Darkened With Something More Than Night
American film noir flourished in Hollywood in the 40s and 50s (ending in the 60s with the most excellent Odds Against Tomorrow) and captured America’s post-war anxiety, anguish, disillusionment, and severe masculinity crisis.
It’s an enduring cultural blueprint for bleak times.
Not simply a genre, noir is a vibe, a motif, a tone. Characterized by mood and striking visual style, its roots trace back to German expressionism.
In noir’s fallen world, violence stalks the city, the cops are crooked, and the women, well, the women will eat a man alive. (They must be punished.)
There’s no flawless protector, either. Noir gives us a reluctant, pained, and disoriented antihero. While he’s motivated by a cryptic moral code, he’s a misanthrope unmoored from the comforts of society.
Existential dread and despair imbue these pictures— the reels project life’s alienation, futility, and absurdity. Self-reliance and denial of cosmic design place human choice and chance in a crucible, and everyone gets burned.
That's life. Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you.— Al Roberts, Detour.
Arguably, the most brutal distillation of this sentiment is the nasty gem Detour by Edgar G. Ulmer. Clocking in at 68 minutes, here is a miserable journey where every step leads to ruin. Hitchhiking to Los Angeles, Al (played by Tom Neal) catches a ride that goes from bad to worse when his driver keels over, and Al decides to assume the dead man’s identity.
However, the real nightmare begins when Al picks up the most caustic femme fatale ever imagined. Vera (played by Ann Savage) snarls onto the screen and devours Al with relentless ferocity.
Spoiler: Nothing goes well. And the same can be said for almost all these films. (Pick Up On South Street comes to mind as an exception with a happy ending.)
Yet sometimes, on these mean streets, a sooty lamp casts a shadow of something akin to hope. Perhaps it’s just obstinance or a pathological adherence to a moral code.
But inside noir’s cold, dark heart simmers a hardboiled defiance, a tougher-than-tough attitude, and a will to live despite the wretched circumstances.
These characters and stories upend the American dream — no more promises of a new day. Instead, we live by night. But live, we do.
