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Up until Gene Stavis wrote <<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,>> I was not shaking my head. I'm just finishing writing some

comments about Marc Vernet's eurocentric posturings in SHADES OF NOIR, and

I see the concept of critics "inventing" film noir continues to spread.

Maybe I'm a purist, but I think it's not terribly instructive to probe the

self-consciousness of filmmakers of the past. And to speak for them is a

little presumptuous. I commented on this at greater length two years ago

in an essay on "neo-noir" in the 3rd edition of FILM NOIR: AN ENCYCLOPEDIC

REFERENCE, excerpting Bordwell's "Case of Film Noir" to represent the

created-after-the-fact viewpoint and page 59 John Alton's PAINTING WITH

LIGHT for a viewpoint from the heart of the "classic period" of noir. A

couple of years and a lot more pondering later, I still have to conclude

that, then as now, most filmmakers had an idea of what they were doing.

John Alton told me that the University of California Press plans to

reprint his book. In the meantime it's worth tracking down a copy of the

1949 edition, to see what one cinematographer at least that about the

"style" of the times.