Philosophy at the Movies The Philosophy of Film Noir

Humanism Ireland • No 114 • January-February 2009
BOOKS
Philosophy at the Movies
The Philosophy of Film Noir
• Edited by Mark T Conard
The University Press of Kentucky • ISBN 978-0-8131-9181-2
Les Reid
F
ILM NOIR represents a dark
night of the soul in American
cinema. In the 1920s and 30s
the most popular genre was the
Western, with its tales of courage,
self-reliance, male toughness and female sweetness. Westerns were infused with the values of the American Dream and the Western hero was
likeable, trustworthy and admirable.
By contrast, the group of films
made in the 1940s and 50s, which
are referred to as “film noir”, convey
dark feelings of disillusionment,
pessimism and cynicism. Some recurring characteristics of such films
are: the whole society portrayed
seems corrupt; the protagonist is
more anti-hero than hero; a femme
fatale lures the protagonist into
crime; crime is presented as a cunning exploit and fatalism rules as
plans go awry. The expressionistic
use of black/white photography
which gives film noir its name, emphasises the bleak reality of urban
life and the disillusionment it
brings.
Film noir has been written about
extensively since Borde and Chaumeton first analysed it in 1955. This
new book makes a useful addition to
the catalogue because it brings together thirteen essays on philosophical aspects of the genre. The
essays cover a wide range of issues,
from ontology (is film noir a genre
or what?) to aesthetics (does its fatalism equate with tragedy?) to the
meaning of life (is its cynicism
founded on a moral crisis, like existential angst?) and more. Among the
classical philosophers cited, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer feature most
often, with Plato and Aristotle close
behind. Thomas Nagel, Paul Edwards and Charles Pierce are the
most popular modern philosophers
cited. I found the references, whether
classical or modern, clearly explained and effectively used. They
added considerably to the interest of
the discussions.
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Fred MacMurray and Edward G.
Robinson in Double Indemnity
The phenomenon of film noir invites
sociological speculation. For example, in
a well-known essay on its social context,
"Notes on Film Noir" (in Film Noir Reader
2), Paul Schrader emphasised the trauma
of World War 2 and the difficulties encountered post-war when the survivors
tried to resume normal life. Film noir
gave expression to those social problems.
Such speculations are tempting, but they
are methodologically dubious since they
make broad sociological comments with
little empirical data to support them. For
the most part, the contributors to this anthology avoid such speculation and concentrate on the films, rather than on the
society in which they were made.
The essay by Steven M Sanders is a case
in point. He examines the fatalistic outlook which is found in many classic noir
films and compares it to the concept of
absurdity in existentialism. He uses Vertigo and The Third Man as his main examples, but Double Indemnity, The Postman
Always Rings Twice and The Asphalt Jungle are obviously fatalistic. In the films,
the protagonist seems doomed: plans do
not work out, human relationships are
flawed and unreliable, and society seems
to be biased in favour of others. That
combination of fatalism and alienation
has some kinship with existentialism.
The existentialist is alienated because
he/she refuses to accept as given the moral
codes of others. According to Sartre, anyone
who denies his/her own freedom by following a given moral code (eg. by being a
Catholic) is guilty of bad faith. Freedom,
however, brings absurdity in its wake because the world is indifferent to the hopes of
humankind. Hence the pointless toil of
Sisyphus which is celebrated as heroic by
Camus. That existentialist defiance is expressed in the dark wit which is a feature of
film noir.
However, Sanders concludes that film noir
and existentialism are fundamentally different in their attitude to human freedom. Both
recognise that our freedom is bounded by
physical (and social?) limits, but existentialism emphasises the capacities that humans have - the scope of their freedom whereas film noir sees only contingency,
failure and fate.
A similar analysis of the fatalism in film
noir leads Ian Jarvie to conclude that, despite the combination of flawed heroes and
pessimistic outcomes, the narratives do not
attain the status of tragedy. In Aristotelean
terms, film noir is low drama. Jarvie says
that the stories are “morally incoherent”.
They provide glimpses of personal integrity, but no clashes of principle which test
the moral fibre of the protagonist. So they
fall short of tragedy.
Those arguments I found quite persuasive,
but there were others which were much less
so. Thus I was assured by J Holt that the
pessimism of neo-noir is one of its
strengths because pessimism is more
“realistic” than optimism. That assertion
was contentious in itself, but it was also at
odds with the critique offered by PA Cantor
in which he claimed that the pessimism of
film noir is the product of a “distorted” view
of the USA which 1930s European émigré
directors like Ulmer, Wilder, Siodmak and
Lang, conveyed through their films. I was
left wondering whether pessimism is realistic, distorted or both.
Equally debatable was the identification of
a lack of religious faith (the world of film
noir is largely god-free) with meaninglessness, or alienation, or a lack of moral values.
Sometimes such false assumptions were inherited from earlier philosophers:
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Humanism Ireland • No 114 • January-February 2009
MT Conard, for example, accepted from
Nietzsche the assertion that the death of
god entails the death of meaning, as if noone could find a purpose in life without
belief in the supernatural. No doubt, Nietzsche is a fitting source to quote since
his rhetorical excesses match the melodramatic expressionism of film noir, but I
would not take anything he wrote as gospel.
Discussion of film noir is often too narrow, in my opinion. Precursors in the
pulp fiction of the 1920s and 30s are acknowledged, but earlier prototypes are
rarely mentioned. Consider Hamlet. He is
a film noir anti-hero. He is an alienated
figure, cynical and abrasive in his wit,
hostile to the society he lives in,
shrewdly intelligent in his pursuit of his
enemy, and ruthless when others block
his path. His black attire, specified in the
text, suits his dark broodings and the
pessimistic outcome of the play.
The play deals with all forms of killing:
accidental manslaughter, deliberate murder, impulsive killing and suicide. Hamlet ponders on the morality of such killing, but events often outstrip his philosophising and we, the audience, are
swept along in his wake. Emotions run
high and the passages of rational thought
are brief and ineffectual. At the end, we
feel sobered by such a grim pursuit of
justice in which many innocent people
have been killed. Hamlet dies and “the
rest is silence.”
assumed that our sympathies would follow
a conventional path and cherish our common humanity.
The challenge of film noir is to deny that
assumption and depict a world where our
sympathies take a different path and lead
us down into the dark. Perhaps that is part
of its attraction. We enter a world where
our moral bearings are lost and we allow
ourselves to side with amoral people, living in a world quite like our own, but with
all its ugly, unjust defects emphasised.
We do not know how well we shall cope,
confronting murky situations with our
moral complacency switched off, but that
uncertainty grips our attention and carries
us into the story.
Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart
in The Big Sleep
Philosophy is the art of putting our
thoughts in order. But doing that requires us to scatter the pieces sometimes,
just to see how we arrive at order again
from all that disorder. Film noir performs
a similar function and does so in a most
engaging way. And this collection of essays, delving into the films and elucidating their philosophical depths, is challenging and engaging too. Read it and
prepare to be provoked.
(You can find a list of classic noir films at
http://www.imdb.com/chart/filmnoir)
This article first appeared in Philosophy
Now, October 2008
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Dana Andrews in Laura
Humanist Library of Ireland Recognises
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Hamlet: “a film noir anti-hero”
The classics of film noir stir the emotions in the same way. Killings happen
and we are implicated by our sympathy
for the wrongdoers. Ordinary moral reasoning seems to be undermined. We feel
more sympathy for the killers than for
their victims.
Hume argued, quite convincingly, that
morality ultimately rests on our emotions
of sympathy and compassion.
Those
feelings provide the “ought,” the basic
moral values, from which all our complex
moral reasonings are derived. But Hume
Diane File, Oklahoma, USA
P. J. Conneely, Galway
Sofia Contino, Italy
Ann Charleton, Dublin
Kieran Doyle, Meath
The Early Supporters program offers an opportunity for all enthusiastic and
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Nicolas Johnson
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