| Raymond Chandler described
the landscape of the hardboiled mystery, what the French called "roman noir,"
as a place where the streets are dark with something more than night. The
hardboiled stories of Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, James M. Cain, Cornell
Woolrich, Horace McCoy, David Goodis, Chester Himes, and Jim Thompson were
characterized by cynical fatalism, a brutal existentialism, and casual,
almost banal, nihilism. It's no wonder it was so appealing to the French.
Of course, not all mystery and supsense movies are descended from the bleak worldview of the hardboiled writers, but the films that ARE descended from hardboiled constitute their own sub-genre: Film Noir. This is a grouping of films that collectively influence the rest of cinema more than just about any other type of movie--out of all proportion to their numbers or their box office success. The poet laureate of the Mystery and Suspense movie is Alfred Hitchock, a director whose films are suffused with such a darkness of heart and are mounted with such a mastery of cinematic technique that his name has become an adjective. So distinctive is the stamp of Hitchcock's anima on his films that many critics and viewers assign him his own sub-genre. |