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In most film noir, you may be able to pick out a teaspoon of nobility in even the most nihilistic, rotten protagonist --- they’re in the situation because of their attraction to someone, or due to desperation, or the breaks are against them. Or sometimes, because of the structure of the world around them. From this season’s own short list, witness the hard luck of Al in Detour as his ride is killed falling out of a car. Bart can’t leave Laurie and her homicidal tendencies behind in Gun Crazy. Marlowe wrestles with covering up a murder for love in The Big Sleep. The Swede is played for a sap in The Killers because he took the wrong course after giving up boxing. I mean, pick your reasons.

But occasionally in the genre, a protagonist is so unsympathetic, so outside the mainstream of human values that he (always he) plows on for the basest of reasons in his quest for money, or ease, or freedom, or carnal satisfaction. Combine that with a story that is beset by nihilism, directed by someone who was understandably bitter about their life’s turnings, populated with actors with a story to tell, and you have a bitter stew of noir that’s difficult to watch, let alone understand. Please stay in your seats. I present to you the wonderfully named Night And The City. The most noir of titles…

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Our Noirvember pod on The Big Sleep had me ooohhhing and aaahhhing about the talent that brought the film to life in front of and behind the camera. As we enter the classic period of noir in America, we’re going to look at a film that has some of the most impactful and prolific noir actors ever assembled, with just as talented a production team as in Sleep. For your holiday enjoyment by the crackling fire, we bring you the noir based on a very short Ernest Hemingway story, 1946’s The Killers from Universal. Historically, we’ve liked to propose that, if you want to introduce a friend to film noir in a short sitting, you’d put them in a comfortable chair, roll Double Indemnity from 1944, allow them to stretch afterwards, perhaps all “go out to the lobby,” then give them a shot of Bob Mitchum playing Bob Mitchum in 1947’s Out Of The Past. But if you wanted to show them a noir that has maximum acting talent at every level, so much so that it seems almost wasteful, you’d have to delight them with a triple feature and run The Killers.

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Exit Scary Season, hello Noirvember and back to film noir in earnest! We’re leaving behind the subgenre of crazy kids on the run and into more established noir territory --- the private detective story. And do we have a great one for our entrance! Among the first pre-wave of classic film noir released in the US after WWII, it’s 1946’s The Big Sleep. Packed with talent in front of and behind the camera, packed with confusion by one of the hallmark authors of the hard – boiled writing style, packed with intrigue beyond the simple telling of a story --- it’s a signal event of the genre. It’s packed.

It started, as do many of the early noir films, with a master of the pulp magazine story, the estimable Raymond Chandler. Chandler had an extremely round-about path to artistic success. He was a son of the Midwest, born in Chicago and raised in Nebraska, but due to family connections, well educated at Dulwich College in London. He became a British citizen and entered the civil service, which he found stifling. He moved on to newspaper work, had a stop in Canadian military service during WWI, then returned to the US, beginning an executive career in the Southern California oil industry. The Depression put paid to his work there, as well as contributed to his growing alcoholism. Short on funds, Chandler took a flyer and picked up on the paid – by – the – word pulp fiction magazines of the day, his first story in 1933 winning him instant success. He never looked back. He became more ambitious, his slow writing more fitted to novels than paid – by – the – word, publishing his first, The Big Sleep, in 1939.

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark