I have, at this point, watched quite a few film noirs – at least a hundred that would fit the classical definition, which of course means not counting your various protos, neos and roses-by-other-names. This certainly isn’t enough to make me an expert in the genre, but I think it does grant me the authority to make some generalizations. Here’s the first one: most noirs are essentially common. They’re common in their outlook, common in their values, common in the ways they try to make you think like them. By this I mean they’re commonly cynical, of course, in the way a certain kind of cynicism is common among men that have suffered an injustice, but also that they’re commonly cinematic. I suspect that much of the enduring popular interest in noir as a style, as an artifact, as a discursive mode can be traced to a failure to recognize one or both of these things – there is a certain kind of “film buff” who would tell you that the noir shows us the darkness and anxiety lurking beneath the surface of a prosperous American society, but this isn’t really true: the fascism of Mickey Spillane is in no way discontinuous with what preceded it or what came after; it’s the text, not the subtext, of the Big Lie, and Hollywood cinema has always had the black, abyssal shadows to match it. Everything a common noir “exposes” has always been right there on the screen for anyone who cares to see it, it’s just that very few really do.
This is a long way of saying that most noirs, even most of those I enjoy watching quite a bit, don’t do much for me. They’re satisfying but inert, prettied up scraps of cheap ideology. The cynic will say this is true of most films of any genre made in the classical period, and perhaps he’s right, bless his bitter heart, but the fact remains it’s something I experience with noirs far more than anything else. So, here’s my second generalization: these “common noirs” are uncommonly unremarkable. Which begs the question: why keep watching them? Well, for one thing, because I do still consider myself some sort of scholar of cinema, and American cinema in particular, and as such I have at least as much of a scholarly interest in unremarkable films as I do remarkable ones. Perhaps even a greater one, as the unremarkable is frequently more instructive about the actual logic and mechanisms of cultural production operating in a given context than the remarkable, which is by definition rather unrepresentative. But, of course, there’s another reason as well, that being the possibility that whatever I’m about to see will prove to not, in fact, be a common noir, but rather that which I actually want to talk about: a rare noir.
A rare noir is a work of immense cosmic weight. It walks with a sure step in the deepest shadows and darkest nights. It makes all the hundreds of hours of common ones worth it. Watching one is to glimpse some fragment of the true shape of things, as through a glass, and darkly. It purifies that which is muddy and obscured in the common noir, as indeed is such in all common things, and in this purity becomes at times scarcely possible to endure, like a sudden, blinding light in a previously darkened room – that is, like the mythic essence of cinema. I want to be very clear: I am not speaking simply of “very good noirs.” I have seen a dozen films that I would say deserve the latter recommendation, perhaps more, but only three Rare Noirs: Kiss Me Deadly, The Big Combo, The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond. Perhaps Touch of Evil, as well, but that’s the definite extent of the list. You may notice these are not necessarily the most famous noirs, the most well-known and -respected, and this is part of it. There’s no algorithm, no hermeneutic, which can reliably distinguish the rare noir from the common. One can’t draw up a list of “probable candidates” based upon some quantitative metric that will prove better than random selection; a qualitative approach might yield a better array, if one is suitably skilled at reading between the lines of critical discourse, but even this would be of limited value. I’ve offered my own list, of course, and I encourage you to use it if so inclined, but this is an expressive terrain in which language is ill-equipped to travel; my soul is not yours, and I can’t be sure I haven’t led you astray, perhaps in some subtle way neither of us will realize until it’s far too late. I can say this with confidence: a rare noir is not something to be taken lightly, but equally it’s not something you can “prepare for,” like war or surgery. It’s only in the encounter itself, in the act of watching, that the rare noir reveals itself, and you can’t really know how it will affect you until it’s already begun its work. Best to follow the example of that mainstay of ‘50s America, the drunk driver, facing a sudden rush of blaring horn and bright white headlight on the wrong side of town – stay loose, move slowly, and accept the oncoming darkness.
le remords 