by Kevin Morris

Created on: February 10, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

Film noir, that aesthetic crossroads between German expressionism and 1950s Americana has always fascinated me. The popularity and cult status of such "neo-noir" films as Minority Report, Dark City and Memento has only intensified my interest in this unique genre.
But what is film noir? Of what does the genre consist? Many attempt to define noir by example. Films like The Big Combo, Chinatown and Vertigo have all been evoked in an effort to describe the mise en scne of the noir movement, but individual films do not an artistic movement make. Related efforts to describe noir in terms of camera angles, character sketches and the use of clich terms like "police procedural" have only muddied the waters.

In reality, film noir is neither an approach to direction or architecture of storyline. Neither a "dark pulp" of the 1950's zeitgeist or an embodiment of "hard-boiled masculinity," film noir is in fact best defined as an existential critique of the romantic tradition, written for the screen.
With this in mind it is no surprise that film noir's genesis coincided with the zenith of romanticism in North America. The United States, having just vanquished the Axis powers (which were themselves very much a product of the romantic tradition) had crushed related evils as well. Labor and management were harmonized under "the broker state," Keynesianism had found a coveted "middle way" between Darwinian laissez-faire and Soviet collectivism, and returning GI's came home to a cornucopia of economic growth, educational investment and military supremacy.
The romantic tradition had even colored the fears and uncertainties of the late 1940s and early 1950s with a hue of consensus history. Competition with the Soviet Union was a struggle between good and evil, while any waning of religiosity and family values could weaken the nation.
The film noir was a cynical critique of all of this. But unlike the counter culture of the 1960s, film noir did not seek to replace outdated morality and political whitewashing with a new theory of history. Rather, film noir was existential critique, an assertion that beneath romantic notions of church and nation lurked a profound philosophical anomie, an alienating "dark night of the soul". As liberalism and conservatism clashed over which romantic notions of society should guide human action, film noir questioned the validity of romanticism, the notion of abstraction itself.
As such, it is no coincidence that film noir has often been labeled "picaresque": as society continues its relentless march of progress, film noir examines the angst in households and individuals. But the hardboiled characters of film noir are not best described as "black hats" operating outside society's norms, but rather as an illustration of how individual dread persists in even the most homogenous and romantic of cultures.
Two neo-noir films capture this concept particularly well. In Memento and Mulholland Drive we watch as romantic struggles and exciting adventures melt into the dreadful reality of everyday life. Rather than solving a mystery or seeking revenge, we see that Leonard Shelby and Diane Selwyn are frighteningly average. There are no mountains to climb or evils to vanquish. There is only the relentless rhythm of everyday life and the individual "will to power". Mulholland Drive's genius is not in its poignant examination of a failed actress's psyche but rather in it's effect on the viewer: as we slowly realize that there is no mystery or conspiracy in Selwyn's life, we become aware of how much we wish there had been, so that we could continue to hope for some future exception to the crushing normalcy of our lives.

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