Continuing the joint work that the coordinators of this volume initiated in 2020 with Grandes Temas del Western and continued this year with a volume dedicated to fantastic cinema, and motivated by the success of their foundational work, appears in 2022 this essay, which in its nearly 300 pages proposes an overview of the themes and historical conditions that develop in film noir, focusing on the forties and fifties, but also addressing Hollywood and international manifestations linked to this genre (Gangsters, thriller, polar, poliziesco, Japanese noir, police, mafia, espionage, hybridizations, and neo-noir).
A large number of contributors repeat, beginning the work with a kind of preambles that explain its purpose, the authors' trajectories, and to some extent, the aims of the project. Thus, Quim Casals indicates in his foreword that the methodology will consist of «dissecting the genre based on two major thematic axes: human condition […] and social context» (Prunera et al., 2022, p. 8).
Without defining the genre outright, certain traits are compared with those of the western, justifying in a way the editorial continuity: genuinely American that expands to Europe, flourishing during the classical era and linked to American history, immediate for the case of noir. The impossible mission of delineating film noir offers a double opportunity to the foreword writer: first, to execute a brief state of the art in which, without names, the main trends are synthesized when defining today's genre, as well as references are made to the substantial academic literature linked to it. Second, to emphasize that contributors are independent of their positions within the cited theories. film noir is more than a genre, a worldview, an emotional state that can tend towards hybridization with other genres.
A thematic index will be of great help to the reader interested in exploring a specific aspect of film noir, allowing each chapter, by its theme, representative film, and essay structure (which greatly expands on the presented filmography). Its order is alphabetical rather than chronological, and an evolutionary-temporal approach can be seen, starting from the origin and birth of what is discussed and analyzing its transformations. Each chapter opens with a dialogue or quote from a movie and sometimes cites academic authors, which is not a strict requirement for exposition, allowing for fluid prose and revealing more subjective ideas and cinephilia than footnotes, hence each chapter lacks a separate bibliographic section. In summary, it will highlight its passionate and popularizing nature, at the same time cultured, elaborate, and well-supported, conveying an overall sense of having watched rather than read a cinefórum.
Proof of subjectivity and each author's weight will be lists of favorite films accompanying their writings. The most cited is Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944), and the preference for Fritz Lang, John Huston, or Billy Wilder becomes evident, with the majority of filmographies focusing on the decades of 1940s and 1950s, though later works by Polanski, Altman, Leone, or Lynch also appear.
Among the chapter topics, "Alcohol" (Márquez Sánchez) stands out, in which the origin of alcoholism (noir literature) and its evolution from Prohibition are traced. Of interest is the punishment for drinking, the connection between whisky and loneliness as essential to noir iconography, the author's division of drinkers into three types, or differences in treatment of alcohol and cuisine across literatures and cinemas, such as the redemptive role in Mediterranean noir. It concludes by noting that despite politically correct norms nearly expelling tobacco from screens, alcohol remains an element of setting, as exemplified by Bond's average consumption of five drinks per film.
When dealing with "Underworld" (Soldevila), its portrayal throughout the history of the genre is analyzed, starting from Von Sternberg's silent example (Figure 2) and ending with the structural redefinition of the gangster. Without direct quotes, it will be one of the chapters with the most references to film scholars and historians. Noteworthy are analyses of microsocieties emerging in the underworld, the American dream as nightmare, and the aesthetics used for representing the underworld, which rejects realism to synthesize that it is debt to baroque and tenebrous expressionism, focusing on night, atmospheric density, and dramatic lighting. By decades, noteworthy are the 1930s' trope of childhood in the underworld as a life-defining condition, followed by police corruption linked to Prohibition and nostalgia for childhood. For the 1940s and 1950s, the dichotomy between countryside and city is highlighted, with the consequent metonymy of corruption-purity and even romantic elements, while at the end of film noir appears the redefinition of the gangster.
The «Femme Fatale» is treated by Sintu Amat, who after a brief genealogy linking woman and evil, analyzes the trope's journey through the 1940s and 1950s, the impact of the Hays Code (and its fall), and some notable examples. Considering Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941) as a first example and the straight girl as a counterexample, the most interesting aspect is the author's branching of the femme fatale into covetous femme fatale, pursuing an end, and false femme fatale, whose main goal is love. Clearly, he provides justification for each and places Gilda (Vidor, 1946) as an example of the latter. He concludes by narrating how the fall of Hollywood's self-censorship code has allowed a liberated, vengeful, explicitly unfaithful, erotic femme fatale to emerge, surviving beyond the genre and even resurfacing in others.
Other chapters of the book are, in order of presentation: ambition, boxing, prison, corruption, disillusionment, private detective, false culprit, fate, gangsters, Great Depression, Cold War, escape, gambling, literature, mixed-race characters, music, neo-noir, night, losers, police, press, redemption, robbery and theft, solitude (one of the last texts by Fernando Marías), betrayal, past traumas, villains, and violence.
Bibliography
J. Prunera, X., Casals, Q., Nasarre, Ll., Amat, S. (2022). Grandes Temas del cine negro. Dolmen Editorial.
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