When asked to describe pornography, Justice Potter Stewart described his threshold test for obscenity in a famous speech, saying that he “knew it when he saw it.”
That’s also a pretty good method of describing Noir.
There’s a femme fatale and a fedora wearing detective except when there’s no femme fatale and fedora wearing detective.
It is black and white, except when it isn’t, and most importantly, it involves murder. Or it doesn’t.
Who really knows?
The best description of Noir is that it is a feeling, a style of telling a story. It is dark in nature, hence the name, and the outcome, even on the rare occasion when it is positive, is not positive for all.
I could attempt to go into further detail, but others have already done so, in a better fashion than I could do so myself.
One of those individuals is John P. Hess at Filmmaker IQ. In the following video Hess outlines the beginnings of noir, how and why Hollywood embraced the style, and where it is headed today.
It’s a great video and does an excellent job of outlining a genre that will always be in style.
Like the fedora!
