Gangsters and cops are often present in film noir, but the genre isn’t defined by cops and robbers. Film noir (“dark film”) is a matter of style and attitude—of German Expressionism transplanted (usually but not always) to Hollywood and with it, a sense that society as presently constituted is seriously askew despite any happy resolution to the story. Noir continues as an influence today (see Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn). For the most part, the genre flourished from 1940 through 1960, a period that saw the release of several hundred movies fitting the definition.
Forget Netflix: their menu of film noir doesn’t run deep. Many interesting titles are being released for home viewing on Blu-ray including the following from Kino Lorber:
Naked Alibi (1954) is a twisting story that keeps the audience guessing during its first half. Is Al (Gene Berry) an innocent man victimized by a brutal, out of control cop (Sterling Hayden) or is the monomaniacal cop onto something? Gloria Grahame plays a nightclub singer in a border town, less a femme fatale than an abused woman. Aside from its deep pools of shadow on wet nocturnal streets, Naked Alibi’s strength as film noir comes from its visual archetype of the labyrinth as characters try to escape from mazes of dark alleys and apartment building corridors
Woman in Hiding (1950) belongs to a noir subgenre—women trapped in dangerous situations in a male-run society. They won’t be believed and their husbands can always have them committed to an asylum if they persist in telling the truth. In Woman in Hiding, Ida Lupino realizes that her husband (Stephen McNally) killed her father and plans to murder her to gain possession of the estate. She disappears and must depend on the dubious assistance of her husband’s ex-lover as well as a stranger who becomes besotted with her (Howard Duff). The climactic night scene at her father’s mill becomes another pursuit through a labyrinth—this one made of catwalks and stairs under the deep shadows of pulleys and steel rafters.
The Man Between (1953) is director Carol Reed’s follow-up to one of the greatest films ever, his The Third Man. As such, it will always suffer in comparison. Set in divided Cold War Berlin, The Man Between concerns an innocent young English woman (Claire Bloom) who slips into the clutches of a German criminal (James Mason). There is a chase through the dark, snow-slick Berlin streets (this was pre-Wall) and up a multi-story construction site. The Man Between lacks The Third Man’s convincing sense of place and despite some good screenwriting and a suspenseful build-up, it seems, well, a bit Hollywood in contrast to its forebear.
Is Seven Days to Noon (1950) film noir? The British picture by directors Roy and John Boulting often suggests an Alfred Hitchcock thriller about a nuclear scientist who steals a suitcase-size bomb and gives the prime minister one week to renounce nuclear war—or else he’ll detonate the device. London becomes the labyrinth and the bomb is the needle in an endless haystack. Although nighttime brings those long shadows, nothing is more eerie than scenes of London by day, evacuated and totally emptied of humanity.
