Literary Technique in Crime Fiction of the 30s-50s and Films Noir

Literary Technique in Crime Fiction of the period and Films Noir:

Film noir grows out of crime fiction of 1930s and 40s, particularly fiction featuring focus on criminal behavior or the attempt to find justice (or occasionally to exploit injustice, as in Hughes’ In a Lonely Place)) by a single individual against the larger society/group.

• “hardboiled” detective or private eye
• Typically interested in life and questions of morality in urban centers
  • Emphasis on urban life reflects affinity with modernist literature
    • frequently features Los Angeles as center of American dream that has been corrupted
      • fantasies of Hollywood in early days of film
      • reality of L.A. as city of the failed, the displaced, the immigrant (anyone from anywhere else)
      • major boom in population in L.A. following WWII and the return of soldiers who moved their families to the west coast

 Emphasis on first-person narrative in novels (Chandler’s The Big Sleep) or limited third-person narration (Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon); first-person voiceover in film

• • First-person narrator is frequently an individual with high moral standards and absolute code of conduct whose refusal to give up that code places him in serious danger
  • First-person narrator is a loner, cynical, separate from most others like him
  • Very frequently is a war veteran (WWI or WWII) or former cop who has left the force in protest
  • Often a family man who is struggling to keep or attain the American Dream in the face of moral quandaries or choices
• neorealism; often seems near-documentary in approach

• Significance of the femme fatale: woman attractive to but dangerous to men, who is either in trouble and needs justice done, or is more often morally tainted and “improper” and a danger to men. See Barbara Stanwyck’s character in Double Indemnity:

• In film: Hays Code (1930) required punishment of lawbreakers, even sympathetic characters; no character could commit a crime and get away with it. The Hays Code’s general principles were:
  • No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
  • Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
  • Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.
  • Films failing to meet these criteria, and other more specific moral criteria, would fail to be released to the American public; managed by the Breen Office of the MPAA
  • Back to Double Indemnity, Phyllis must pay for her immoral ways according to the Hayes Code, resulting in this Hollywood response to her character:

Social and Literary Influences on Crime Fiction and Film Noir

Much of the genesis of what we know as crime or noir fiction of the 1930s-1950s begins with later years of the Great Depression (1929 to early 1940s) and the economic collapse that left many out of work, without the security of the Protestant work ethic and the idealism of the Horatio Alger stories they had been brought up to believe in as a part of American society.

Protestant work ethic: a phrase (sometimes known as the Puritan work ethic) created by Max Weber in his 1904 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It presents the notion of hard work and sacrifice as leading to reward (in the Christian sense, heaven or grace; in the capitalist sense, the American Dream).

Horatio Alger stories: Named after the author of novels about poor or working class Americans who, through hard work, perseverance, and a little luck, rise to the top of American society and socio-economic class. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) is a good example of such a story.

During the Depression, many are disillusioned by their inability to find work, afford a place to live, or feed their families.

Other historical influences on crime noir include:

• conflict in Europe (Hitler rises to power in 1933)
• U.S. enters WWII in 1942
• Women are empowered by changing social roles, particularly with the right to vote (1919), significant roles in workplace in both World Wars, newfound independence
  • In crime fiction and film noir, woman needs help seeking justice, but more often is a danger to the moral integrity of the man whose help she seeks/seduces
• Prohibition ends in 1933
• Post-WWII social changes and the entry into the Cold War, especially in the 1950s

Literary Influences and Effects:

• Literary/Aesthetic Modernism and the Modernist period (1910-1939)
  • The first literary movement that takes place simultaneously both in the U.S. and Europe
  • Focus on urban life and culture
  • Reaction to the disillusionment of WWI and the failure of social institutions. For James Joyce, these were particularly the failure of:
    • Nation/national identity, including patriotism
    • Chuch/religious identity, including the mythos of moral superiority and ultimate reward
    • Family identity, including social class standing and expectations for children to achieve socially
  • Modernist writers experimented with new narrative forms, voices, structures
    • Highly influential: short stories and novels of Ernest Hemingway (see “The Killers,” 1925)
    • minimalist or “hardboiled” writing style

Ornate narrative style of Jane Austen: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.” (opening sentences of Pride and Prejudice, 1813)

Spare or “hardboiled” narrative style of Ernest Hemingway: “Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn.” (opening sentences of The Sun Also Rises, 1926)

• Modernist art may reflect bleakness, darkness, alienation, disintegration, disorder, nihilism
• Recognizes that all art, literature, music, is a social construct and thus representative of society’s values and at the same time able to question or contradict them
  • See as example Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907

Click the link for an audio commentary on the painting from the New York Museum of Modern Art:

Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907

What is Noir?

Below are some concepts that will form the foundation of our discussion of noir fiction and the films of the period.

Film Noir: phrase coined by French film critic Nino Frank in 1946

• translates literally as “black film”; refers to heavy use of darkness or chiaroscuro techniques of crime film of the era
• the blackness or darkness of the lighting becomes metaphoric, representative of cultural questioning and anxiety about the individual, the society, and identity
  • moral dissolution or ambiguity of the characters and their actions or behaviors
  • questions about crime and punishment, and cynicism about whether there is such a thing as “justice,” “truth,” or moral “rightness”
  • the prevalence of anti-social or sociopathic behavior, particularly in anti-heroes
  • psychological conflict and crisis experienced by the protagonist(s)
  • cultural anxiety and/or existential angst, the feeling that the core beliefs we were brought up with are false, leaving us with the feeling that nothing holds value
  • xenophobia and fears of the immigrant tide (Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, Mexicans, Japanese, and others whose presence in Anglo American society is suspect)
  • racism and fears of African American uprising, power, particularly in urban settings
  • later the darkness becomes about post-WWII anxiety, particularly about the Cold War, communism and the bomb

Film noir grew out of earlier German Expressionist cinema (1920s: see The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), or Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) or M (1931)–see the clip from M below, starring Peter Lorre)

It was also considered a response to the screwball comedies and musicals of the 1930s. See Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby (1938), for example, starring Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn:

Film noir is a period in American cinema typically defined as from 1940-1958. Noir more a technique than a genre; while the films and novels will address many of the social anxieties outlined above, it may take very different approaches that we’ll discuss as we think about the role of the detective in noir, of the American innocent tempted by the immoral, of the immigrant, of women, of socio-economics, and of race and identity. A great example of noir film that illustrates many of these elements is This Gun for Hire (1942):