by Allan Fish
Imagine you’re in a mighty hall and the great analysts of world film are there, waxing lyrical about their favourite auteurs, moods, movements and directors of world film. You can imagine it, a place not dissimilar to the Library in those great recent Doctor Who episodes about the Library and the Vashta Nerada. Eventually, and with some inevitability, the topic of conversation gets round to film noir. Each is asked to describe what the very term film noir conjures up to them. The first critic takes a sip on his beverage of choice and leans forward in his easy chair and begins to address the assembly…
“The very term film noir conjures up a world where nothing would be the same again. Indeed, there’s a case for adjusting cinematic chronology to not the simple chronology of BC and AD, but PN and AN, for pre- and après noir (for French seems the appropriate language). There was a world before noir, a time of clear cut black and white, of heroes and villains. A time where the villain could do whatever he liked so long as he got shot in the final act and pulled down the curtain over himself…” (more…)
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