I welcome you and all to a dark universe in which shadows hide dangers far beyond the reaches of the human mind and night seems to be the perpetual state of time. Reality seems tainted by the sins of men and madness creeps behind every step you take. WELCOME, be you all, TO A PLACE that would put FUN HOUSES to shame!!!!
Welcome, to the stage and chamber in which you shall play your biggest role yet.
A museum of sorts, should you look at the walls. Thou shall findeth that the doors..are...CLOSED!!!
Nobody escapes; nobody ever gets out, not before the trail, not before the laughs. A place built for, and BY, paranoid schizophrenics with delusions of being chased and split personality disorders. A look in the mirror means a look at your face or a sentence for life.
Crowded streets that turn empty at a sway of your feet, madmen leading a turbulent carnival at your expense.
I WELCOME YOU, to my world.
A world of deceit and black magic. A place without real love. Were innocent men mingle with troubled women and fall into a spiraling vortex of DOOM. This is my home, this is the place.
Night never ends in the FILM NOIR universe.
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Finally, after a year put on hold, the subject has surfaced again. In my not-so-meticulous-though-I-rather-wish-it-was mission to shed some light on movie matters I have failed on previous occasions to make an honorable mention at one of cinema's most beloved genres and for the matter one of my own favorites.
Film Noir has raged and evolved in such a manner without actually loosing it's essence to which an unaccountable number of followers and scholars have broken time barriers. Here I am, for example, now 21 and clamoring at something long before my time. It wouldn't surprise me there were younger persons, perhaps ignorant to the fact that they also love the genre.
The thing is that, you can't overlook the superb quality in the storytelling of a Film Noir. I am one of the many who had no fucking clue I loved it after some time. I believe my first encounter with the subject was, and I shit-you-not, in a Garfield cartoon.
First, some history...and I promise it won't be shitty.
Back in the 1940's, even when Technicolor technology already existed (which means movies could be in color now, and did for over 20 years) some studios started distributing movies that used black and white filters. Not only that, as time would tell, but they also made some unusual uses of low-key lighting to create heavy shadows and dim scenarios. The obvious was that the movies had a darker, somber tone to them.
The visual symbols were plain. Film Noir, literally translated to Black Film. But the darkness did go beyond just the lighting, it went to the storytelling, to the cast and script and circumstances.
Movie critics, connoisseurs and the public in general started noticing the sudden back trail at the colorless features and notices one too many aspects in the films. Finally a French critic named Nino Frank baptized the genre as Film Noir.
Now to get real dirty, Film Noir has stretched to unimaginable lengths when dealing with characters and storylines, yet keeps a distinctive feeling to all. The movies dealt, in their majority, with subjects close to the decay of human nature.
Almost all are crime dramas, with the main characters being the average Joe, the hardboiled detective or the ambivalent gangster. All cut by the same knife, middle age men who were hard drinkers and chain smokers with questionable morals drawn to attractive women, who meant trouble, and trouble in general.
They would always be drawn to situations where the world was directly or indirectly against them. They were the good guys even though they were the bad guys. They were tough and loners, standing ground for no one but themselves and the few people they actually trusted (which in most movies turned up dead).
Fighting rackets, mob guerrillas, vicious scumbags from all sorts and sizes and in general falling desperately into a viper’s nest, a wolf’s lair. The dragon’s mouth. Street wise and able to withstand anything from a beating to a heavy dosage of mind alliterating drugs. These were the heroes; scruff, dirty, mean and real, these were the ones whom I believed in, unlike the pristine ones.
The women were trouble because they meant business. Film Noir never knew such a thing as the weaker sex. Sometimes they were straight up bad ass, others they used their sexuality coming on as fragile and naïve when in reality they were…well…bad. And then there were the times when they were the criminal masterminds, plotting to commit a crime and get away with it, letting some poor sap take the fall. These were the femme fatales, women who were as smart as they were sexy. 
And shit bang, were this women hot.
The dialogues were jewels. Over the top, 50’s urban oriented lingo; like wise guy talk. The detectives talked like the scumbags they were after and all of this, you can bet you sweet ass to more, to a Jazzy, cool soundtrack.
Film Noir saw its run end somewhere among the 1950’s after stories of ruthless cops, corrupt cities, dangerous good looking dames, criminal masterminds and a solitary all-for-nothing-no-holds-barred detective or their criminal counterpart that drew the line somewhere who fought all the previous were no longer interesting…
..Or so it was thought.
Film Noir resurfaced as Neo-Noir which in turn branched into a serious of noir oriented movies that go from the Sci-Fi Noir (Terminator, Blade Runner), Psycho Noir (Blue Velvet), and a weird but subtle, neo-noir of sorts called by Wikipedia parody noir of which stands out the, and I quote, quintessential Neo-noir of the 70’s.
Not for nothing it’s my favorite movie of all times.
Modern day, Noir based works of art could be found in Sin City (both the graphic novel and the movie), Max Payne (The videogame, not the shitball fucked up movie), some Batman works (The Long Halloween for example) and of course, the classics. I loved it, all my life, because I saw something in these people. Perhaps it was the fact they weren’t muscle masses like most action heroes whom I saw a definite line of separation. Maybe it was the cool atmosphere of cigarette smoke, whisky glasses and Jazz tunes. It could’ve even been the lonely guys, fighting of the world and the shit, one dirty fuck at a time.
But I love it, none the less, and now I invite you to look out for one of cinema’s most beautiful, inventive and impressive genres.
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