From the Comments

I wanted to elevate what my friend Ted posted in the comments to a full-fledged Post. I think his insight into the visual contrast of noir is interesting. I'm including my comment after it, which is kind of a "me too!" thought.

Ted Fisher said...

So here's my thought:

"Film Noir" as we understand it today really comes out of the European directors and cinematographers and screenwriters who came into the Studio System and brought a different worldview and a different film style with them. So in a way it might be fair to say "Noir" and "Southern California" are really in opposition to some degree: while we've seen depictions of 1930s - 1940s SoCal in a "Noir" style, those who lived there in that period would likely have thought in other visual terms. (What comes to my mind is the American Regionalism / American Scene Painting style.)

So it could be interesting to use opposed styles -- one view that has the golden light Southern California really has, even if filtered through a lonely Hopperesque take, and another view that has the harsh and heavy dark nightworld we find in the best Noirs.

Heck, it seems that's often the Noir subtext: one wrong step and you leave the golden world and end up in the dark....

5/31/2008 07:52:00 PM

djomg said...

So true... The best stories/films in that style are always about "accidents"; mild mistakes that turn deadly, or a chance meeting with disastrous consequences...
Your best intentions become the means to your end.

That may be the best way to describe "Noir" style:
The confluence of light and dark, visually and thematically, and what lurks unseen taints the beauty of the visible.