----------------------------Original message---------------------------- 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.