----------------------------Original message---------------------------- It's tough to respond to the Noir discussion without sounding like a hidebound purist, but I'll give it a try. To understand film history, it is necessary to understand not only a particular genre, but its roots and its progeny as well. I agree with Schrader's notion of today's films NOT being true noir. This is not out of a desire to exclude but to understand the style, content and the era in which film noir flourished. German Expressionism, American gangster films, French Poetic Realism all made contributions to a style which emerged around 1944 and seemed a natural style of filmmaking until the mid-fifties when the genre became self-conscious and inbred. Over the years, the style influenced other films and emerged as period throwbacks made by several generations who, rather than inventing new modes of expression, increasingly resorted to assuming the mantle of styles they had experienced in youth or discovered long after the era had vanished. Original (or True) Film Noir didn't simply represent a stye filmmakers assumed, but reflected the political and social realities of the era. The end of WWII, the threat of atomic annhialation, the Cold War, the witch hunts, the appeal of the cynical B-mystery writers -- all influenced the look of these films and their subjects. There may be resonances of those realities today, but modern times require styles which reflect the present times, not the borrowed surfaces of other times. It is significant too that filmmakers who were creating the style never thought of it as a "style". It was simply their instinctive method of film-making, responding to the times in which they lived. It was critics who invented the "style", long after it had ceased to be a force. Just as tomorrow's critics will begin to make sense of what is going on today, the style preceded (and became deceased) long before it was named. Of course, filmmakers should be influenced by and absorb the styles of the past. This is a natural synthesis and is the primary source of creativity. However, debasing the boundaries of a true style in order to hitch one's wagon to an undoubted star, is just laziness and I don't believe that true artists (not just poseurs) join in the exercise. Most of these claims of true Noir films being made today are made by critics, often uninformed and lazy. The real creative artists of today are beating their own paths through the jungle, guided by artifacts of the past, but not slavishly following them. Gene Stavis, School of Visual Arts - NYC