ibid, p.40. 11 Ibid, p.42. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 111
The subsequent meetings are between the Magistrate and his lawyer for the next 11 months. The existential sentiment is clear on the part of Monsieur Meursault as he reveals,
“Neither of the two men, at these times, showed the least hostility towards me, and everything went so smoothly, so amicably, that I had an absurd impression of being ‘one of the family’. I can honestly say that during the eleven months these examinations lasted I got so used to them that I was almost surprised at having ever enjoyed anything better than those rare moments when the magistrate, after escorting me to the door of the office, would pat my shoulder and say in a friendly tone: ‘Well, Mr. Antichrist, that’s all for the present!’ After which I was made over to my jailers.”12
Monsieur Meursault is never regretful of his action in killing a man. He only occasionally misses the time he could walk on the sandy beach. He also occasionally misses spending time with his girlfriend (for physical reasons only) and smoking cigarettes. Other than that, the only obstacle he has is overcoming his boredom. But eventually he finds ways to amuse himself in his cell. Eventually the days and months just pass by and he does not have any remorse.
On the day of his trial, Monsieur Meursault is not worried about his fate but more interested in the court proceedings. He is even amused by the jury and thinks of the jurors as being people in a street car and tries to find interesting aspects of their appearance. Monsieur
Meursault is even appreciative of the journalists covering his case and makes small talk with them. The whole Monsieur Meursault is oblivious to the murder he committed but instead focuses on the courtroom activities and the appearances of the people, as if he were at an amusement park.
12 Ibid, p.43. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 112
Even after the jury deliberates for only 45 minutes and returns with a capital sentence to be beheaded in a public place, it does not really faze Monsieur Meursault. He further refuses to see the prison chaplain several times, as he does not consider saving his soul to be important and does not grasp the seriousness of the crime he committed. He is more fascinated with the workings of the guillotine and the other methods of executing someone.
His existential viewpoint is found again in his indifference at being sentenced to death.
“‘But,’ I reminded myself, ‘it’s common knowledge that life isn’t worth living, anyhow.’
And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or three score and ten – since, in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forth years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably.”13
Eventually the prison chaplain does come to see him and asks, “Have you no hope at all? Do you really think that when you die you die outright, and nothing remains?” Monsieur
Meursault replies, “Yes”.14 It is this mindset that is often expressed by existentialist philosophers and serves as a prevalent mood in many noir literary and film productions. Like characters in noir works, Monsieur Meursault also does not believe he has committed a sin but rather a criminal offense. Monsieur Meursault only thinks about earthly things and does not consider an otherworldly life. This obsession with earthly pleasures is what drives many male protagonist and femme fetale characters in noir productions to act. They do not consider the morality of their actions but rather a temporary satisfaction. The sense of alienation and indifference felt by Monsieur Meursault as he nears the end of his life is a common theme in noir productions. Therefore, noir can be considered a reaction to living in a God-less world
13 Ibid, p.65. 14 Ibid, p.67. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 113 where everything is in flux and changing. In an existential world, people cannot see the truth of their existence and can end up becoming like Meursault.
In The Stranger, Monsieur Meursault is unaware of his existence and just goes through the motions every day, similar to protagonists in noir productions that are trying to do a self-discovery. However, The Stranger is not as fatalistic as other classic noir stories, in that Monsieur Meursault is just sitting in a jail cell waiting to be executed after his appeals are exhausted, but it is not clear when exactly he will meet the guillotine by the end of the story. Different from a traditional noir story, in The Stranger the world of nature is present and given great detail. In American noir stories, nature is often dead with little description about trees, flowers, and other such vegetation. Similar to the alienation and a similar lack of meaning and sense found in The Stranger, this sentiment is also portrayed in noir storylines.
For example, in Mildred Pierce when Mildred is thinking about committing suicide, the police officer who catches her in the act displays emotional isolation and dissociation. The alienation and inhumanity of this character in the film can be seen from the first dialog between the policeman and Mildred on the pier, as Mildred is contemplating suicide. The policeman sees her and says, “What’s on your mind, lady? You know what I think? I think maybe you had an idea you’d take a swim. If you take a swim, I’d have to take a swim. Is that fair? Because you feel like killing yourself, I gotta get pneumonia. Never thought about that, did you? Okay. Think about it. Go on, beat it now. Go on home before we both take a swim.”
In a utopia society, a police officer is supposed to serve the public and help those in need, but here he is more annoyed and inconvenienced by the thought of getting wet and catching a cold.
Another case of inhumanity is found a short time later early in the film in Wally as he just wants to flee the scene of a crime after he discovers Monte’s body. Wally does not check PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 114 to see if Monte is breathing or not; he just wants to leave the crime scene as quickly as possible. As the police catch him before he can leave the premises, he matter-of-factly says,
“This is a pretty big night for you. Lots of excitement. There’s a stiff in there.” This is a very cold an uncaring way to refer to a deceased person. A police officer comes out of the house and in an equally cold manner states, “You never saw deader.” This sets the tone for mindset of the other characters throughout the film.
Like The Stranger, ethical ambiguity is visible in The Postman Always Rings Twice, as a drifter, Frank Chambers, decides to help Cora Smith kill her husband Nick Smith, just so he can be with her, even though it is wrong to murder someone. To face the consequences for their actions, Cora is killed accidentally in a car accident and Frank is sentenced to the gas chamber. Ethical ambiguity is evident in Double Indemnity as well, as Walter and Phyllis plan to kill Phyllis’ husband. Walter desires Phyllis physically, and Phyllis is interested in her husband’s wealth. To make them pay for their crimes, Phyllis is shot to death, while Walter dies slowly after being shot but still has time to confess his crimes to the insurance investigator. The Production Code of the Hays’ office made the directors have endings where a moral message is conveyed. The characters’ schemes do not result in their desired outcomes. The characters’ schemes are fruitless and the characters themselves are self- destructive. In classic noir films, killers are usually killed themselves, cheaters are commonly caught by the police, and thieves are sent to jail. The characters are not portrayed as being noble or role models.
3.2 Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus
Similar with The Stranger, another of Camus’ works, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), also deals with the theme of entrapment and indifference, which are common themes of noir productions. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Sisyphus is in a state of condemnation in the PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 115 underworld and the only activity he has is pushing a boulder to the top of a hill, and then the boulder rolls back down on its own. When the boulder reaches the bottom of the hill,
Sisyphus has to go through the whole process again, time after time. He is trapped in this punishment of a boring and mundane existence, which is also the case of many noir world characters that cannot break free from the fateful hands that have been dealt to them without great sacrifice. Therefore, like Sisyphus who achieves monetary happiness in his earthly existence, noir characters also can only get fleeting happiness through earthly pleasures, if at all, before succumbing to their predestined fates.
Sisyphus’ imprisonment comes from different versions. One tale tells about how Zeus took the human daughter of Asopus. After he told Asopus about this, Sisyphus got a natural spring water source from Asopus for the city of Corinth, which made him and the townspeople happy and rich. But in doing so, Sisyphus incurred the wrath of the gods.
Another version reveals how Sisyphus enchained Death so that no one died while Death was captured. But after Death was freed by the God of War, then Sisyphus was forced to die and go to the Underworld. Basically, Sisyphus has to live forever in the Underworld with a hopeless struggle of pushing the boulder endlessly. A parallel can also be applied in the fate of noir characters, whose actions are for the most part hopeless. They cannot escape from the doldrums and fateful circumstances that have been bestowed upon them from the beginning.
They do not have the freedom to engage in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which are the ideals in pursuing the American Dream. Like Sisyphus who gains a moment of clarity when the boulder rolls back down the hill only to have Sisyphus push it back up the hill again, noir characters also often reach a point where they realize they have absurd fates with no hope in escaping their fates. Even when the boulder is rolling back down the hill, it can show Sisyphus reflecting or longing for the life of wealth and happiness he left behind. This PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 116 feeling of longing or reminiscing is also found in noir characters who want to regain something from the past but are unable to do so. This can even be related to an unlikely return to traditional values in the wake of a changing, more modern, and materialistic society, as was experienced during WWII. Sisyphus’ life and noir characters’ lives reflect this sort of futility in their actions.
Existentialism itself can be thought of as an individual who stands alone in facing a meaningless universe. There are no meanings or values found in the world or outside humanity. People live in a world of absurdity (struggling between objective meaninglessness and an earnest desire for meaning, according to Camus), rejecting transcendental ideals.
Existentialism also places the self as the focus of its philosophical perspective. Existentialists only consider human existence because people are thought of as living different from animals and inanimate things. Humans are the only source of meaning and value. Existentialism emphasizes the individual and personal experiences of existence, which are authentic. Also, emotions and moods of the individual are more important than universal philosophical concepts. Some of the primary moods that existentialists focus on are negative in nature like those dealing with alienation, despair, pessimism, guilt, shame, and anxiety (which are commonly found in noir works). These feelings convey a finite existence that ultimately leads to death. Therefore, existentialism looks at the meaning of life and how individuals respond to living in a world without meaning.
The fate of factory workers during WWII in support of the war effort can be compared to that of Sisyphus, as they are like drones living absurd existences. Even Camus supported this sentiment by stating, “I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 117 only in human terms.”15 Camus believes that because people have a consciousness, it sets them apart from animals, so their lives are absurd in their search for meaning. Therefore,
Sisyphus has a tragic and absurd existence because he is aware of the futility of endlessly pushing the boulder up the hill. Since Sisyphus can recognize and affirm his fate, in a way he can master it. If one can accept a God-less world, it can make life more difficult to live due to no inner meaning, but on the other side, it can let one overcome the nihilism that absurdity threatens. “It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.”16
Parallels are also apparent in Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus with Nietzsche’s concept of eternity. For Sisyphus, he has to keep pushing the boulder for an eternity with no real purpose. Nietzsche also believes that the universe is in a cycle just repeating itself with no real goal or purpose, which makes everything seem useless. This concept of futility espoused by Camus and Nietzsche is commonly found in noir works as well, in response to societal changes or pressures.
Camus puts forth the point that life can be viewed as a never-ending struggle without hope. In looking at Sisyphus’ life, it is hopeless and futile. Related with noir characters, if they realize that they cannot do anything to change their predicaments and the fates that have been dealt to them, then their fates will seem tolerable to them. As long as they do not strive to achieve more than what is allowed or predetermined, then they will be able to appreciate their lives. Likewise, if Sisyphus accepts his fate of having to push the boulder for an eternity, it will not be a punishment. However, if he yearns for his previous life or an escape for a better life, he will have a miserable and unbearable life. In examining Sisyphus’
15 Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. (New York: First Vintage International, 1955), p.51. 16 Ibid, p.110. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 118 condition in the Underworld, a quote by Arthur Schopenhauer best represents his position: “A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.” Therefore, Sisyphus cannot hope for anything other than his current situation if he hopes to find any happiness in his life. At the end of his essay, Camus states “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” This implies that the readers have no other option than to assume that Sisyphus is content upon accepting his fate.
If Sisyphus struggles against his fate, he will be miserable, but if he is content with his fate, he can find happiness in his existence. As long as he does not have hope or faith for something better, happiness can be found in his life. This last sentence can also mean that if true happiness is attainable, then Sisyphus must be happy. For noir characters this premise can also be applied. As long as they conform to the societal norms of their noir world existence, then they should be able to find some semblance of happiness within it. Happiness can only be attained without hope or faith in something better. A parallel can be seen with the ending of “The Postman Always Rings Twice” when Frank Chambers is indicted for killing
Cora Smith in a bogus auto accident and is charged to face a murder trial. Actually, he does not intentionally kill Cora Smith, but some kind of retribution must be found for his role and
Cora’s role in the murder of Nick Smith. So Cora dies in the car accident on the bridge, and
Frank goes to jail for her murder awaiting execution. Although Frank is not charged with the murder of Nick Smith, Frank is able to accept being executed for the death of Cora, as long as in his rationalism he is being executed for his previous crime and not the murder of Cora.
While talking to a priest in his jail cell, Frank goes through a kind of spiritual awakening and accepts the execution of Cora as being God’s justice for his part in the murder of Nick Smith.
Therefore, by accepting his fate at the end of the story, Frank can be at peace with himself, as he awaits his execution. Hence, as Sisyphus and Frank are content to accept their fate, they will both be able to come to a kind of peaceful existence with their lives. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 119
3.3 Fatalism and Predetermination
Although an existentialist perspective can be applied for noir works, it cannot be applied completely when examining the concept of fatalism found in noir. Noir productions emphasize more on limited choices characters can make, which result in fatal consequences when they do not reform their behavior. The fatalistic aspects are expressed through voiceover narration and flashbacks. The viewers may know the fatalistic outcome at the beginning of the story. In contrast, existentialism is not fatalistic, in that it strives to give people the freedom to determine their own values. People have to decide what they want to do and be allowed to do it.
In describing the theme of classic noir, it does not give obvious moral lessons and does not show Americans as being particularly well-adjusted, content, or virtuous.
The world of classic noir proffers a disturbing vision that qualifies all hope and suggests a potentially fatal vulnerability, against which no one is adequately protected. Classic noir has deeply democratic instincts: no one wins; the unforgiving laws of the human condition apply universally to every individual. The grim pessimism of classic noir is hardly congenial to the sorts of comic films that flourished in America during the same time period.17
In philosophical terms, an interesting notion by Socrates is that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates believes that the purpose of human life is personal and spiritual growth. People can only understand their true nature if they examine and reflect upon their lives. This mirrors an expression by another philosopher, Santayana, who stated, “He who does not remember the past is condemned to repeat it.” Therefore, if people are not aware of these patterns, they will subconsciously keep repeating them. People will be sort of stuck in a rut that they cannot escape from and will continue to repeat mistakes and not grow spiritually.
This is a common theme in classic noir films for characters that are unable to escape from
17 Hibbs, Thomas S. “The Human Comedy Perpetuates Itself: Nihilism and Comedy in Coen Neo-Noir”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009), p.138. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 120 their predetermined fates without some kind of great sacrifice. Characters have fatalistic existences and are doomed to live predetermined lives. They cannot learn from their past and reinvent themselves as Benjamin Franklin, Socrates, and Santayana believe.
Sartre’s concept of existentialism can be examined from a positive perspective as well as it encourages people to be responsible, authentic, and independent in finding their own paths. In contrast with this, noir literary and film works look at the negative side of this and what it would be like to live in a God-less world full of fear, anxiety, alienation, and distrust.
Noir protagonists are not really free to explore their lives or take different paths made available to them from their experiences. The characters do not have true independence to do what they want; they generally only have temporary happiness or meaningless wealth. The characters act because they are forced to do so, not out of a personal choice. As Sartre is more focused on freedom, noir is centered on entrapment. No matter what the male protagonist tries to accomplish, in the end it is all futile. The noir protagonist is tied to his past and cannot escape from it. Whatever he does is related to his past.
French critics Borde and Chaumeton considered the central emotions of true film noir to be paranoia, fatalism, violence, and dread.18 These psychological traits can be linked to the psychological effects of WWII and the Cold War period.
“Noir films held out no cure or hope of heaven here or hereafter, nor did they attempt to explain God’s apparent absence in a time of such vast death and suffering. In that sense, they were perhaps the popular art form most closely attuned to the après-guerre mood, exemplified directly and profoundly in the existentialism of Camus and Sartre and the gloomy theology of Niebuhr.”19 Cornell Woolrich, a famous novelist of the 1940s, illustrates the spirit of noir psychology as being fatalistic: “The path you follow is the path you have to follow; there are
18 Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. (New York: Nation Books, 2012), p.223. 19 Ibid, p.223. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 121 no digressions permitted you, even though you think there are.”20 He went on further to say regarding the psychology of noir characters: “A sense of isolation, of pinpointed and transfixed helplessness under the stars, of being left alone, unheard, and unaided to face some final fated darkness and engulfment slowly advancing across the years toward me … that has hung over me all life.”21
3.4 Fatalism and Voiceover Narration
Some noir films are shot in a first person (voiceover) narration to signify a ‘dead man walking’ theme like if the character is already dead and retelling the story through flashbacks or as the character is on an imminent road to death. The ‘dead man walking’ concept is similar to what a real soldier feels as he is just biding his time before his imminent demise.
This concept of characters waiting for their own demise is apparent in the film Double
Indemnity. The main character, Walter Neff, can feel that his plan is going to go wrong and he will be caught. This kind of movie shows that murderous instincts are present even in regular middle-class people. The movie is set in an urban setting and the characters appear normal on the outside. Murder, deception, and greed can occur even in an American city or town, not just relegated to a far-away land during a war. The previous war-type movies were more cheesy and patriotic in sentiment, while the noir films could express the grim reality of a brutal murder and the dark side of the human psyche. A voiceover narration was used in movies like Double Indemnity not to find out who did a crime but instead to show how the person would be caught and punished through flashbacks. By using this style, it shows that regular people have darkness and flaws within themselves and have to struggle with their own mortality. This is similar to what soldiers may experience in wars and will let the audience sympathize and identify with the characters better.
20 Ibid, p.224. 21 Ibid, p.224. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 122
3.5 Existentialism and Male Protagonists
In characterizing the traits of male protagonists in traditional noir, Andrew Spicer provides his own interpretation.
One of the most arresting traits of film noir is its depiction of male protagonists who lack the qualities (courage, incorruptibility, tenacity, and dynamism) that characterize the archetypal American hero and who therefore function as antiheroes. Typical noir male protagonists are weak, confused, unstable, and ineffectual, damaged men who suffer from a range of psychological neuroses and who are unable to resolve the problems they face.22
Therefore, in considering Spicer’s definition, an existential framework best supports an analysis of noir characters as they do not have a sense of morality to fall back on, as a traditional hero does. This is evident in the character of Walter Neff in Double Indemnity as he is easily infatuated with Mrs. Dietrichson and is willing to do whatever she wants to possess her. The character Frank Chambers in The Postman Always Rings Twice also does not have a moral belief system, as he is eager to dispose of Cora Smith’s husband just to be with her, even though Nick Smith is a pleasant and friendly man. Even Philip Marlowe in
Murder, My Sweet and The Big Sleep is not driven to do his job based on some sense of moral calling but rather out of financial considerations.
3.6 Material Items and Existentialism
In classic noir films, venetian blinds are a common sight that expresses various metaphoric meanings. Visually, venetian blinds can show that something secretive is happening behind them. Many times it is related with a criminal or illicit activity or some kind of scheming. When light flashes through them, it can also signify a character being trapped as it resembles bars from a jail cell with an alternating dark and light pattern on a character’s face. It can give a rather haunting and claustrophobic look. Venetian blinds are
22 Spicer, Andrew, “Problems of Memory and Identity in Neo-Noir’s Existentialist Antihero”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009), p.47. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 123 especially prevalent in Double Indemnity and The Big Sleep. Another aspect that venetian blinds symbolize is that of upper class society and what most working class people strive to penetrate. At the time, venetian blinds were more expensive and owned by the wealthy.
Upper class society values God, love, money, morality, and the family. From an existential perspective, criticism and suspicion can be placed on these values as the characters who possess venetian blinds in their homes generally do not hold true to their idealized values; they have a hollow, superficial, or false value system. Nietzsche’s existentialism is critical of this kind of society and their fake value system. Nietzsche will conclude that God is actually dead and that people only superficially use morality to acquire power. In a Western and capitalist society, these values are not really valid. This is expressed through inauthenticity, alienation, and hypocrisy. An existential perspective may claim that venetian blinds actually symbolize hiding the truth or reality of what the world is really like as they only let a crack of light through them, not exposing the whole reality of the world in which one lives.
Cars in noir films can also have symbolic functions. In Double Indemnity there is a scene that shows Walter Neff speeding in his vehicle with it swerving back and forth along the road. This can signify how his life is spinning out of control every since he met Phyllis
Dietrichson. He is unable to keep his life in order due to his infatuation with this femme fetale. The car can signify Neff’s desire to create a new identity and existence, but he is unable to do it, as it just weaves around the road. This is parallel with Americans’ vision for a life of betterment and living their own lives the way they want. The occurrence of cars is reminiscent of the large increase in wartime necessities by automobile makers during the war but not personal cars. Two other modes of transportation that have symbolism are the train and trolley. As they go in a straight line, it signifies that Walter and Phyllis cannot escape their fates of ultimate death. Even though Neff creates the “perfect” insurance scam by PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 124 throwing Phyllis’ husband’s, Mr. Dietrichson’s, corpse off the train (to collect a double indemnity insurance claim, as the likelihood of someone dying by falling off a moving train is extremely rare), he is still caught in the end by his boss, Barton Keyes. Keyes even remarks in the film that “Murderers ride a trolley car all the way to the end of the line and it’s a one- way trip and the last stop is the cemetery.” The car is also used as the place where Neff murders Mr. Dietrichson, as he strangles him while hiding in the backseat.
Cars can also symbolize characters’ hopes. In The Postman Always Rings Twice, it reveals how the adulterers, Cora Smith and Frank Chambers, are trapped because they do not have a car. When Frank explains to Cora why they have to hitchhike instead of stealing a car, he says, “Stealing a man’s wife, that’s nothing. But stealing his car, that’s larceny.” This refers to taking away a man’s identity and hope because men generally identify with the vehicles they drive. If they have no vehicles, then they have no self-identity, which was a concern during and after WWII, as people faced uncertain futures. In the novel version, Cora elaborates further by stating to Frank about their dashed hopes, “And we just cracked up under it. It’s a big airplane engine that takes you through the sky, right up to the top of the mountains. But when you put it in a Ford, it just shakes to pieces. That’s what we are, Frank, a couple of Fords.”23 When Cora says that they are just a couple of Fords, she means that they are just common and nothing special. They will not be able to get into the upper class and will be forever doomed as the class they were born into, showing their fatalism.
In noir films, many times automobiles reflect one’s ability for social mobility. The more expensive a car one drives, the more one feels able to move into a higher social class.
This need for authenticity is seen through the eyes of several characters in Mildred Pierce as well. Several of the main characters strive to achieve wealth, personal sexual experiences,
23 Cain, James M. The Postman Always Rings Twice. (New York: Vintage, 1989), p.70. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 125 and new adventures, often at the detriment of others. The characters link authenticity with the pursuit of happiness through materialism. Many of the characters in film noir, like Mildred
Pierce, have a deep-seated obsession with a particular goal or object. Concerns about identity crisis and authenticity can be seen in the nature of femme fetale characters. Mildred’s greed and obsession to earn her daughter’s (Veda) love motivate the bad decisions she makes.
Mildred’s desire for wealth is a typical American story that shows how she wants to reach her goal on her own. Mildred tries to buy her daughter’s love by giving her an expensive convertible, but that is not enough to win her love. Her daughter is only temporarily satisfied before she wants a more expensive luxurious item.
The movie Mildred Pierce reveals the difficulty of social mobility during the 1940s and a critical viewpoint of capitalism. Consumerism can be seen as a means of dealing with the anxiety of the time period as in the case of Veda, who is always in pursuit of wealth.
Veda’s spoiled behavior is apparent early on as Bert says to Mildred about buying Veda a dress, “No wonder those kids are so fresh and stuck up. That Veda. I’m so fed up with her high-hatting me. One of these days I’ll slap her face.” She is always critical of her mom and considers her mom of a lower social class, because she works as a waitress, sells baked goods from her home, and ultimately owns her own chain of restaurants. Veda does not consider her mother as being worthy of achieving upward mobility into the upper class, because she is not from “old” money, passed down from generation to generation. Mildred works harder and harder to gain the respect and appreciation of her daughter to appease her through material goods, but to no avail. Veda only obtains a temporary happiness through these material possessions her mother buys her until she wants something more. Veda can only be appeased through money temporarily before she desires something more. Veda uses the material items as a way to temporarily escape from her drab life. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 126
Next, from the first few minutes of the movie Mildred Pierce, it is clear that Wally is a wheeling and dealing type of character who is always trying to get the upper hand on another person. He is not really sincere in apologizing for taking Mildred’s business away from her by saying, “I’m glad you’re not sore about me taking you over the hurdles. I didn’t mean to cut up your business. I just got started and couldn’t stop. I see an angle, I start cutting myself a piece of throat. It’s an instinct. With me, being smart’s a disease. Know what I mean?” He maintains this persona throughout the movie. He is primarily nice to Mildred because he wants to have a sexual relationship with her and wants to take advantage of her financially.
The characters in the film can mostly be seen as lacking humanity because to make advances in their lives, they have to sell themselves. Veda sells herself to get money from her boyfriend. Mildred becomes so immersed in her restaurant business that she loses much of her femininity and humanity. Wally betrays Mildred and Bert for financial gain. Mildred buys Beragon, so he will be with her until he seems to just be prostituting himself. Mildred also pays him to take Veda out and entertain her. Beragon also uses Mildred for money and
Veda for sex. So, therefore, the characters essentially become commodity items involved in buying and selling themselves, which makes them lose their humanity. Mildred cannot reach the American Dream because she goes about it all in the wrong way and faces numerous societal constraints. By making herself into a commodity item and becoming obsessed with money, she sells out her humanity and ultimately fails in her quest. Therefore, the obsession with wealth and materialism is a common occurrence in noir films.
In general, when one owns a convertible or another kind of luxurious item, it signifies positive attributes and the American belief of the pursuit of happiness. If you have a convertible, a yacht, a mansion, or another prestigious item, you will be living the American PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 127
Dream as rich and feel free and happy. However, in noir films a luxurious item’s positive attributes are one-upped by negative traits of being defeated and disillusioned. In noir films, characters that have convertibles or another expression of wealth do not really go anywhere or achieve anything. They have empty worthless lives.
The hollowness, disorientation, and existentialism beliefs are evident in the traits of film noir characters. As the characters do not have a sense of values or a particular belief in who or what they are as humans, there is no basis in the meaning and value of things, like ethical values related to good and evil. This is seen when the characters act according to their own selfish interests (except for certain characters to a particular extent that live according to societal norms), because they do not think of an afterlife or the consequences of their actions in this life. They are only interested in the here and now and what immediate or earthly benefits they can acquire from their actions. As the characters do not have a guiding philosophical belief or a set of values (like those which a religion can offer), they are seen as being adrift or lost. The protagonist characters are disoriented and alienated from the world.
The world is seen to be chaotic and without meaning or value to their existence. Therefore,
Nietzsche’s “death of God” with no value or meaning leads to disorientation, pessimism, and nihilism, which leads to existentialism in the worldview of noir characters.
In conclusion, movies are often a reflection of the society into which they were created. Varying film styles and periods depict the societal metamorphoses that occurred within the society at different times. Political and economic changes can especially affect people’s psychology, which are frequently expressed in a film work. As movies are often based on literary works, storylines are more certainly affected by such societal transformations. Therefore, movies have an important place in societies all over the world.
Through movies, viewers can see how the ways they were created reflect trends, changes, and PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 128 calls for alterations in society. To be considered great, movies can be radical, moving, and extreme to initiate particular societal changes. However, movies can also simply draw a mass following to reflect the spirit of the time without encouraging any great shifts in societal beliefs. Through an existential perspective from the likes of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and
Camus, the noir literary film adaptations under review depict the fears and psychological effects of 1940s American society in the wake of a changing post-war society. The hollowness, disorientation, and existentialism beliefs are evident in the noir character traits.
As the characters do not have a sense of values or a particular belief in who or what they are as humans, there is no basis in the meaning and value of things, like ethical values related to good and evil. The characters do not think of an afterlife or the consequences of their actions in this life. They are only interested in the here and now and what immediate or earthly benefits they can acquire from their actions. As the characters do not have a guiding philosophical belief or a set of values (like those which a religion can offer), they are seen as being adrift or lost. The protagonist characters are disoriented and alienated from the world.
The world is seen to be chaotic and without meaning or value to their existence. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
CHAPTER IV
THE SPIRIT OF NOIR AS EXPRESSED IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
4. The Spirit of Noir
I think human consciousness was a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self- aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, this accretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when, in fact, everybody’s nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal. (Detective Rust Cohle, from the TV series True Detective, ep.1, 2014). The above quotation aptly conveys the existential mindset that can be found in today’s entertainment media and literature. This outlook is an extension of that devised and reformulated from prominent philosophers over time like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and
Camus. Before delving into the spirit of noir found in today’s society, it is pertinent to trace the background of the noir attitude. The noir sentiment was primarily established during the
WWII period. Leftist viewpoints were put forth in film noir during WWII and after throughout the Red Scare. Their main purpose was to use social criticism to ensure freedom and equality for all people regardless of class or race. They also wanted rights for the working class and no oppression by the government or big businesses. As the government placed many limitations on people’s civil liberties and freedom to express injustices through the media, these leftist filmmakers sought to expose the government for its tyrannical actions and create a society whereby everyone had the freedom to express their individual concerns.
Related with the oppressive measures enacted by the HUAC, arrests, and blacklists of the time, similarities can be noticed in today’s society as well. Although now there are no significant threats from German Nazis, Japanese insurgents, and Russian communists or spies, the modern threat faced by Americans is in the form of Muslim insurgents, terrorists,
129 PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 130 hardliners, and sleeper cells. The same concerns expressed by leftist filmmakers in the 1940s and 1950s are again social concerns as the government engages in suppressing people’s basic civil liberties in the name of national security. The violations of Americans’ civil liberties and rights to privacy are reflected by these WWII era filmmakers in modern society. Therefore, traditional noir films depict the problem of achieving the American Dream not only in the past but as a recurring theme in the 21st century.
According to Mark Conard, classic film noir is best recognized through technical cinematic features like unusual lighting, tilted camera angles, and off-center scene compositions. Besides these cinematic characteristics, various themes are also typical, like the inversion of traditional values (bad guys become heroes or good guys do bad things); moral ambivalence (there is no clear line between right and wrong); feelings of alienation, paranoia, and pessimism; and the themes deal with crime and violence.1
Based on Mark Conard’s definition, “The term neo-noir describes any film coming after the classic noir period that contains noir themes and the noir sensibility.”2 An important difference is that these movies are generally not shot in black-and-white (except when they are intentionally trying to reminisce about classic noir films). However, many of the same themes are found like alienation, moral ambivalence, and disorientation.
The neo-noir films may be able to convey the noir sentiment better than traditional noir films due to the fact that the noir label was retroactively applied to the classic label of these films several years after this genre was not popular any more, meaning that when the classic films were made, they were not essentially made according to a particular movement, which can be seen from the variety of films made from the 1940s and 1950s that are today
1 Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), p.1. 2 Ibid, p.2. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 131 classified as noir. In the modern era, noir films can be explicitly made with a certain purpose.
Next, in the past the Hays office censored noir films to varying degrees. Today there is much more freedom granted to movie producers and directors. They will have a rating system attached to their films based on the standards assigned for movie content. Therefore, the concepts of pessimism, bleakness, anxiety, and cynicism can be more openly shown without being censored by government-run offices as in the past.
So, in analyzing the 1930s detective and crime novels and screen adaptations several years later, the working class against big business / upper-class mentality, the anti- government / anti-establishment themes, and criticism of capitalist society can be examined as carryovers from the early noir literary and film adaptation works. Various differences can be seen between classic noir and neo-noir. Traditional noir films are usually in black-and- white, while neo-noir movies are mostly filmed in color. Sometimes neo-noir films can be shot in black-and-white if they are made as a tribute to the classic style (like in Sin City
(2005) and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)). Voiceover narrations are infrequently used in neo-noir compared with classic noir. Next, the sexual and violent scenes are more explicit in neo-noir, due largely to the fact that the Production Code of the Hays’ office had tighter filming restrictions than those censor restrictions of today. Classic noir pictures were more suggestive in nature while neo-noir is more straightforward and obvious. Producers now have much more freedom in determining plots and final outcomes, whereas the classic noir productions had more restrictions. In classic noir films, the directors had to show a morally allowable ending, but now directors can let criminals get away with their crimes if they so desire without having to atone for their crimes. Morality and poetic justice are more commonly found at the end of traditional noir films than neo-noir ones. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 132
After the Cold War era, the noir era had ended but aspects of noir could still be found in various films. The bleak cynicism and dark visual style of 1940s noir was present in films like Dirty Harry (1971), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955), On the Waterfront (1954), among others. Movies that dealt with darker topics would reflect this through darker lighting and various obscure camera angles.
Today the noir hero or anti-hero can be seen as a figure that rejects authority and is considered an outsider. Parallels can be made in comparing the threat of communism in the post-war era and the war on terrorism today. Both were fighting an invisible enemy of sorts as no one could be directly attacked through a mobilization effort. At a societal and political level, the noir era reveals the struggle between a capitalist society and the threat that communism posed to it as well as the current threat of terrorism on a capitalist society.
4.1 Post WWII Neo-Noir TV Shows
The noir characteristics of the 1940s are best found in today’s films and literary works as expressed through neo-noirs. The typical protagonist that was a sympathetic fugitive figure or leftist anti-government anti-establishment character of the World War II era and the working-class police officer in the McCarthy Cold War era have surfaced in various forms in today’s modern era. Two TV shows that carried this theme in the 1950s were The Fugitive
(1940s theme) and Dragnet (Cold War era theme).
Other TV shows that developed from the success of The Fugitive and Dragnet were
Maverick (similar perspective as The Fugitive) as well as Wyatt Earp and Gunsmoke (similar perspective as Dragnet). The Rockford Files (starring James Garner, also in Maverick) is a detective story from the 1970s with noir traits as well. Jim Rockford is an ex-con who became a private investigator, but he is more concerned about money (like Sam Spade in PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 133
Dashiell Hammet’s novels and Philip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s novels) and not as brave or tough as traditional film and literary detectives. Mike Hammer starring Stacy Keach was a popular detective TV show in the 1980s based on Mickey Spillane’s classic private eye character. He also has noir detective characteristics in that he is tough, honest, a lady’s man, and dedicated to solving murders.
In comparing The Fugitive and Dragnet, The Fugitive has a noir characteristic of being on the outside fighting against the law (government) just like many noir films did in conveying a struggle against big business censorship, and the government. In contrast,
Dragnet has more of the realism factor found in early noir films as many of the TV episodes are based on actual cases. Dragnet also uses narration and emphasizes the fact that crime does not pay as the criminals go to court and jail. This resembles the message the censorship board wanted to convey in WWII era films.
4.2 Neo-Noir Anti-Establishment Depictions
The Reagan and Bush presidencies can also be compared to the post-World War II era and promises for the future through Reagan’s trickle-down economics program stating that if big businesses make a sound profit then everyone down the line will reap in the benefits as well. This is similar with the post-WWII government’s claims for a brave new world full of prosperity for everyone at the defeat of Germany and Japan. Reagan was very supportive of corporations and anti-union as he forced big union strikes to end if they were detrimental to the national economy. Various neo-noir films were made to reflect corruption in Reagan’s program and Bush’s anti-drugs government program. This anti-government sentiment is found in films of that era like Internal Affairs (1990, about a corrupt cop involved in criminal activities); Bad Lieutenant (1992, about a corrupt New York city police detective); Q and A
(1990, about a corrupt police detective); Unlawful Entry (1992, about a mentally disturbed PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 134 cop who invades a couple’s private lives); among various other films conveying an anti- government or anti-establishment mentality. Even TV shows like Twin Peaks, Dallas,
Dynasty, and Knots Landing reflect corruption and scandal among the upper class and depicts what really occurs in the public and private lives of the wealthy. Therefore, although these films and TV shows do not have the same filming techniques as traditional noir movies, they still maintain the same social critiques that were prevalent in the 1940s.
The outsider and anti-establishment or anti-government theme is also found in the
1990s, especially through the TV series The X-Files. This series has two protagonists, Scully and Mulder, who are paranoid about government conspiracies and cover-ups in search of uncovering the truth about various cases.
4.3 Modern Societal Issues Expressed through Noir
In terms of modern expressions of noir traits, they are most readily recognizable through noir themes in modern literary and film productions as retro-noir. For instance, if an
African American or other minority group member wishes to express his/her particular instances of repression, prejudice, or discrimination growing up in white America, that person can do so through retro-noir. Also, in terms of storyline, the traditional crime and detective stories of the 1940s-1950s have been substituted with thriller and serial killer type stories that integrate noir characteristics into the plot. This can be depicted through social crises that may mirror or be a variation of social crises in the mid-20th century. For example, sicknesses today (like AIDS) are different from sicknesses in the past (like polio). Both of these sicknesses can be expressed through a noir perspective that is dark, critical, and depressing, as a social critique. Even a sharp downturn from a wealthy lifestyle to a poor lifestyle can be depicted through noirism as in the economic recession of the early 21st century and how many Americans lost their jobs, homes, comfortable lifestyles, and positive PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 135 outlooks on life. When people get stuck in a rut or fall into a black hole with no way to escape, without great sacrifice, it is reminiscent of the noir themes of the 1940s. Whenever society is faced with feelings of repression, betrayal, helplessness, a loss of self-worth, paranoia, poverty, deception, or other negative aspects that break their will to persevere, it allows for these feelings to be expressed through a noir literary or cinematic work. These problems can also be compounded when gender, class, or racial issues are intermixed with them. Besides considering serious issues to make a social criticism about current conditions in society, neo-noir or retro-noir productions can also be made just for entertainment purposes for those who are reminiscent about the past and desire to reinvigorate the lost or forgotten writing and filming style.
Neo-noir can be considered as representing philosophical aspects or themes that are present in modern popular culture. Some modern films with a neo-noir theme include Angel
Heart (1987) as Harry Angel (played by Mickey Rourke) unbeknownst to him is told to find himself by going on a quest; L.A. Confidential (1997) as a police officer named Bud White
(played by Russell Crowe) shoots an unarmed man who is accused of rape; and The Usual
Suspects (1995) as FBI Agent Dave Kujan (played by Chazz Palminteri) finds that Verbal
Kint (played by Kevin Spacey) could or could not be the figure Keyser Soze, as he tells a story about an assassination that is made to be a drug heist but by the end of his story, it is not clear if what he relayed is true or a lie. Various other films that have a neo-noir theme include
Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Taxi Driver (1976), Reservoir Dogs (1992), and Sin City (2005).
After the noir era ended by the late 1950s, the mood could still be found as the style was reinvented into a neo-noir style. In neo-noir stories, there are still detectives, femme fetales, and twisting thriller plots, but they are more developed than in the classic noir works.
In classic noir plots, the detective is on a quest to solve a crime, but in neo-noir plots the PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 136 detective is more on a self-discovery (like in Angel Heart or Blade Runner). Foster Hirsh says, “While there have been many local changes, noirs basic narrative molds have remained notably stable. Neo-noir is as likely to take place in vast open spaces as in the pestilential city of tradition.”3 This is related to the fact that during WWII everything was city-centered, but after the war as capitalism got a strong foothold, everything started to spread out, which also affected the locations of neo-noir stories. In line with changes to the locales, there were also changes in the lifestyles depicted in neo-noir works. This is apparent in considering that the traditional nuclear family was no longer prominent, and people became more mobile. This resulted in people not having good social ties with their communities or neighborhoods anymore, which is often seen in these neo-noir works.
4.4 Neo-Noir Femme Fetales
In comparing the roles of femme fetales in 1940s noir films and modern neo-noir films, the traditional femme fetale is more interested in money and acquiring wealth, perhaps because the topic of sexuality was forbidden during the 1940s as the censorship board was worried about viewers being negatively affected. The producers could only use sexual innuendos and vague references to sex expressed in indirect ways. For today’s femme fetales, the characters are not only interested in financial gains but also sexual domination, as this can be clearly depicted in literary and film works. The male characters in neo-noirs resemble the male protagonists in traditional detective or crime noirs. They are threatened by femme fetales and have great difficulty in overcoming these imposing women. The femme fetales today are more ferocious and duplicitous to depict their desires to be equal or superior to males. This kind of femme fetale is even seen through female criminals in modern news stories that would not have happened in past year, as in the case of Loraine Bobbit castrating
3 Hirsh, Foster, “Detours and Lost Highways”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009), p.8. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 137 her husband for his sexual indiscretions or other such heinous crimes. The neo-noir films of today do not necessarily deal with morality or issues of the femme fetale meeting her demise if she does not repent, as found in classic noir stories. In neo-noirs the femme fetale may escape or not be detected for committing various crimes. She may be more devious and underhanded than her male protagonist counterpart. Furthermore, a femme fetale may be defeated by a female heroine, whereas in traditional noir works, the male protagonist was always the hero, like in the characters Sam Spade, Philip Marlow, Mike Hammer, among others. Femme fetales today do not face the same constraints in their sexuality and aggressiveness as in past years due to the fact that females are able to break out of their traditional household roles and have more independence to live their lives as they choose to be separate from the patriarchal structure.
Noir films also contribute to reflections of modern society in cinema through the characterization of femme fetales. These kinds of women are now found in thriller/horror/slasher kinds of films. Although modern films generally do not use the same black-and-white style of lighting in traditional noirs (unless they are trying to recreate the exact mood of the 1940s, various aspects are still carried over in today’s era. Expressionistic lighting is still used in varying degrees to show characters being entrapped (The Grifters) or in a fight for good against evil (The Empire Strikes Back). The style and music (primarily jazz) can also be made to resemble mid-20th century films. Femme fetale characters are further found in films like The Grifters, Basic Instinct, Malice, Body of Evidence, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, Single White Female, among others. These are all deadly and dangerous femme fetale women that are found in films of various genres but still convey the underlying femme fetale characteristics. Different from traditional femme fetales who are money and power oriented, modern ones may also be obsessed with men or may want to be a PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 138 mother by killing the real mother and trying to take her place. The newer version of the femme fetale does not have particular constructs to fit into, whereas the traditional one was required by censorship regulations to meet particular criteria. The newer femme fetales have broader audiences to appeal to, so their roles and genres are more varied.
Another difference in the way classic and modern femme fetales are shown is through the ways the films are made and what kind of audience they target. This refers to the production, distribution, and targeted audience. Hollywood used to just make these films as
“A” or “B” level films for big screen audiences with small budgets for American viewers.
Now femme fetales are found in worldwide venues with big budgets, more elaborate camera work and special effects, more varied stories, different kinds of viewers, and in various distributions formats like TV series, videos, cable TV, etc. Therefore, more care is needed and pre-screenings to ensure that it will be accepted by a wide-scale audience.
As in noir films of the WWII era, in today’s society femme fetales can also pose a threat to male sexuality and patriarchal society. As men today are less masculine than in years’ past, these femme fetales can symbolize the further degradation of masculinity in society. Femme fetales highlight male insecurities in an ever-changing industrial world.
In discussing how modern femme fetales contribute to male paranoia, Amelia Jones reveals woman films are “the fearful response of patriarchy to the loss of boundaries endemic to the conditions of subjectivity in contemporary, so-called postmodern, American life. Their seemingly conventional narratives are, on closer look, distorted by projected anxieties provoked by the postmodern collapse of traditional rules governing sexual difference. Male paranoia is a defense aimed at rebuilding the subject-object dichotomy that threatens to dissolve as more and more women (and men for that matter) take on both masculine and PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 139 feminine roles.”4 Therefore, in analyzing the femme fetales of today, they possess some of the same characteristics as those of past years but have expanded and more developed personality types and are more blatantly aggressive and domineering than in the past. What’s more, modern femme fetales do not necessarily meet their doom or reform themselves. They may continue going on living in the same manner. They can subvert the traditional patriarchal structure and determine their own destiny.
In analyzing how the modern femme fetale has been reinvented, Kate Stables claims,
“The new fatale uses the accumulated visual iconography of the fetale in art and film, but the introduction of three key areas: 1) repeated representations of sexual acts; 2) transparently sexual speech; and 3) the open problematizing of the fetale’s sexuality; has skewed the figure in a totally new way.”5 Stables continues by stating that, “Classic film noir sexualized its heroines through highly cooled glamour, and an armory of visual iconography arranged to signal sex and define her as a sexual presence. Put repeatedly on sexual display, the new fetale is redefined as a sexual performer within a visual system which owes as much to soft- core pornography as it does to mainstream Hollywood.”6 The new femme fetales are more direct, blunt, and harsh in the way they talk, whereas the classic femme fetale is not as open, uses more metaphors, and is more ambiguous in her manner of speech. Classic femme fetales go back and forth with their male protagonist counterparts while flirting without engaging in much physical contact, while the modern femme fetales can be much cruder and engage in visible sexual acts on the screen.
4.5 Neo-Noir Anti-Heroes
4 Jones, Amelia, qtd in Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.167. 5 Stables, Kate, “The Postmodern Always Rings Twice: Constructing the Femme Fetale in 90s Cinema”, from Kaplan, Ann. Women in Film Noir. (London: British Film Institute, 2008), p.172. 6 Ibid, p.173. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 140
Related with detective stories, in the 19th century Sherlock Holmes is the popular typical detective hero who is rich and solves cases out of goodwill. In the mid-20th century the detective is more of an anti-hero flawed character like Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe who solve cases out of financial need, are from a working-class background, and are at odds with the society around them, as reflected in their cynical, harsh, and pessimistic attitudes.
The classic noir detectives work alone, unlike Sherlock Holmes who has Watson as his assistant. For neo-noir, the detective does not look for a criminal as much as he is doing a self-exploration while solving a case. Neo-noir detectives may have amnesia, hallucinations, artificial memory implants (like in Blade Runner or other science fiction stories), or other instances which cause them to struggle to find themselves.
4.6 Existentialism and Neo-Noir Today
By examining the philosophical themes of neo-noir films, the correlations can be seen from the classic noir literary and film works. Like traditional noir, neo-noir also has an existential sentiment, even more so in many respects than that found in traditional noir. This is supported by Thomas Elsaesser, who wrote,
The psychologically or emotionally motivated classic hero was replaced by the unmotivated hero, who brought an almost physical sense of inconsequential action, of pointlessness and usefulness; stances which are not only interpretable psychologically, but speak of a radical skepticism about American virtues of ambition, vision, and drive, which had underpinned the classic Hollywood action genres.7 More freedom was given to producers to make various kinds of films, and they did not necessarily have to be tied up into a neat resolution with a happy ending. Since the
Production Code (based on previous censorship regulations, the Hays Office) was no longer in effect, producers had more artistic freedom. The neo-noir directors stayed within the crime
7 Spicer, Andrew, “Problems of Memory and Identity in Neo-Noir’s Existentialist Antihero”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009), p.49. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 141 genre and used the traditional quest, investigation, or journey format, but made their actions look even more absurd or meaningless, thus showing how existentialism was more prevalent than in classic noir films. With more indie and art house film productions making creative films and not relegated to just showing them as box office productions or other major film labels, it has allowed for a greater variety of neo-noir productions to be shown. Furthermore, viewers can watch these kinds of films on DVDs or other media formats, unlike in the past where they had to go to the cinema. Besides that, viewers are more knowledgeable about film productions today and do not necessarily need to have a perfect ending with a moral resolution; they can better appreciate cinematic creativity today than in past years.
4.7 Three Types of Neo-Noir
According to Jerold J. Abrams, neo-noir can be divided into three types: past neo- noir, present neo-noir, and future neo-noir.8 Past neo-noir is more theological in nature. An example of past neo-noir is Angel Heart about Detective Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) who is hired by Louis Cypher “Lucifer” (Robert DeNiro) to find Johnny Favorite who suffers from amnesia. Harry Angel also suffers from amnesia, and it turns out that actually Lucifer is making him remember his past. The devil wants Harry Angel to remember his past, so that he can take his soul, as was previously agreed upon when Harry was Johnny Favorite. This is similar to the literary figure Faust, who is a successful scholar but dissatisfied with his life, which prompts him to make a deal with the devil for unlimited knowledge and world pleasures in exchange for his soul. Another good example is Pulp Fiction (1994) with Jules
Winnfield (Samuel Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) who are sent on a quest to retrieve a briefcase that glows inside, which is a similar quest with Raiders of the Lost Ark several years before about retrieving a golden mystical object.
8 Abrams, Jerold J., “Space, Time, and Subjectivity in Neo-Noir Cinema”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009), p.10. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 142
For future noir, it generally deals with science fiction and alien themes. A good example that fits into this category is Blade Runner (1982), as Detective Rick Deckard
(Harrison Ford) has to find four humanoid replicants and kill them. The replicants have a limited lifecycle of only 4 years, and they want their creator to make them live longer. Like other noir detective stories, Deckard also goes on a quest to find himself and after meeting
Rachel, a human-like replicant (Sean Young). Then he starts to question his own identity, and it is assumed at the end of the film that he is also a replicant, although not explicitly stated so.
Blade Runner also has low-key lighting; indoor shadowy images; a voice-over narration by the protagonist detective; dark, gloomy, rainy, and life-less settings; as well as apparel typical of traditional noir characters. Deckard is often seen wearing a trench coat. Rachel looks like a traditional femme fetale of 1940s noir, as she has her hair tied in a bun and wears a jacket with shoulder pads just like Mildred Pierce. The similar clothing styles and appearances of
Mildred Pierce (in Mildred Pierce) and Rachel (in Blade Runner) can be viewed from their similar styles in appearance.
In considering the film Blade Runner from an existential perspective, Jean-Paul Sartre in Existentialism and Human Emotions states that existence precedes essence in humans only.
This means that when humans are born, they can determine the course of their existence, but human-made things like androids have their essence first in the minds of their creators and are programmed to do limited or various functions according to how their creators design them before they are in a physical form. Therefore, in androids, the essence comes before the existence. Sartre argues that if one thinks about God in the traditional sense, then God will be just like the scientist who makes androids and has their final determination in mind before they are created. Sartre eliminates God from this equation, so that humans can make their own determination and not be pre-determined by God. As Sartre did not believe in God, he PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 143 thinks that humans decide what they want to be through their own actions. Sartre believes people become more human by developing emotions over time.
The Bourne Identity (2002) and Memento (2000) are examples of present neo-noir where the protagonists suffer from amnesia or deal with self-discovery like in other neo-noir works. As traditional noir has detective characters who go after criminals to solve cases, instead of trying to do a self-discovery or reconcile amnesia (although there are various traditional noir stories with amnesiac characters after WWII related to wartime veterans who suffer from psychological problems), the detectives are still trapped in the noir world they live. This theme is also found in neo-noir films, as protagonist characters or detectives may go through some kind of self discovery, but ultimately they are unable to complete a self- discovery or many questions will still remain.
4.8 Portrayals of Classic and Neo-Noir
Just as traditional noir films were influenced by social incidents like World War II, the Cold War, and the atomic era later, neo-noir films were also influenced by the Vietnam
War, the John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, Watergate, and more modern problems dealing with economic issues and terrorism. Therefore, historical factors have played a role in influencing the development of noir and neo-noir films.
A primary difference between neo-noir and classic noir is that characters in neo-noir can sometimes triumph over or control the noir world they live in. An example can be seen in the film Silence of the Lambs, where serial killer Hannibal Lecter is in control of his surroundings, even when he is imprisoned it is because he chooses to be there. Next, in
Reservoir Dogs, the characters can engage in mayhem killings without any real consequence. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 144
In classic noir, such kinds of characters would have to atone for their sins and crimes or meet their doom.
Similar with Plato in The Republic and Marx in various writings, classic noir also portrays the concept that when individuals are obsessed with wealth it can threaten justice and social order. This is in response to the social and cultural changes in a post WWII society. Similar with that, neo-noir has also made criticisms on corporate capitalism in response to dismay over the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and recessions. In these kinds of criticisms on capitalism, wealth is not shown in a glamorous light like in the movie
Chinatown.
In considering the neo-noir film Chinatown (1974) which takes place in Los Angeles in the 1930s, this story deals with a private detective, Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson) who is hired by a woman (played by Diane Ladd) to investigate an engineer, Hollis Mulwray
(played by Darrell Zwerling). Surrounded by various kinds of crimes and criminals, Gittes can be classified as a noir detective but somewhat different from Philip Marlowe of the mid-
20th century. Gittes is a capable detective in various aspects, but he cannot traverse the noir world as easily as Philip Marlowe. Gittes also does not have as many admirable traits as
Marlowe, which can make Gittes seem more realistic in representing what a true detective may be like in the real world. Gittes also has difficulty going up against the corruption and seems to be better off not trying to change everything.
Various neo-noir films also have a theme of reminiscing about the past and worrying about the future, while trying to figure out how to get by in their present chaotic world. One such example is Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), starring Robert De Niro as Travis
Bickle. The traditional noir characteristics of having nostalgia, feeling lost, and being insecure can be transposed to this film as well. Here, the anti-hero Travis Bickle is a Vietnam PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 145
War veteran who has returned from the Vietnam War and works as a taxi driver. He is disgusted by the city he lives in and thinks someone needs to clean the whole city up. This is reminiscent of classic noir films with WWII veterans who return to their society and are disillusioned and cannot adjust. In describing what his life is like as a taxi driver, Travis says to himself in a 1st person narration just like in classic noir films, “All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. I go all over. I take people to the
Bronx, Brooklyn, I take 'em to Harlem. I don't care. Don't make no difference to me. It does to some. Some won't even take spooks. Don't make no difference to me.” In another part of the movie, Travis talks about what his neo-noir world is like to live in. “Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere.
There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man.” He also says related to the city’s condition, “I think someone should just take this city and just... just flush it down the fuckin' toilet.”
Typical classic noir anti-heroes also live lonely lives, especially detectives. In Taxi Driver,
Travis Bickle is a sexually repressed and paranoid individual, which can be seen in how he lives and interacts with others. He is portrayed as a psychologically disturbed person full of anger towards the society he lives in, and unable to adjust to this undesirable world. He has an existential worldview full of pessimism and anguish trying to navigate his way through this neo-noir world. Therefore, this movie has many parallels with classic noir productions.
The character also has a sort of spiritual awakening or self-realization at the end of the film, similar with Frank Chambers in The Postman Always Rings Twice and Monsieur Meursault in The Stranger.
4.9 Manifestations of Noir Today
4.9.1 Modern Cultural Manifestations of Noir PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 146
In comparing the 1940s and the modern era, noir sentiment is trendy again as parallels can be made between the two eras. In today’s time, the term best applied is neo-noir or retro- noir. In some aspects, noir is revitalized in a more generic sense, such as in a section in the
New York Times national paper “City” section there is a part called “Noir York”. This is more related to the night scene and events happening around the city that may attract New York residents. Another way that noir is expressed generically is through clothing, decorative items and styles, food items (like chocolate), and various other expressions to capitalize on the trendy look and feel of black-and-white contrast. There is even a website called NoirNet.
Therefore, after disappearing for the most part from the 1960s to the 1980s, noir has made a comeback and been revitalized through various expressions.
Next, from a fashion and cultural perspective, in today’s society noir has been branded and is found in popular culture in advertisements, magazine articles, editorials, music videos, and products. It is used to represent the mood, style, or attitude of particular noir films of the 1940s and 1950s. Examples of its expression through popular culture can be viewed in numerous forms today.
4.9.2 Expressions of Noir in the Media Today and in the Future
The World War II period noir films and literary works still gain a great following even today, as various noir novels are still being turned into movies and TV shows. Even the original Mildred Pierce from the mid-1940s was remade into an HBO miniseries starring
Kate Blanchet just a few years ago (2011). This style of writing and filmmaking from the
1940s is significant to American culture and society as it reflects the real condition of society at the time and how political, social, and economic factors interacted to create such a unique literary and film style. The noir films can be considered as cultural products which reveal a great deal about the worries, anxieties, and pressures faced by Americans living during the PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 147 war. The legacy of these films and the spirit from their unique literary and cinematic style can be enjoyed and emulated by film and classic detective / crime novel connoisseurs, film and
TV show producers, as well as historians and casual entertainment lovers.
Today, traditional noir films and novels still have popularity and are found in various forms. Some classic noir films are remade into more modern versions. The classic novels are used as a framework for modern crime novel writers to base their works. Noir is also an international phenomenon now, not just relegated to the USA, South America, England,
France, and Germany, as it was during the mid-20th century (especially during WWII). Many adaptations are found in numerous countries worldwide. Even various museum displays and paintings depict the noir theme. The popularity can be due to an assortment of factors, but for newer neo-noir productions, it may be popular because directors can use their artistic freedom combined with sexual violence or criminality to produce unique stories. Noir can be shown today in many different styles to reminisce about the past time, just to depict an era that is no more, or to try to revitalize it in some way.
Next, since the 9/11 incident, the theme of being in a Cold War is again revived, only the difference is that during the Cold War, the enemy was more easily identifiable in the form of the USSR. Now, the enemy is terrorism which is more unseen and stretches over many countries and is not contained to particular countries.
The common theme of noir films related to despair and hopelessness can even be applied to modern American society. “Americans living through the Great Recession of 2008 got a taste of what it was like back then – how a paralysis of fear gripped the nation as the PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 148 stock market crash widened and deepened, as one-quarter of the labor force was unemployed and without hope.”9
In today’s society, noir can be seen as potentially being found all over the world.
Even though it was incepted in the mid-20th century, the themes of paranoia, betrayal, deceit, hopelessness, and failure are even more prevalent now. As the decades progressed, these kinds of films were more fatalistic and displayed more despair. Although noir and neo-noir films were not the dominant films of any era, they still attracted a wide audience with viewers who could relate with the themes and messages found within the films. The newer neo-films can be considered as a response to the repressed era of the Production Code, which had strict regulations in how films were produced and what messages they conveyed. In addition, neo- films convey many more social ills and criticisms of society that have sprung up worldwide.
Oftentimes, neo-noir today strives to convey how behind a peaceful society with nice houses and fenced-in yards, there is a darker side that lurks behind it. The protagonists are surrounded by darkness that may swallow them at any time. No safety nets can be found in any layer of society, as the protagonists have to be on guard at all times. These kinds of movies reveal that the society we live in now is problematic, and the prevalent societal concerns will only get progressively worse.
Consumerism and materialism is much more prevalent today than it was during and after WWII. Many of Nietzsche’s concerns about the effect of society in the face of scientific and technological advancements have come to fruition. Television has become a more popular form of media compared to movies to express existential aspects and societal problems today. Some of the various TV series that reveal criminal aspects of society are Law and Order (1990-2010), Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (1999-present), Law and
9 Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. (New York: Nation Books, 2012), p.29. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 149
Order: Criminal Intent (2001-2011), CSI: Las Vegas (2000-present), CSI: Miami (2002-
2012), CSI: New York (2004-2013), Criminal Minds (2005-present), among numerous other types of shows that deal with criminality and sex crimes. There is even a FOX Crime
Network that deals specifically with crime TV shows 24 hours a day. Furthermore, the most recent popular TV series that deals with the dark side of humanity and an existentialist perspective from the protagonist character is True Detective (2014-present) about the lives of two detectives, Rust Cohle (played by Matthew McConaughey) and Martin Hart (played by
Woody Harrelson), who become entangled during a 17-year search for a serial killer in
Louisiana. The existentialist mindset of Detective Rust Cohle is easily observable in the first
15 minutes of the 1st episode of True Detective, after the two protagonists have left a grisly murder scene and are taking a car ride together in the boondocks of Louisiana. This is portrayed in the following dialog.
Rust Cohle: People out here it’s like they don’t even know the outside world exists. Might as well be living on the fucking Moon. Martin Hart: There’s all kinds of ghettos in the world. Rust Cohle: It’s all one ghetto, man. Ginat gutter in outer space. Martin Hart: Ask you something? You’re a Christian, yeah? Rust Cohle: No. Martin Hart: Well, then what do you got that cross for in your apartment? Rust Cohle: That’s a form of meditation. Martin Hart: How’s that? Rust Cohle: I contemplate the moment in the garden, the idea of allowing your own crucifixion. Martin Hart: But you’re not a Christian. So what do you believe? Rust Cohle: I believe that people shouldn’t talk about this kind of shit at work. Martin Hart: Hold on, hold on, uh … 3 months we been together. I get nothing from you. Today, what we’re into now, do me a courtesy, okay? I’m not trying to convert you. Rust Cohle: Look. I consider myself a realist, all right, but in philosophical terms, I’m what’s called a pessimist. Martin Hart: Um, okay. What’s that mean? Rust Cohle: Means I’m bad at parties. Martin Hart: Hey, let me tell you. You ain’t great outside of parties either. Rust Cohle: I think human consciousness was a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are all creatures that should not exist by natural law. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 150
Martin Hart: Huh. That sounds god-fucking-awful, Rust. Rust Cohle: We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, this accretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when, in fact, everybody’s nobody. Martin Hart: I wouldn’t go around spouting that shit, I was you. People around here don’t think that way. I don’t think that way. Rust Cohle: I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal. Martin Hart: So what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning? Rust Cohle: I tell myself I bear witness, but the real answer is that it’s obviously my programming, and I lack the constitution for suicide. Martin Hart: My luck, I picked today to get to know you. Rust Cohle: I get a bad taste in my mouth out here. Aluminum, ash. Like you can smell the psychosphere.
From the above dialog, the existential mindset that was prevalent in the 1940s noir era literary and film works can be seen as a prevailing theme in many forms of modern entertainment media. Even the tag words used by HBO to promote the TV series True
Detective convey its dark mood with the phrase “Man is the Cruelest Animal”. Therefore,
America’s fascination with crime and the dark aspects of humanity is easily recognizable in these types of TV shows that gain substantial viewership.
Today’s media has many negative effects on the American mindset. The modern reality of today’s society depicts people being more detached than they ever were before.
People do not spend as much time in their communities, as they prefer interacting in virtual communities. People seem to be more disillusioned as big businesses become bigger and people are increasingly isolated in society. Americans are obsessed with money, in the hopes that the more material possessions they acquire, it will somehow substitute for the emptiness, hopelessness, and despair in their lives. There are further many television programs like
Extreme Makeover, Pimp My Ride, The Apprentice, Wife Swap, I Want a Famous Face, just to name a few that promise with major alternations to people’s personal appearances or home and automobile appearances, it will bring instant happiness. These TV shows do not show PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 151 minor alterations but emphasize knocking everything down and starting over from the beginning. The American public is deluded into believing that drastic changes in their physical or economic condition will make them instantaneously cheerful. There is also a constant barrage of advertisements proclaiming that consumerism is the path to happiness.
Even on the international scale, the negative effects of consumerism have pervaded the music video industry. The most recognizable example in today’s popular culture is visible in the music video “Chick Chick” by Wang Rong Rollin, a Chinese singer from China, who released the song in October of 2014. When examined from a superficial perspective, the video can be seen to be about a hen which cannot find its chick and asks the other animals it encounters for assistance. However, from a noir existential perspective, this video can convey the influence of Western decadence and how extravagance, luxury, and self-indulgence have infiltrated societies worldwide, resulting in a sense of moral decline. With the Cinderella,
Lady Gaga, as well as fat and lazy American references, it shows the negative effects of materialism and the decline of Western society. This is in line with the materialism concerns and social decline of Nietzsche in the late 19th century as well as the loss of originality as Ben
Franklin had wanted.
To top this, there are also fears of terrorism, empty promises from government leaders, corruption, war, greed, violence, and other societal ills. With these societal aspects becoming more obvious today, it lays the groundwork for noir moods to be depicted in various media. As consumerism becomes more rampant, various social problems are more prevalent, and as the media has an increasingly negative effect on American society, it will lead to more social criticisms of the state of the world as expressed in noir literature and neo- noir films. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION AND LIMITATIONS, SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5. Conclusion and Limitations, Suggestions and Recommendations for Further
Research
5.1 Conclusion and Limitations
Movies and literary works oftentimes reflect the society into which they were created.
What people do or see in reality is more often than not found on the movie screen and the printed page. This can be substantiated through the concept that one aspect of a society is a reflection of another. Therefore, films and literary works can be considered as having a very influential role in society, whether as an active or reflective function. These permanent records can preserve a particular language, culture, and era. They can depict how a society has evolved over time. Movies and literary productions are able to reveal how a society was shaped and the morals and values found within it. These cultural products also can be used as an instrument to teach society about the present, show its connection with the past, or reveal where it might be heading in the future.
This thesis has explored the extent to which American film noir is an extension of existentialism and how the spirit of film noir is still expressed in modern American society.
This thesis has primarily analyzed the film adaptations of several literary works instead of the literary works directly because the theoretical framework best supports the film versions as many of the cinematic effects and narrative elements present in the noir movies better support an existential perspective. In addition, actors in motion pictures can more actively engage viewers’ responsiveness in numerous ways like through audio and visual stimulations that a
152 PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 153 literary work may not effectively be able to do. Conveying the storyline through a cinematic means will reach a greater audience and can show the concerns, fears, anxieties, paranoia, and fatalism of 1940s film noir. The film characters are representative of these characteristics as well as the “authors” of the film, which can include the screenplay writer, director, producer, and others involved in the filming process. Through watching classic noir films, viewers can examine what characters do and analyze their actions at the meta-level to realize how they move viewers to respond in a certain way and how the characters can be construed as representing society on a larger scale. By looking at the overlap between the film world and the real world, the moral psychology of both can be examined by discovering the personal inner lives of the characters and their relevance in how the stories unfold, thus reflecting societal beliefs of a particular period. The study is significant to examine the emergence and development of noir literature and its screen adaptations, as well as to consider how this style and/or theme is still present in modern day literary works, the film industry, and society in general.
Cultural products like noir films and literary works depict how characters interact with each other in various social situations and what kinds of social constraints or dilemmas they are faced with. Conducting an in-depth analysis of the noir style and characters’ psychology is beneficial to measure the degree of societal reflection and sentiment expressed through the noir mood. Therefore, it is essential to realize the significance of film noir to show how the ideas and themes found within it can influence a person’s ideology as well as how the values are reflected in society at that time and its connection with modern society.
In conclusion, most noir films and literary works reveal how the American concepts of liberty and personal invention counter the real conditions of society. As a result, many characters are alienated, displaced, indifferent, tarnished, and impoverished, living in an PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 154 existentialist society. Various leftist noir works depict capitalism as a social evil because the small people are at the mercy of the powers to be. Unable to resist the social constraints placed upon them, they fold under the pressure and lead trapped and disappointed lives. The principles that America was founded on are portrayed in noir works as being unreal or unreachable. The characters are depicted as not really having individual personalities or reachable ambitions, as they are constrained by their place in society. It is near impossible to reinvent oneself without sacrificing a great deal or experiencing much trauma. The concepts of capitalism and consumerism are viewed in a negative light, as obtaining material wealth and engaging in free enterprise will only bring a person momentary happiness as individuals will eventually sink into their obsession with consumer goods and be overcome by paranoia and insecurity. Therefore, noir literary and film works are essential not only to look at the historical development of society in the face of major social incidents, but also to remind us to be open to different intellectual and political viewpoints that are present in today’s society, so that all people have true inalienable rights to reach the American Dream.
Limitations
In considering the limitations of this thesis, a broad and general approach was used to incorporate the overall sentiment of noir with emphasis on the noir mood/style from an
American perspective. For the theoretical framework, Albert Camus was chosen over other existentialists because he lived during the 1940s when noir was at its heyday and was directly influenced by noir crime writers and films of his era. In addition, after reading various scholarly writings related to noir, I found that Nietzsche’s existentialist perspective has been used on various occasions, but Albert Camus has only been mentioned in passing, which created a niche for an analysis to be conducted related to Camus’ existentialist viewpoint. In spite of this, many other existentialist theorists can also be examined. As the concept of noir PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 155 itself is broad and extends to various literary genres, film genres, and popular culture, it is better to analyze it in a broad perspective and apply examples from these three fields to support the thematic style, as noir itself changes over the years in relation with societal transformations or criticisms. As a noir perspective is far reaching over many decades, a more complete analysis can be devised. The examples utilized in this thesis are ones in which I am most familiar; nevertheless, a plethora of other examples can be used and angles can be applied in conducting a study on noir. Also, due to the length restrictions of writing this thesis, I chose the best examples to support the theoretical framework.
5.2 Suggestions and Recommendations for Further Research
Many different avenues can be explored regarding noir from a literary perspective or a film analysis. This thesis touches briefly on the role of the femme fetale and her significance to the plot construction of the noir mood during the early to mid 1940s. Perhaps a more in-depth study can be conducted on femme fetale characters and how they have changed from the 1940s to the 1950s and ultimately to modern times, analyzed from a feminist perspective to reveal how these characters are a threat to the traditional patriarchal society and how femme fetales convey women’s increased power in society.
A Freudian psychoanalytic perspective can also be applied to analyze the inner workings of characters’ minds and how their surroundings affect their mindsets. Some of
Freud’s works that can be used for a psychoanalytical approach include A Case of Paranoia
Running Counter to the Psychological Theory of the Disease, On the Mechanism of
Paranoia, The Uncanny, The Interpretation of Dreams, and Totem and Taboo. Another psychoanalytic approach that can be used is from Jacque Lacan’s The Mirror Stage as
Formative Function of the ‘I’ as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. Jacque Lacan’s theory from Jacque Lacan’s Return to Freud: The Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary can PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 156 also be used to analyze the split from the Symbolic and the Imaginary to show overlapping between symbolic and idealized functions of characters in a social reality construct as part of the Symbolic Order. Next, various other existentialist perspectives (Schopenhauer, Jaspers,
Sartre, Dostoyevsky, Kierkegaard, Camus, etc.) can be analyzed and compared with
Nietzsche to determine overlaps and differences in viewpoints as they pertain to particular noir film and literary works under analysis.
Next, from an existential perspective, many other film and literary works can be compared such as The Onion Field, a non-fiction novel by Joseph Wambaugh, which details the shift of the main character Ian Campbell, a police officer, who changes from living his life from a Kantian philosophical belief to that of an existential belief based on a tragic life event, the murder of his partner. Or even a psychological comparison between the two protagonist police officers in the literary work The Onion Field and the two protagonist detectives in the TV series True Detective would be appealing to explore from an existential perspective. A second literary and film work that would be interesting to analyze from an existential perspective would be Lord of the Flies by William Golding, which shows what happens to a group of children stranded on an island that have no moral basis to fall back on.
A third novel, Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, and its loosely-based film version,
Apocalypse Now, would be equally as interesting to explore the existential belief system of the characters.
Besides the suggestions espoused above, another angle that can be examined is related to the role of modernity and effect of materialism as found in these films by considering the physical items used in the film settings to determine whether the items used in noir films are more representational of traditional or modern values using a Marxist analysis. This can be utilized to examine how noir movies convey the conflict between the traditional lifestyle with PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 157 a more modern materialistic lifestyle by analyzing the physical items used in the movie sets combined with a socialist theoretical perspective. For example, in the movie Mildred Pierce, there is a clear shift from a traditional to a modern lifestyle, and an analysis of these items and the popular brand names of the time could reveal the director’s criticism of society’s changing values.
Another interesting research topic that can be analyzed is to conduct a comparative literature research on existentialism from an American perspective with that of an Indonesian perspective from a well-known author like Iwan Simatupang, who has written numerous literary works like Bulan Bujur Sangkar, RT Nol / RW Nol, Petang di Taman, Merahnya
Merah, Ziarah, Kering, Koong, Tegak Lurus dengan Langit, Sejumlah Masalah Sastra,
Surat-Surat Politik, and Ziarah Malam. Hence, numerous perspectives and theoretical approaches can be applied to research noir films and literary works from a number of viewpoints.
In examining noir at an international scale, numerous books have been written about noir related to cities and regions all over the world, including Belfast, Helsinki, Tehran, Tel
Aviv, Berlin, Euro, Nordic (Scandinavian), Manila, Paris, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Dublin,
Bangkok, London, Haiti, Budapest, Havana, Venice, Mexico City, Copenhagen, Barcelona,
Vancouver, Singapore, Sweden, Mediterranean, Toronto, Mumbai, Moscow, Columbia, New
Delhi, Trinidad, European, East Asia, Morocco, Britain, Africa, among others. Nevertheless, noticeably absent from this plethora of noir literary works in the field of world literature is
Indonesian noir. Even in popular culture, there are no compilation books written about noir aspects in Indonesian society related to detective stories, criminal aspects, and existential themes in English language. Therefore, in order to provide a substantial contribution to world literature, comparative literature, and popular culture, it is imperative that more Indonesian PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 158 noir-style literary works and movies are translated into English language, so that Indonesian literature and movie productions can be better recognized at the international level. By translating more Indonesian noir works and films into English language, a new mood/style of
Indonesian noir can be established and provide invaluable contributions to world literature and the international film community. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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APPENDICES
Appendix 1: Biography of James M. Cain (1892-1977)
James M. Cain was an American journalist, screenwriter, and novelist. He is identified with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as belonging to the hard-boiled school of crime fiction. Three of his novels - The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), which captured the downbeat atmosphere of the Depression, Double Indemnity (1936), and Mildred Pierce (1941) - were also made into classics of the American screen.
He considered himself as a journalist foremost, as he wrote in the preface to Double Indemnity: "I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices and even the gutters of his country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent, and that if I stick to this heritage, this logos of the American countryside, I shall attain a maximum of effectiveness with very little effort."
James Mallahan Cain was born in Annapolis, Maryland, the son of James W. Cain, a distinguished educator, and Rose Cain, an opera singer. During the last year of World War I he served in the U.S. Army as the editor of the 79th Division newspaper Lorraine Cross in France. After the war Cain was employed by the Baltimore American (1917-18) as a police reporter, and then by The Baltimore Sun (1919-23), where he covered political and industrial strife in the West Virginia.
From 1923 to 1924 Cain was Professor of Journalism at St. John's College, Annapolis. From 1932 to 1947 Cain lived in Southern California writing for films, although his original contract at Paramount lasted only six months. In Hollywood Cain was never hailed as a great screenwriter but he was known for his wickedly sharp ear for dialogue. Cain secured writing credit only on three films. His most important works, including The Postman Always Rings Twice, were adapted for the screen by other writers. Cain's style was sparse, and he believed that it was the way novels should be written at the time of the Depression.
Love was a constant source of troubles in Cain's novels and his personal life from the beginning of his career. His divorces cost much money and he had occasionally difficulties in paying the bills. When the newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst made it known that he did not like Cain, that source of income was cut off. It was not until in his 80s, when Cain began writing articles again for The Washington Post. Cain's marriage in 1920 to Mary Rebecca Clough, his childhood sweetheart who worked as a teacher, dissolved three years later. He then married in 1927 Elina Sjösted Tyszecka. They divorced in 1942. Cain's third wife (1944-1945) was Aileen Pringle, a silent-screen star, who was acquainted with Mencken. After divorce Cain married in 1947 the opera singer Florence Macbeth Whitwell.
Cain generally preferred a first-person narrator, avoided moralizing, and his characters were often self-destructive, or used by stronger women. Many of his stories were set in Glendale, a Los Angeles suburb. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 166
Selected bibliography:
Crashing the Pearly Gates, 1926 (play) Theological Interlude, 1928-29 (play, in American Mercury) Citizenship, 1928-29 (play) Our Government, 1930 (play) The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1934 Double Indemnity, 1936 Serenade, 1937 Algiers, 1938 (additional dialogue, based on the novel of Henri La Barthe) Blockade, 1938 (additional dialogue) Stand Up and Fight, 1939 (screenplay, with Jane Murfin, Harvey Fergusson, Laurence Stallings / un-credited additional dialogue) Mildred Pierce, 1941 Love's Lovely Counterfeit, 1942 (in Three of Hearts,1949) The Embezzler, 1943 Career in C Major and Other Stories, 1943 Gypsy Wildcat, 1944 (screenplay, with Joseph Hoffman, James P. Hogan, Gene Lewis) For Men Only: A Collection of Short Stories, 1944 (ed.) Three of a Kind: Career in C Major, The Embezzler, Double Indemnity, 1944 (Career in C Major and The Embezzler published as Everybody Does It, 1949) Past All Dishonor, 1946 (in Three of Hearts, 1949) Sinful Woman, 1947 (with Jealous Woman, 1955) The Butterfly, 1947 (in Three of Hearts, 1949) The Moth, 1948 Three of Hearts, 1949 Jealous Woman, 1949 The Root of His Evil, 1951 (as Shameless, 1958) Galatea, 1953 Mignon, 1965 The Magician's Wife, 1965 Cain x 3, 1969 (with a new intro. by Tom Wolfe) Rainbow's End, 1975 The Institute, 1976 The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction, 1981 (edited by Roy Hoopes) Cloud Nine, 1984 The Enchanted Isle, 1985 60 Years of Journalism, 1985 (edited and with introductions by Roy Hoopes) Career in C Major and Other Fiction, 1986 (edited and with introduction by Roy Hoopes) The James M. Cain Cookbook, 1988 The Cocktail Waitress, 2012 (afterword by Charles Ardai)
Source: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jmcain.htm. “James Mallahan Cain”. Accessed on September 4th, 2013. Web. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 167
Appendix 2: Biography of Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)
Raymond Chandler was an American motion picture screen writer and author of detective fiction. Chandler began writing stories for the crime fiction magazine Black Mask, which also published Dashiell Hammett’s stories. He is best known for his tough but honest private detective Philip Marlowe. As a representative and master of hard-boiled school of crime fiction, Chandler criticized classical puzzle writers for their lack of realism.
Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago, but he grew up in England after the divorce of his parents. His mother, Florence, had married a Quaker railroadman, Maurice Chandler, while visiting her sister in Omaha. Chandler lived with his mother, grandmother, and aunt in Auckland Road, Upper Norwood, in south London. He attended Dulwich College, which was within a longish walking distance of Upper Norwood, and studied then international law in France and Germany.
Before returning to the United States in 1912, Chandler published twenty-seven poems and his first story, 'The Rose-Leaf Romance.' During World War I he served in the Canadian Army (1917-18), and was later transferred to the Royal Air Force (1918-19). In 1924 he married 18-years older Pearl Cecily "Cissy" Hurlburt, twice married and divorced. When she wed Chandler she was fifty-three, but looked far younger and listed her age as forty-three. It was possible Chandler never knew her true age.
After the war Chandler worked in a bank in San Francisco, wrote for the Daily Express, and was employed as a bookkeeper and auditor for Dabney Oil Syndicate from 1922 to 1932. When Chandler lost his job during the Great Depression – he was fired for drinking and absenteeism – he began writing stories for Black Mask Magazine. At the age of forty- five, with the support of his wife, Chandler devoted himself entirely to writing. He prepared himself for his first submission by carefully studying Erle Stanley Gardner and other representatives of pulp fiction, and spent five months writing his first story, 'Blackmailers Don't Shoot.' It appeared in December 1933 in Black Mask, the foremost among magazines publishing in the hard-boiled school.
Chandler was a slow writer. Between 1933 and 1939 he produced a total of nineteen pulp stories, eleven in Black Mask, seven in Dime Detective, one in Detective Fiction Weekly. Unlike most of his pulp-writing colleagues, Chandler tried to expand the limits of the pulp formula to more ambitious and humane direction. His fourth published story, 'Killer in the Rain,' was used in The Big Sleep (1939), Chandler's first novel. The story introduced Philip Marlowe, a 38-year-old P.I., a man of honor and a modern day knight with a college education. Marlowe is about forty, tall, with gray eyes and a hard jaw, has a college education, listens to classical music, and solves alone chess problems. Marlowe is betrayed by his friends, women, and lying clients, but he is always quick with wisecracks. Preferring nonviolent solutions, in the course of seven novels he kills only one man, Canino in The Big Sleep.
In his role as narrator, Marlowe moves through the criminal world and social elite – sometimes there is not much difference – of Los Angeles. "A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness." (The Long Goodbye) When Chandler himself first arrived in Los Angeles, horses and buggies were PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 168 still common sights, and the downtown streets were only partially paved. Toward the end of his life, Chandler began to think that L.A. had become an impossible place to live.
In 1946 Chandler received the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for a screenplay, and in 1954 for a novel. When his wife died in 1954 Chandler was devastated. He sailed for England and met Jessica Tyndale, a banker, on board, and they became close. Playback (1958), Chandler's last finished novel, was originally written as a screenplay.
Selected bibliography:
'Blackmailers Don't Shoot', 1933 The Big Sleep, 1939 Farewell, My Lovely, 1940 The High Window, 1942 The Lady in the Lake, 1943 Five Murders, 1944 (contains 'Blackmailers Don’t Shoot,' 'Goldfish,' 'Guns at Cyrano’s,' 'Nevada Gas,' and 'Spanish Blood') Double Indemnity, 1944 (screenplay, with Billy Wilder; based on James M. Cain's novel; in Best Film Plays 1945, edited by John Gassner and Dudley Nichols, 1946) And Now Tomorrow, 1944 (screenplay, with Frank Partos; based on a story by Rachel Field) The Unseen, 1945 (screenplay, with Hagar Wilde and Ken Englund; based on a novel by Ethel Lina White) Five Sinister Characters, 1945 (contains 'I’ll Be Waiting',' 'The King in Yellow,' 'Pearls Are a Nuisance,' 'Red Wind,' and 'Trouble Is My Business') Finger Man, and Other Stories, 1946 (contains 'Finger Man,' 'The Bronze Door,' 'Smart Aleck Kill' and 'The Simple Art of Murder') The Blue Dahlia, 1946 (screenplay) Spanish Blood: A Collection of Short Stories, 1946 (contains 'Spanish Blood,' 'The King in Yellow,' 'Pearls are a Nuisance,' 'Nevada Gas,' and 'Trouble is My Business') Red Wind: A Collection of Stories, 1946 (contains 'Red Wind,' 'Blackmailers Don't Shoot,' 'I'll Be Waiting,' ‘Goldfish,' 'Guns at Cyrano's') The Little Sister, 1949 Trouble is My Business, 1950 The Simple Art of Murder, 1950 (contains the essay 'The Simple Art of Murder' and the short stories 'Finger Man,' 'Smart Aleck Kill,' 'Guns at Cyrano's,' 'Pick-Up on Noon St.' 'The King in Yellow,' 'Goldfish,' 'Pearls Are Nuisance,' 'I'll Be Waiting,' 'Red Wind,' 'Nevada Gas,' 'Spanish Blood' and 'Trouble Is My Business'; as Trouble is My Business, Pick-Up on Noon Street, and The Simple Art of Murder, 3 vols., 1951-53) Strangers on a Train, 1951 (screenplay with Czenzi Ormonde and Whitfield Cook, based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel) Pearls Are Nuisance, 1953 Smart Alec Kill, 1953 The Long Goodbye, 1953 Playback, 1958 Poodle Spring, 1962 (unfinished, in Raymond Chandler Speaking, 1962) Raymond Chandler Speaking, 1962 (edited by Dorothy Gardiner and Kathrine Sorley Walker) PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 169
Killer in the Rain, 1964 (with an intro. by Philip Durham; contains 'Killer in the Rain,' 'The Man Who Liked Dogs,' 'The Curtain,' 'Try the-Girl,' 'Mandarin's Jade,' 'Bay City Blues,' 'The Lady in the Lake' and 'No Crime in the Mountains') The Raymond Chandler Omnibus: Four Famous Classics, 1964 (foreword by Lawrence Clark Powell) The Smell of Fear, 1965 The Midnight Raymond Chandler, 1971 (edited by J. Kahn) Chandler Before Marlowe: Raymond Chandler’s Early Prose and Poetry, 1908-1912, 1973 (edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, foreword by Jacques Barzun) The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler, and English Summer: A Gothic Romance, 1976 (edited by Frank Mac Shayne) The Blue Dahlia: A Screenplay, 1976 (with a memoir by John Houseman, edited, with an afterword by Matthew J. Bruccoli) Raymond Chandler and James M. Fox: Letters, 1979 Selected Letters, 1981 (edited Frank MacShane) Raymond Chandler’s Unknown Thriller: The Screenplay of Playback, 1985 (introduction by Robert B. Parker) Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, 1987 (selected by Elizabeth Ward and Alain Silver) Later Novels and Other Writings, 1995 The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Non-Fiction, 1909-1959, 2000 (edited by Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane) Collected Stories, 2002 (with an introduction by John Bayley) Philip Marlowe’s Guide to Life: A Compendium of Quotations, 2005 (edited by Martin Asher)
Source: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rchandle.htm. “Raymond Chandler”. Accessed on September 4th, 2013. Web. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 170
Appendix 3: Synopsis of The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
The story deals with a drifter named Frank Chambers, who stops at the Twin Oaks diner, located on a rural road near Los Angeles. The concept of a drifter or someone who is trying to find his place in life is a common theme in a noir story. Frank accepts a job from Nick Smith, the middle-aged, alcoholic owner of the diner. Frank is immediately intrigued by Nick's young wife Cora. They become romantically involved and decide to find a way to kill Nick, even though he is a nice man. Frank is obsessed with Cora’s beauty, and Cora is obsessed with being wealthy. This is also a typical theme in a noir storyline. Therefore, Cora convinces Frank that the only way for them to achieve happiness is to kill Nick and collect his insurance money. Their first attempt to kill Nick fails, as he is only hospitalized and unaware of their plan. Then they get Nick drunk, and try to stage an automobile accident at Malibu Lake, unaware that District Attorney Kyle Sackett has been following them. Though Sackett arrives on the scene too late to save Nick, he is certain that Cora and Frank are the killers. Without enough concrete evidence to convict Frank and Cora, Sackett tries to pit the two against each other. Frank and Cora become distrustful of each other. Several weeks pass, and Cora and Frank still do not trust each other, but decide to marry, in order to run the diner together and not appear to be living indecently. So they just want to get married for financial and physical reasons. One day, Cora leaves Twin Oaks to visit her ailing mother in Iowa. During her week-long absence, Frank has an affair with Madge Gorland, a woman he meets at a train station. This shows that Frank has fleeting love for women. They eventually get back together again. One day, Frank loses control of the car and the vehicle careens off the road. Although Frank escapes unhurt, Cora is killed. Frank is then convicted of Cora's murder, and just before his scheduled execution, Sackett comes to see him. When Frank tells him that he didn't kill Cora and hopes that at the last second she did not think that he did, Sackett reveals that a note left by Cora, which was recently found in the back of the diner's cash register, not only revealed her love for Frank, but inadvertently divulged details of Nick's murder. Realizing that his situation is like that of someone who only receives the mail after the postman rings the doorbell twice, Frank contently heads toward his execution. Therefore, Frank is okay with being executed for Cora’s murder, as long as in God’s eyes it is known that he only intentionally killed Nick. Frank realizes his existentialist viewpoint at the end of the story and is content with the way his life will end up.
Source: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/378/The-Postman-Always-Rings-Twice/full- th synopsis.html. “The Postman Always Rings Twice Synopsis”. Accessed on September 6 , 2013. Web. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 171
Appendix 4: Synopsis of Double Indemnity by James M. Cain
As in many other noir storylines, the events take place in Los Angeles. The story is also a media res, which is typical of noir stories. It begins with insurance agent Walter Neff, who is bleeding from a gunshot wound and slips into his office at the Pacific All Risk Insurance Co. Walter records his murder confession on the Dictaphone, addressing his boss and friend, Barton Keyes, a meticulous and intuitive claims agent. Walter then goes back to the past when the incident all began. It starts when he goes to Mr. Dietrichson’s house to renew Dietrichson’s insurance policy. When Walter enters the house for the first time, he is immediately taken in with Dietrichson's wife Phyllis, who first appears wearing only a towel at the top of the staircase. Then Walter flirts with Phyllis, who also shows interest in him. The next time Walter goes to the house, Phyllis convinces him to make an insurance policy for her husband, so that if he dies by accident by falling from a moving train, then Phyllis will get extra insurance money from the double indemnity clause. Walter becomes infatuated with Phyllis and does whatever she wants, but Phyllis is only interested in acquiring her husband’s fortune. Phyllis is also suspected of killing her step-daughter’s mother previously to be able to marry Mr. Dietrichson. Phyllis is a typical femme fetale who is rotten to the core and only interested in using and manipulating gullible men with her attractive looks. Eventually Keyes becomes suspicious of the accident and investigates it. Then Walter realizes that Phyllis only used him and confronts her about it. Phyllis then shoots Walter, but is unable to kill him. Admitting that she has never loved him, Phyllis then embraces him, and Walter shoots her twice, killing her. Then Walter leaves the house and goes back to his office to finish his confession in the Dictaphone. Keyes comes to the office and sees the trail of Walter’s blood. Walter wants to escape and go to Mexico, but because he has been shot, he collapses in the doorway of the office. Even though Keyes is disappointed with Walter, he still shows his affection for Walter, and Walter does the same, as Keyes lights Walter's final cigarette.
Source: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/73500/Double-Indemnity/. “Double Indemnity Synopsis”. Accessed on September 6th, 2013. Web. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 172
Appendix 5: Synopsis of Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain
The story begins in media res, as Mildred Pierce’s second husband, Monte Beragon, is murdered in her beachfront house. Then Mildred Pierce lures longtime acquaintance Wally Fay to the house and then runs away, leaving him with the body. A short time later, Mildred returns to her Pasadena house to find the police and her daughter Veda waiting for her. Mildred tries to frame Wally for Monte’s murder. Then at the police station she retells all the events leading up to the murder. After Mildred’s first husband, Bert, loses his job in real estate, he becomes discouraged and leaves Mildred for another women. Mildred has to raise her two daughters, Kay and Veda, by herself. The only way she can do this is to enter the restaurant business and learn from the ground up. As in a typical noir film, Mildred is frowned up for being too successful and neglecting her children. For example, when she is having an affair with Monte, her daughter Kay dies. Kay is seen coughing several times preceding her death, which signifies that Mildred does not pay as much attention to her as she should. Her other daughter Veda is spoiled rotten and very snobbish. Veda is kind of a young femme fetale with horrendous behavior. Veda always criticizes her mother for her hard work and Veda even pretends to be pregnant to get a rich boy to give her a lot of settlement money for an abortion. Mildred does everything for Veda, but she never appreciates her mother. Then Mildred even marries Monte, who just uses Mildred for her successful business. Then Mildred loses her business to Wally, because Monte wasted all the profits from it. After telling the police her story, Mildred confesses to murdering Monte. The police then question Veda, who admits she shot Monte, with whom she was having an affair, after he refused to marry her. Veda blames Mildred for making her the way she is, but Mildred finally has had enough of Veda and rejoins the loyal Bert outside the police station. At the end of the film, it shows women scrubbing the floor of the police station and a sort of golden arch effect above the entrance door of the police station, signifying that Mildred and Bert will be happy again if Mildred returns to her domestic role and remains faithful to Bert.
Source: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/321/Mildred-Pierce/. “Mildred Pierce Synopsis”. Accessed on September 6th, 2013. Web. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 173
Appendix 6: Synopsis of The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
This is a detective story that takes place in Los Angeles as private detective Philip Marlowe is called to the mansion of General Sternwood, a wealthy, aging invalid with two wild young daughters: the femme fetale and childish Carmen and the divorced Vivian Rutledge. Sternwood explains that Arthur Gwynne Geiger, a rare book dealer, is demanding payment of Carmen's gambling debts. This is sort of a confusing storyline as many subplots and characters are involved, which is a typical characteristic of a noir detective film. Philip Marlowe is sort of a distrustful everyday man who is always striving to earn money and solve a case. He is sort of a loner and seems to be at odds with the world around him. He tries to make changes to what happens around him, but in the end the world is too big for him to change. This is shown in his demeanor as he seems to be sort of a disillusioned character and rather harsh with those around him. In the story, Marlow is distrustful of rich people, but he seems to feel sorry for Sternwood, as he is forced to sit in the wheelchair all day. Therefore, Marlowe tries to keep his daughter Carmen out of trouble and takes her out of a house where a person is killed. The convoluted plot involves bribery, deception, and murder, all characteristics of a noir story. The characters live in a world of distrust where everyone is out for their own best interests. At the end of the story, Marlowe solves the crime and helps Vivian to send Carmen away where she will be prevented from hurting anyone else. Marlowe also seems to fall in love with Vivian at the end of the story.
Source: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/45/The-Big-Sleep/. “The Big Sleep Synopsis”. Accessed on September 6th, 2013. Web. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 174
Appendix 7: Synopsis of Farewell, My Lovely (Murder, My Sweet)
by Raymond Chandler
This is a detective story about private detective Philip Marlowe, who is interrogated by police lieutenant Randall about his involvement in several murders. As with other noir stories, it is a media res as Marlowe recounts the events leading up to the interrogation. Philip Marlowe investigates a case with no fresh leads when he encounters Moose Malloy in a bar looking for his ex-girlfriend Velma Valento. Moose seeks Marlowe’s help to find her after he was in prison for several years. Then Marlowe goes on a quest to find Velma and meets many unsavory and tough characters along the way. This story also has many subplots with various characters involved in the particular subplots. As Marlowe searches for Velma, he eventually discovers that she is alive and has been using the alias Mrs. Grayle. This concept of double identity is another common feature of a noir film. It uses a first person narrative to tell the story, similar with many other noir films. The situation is only solved at the end of the story when Marlowe is kissed by Velma and realizes he has seen her before. Then they get into a cab together and leave. Throughout the story, Marlowe is also blinded, which is characteristic of a noir film. Often a male protagonist is literally blinded so it puts him at a disadvantage or emotionally blinded, leaving him to be manipulated by a femme fetale.
Source: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/84186/Murder-My-Sweet/. “Murder My Sweet Synopsis”. Accessed on September 6th, 2013. Web. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 175
TABLES
Table 1: Common Characteristics of Noir Films
The primary moods of classic film noir were melancholy, alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt, desperation and paranoia. Heroes (or anti-heroes), corrupt characters and villains included down-and-out, conflicted hard-boiled detectives or private eyes, cops, gangsters, government agents, sociopaths, crooks, war veterans, petty criminals, and murderers. These protagonists were often morally-ambiguous low-lifes from the dark and gloomy underworld of violent crime and corruption. Distinctively, they were cynical, tarnished, obsessive (sexual or otherwise), brooding, menacing, sinister, sardonic, disillusioned, frightened and insecure loners (usually men), struggling to survive - and in the end, ultimately losing. The females in film noir were either of two types (or archetypes) - dutiful, reliable, trustworthy and loving women; or femme fetales - mysterious, duplicitous, double-crossing, gorgeous, unloving, predatory, tough-sweet, unreliable, irresponsible, manipulative, and desperate women. Usually, the male protagonist in film noir wished to elude his mysterious past and had to choose what path to take (or have the fateful choice made for him). Invariably, the choice would be an overly ambitious one, to follow the dangerous but desirable wishes of these dames. It would be to follow the goadings of a traitorous, self-destructive femme fatale who would lead the struggling, disillusioned, and doomed hero into committing murder or some other crime of passion coupled with twisted love. When the major character was a detective or private eye, he would become embroiled and trapped in an increasingly-complex, convoluted case that would lead to fatalistic, suffocating evidences of corruption, irresistible love, and death. The femme fatale, who had also transgressed societal norms with her independent and smart, menacing actions, would bring both of them to a downfall. Noir films (mostly shot in gloomy grays, blacks and whites) showed the dark and inhumane side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love, and they emphasized the brutal, unhealthy, seamy, shadowy, dark and sadistic sides of the human experience. An oppressive atmosphere of menace, pessimism, anxiety, suspicion that anything can go wrong, dingy realism, futility, fatalism, defeat, and entrapment were stylized characteristics of film noir. The protagonists in film noir were normally driven by their past or by human weakness to repeat former mistakes. Film noir was marked by expressionistic lighting, deep-focus camera work, disorienting visual schemes, jarring editing or juxtaposition of elements, skewed camera angles (usually vertical or diagonal rather than horizontal), circling cigarette smoke, existential sensibilities, and unbalanced compositions. Settings were often interiors with low-key lighting, venetian-blinded windows and rooms, and dark, claustrophobic, gloomy appearances. Exteriors were often urban night scenes with deep shadows, wet asphalt, dark alleyways, rain-slicked or mean streets, flashing neon lights, and low key lighting. Story locations were often in murky and dark streets, dimly-lit apartments and hotel rooms of big cities, or abandoned warehouses. Narratives were frequently complex, maze-like and convoluted, and typically told with foreboding background music; flashbacks (or a series of flashbacks); witty, razor-sharp, and acerbic dialogue; and/or reflective and confessional, first-person voiceover narration. Amnesia suffered by the protagonist was a common plot device, as was the downfall of an innocent Everyman who fell victim to temptation or was framed. Revelations regarding the hero were made to explain/justify the hero's own cynical perspective on life. Source: http://www.filmsite.org/femmesfatales.html. “The Greatest Femmes Fetales in Classic Film Noir”. Accessed on June 15th, 2013. Web. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 176
Table 2: Posters Depicting Positive Propaganda for the WWII War Effort PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI 177
Table 3: The Detective Model
Classic: Sherlock Holmes Hard-Boiled: Marlowe/Spade Setting: less realistic (can be fantastic) Setting: always realistic (and urban)
Uses drugs (morphine and cocaine) Uses alcohol (typically bourbon)
First-person singular about friend First-person singular voice-over
Mind: two sides (slow-creative vs. fast-precise) Mind: steady, even
Lives with friend (Dr. Watson) Lives alone, has no friends
Femme fatale (anti-Ariadne) nonessential Femme fatale (anti-Ariadne) essential
Method: science of deduction (but is really Implicit method: abduction (without abduction and musement) musement)
Character is intellectual (scholarly) Character is non-intellectual
Natural opponents: Scotland Yard Natural opponents: city cops
Artistic (enjoys music, plays violin) Non-artistic
Well-traveled (e.g., knows foreign tattoos) Not traveled
Work is a game (“the game is afoot”) Work is just a job (for fee only)
Upper-class tastes and manners Middle class: an “Everyman”
Tall, languid, nonphysical Shorter, tough, aggressive (fistfights)
Link to medicine with Dr. Watson (detective Stories are typically nonmedical clues like medical symptoms)
No regular weapons (save reason) Carries a gun (and shoots people)
Smokes a pipe Smokes cigarettes
Form is masochistic Form is sadistic
Hobbies: beekeeping, violin, drugs (stingers, No hobbies (flatter character form) violin, needles signify precision)
Mannerist maze Rhizomatic maze
Source: Jerold J. Abrams in “From Sherlock Holmes to the Hard-Boiled Detective”, as found in Conard, The Philosophy of Film Noir, p.78.