The term film noir, French for 'black film' (literal) or 'dark film' (closer meaning),[1] was first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, but was unrecognized by most American film industry professionals of that era. [120] Between 1983 and 1989, Mickey Spillane's hardboiled private eye Mike Hammer was played with wry gusto by Stacy Keach in a series and several stand-alone television films (an unsuccessful revival followed in 1997–98). While City Streets and other pre-WWII crime melodramas such as Fury (1936) and You Only Live Once (1937), both directed by Fritz Lang, are categorized as full-fledged noir in Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's film noir encyclopedia, other critics tend to describe them as "proto-noir" or in similar terms. The classic film noirs The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Glass Key (1942) were based on novels by Hammett; Cain's novels provided the basis for Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), and Slightly Scarlet (1956; adapted from Love's Lovely Counterfeit). It was in this way that accomplished noir actress Ida Lupino established herself as the sole female director in Hollywood during the late 1940s and much of the 1950s. See, e.g., Silver and Ward (1992), pp. Naremore (2008), p. 275; Wager (2005), p. 83; Hanson (2008), p. 141. Perhaps no American neo-noirs better reflect the classic noir A-movie-with-a-B-movie-soul than those of director-writer Quentin Tarantino;[119] neo-noirs of his such as Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994) display a relentlessly self-reflexive, sometimes tongue-in-cheek sensibility, similar to the work of the New Wave directors and the Coens. "Robert Siodmak", in Cameron. 59–61 [in Silver and Ursini]. Spicer (2007), p. 241; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 257. See, e.g., entries on individual films in Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 284–86; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 278. Film noir (/ f ɪ l m n w ɑr /; French pronunciation: ) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly such that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations.Hollywood's classical film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Some refer to such latter-day works as neo-noir. 1–21; Schatz (1981), pp. Mann did some of his most celebrated work with cinematographer John Alton, a specialist in what James Naremore called "hypnotic moments of light-in-darkness". Robert Wise (Born to Kill [1947], The Set-Up [1949]) and Anthony Mann (T-Men [1947] and Raw Deal [1948]) each made a series of impressive intermediates, many of them noirs, before graduating to steady work on big-budget productions.
In this production context, writers, directors, cinematographers, and other craftsmen were relatively free from typical big-picture constraints. [45] Variety magazine found Ingster's work: "...too studied and when original, lacks the flare to hold attention. [11] Foster Hirsch defines a genre as determined by "conventions of narrative structure, characterization, theme, and visual design". The film plays with an awareness not only of classic noir but also of neo-noir reflexivity itself. 267–68, for a representative discussion of film noir as an international phenomenon. Therefore, the composition of this list may be controversial. [140] Similarly, graphic novels provide the basis for Road to Perdition (2002), directed by Sam Mendes, and A History of Violence (2005), directed by David Cronenberg; the latter was voted best film of the year in the annual Village Voice poll. Silver and Ward (1992) list 315 classic film noirs (passim), and Tuska (1984) lists 320 (passim). For overview of debate, see, e.g., Bould (2005), pp. See, e.g., Bould (2005), p. 18, on the critical establishment of this iconography, as well as p. 35; Hirsch (2001), p. 213; Christopher (1998), p. 7. [111] From 1981, the popular Body Heat, written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, invokes a different set of classic noir elements, this time in a humid, erotically charged Florida setting; its success confirmed the commercial viability of neo-noir, at a time when the major Hollywood studios were becoming increasingly risk averse. Schrader (1972), p. 54 [in Silver and Ursini]. 217–18; Hirsch (2001), p. 64. [74] Ulmer's other noirs include Strange Illusion (1945), also for PRC; Ruthless (1948), for Eagle-Lion, which had acquired PRC the previous year and Murder Is My Beat (1955), for Allied Artists. [134], Director Sean Penn's The Pledge (2001), though adapted from a very self-reflexive novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, plays noir comparatively straight, to devastating effect. During the new century's first decade, he was one of the leading Hollywood directors of neo-noir with the acclaimed Memento (2000) and the remake of Insomnia (2002). 17, 122, 124, 140; Bould (2005), p. 19. 'From 'Trance' to 'Spring Breakers,' Is This the Golden Age of Film Noir?'. Aziz (2005), section "Future Noir and Postmodernism: The Irony Begins". Debuting as a director with The Maltese Falcon (1941), John Huston followed with Key Largo (1948) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Cartoons such as Garfield's Babes and Bullets (1989) and comic strip characters such as Tracer Bullet of Calvin and Hobbes have parodied both film noir and the kindred hardboiled tradition—one of the sources from which film noir sprang and which it now overshadows.[163]. [162], In other media, the television series Sledge Hammer! A complete list of Western movies in 1933. Back at Warners he supported George Arliss in The King's Vacation, then was in 42nd Street (both The Manchurian Candidate (1962), directed by John Frankenheimer, Shock Corridor (1963), directed by Samuel Fuller, and Brainstorm (1965), directed by experienced noir character actor William Conrad, all treat the theme of mental dispossession within stylistic and tonal frameworks derived from classic film noir. Hirsch (2001), p. 7. "Some Visual Motifs of, Sanders, Steven M. (2006). Films of his such as Shanghai Express (1932) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935), with their hothouse eroticism and baroque visual style, anticipated central elements of classic noir. Borde, Raymond, and Etienne Chaumeton (2002 [1955]). Although film noir was originally associated with American productions, the term has been used to describe films from around the world. [2] Cinema historians and critics defined the category retrospectively. Krutnik, Frank, Steve Neale, and Brian Neve (2008). The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972) centers on another implacable investigator and an amnesiac named Welles. [133] The neon-noir, more specifically, seeks to revive the noir sensibilities in a more targeted manner of reference, focalizing especially its socio-cultural commentary and hyper-stylized aesthetic. Krutnik, Neale, and Neve (2008), pp. [185] Certain archetypal characters appear in many film noirs—hardboiled detectives, femme fatales, corrupt policemen, jealous husbands, intrepid claims adjusters, and down-and-out writers. The exhibition Light & Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, 1933–1950 explored how the experiences of German-speaking exiles and émigrés who fled Nazi Europe—many of them Jews—influenced the classic films of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth Ward (1992). For instance, critics tend to define the model film noir as having a tragic or bleak conclusion,[170] but many acknowledged classics of the genre have clearly happy endings (e.g., Stranger on the Third Floor, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and The Dark Corner), while the tone of many other noir denouements is ambivalent. Neon-noir can be seen as a response to the over-use of the term neo-noir. Ulmer. Its visual intricacy and complex, voiceover narrative structure are echoed in dozens of classic film noirs. [109], The turn of the decade brought Scorsese's black-and-white Raging Bull (cowritten by Schrader); an acknowledged masterpiece—the American Film Institute ranks it as the greatest American film of the 1980s and the fourth greatest of all time—it is also a retreat, telling a story of a boxer's moral self-destruction that recalls in both theme and visual ambience noir dramas such as Body and Soul (1947) and Champion (1949). The Coen brothers make reference to the noir tradition again with The Man Who Wasn't There (2001); a black-and-white crime melodrama set in 1949, it features a scene apparently staged to mirror one from Out of the Past. For description of noir as a genre, see, e.g., Bould (2005), p. 2; Hirsch (2001), pp. Actually, many of these films could hardly be called noir, and I don't think that Gifford claims that they are. Fritz Lang, the director of movies including Metropolis (1926) and M (1931), and widely regarded as the creator of the film noir genre, was born Friedrich Christian Anton Lang on the 5th of December, 1890, in Vienna.. Having studied civil engineering and art at the Technical University of Vienna, the young Fritz Lang travelled extensively throughout the world, and studied painting in Paris. 182–98, 209–16; Downs (2002), p. 171; Ottoson (1981), pp. Samuel Fuller's brutal, visually energetic films such as Pickup on South Street (1953) and Underworld U.S.A. (1961) earned him a unique reputation; his advocates praise him as "primitive" and "barbarous". March 23, 2016. %%EOF
[172], The low-key lighting schemes of many classic film noirs are associated with stark light/dark contrasts and dramatic shadow patterning—a style known as chiaroscuro (a term adopted from Renaissance painting). [169] Concerning films made either before or after the classic period, or outside of the United States at any time, consensus is even rarer. Silver, Alain (1996). 19–53. The film stars Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Michael Chekhov and Leo G. Carroll. Released the month before Lang's M, City Streets has a claim to being the first major film noir; both its style and story had many noir characteristics. [168] Some critics include Suspicion (1941), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, in their catalogues of noir; others ignore it. "A Tale of Three Cities: The Banning of. Jones, Kristin M. (2009). This cinematological trend reflected much of the cynicism and the possibility of nuclear annihilation of the era. "Philosophizing Sex Dolls amid Film Noir Intrigue", Davis, Blair (2004). 26, 28; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. Where Chandler, like Hammett, centered most of his novels and stories on the character of the private eye, Cain featured less heroic protagonists and focused more on psychological exposition than on crime solving;[39] the Cain approach has come to be identified with a subset of the hardboiled genre dubbed "noir fiction". Whoever went to the movies with any regularity during 1946 was caught in the midst of Hollywood's profound postwar affection for morbid drama. [33], Italian neorealism of the 1940s, with its emphasis on quasi-documentary authenticity, was an acknowledged influence on trends that emerged in American noir. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. [86] Examples of British noir from the classic period include Brighton Rock (1947), directed by John Boulting; They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), directed by Alberto Cavalcanti; The Small Back Room (1948), directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger; The October Man (1950), directed by Roy Ward Baker; and Cast a Dark Shadow (1955), directed by Lewis Gilbert. Narrative structures sometimes involved convoluted flashbacks uncommon in non-noir commercial productions. Themes of terror, madness, and helplessness whip through the film. Silver (1996), pp. [131] Another neon-noir endowed with the 'fever-dream' aesthetic is The Persian Connection, expressly linked to Lynchian aesthetics as a neon-drenched contemporary noir.[132]. �Q|��4���y��F2Ϸ{Pǻpn�ӛ�_�~����|L�ab�N�����ب�sɓ���0����Ul��3��*W��Y�(��]��R�}m? Kolker (2000), pp. See Naremore (2008), pp. [152] The Animatrix (2003), based on and set within the world of The Matrix film trilogy, contains an anime short film in classic noir style titled "A Detective Story". 210–11. See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4; Bould (2005), p. 12; Place and Peterson (1974). 16, 91–94, 96, 100; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. [73] The work of other directors in this tier of the industry, such as Felix E. Feist (The Devil Thumbs a Ride [1947], Tomorrow Is Another Day [1951]), has become obscure. 81, 319 n. 13; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. Working generally with much smaller budgets, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have created one of the most extensive film oeuvres influenced by classic noir, with films such as Blood Simple (1984) and Fargo (1996), considered by some a supreme work in the neo-noir mode. [26] Expressionism-orientated filmmakers had free stylistic rein in Universal horror pictures such as Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1932)—the former photographed and the latter directed by the Berlin-trained Karl Freund—and The Black Cat (1934), directed by Austrian émigré Edgar G. [18] Screenwriter Eric R. Williams labels both film noir and screwball comedy as a "pathway" in his screenwriters taxonomy; explaining that a pathway has two parts: 1) the way the audience connects with the protagonist and 2) the trajectory the audience expects the story to follow. 188, 202–3. Silver (1996), pp. [100] The first major film to overtly work this angle was French director Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle (Breathless; 1960), which pays its literal respects to Bogart and his crime films while brandishing a bold new style for a new day. 1. The commercial and critical success of Sternberg's silent Underworld (1927) was largely responsible for spurring a trend of Hollywood gangster films. British-born director Christopher Nolan's black-and-white debut, Following (1998), was an overt homage to classic noir. [197], The tone of film noir is generally regarded as downbeat; some critics experience it as darker still—"overwhelmingly black", according to Robert Ottoson. Nor does film noir rely on anything as evident as the monstrous or supernatural elements of the horror film, the speculative leaps of the science fiction film, or the song-and-dance routines of the musical. [12], Others argue that film noir is not a genre. [3], The questions of what defines film noir, and what sort of category it is, provoke continuing debate. Turan, Kenneth (2008). [44] Hungarian émigré Peter Lorre—who had starred in Lang's M—was top-billed, although he did not play the primary lead. [198] Influential critic (and filmmaker) Paul Schrader wrote in a seminal 1972 essay that "film noir is defined by tone", a tone he seems to perceive as "hopeless". In 1945, Danny Kaye starred in what appears to be the first intentional film noir parody, Wonder Man. Title Screen : Film Genre(s), Title, Year, (Country), Length, Director, Description : The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), 88 minutes, D: Frank Capra A sophisticated, beautifully photographed film, considered non-PC, controversial and provocative at its time due to the inter-racial or cross-cultural romance in the plot. [107], Hill was already a central figure in 1970s noir of a more straightforward manner, having written the script for director Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway (1972), adapting a novel by pulp master Jim Thompson, as well as for two tough private eye films: an original screenplay for Hickey & Boggs (1972) and an adaptation of a novel by Ross Macdonald, the leading literary descendant of Hammett and Chandler, for The Drowning Pool (1975). In the more current cinematic landscape, films like Harmony Korine’s highly provocative Spring Breakers,[129] and Danny Boyle’s Trance (2013) have been especially recognized for their neon-infused rendering of the noir genre; While Trance was celebrated for ‘shak(ing) the ingredients (of the noir) like colored sand in a jar’, Spring Breakers notoriously produced a slew of criticism[130] referring to its ‘fever-dream’ aesthetic and ‘neon-caked explosion of excess’ (Kohn). 81 0 obj
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[38], Raymond Chandler, who debuted as a novelist with The Big Sleep in 1939, soon became the most famous author of the hardboiled school. '‘Spring Breakers’ Is A ‘Fever Dream’; Or, The Most Common Description Of Harmony Korine’s New Film. Opinion is divided on the noir status of several Alfred Hitchcock thrillers from the era; at least four qualify by consensus: Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951) and The Wrong Man (1956),[55] Otto Preminger's success with Laura (1944) made his name and helped demonstrate noir's adaptability to a high-gloss 20th Century-Fox presentation. Firesign Theatre's Nick Danger has trod the same not-so-mean streets, both on radio and in comedy albums. Framing the entire primary narrative as a flashback is also a standard device. [189] In the popular (and, frequently enough, critical) imagination, in noir it is always night and it always rains. He later played secondary roles in several other formative American noirs. "Générique" ("Nuit sur les Champs-Élysées"), Parody and the noir| I Know Where I'm Going, "A Series on Mexican Noir Films Illuminates a Dark Genre", "Neo-Noir The New Film Noir Style from Psycho to Collateral", "Cold War Noir and the Other Films about Korean War POWs", "10 best neo-noir films of all time: From Chinatown to LA Confidential", "AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies—10th Anniversary Edition", Noir and Neonoir|The Criterion Collection, Neon Noir (series trailer) on Cinefamily Archive's Vimeo channel, 10 Visually Stunning Movies with Neon Lighting|Scene360, 5 Neon-Noir Movies to Watch After Blade Runner 2049|That Moment In, Reza Sixo Safai on his Film "The Persian Connection" — American Iranian Council, "Cinema with Bite: On the Films of Park Chan-wook", "Humphrey Bogart's Back—But This Time Round He's at High School", "The 20 Best Neo-Noir Films Of The 2000s " Taste of Cinema – Movie Reviews and Classic Movie Lists", "The Animatrix: A Detective Story (2003)", "Touch Of Noir: Top 5 Film Noir Parodies", What Is This Thing Called Noir? See, e.g., Naremore (2008), pp. Spellbound is a 1945 American film noir psychological mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Though it was conceived in the United States and was not only directed by an American but also stars two American actors—Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney—it is technically a UK production, financed by 20th Century-Fox's British subsidiary. [30] An important, possibly influential, cinematic antecedent to classic noir was 1930s French poetic realism, with its romantic, fatalistic attitude and celebration of doomed heroes. The cynical and stylish perspective of classic film noir had a formative effect on the cyberpunk genre of science fiction that emerged in the early 1980s; the film most directly influential on cyberpunk was Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott, which pays evocative homage to the classic noir mode[149] (Scott subsequently directed the poignant 1987 noir crime melodrama Someone to Watch Over Me). [179] The Chase (1946) takes oneirism and fatalism as the basis for its fantastical narrative system, redolent of certain horror stories, but with little precedent in the context of a putatively realistic genre. 116–22; Ottoson (1981), p. 2. Lang, Bennett and her husband, the Universal veteran and Diana production head Walter Wanger, made Secret Beyond the Door (1948) in similar fashion.[60]. An A-level feature all the way, the film's commercial success and seven Oscar nominations made it probably the most influential of the early noirs. In 1945, while at PRC, he directed a noir cult classic, Detour. [187], Film noir is often associated with an urban setting, and a few cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, in particular—are the location of many of the classic films. Treated as noir: Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 34; Hirsch (2001), pp. The climaxes of a substantial number of film noirs take place in visually complex, often industrial settings, such as refineries, factories, trainyards, power plants—most famously the explosive conclusion of White Heat, set at a chemical plant. Ottoson (1981) also lists two period pieces directed by Siodmak (. [49] A slew of now-renowned noir "bad girls" followed, such as those played by Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946), Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Ava Gardner in The Killers (1946), and Jane Greer in Out of the Past (1947). Mussolini was near his zenith in Italy. 9–12). [90] Spanish author Mercedes Formica's novel La ciudad perdida (The Lost City) was adapted into film in 1960. [156] In 1947 as well, The Bowery Boys appeared in Hard Boiled Mahoney, which had a similar mistaken-identity plot; they spoofed the genre once more in Private Eyes (1953). With Loretta Young, Winnie Lightner, Lyle Talbot, Regis Toomey. endstream
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I Cover the Waterfront 1933-Claudette Colbert, Ben Lyon and Ernest Torrence. [31] The movement's sensibility is mirrored in the Warner Bros. drama I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), a forerunner of noir. See, e.g., Hirsch (2001), pp. "[181] Amnesia is fairly epidemic—"noir's version of the common cold", in the words of film historian Lee Server. Carl Reiner's black-and-white Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982) appropriates clips of classic noirs for a farcical pastiche, while his Fatal Instinct (1993) sends up noir classic (Double Indemnity) and neo-noir (Basic Instinct). Accentuating the already present use of artificial or neon lighting in the noir films of the '40s and '50s, neon-noir films imbue this aesthetic style with electrifying color and manipulated light to accentuate their socio-cultural critique as backdrop to thematic references to contemporary and pop culture. 107–109. It is important to note, however, that Mabuse is forecasting film noir not merely because of the use of chiaroscuroi–mostly because chiaroscuro is not at all inventive in this particular scenario. Greenspun, Roger (1973). 116 0 obj
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[161] Adapted by director Robinson Devor from a novel by Charles Willeford, The Woman Chaser (1999) sends up not just the noir mode but the entire Hollywood filmmaking process, with seemingly each shot staged as the visual equivalent of an acerbic Marlowe wisecrack. Working mostly on A features, he made eight films now regarded as classic-era film noirs (a figure matched only by Lang and Mann). [137], With ultra-violent films such as Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and Thirst (2009), Park Chan-wook of South Korea has been the most prominent director outside of the United States to work regularly in a noir mode in the new millennium. "Twenty-First Century Nervous Breakdown". [173], Film noir is also known for its use of low-angle, wide-angle, and skewed, or Dutch angle shots. are tales told by dead men. Serving as producer, writer, director and top-billed performer, Hugo Haas made films like Pickup (1951), The Other Woman (1954) and Jacques Tourneur, The Fearmakers (1958)). Long shots or montages of cityscapes, often portrayed as dark and menacing were suggestive of what Dueck referred to as a ‘bleak societal perspective’,[127] providing a critique on global capitalism and consumerism. [91], Among the first major neo-noir films—the term often applied to films that consciously refer back to the classic noir tradition—was the French Tirez sur le pianiste (1960), directed by François Truffaut from a novel by one of the gloomiest of American noir fiction writers, David Goodis. Ballinger and Graydon note "future noir" synonyms: "'cyber noir' but predominantly 'tech noir'" (p. 242). A crime investigation—by a private eye, a police detective (sometimes acting alone), or a concerned amateur—is the most prevalent, but far from dominant, basic plot. Roosevelt introduced a New Deal to Americans. Examples of this sort of generic crossover have been dubbed "teen noir". Night-for-night shooting, as opposed to the Hollywood norm of day-for-night, was often employed. 253, 255, 263–64, 266, 267, 270–74; Abbas (1997), p. 34. A manifest affiliation with noir traditions—which, by its nature, allows different sorts of commentary on them to be inferred—can also provide the basis for explicit critiques of those traditions. [65] Movies with budgets a step up the ladder, known as "intermediates" by the industry, might be treated as A or B pictures depending on the circumstances. 264, 266. See Palmer (2004), pp. Walker, Michael (1992). [6] The authors' caveats and repeated efforts at alternative definition have been echoed in subsequent scholarship: in the more than five decades since, there have been innumerable further attempts at definition, yet in the words of cinema historian Mark Bould, film noir remains an "elusive phenomenon ... always just out of reach". [54], While the inceptive noir, Stranger on the Third Floor, was a B picture directed by a virtual unknown, many of the film noirs still remembered were A-list productions by well-known film makers. Spicer (2007), pp. 59, 163–64, 168. French director Jean-Pierre Melville is widely recognized for his tragic, minimalist film noirs—Bob le flambeur (1955), from the classic period, was followed by Le Doulos (1962), Le deuxième souffle (1966), Le Samouraï (1967), and Le Cercle rouge (1970). h�bbd```b``��� �IDr;�H�7`Yk�. [95], In a different vein, films began to appear that self-consciously acknowledged the conventions of classic film noir as historical archetypes to be revived, rejected, or reimagined. Later works are much more inclusive: Paul Duncan. Some are sci-fi, horror, or plain drama that manifest a noir world view. [4] "We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel ..."—this set of attributes constitutes the first of many attempts to define film noir made by French critics Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton in their 1955 book Panorama du film noir américain 1941–1953 (A Panorama of American Film Noir), the original and seminal extended treatment of the subject. [79], Some critics regard classic film noir as a cycle exclusive to the United States; Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, for example, argue, "With the Western, film noir shares the distinction of being an indigenous American form ... a wholly American film style. Set in Vienna immediately after World War II, it also stars two American actors, Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, who had appeared together in Citizen Kane. [77], Perhaps no director better displayed that spirit than the German-born Robert Siodmak, who had already made a score of films before his 1940 arrival in Hollywood. In Lang’s world, the police and government are impotent or corrupted. M (1931), shot only a few years before director Fritz Lang's d… [5] They emphasize that not every film noir embodies all five attributes in equal measure—one might be more dreamlike; another, particularly brutal. "Richard Fleischer", in, Erickson, Glenn (2004). "UCLA's Pre-Code Series". Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. Significant predecessors from the classic and early post-classic eras include The Lady from Shanghai; the Robert Ryan vehicle Inferno (1953); the French adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, Plein soleil (Purple Noon in the United States, more accurately rendered elsewhere as Blazing Sun or Full Sun; 1960); and director Don Siegel's version of The Killers (1964). 13–15; Bould (2005), pp. 214–15; 253–54, 269–70, 318–19. [28], Josef von Sternberg was directing in Hollywood during the same period. [72] The most distinctive films of Phil Karlson (The Phenix City Story [1955] and The Brothers Rico [1957]) tell stories of vice organized on a monstrous scale. "Film Noir and the Meaning of Life", in. [32] Among films not considered film noirs, perhaps none had a greater effect on the development of the genre than Citizen Kane (1941), directed by Orson Welles. 14–15. Neon-noirs seek to bring the contemporary noir, somewhat diluted under the umbrella of neo-noir, back into the exploration of culture: class, race, gender, patriarchy, capitalism are key thematic references and departures for the neon-noir; an existential confrontation of society in a hyper technological and globalized world. 4, 32, 75, 83, 116, 118, 128, 155. [138] The most commercially successful neo-noir of this period has been Sin City (2005), directed by Robert Rodriguez in extravagantly stylized black and white with splashes of color. Film noir (suom. 140–55, on "B Pictures versus Intermediates". "[81] However, although the term "film noir" was originally coined to describe Hollywood movies, it was an international phenomenon. The British miniseries The Singing Detective (1986), written by Dennis Potter, tells the story of a mystery writer named Philip Marlow; widely considered one of the finest neo-noirs in any medium, some critics rank it among the greatest television productions of all time. 49, 51, 53, 235. According to J. David Slocum, "protagonists assume the literal identities of dead men in nearly fifteen percent of all noir. The signal film in this vein was Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder; setting the mold was Barbara Stanwyck's unforgettable femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson—an apparent nod to Marlene Dietrich, who had built her extraordinary career playing such characters for Sternberg. Scholar Jamaluddin Bin Aziz has observed how "the shadow of Philip Marlowe lingers on" in such other "future noir" films as 12 Monkeys (1995), Dark City (1998) and Minority Report (2002).