Responding to Evan Cameron's response to my notes on film noir (with some

editing)--

 

>Don Larsson:

 

>I appreciate the game you're playing with the term 'film noir', and much

>that you say.  Permit me one last time to clarify what we now know about

>the scope and limits of defining terms (coincident with much that you

>say), and hence to reaffirm the unique achievement (to date) of Damico's

>specification.

 

I hope I haven't seemed too glib in my posts.  I wasn't intentionally

playing "a game" except to the extent that all such matters of definition

are rather gamelike (which I take to be Wittgenstein's point, cited below):

 

>Strictly speaking, a definition of term must give both the necessary and

>sufficient conditions of its application.  As we now know, however, from

>the work of Quine and Wittgenstein in particular, no useful listing of

>necessary conditions can be given for any empirical predicate (i.e.,

>things found in the world have no essences; as Wittgenstein put, any two

>things falling under an empirical term must bear a 'family resemblance' to

>one another, but that does not entail that all things falling under it

>have anything in common).

 

<It follows, therefore, that no definitions of empirically useful terms can

<be given, for no exhaustive listing of necessary conditions is possible.

<We are left then with the task of specifying SUFFICIENT conditions for

<their use as means toward whatever ends we can clearly foresee, and that

<implies that the conditions be TESTABLE as means to those ends.

 

One question we might ask, then, is what use our definitions will be put to.

My notion is that if we need to define "film noir" as people who talk about

film, then we are trying to identify what it is we are talking about.  (If

we can't identify it, then--to paraphrase Wittgenstein--we must, perforce,

be silent.)

 

<Damico, however unintentionally, got it right: his specification is

<listing of conditions which he believes to be SUFFICIENT to ensure the

<construction of a movie which would be 'film noir'; it is not, and is not

<meant to be, what can never be given, namely a listing of necessary

<conditions for a movie being 'film noir'.

 

Then, it seems, his definition is meant to serve *filmmakers* and not film

critics or historians?  What use does it have for the latter?

 

>He has no interested therefore (and quite properly so) in ensuring that

>every movie which is 'film noir' conforms to his specification.  Rather,

>he is concerned with exactly the opposite, namely to ensure that every

>movie which conforms to his specifications is 'film noir'!  If he has

>managed to achieve that end, then he has provided something valuable,

>namely a tool for use by filmmakers who wish to construct films which are

>'film noir'.

 

This, it seems, is precisely the point of our difference.  D'Amico, if I

take your remarks correctly, is being *prescriptive* (but not to the point

of eliminating other possible formulae).  In other words, by your

interpretation, he is telling writers and directors "how to" make a

"film noir."  As such--and as I tried to suggest before--it's not a bad

formula.  Certainly, Kasden seemed to follow something like it in making

BODY HEAT.

 

But what *was* film noir in the first place?  It did not exist until the

French gave it a name.  As critics from Schrader on have said, no one set

out to make a "film noir."  They were making films in various genres that

had certain themes, styles, narrative patterns and characters that often

seemed to have something in common.  It was that commonality that attracted

the first French critics and others that came later.  For the last two

decades, though, people *have* set out to make "films noirs," which means

that they have set out to make films that they think have something in

common with at least some of those films that people have called "film

noir."

 

 

>It is therefore no counterexample to Damico's work to list movies which

>you or anyone else agree to be 'film noir' which do not conform to his

>specification. . . .

 

Since his definition is descriptive only of particular features of particular

films, counterexamples would by necessity be pointless.  It would be like

complaining that the tangerine in question is does not have white flesh and

smooth skin.  But that would apply only if one were to say that "If you wish

to know that your trees are producing fruit, you should see if the objects

hanging from the branches have white flesh and smooth skins that are

usually red but may be green or yellow."

 

The other problem with D'Amico's formula is that it is defined only in terms

of a certain *narrative* construction and says nothing about *style* (which

Gene Stavis' post did address).  If one made a film according to D'Amico's

formula but filmed it entirely in high-key lighting with straight-on

camera angles, would it still be "film noir"?  It is interesting to look

at contemporary reviews of some of the films we now call noir.  American

critics on the whole tended to ignore matters of style entirely.  The

British (in SIGHT AND SOUND especially) were somewhat more sensitive to

the apparently unusual stylistics of these films.  (Pinning down those

stylistic aspects, though, can be just as tricky as finding an essential

core of narrative elements.)

 

 

>. . . It is precisely because Damico's specification was intended to encompass

>SUFFICIENT conditions that it is testable, and hence useful.

 

But, again, useful to whom?  If you mean useful to budding writers and

directors looking for a model to work with, then maybe.  But if we're

using that definition as a  way to define what it is we're going to

talk about, then we've placed some very artificial limits on ourselves.

 

Let's take the *slightly* less tricky question of genre.  Westerns can be

filmed in many different styles and have many different patterns of

thematic and narrative organization.  What they have in common is that they

are set in a (large) geographical area and in a (broad) period of American

history.  Now, one can isolate certain narrative and thematic elements

as "essential" components of the Western and extrapolate them into

science fiction films (OUTLAND), contemporary crime films (DIRTY HARRY)

and the like--but that does not make those film "Westerns" as such.  Moving

back to the Western and then defining it in terms such as "The hero, who

is torn between the duty to society demanded by his job and his personal

distaste for that society, must risk his life in answering a threat to

that society from a criminal" (or something like that) addresses very

well HIGH NOON, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE and many other films.

But it says nothing about a huge number of films that virtually everyone

would agree are "Westerns."

 

 

>The problem

>with a listing such as your own, which encompass a set of features often

>found in movies we agree to be 'film noir', but which are also found in

>many movies which by common consent are not 'film noir' is that the

>listing is untestable.

 

I don't think the individual elements I proposed (which were not meant to

be an exhaustive list) are untestable.  I certainly agree that any individual

element may be found within any number of other films.  The key problem

in the set of elements I proposed is when does a certain combination of

those elements constitute a "critical mass" that causes us to identify it

as "film noir" (or identify individual scenes within a film as "noir-like")?

That, I admit, is a pretty subjective judgment, though I expect that most

of us would find at least some common core of examples that have that

"critical mass."  But we face similar problems when we try to isolate

"meanings" implied by a film.

 

 

 

>. . . To my knowledge, no film

>conforming to his specifications(!) has failed to be 'film noir'.  His

>proposal therefore remains, for me, a USEFUL contribution to the theory of

>genre design for filmmakers, and, sad to say, almost uniquely so.

 

I'm still unconvinced by D'Amico's silence on style and his definition

seems to me to be another kind of tautology.

Isn't it like saying that no fruit that has white flesh, a smooth skin

and is red, green or yellow in color has failed to be an apple?  From your

comments, D'Amico seems to be saying, "Here is how to make sure that what

you are growing is an apple."  I'm trying to say "Here's what is in this

bowl of fruit."

 

But here's another question about use: Why would even a *filmmaker* want

such a formula in the first place?  Even if we ammend or reverse the

genders, as you propose, we are left with a narrative formula that

already is seeming pretty tired.  What made the idea of "film noir"

so interesting in the first place was that it seemed to be something

different from the mainstream, whether in terms of style, the quasi-

existentialism of the characters and narrative, or the "subversion" of

gender expectations that critics of various stripes have cited at one

time or another.

 

Now I would agree that those claims of the difference of film noir have

been exaggerated but there is still *some* kind of difference from the

mainstream of films that preceded or accompanied it in the late 1940s

and 1950s.  To reduce it to a narrative formula for filmmakers to look

to seems (to me at least) to guarantee precisely a "formula" film.

A formula film may be done well or done badly, but what's the point?

 

 

>Again, thanks for initiating this discussion, and thereafter contributing

>to it, in the open and credible manner the subject deserves.

 

Thanks to you too for taking the time to explain your position so coherently.

I hope the discussion continues and that we haven't clogged up too many

mailboxes with it!

 

 

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)

 

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