FATAL(E) CHARACTERS IN US NOIR: A LIST OF THE "TOP OFFENDERS"

A recent essay at the Saturday Evening Post website identified "ten top femme fatales" in film noir. (American film noir, of course: despite efforts by TCM's noir maven Eddie Muller--and yours truly!--to widen the horizons of noir aficionados to the expansive realities of international film noir, many still reflexively see noir as inherently American.)

But that is a battle for another day. The top ten "femme fatales" chosen by Donald Liebenson are solidly within the "region of consensus" for such characters as they appear in US noir. But "top ten" lists seem so perfunctory--so we solicited some help from several more "expansive" experts, who filled in twenty more characters deserving of mention with the Post's top ten.

As you might suspect, however, even that didn't quite satisfy our desire to capture just how pervasive such disruptive characters really are. So we created a much larger list, using the Noir-o-Meter's evaluation of more than 1,000 noirs from around the world.

Sticking with US noir, we look at the "meter's" intensity score for the character element measuring "peril-inducing characters," an element that covers both genders of such "bad faith" presences in noir--the femmes (fatale) and the hommes (fatal). The quantitative gradation method doesn't specify gender, of course: it just grades intensity. So we've compiled a list where the intensity score for this element (weighted at a possible 15 points out of the method's total point allocation of 200) is 11 or higher. 

That turns out to be a lengthy list: 115 US noirs in all. Here's the list, which shows the gender breakdown of such characters, which provides a result that might be quite surprising. Note also that there a number of films containing "bad faith" characters of bold genders whose combined actions brought the overall intensity level of this important noir element to a level where they needed to be included on the list.

As noted, a long list: we've made it large enough for you to read comfortably, but be forewarned--it goes on for a long, long time!

THE surprise (to many of you, perhaps?) is that there are more homme fatal characters radiating significant intensity in these film than femme fatale characters. That suggests that the misogynistic aspect often attributed to film noir (resulting from a fear/loathing of the independent female as a result of her emancipation during World War II) is not a dominating aspect of these films, but more of a transient feature appearing in a compressed time frame within the overall US noir cycle. 

Note that the films selected by the Saturday Evening Post are shown in bold type; the amplifying films (which in a few cases include films that scored less than 11 in this element) are shown in italics (the contributions of Robert Ottoson) or set off with a yellow background (the suggestions of Owen Field). 

This is a fine list that you are encouraged to utilize to seek out any films listed on it that you've not yet seen...

FILM TIMELINE FOR FRENCH 24

THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT '24 has come and gone. A wonderful time was had by all who attended at San Francisco's Roxie Theater, including those folks who viewed all 32 films in the two-part series.

For excellent overviews of the second half of the festival (18 films, including nine repeat screenings featuring past festival favorites, read Owen Field's fine write-ups at the Blackboard, which are organized into five daily updates. Access them at the links below:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

All four decades of French film noir were covered in the full 32-film schedule. Though you'll know only a small number of the titles screened (that's why we've been showing them for the past ten years...), the diagram below provides a look at the full FRENCH 24 lineup, displayed by half-decades and color-coded both according to their screening dates (Part 1, the October schedule, in green; Part 2, the November-December schedule, in yellow) and whether they were repeat screenings (shown in red type): 

As you can see, the only half-decade that was not represented in the full 32-film schedule was 1941-45, the heart of the Occupation Era. 

The decades were reasonably well-balanced--1930s: 8; 1940s: 9; 1950s: 10; 1960s: 5.

Seven films directed by André Cayatte were screened across the two portions of FRENCH 24: five in Part One, two in Part Two.

Five films starring Erich von Stroheim were screened: one (TEMPETE) in Part One; four (L'ALIBI, LES DISPARUS DE ST-AGIL, LE MONDE TREMBLERA, LA DANSE DU MORT) in Part Two.

FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT '24 PART ONE: THE SCHEDULE ON A POSTCARD

Much more about the first part of our grand finale can be found here and here, but here is the promotional postcard for Part One of THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT '24, screening at San Francisco's Roxie Theater from October 3-7.

Things kick off with the lone collaboration between Brigitte Bardot and Jean Gabin, and work through a fascinating look at rare 1930s noir, a special tribute to neglected director André Cayatte, both of which are part of the more exclusive "film club" series playing in the Roxie's screening room (very limited seats still available as of this writing). 

Then it's a glorious high-profile 1930s day on Sunday, October , with a double bill featuring the young Jean Gabin, followed by the magisterial 1934 version of LES MISÉRABLES, a three-part, four-hour epic featuring the great Harry Baur as Victor Hugo's embattled hero Jean Valjean. Of the 50+ versions of "LES MIZ," experts are in agreement that this is the best and most faithful adaptation of Hugo's novel--and it's thoroughly noir.

FRENCH '24 ends with a tribute to the singular monstre sacré Michel Simon, with two films where he is variably touched by madness. Our still from NON COUPABLE would be a fine choice as the image used in an illustrated dictionary for the phrase "fugue state."

When FRENCH '24 Part Two concludes on December 3, a total of 155 rare classic-era French noirs--the most hidden films in the film noir canon--will have been screened in the series since 2014. It's quite a legacy...

FIERY, COLORBLIND PHOTOGRAPHER EDGAR ORTIZ: CHICAGO NEO-NOIR

Tim Adams' Guardian article provides us with a good overview of Edgar Ortiz's Instagram account, where more than 400 images have been housed over the past two years.

What adds interest (and a tinge of paradox) is the fact that Ortiz is colorblind. 

His fiery images, many of which recycle motifs of lone figures crossing Chicago streets with various, sweeping background vistas, are thus working against his own visual limits. 

Only occasionally does he post a black and white image, but when he does, they are quite striking.

We are posting five of Ortiz's Instagram images from his account "Iamease" (if you have an Instagram account, type that into the application's search engine and you should be able to access his page).

The image that the Guardian selected to feature is one of Ortiz's best--we won't spoil it for you here. 

Be sure to click through in order to discover more about Ortiz's background (he is also a musician, and he is a late-blooming photographer.

As technology allows the movie-watcher greater ability to create still images, we see a stronger connection between the dynamic images in film and the "stop motion in frame" of photography.

As you scroll through Ortiz's images at Instagram, you can see a progression in his work.

Compositional angles become more diagonal and complex...

The same light source illuminates two different but connected image elements...

And he finds new ways to add texture to his images that stem from real-life light sources that take advantage of the weather conditions that are in play when he snaps his picture.

Just how "noir" these photos actually are in the context of "stark imagery" (particularly the high-contrast black & white images handed down to us from the classic "New York school" of street photographers) is open to question.

But it's clear that Ortiz is fascinated by pools of light and the shadows that surround them, and his work is more and more focused on the subtle, varied (and sometimes random) interplay of these elements.

And (below) there are some unusual, offbeat images that show that he has a well-developed sense of humor...

As Adams says, there is a tension in Ortiz's vision of urbanism: in his Guardian piece, he frames this as "one part Mean Streets, one part Yellow Brick Road." 

You are encouraged to follow Ortiz at Instagram, where street photography is one of the main attractions in a world often overrun by self-promotion. Edgar's world is all about what he sees, not how he presents himself to us. He deserves your attention...

NC PROSELYTIZES FOR NIGHTMARE ALLEY

Thanks in part to the pandemic, Guillermo del Toro spent the better part of four years bringing his version of NIGHTMARE ALLEY to the screen. He is a highly accomplished filmmaker, with a vast reputation for creatively extending themes and visual motifs in the horror genre, which resulted in an Oscar win for THE SHAPE OF WATER at the 2018 Academy Awards.

NIGHTMARE ALLEY was his followup, with del Toro collaborating with Kim Morgan (whom he subsequently married) in an ambitious effort to retool the legendary 1947 classic that starred Tyrone Power as the self-aggrandizing Stan Carlisle, destined to fall in a manner similar to the Icarus myth because he heedlessly "reached too high." Likewise, Kim Morgan aggressively seized an opportunity to step up from film critic to screenwriter, with the ostensible conviction that she and del Toro would be more faithful to William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 source novel.

Meanwhile, the Film Noir Foundation, friendly to Morgan over the years, organized a suite of written content in its house organ NOIR CITY that would focus on NIGHTMARE ALLEY, in part to pay lip service to the original film, but also to exhort its readership to embrace the new version. The film, while technically accomplished, is not substantially more faithful to Gresham's novel, but FNF head honcho Eddie Muller took up the gauntlet for it in a review that (as we noted in the excerpt from a more expansive evaluation of the just-released issue) he probably should have delegated to another writer. 

The excerpt below zeroes in on the thematic and narrative flaws and subversions extant in the del Toro/Morgan screenplay, which fatally compromises the notion that the screenwriting duo were more faithful to the source novel, and that they demonstrated "reverence for the 1947 film version," which is a sample of the whitewashing undertaken by Muller in his review of the film.

And, jumpin' Jehoshaphat, that's just what leads off the issue: carnival noir, as surveyed by poet, culture critic and new NC contributor Brent Calderwood, most recently writing for THE FILM EXPERIENCE. The feature starts well, but runs out of steam just the way that carnivals did (as noted in the intro) when urbanization overtook America's agrarian roots. Reading the feature's footnotes, one senses that they may have been provided by an editor to simulate a comprehensive list of film noir titles that were (even slightly) touched by the carnival. (Alas, two notable examples of classic French noir with strong ties to the "carny world" were overlooked: drop me a PM for the identities of these two films, as there's no reason to simply give away that information to those who don't quite complete their research assignments.)

It's followed by a condensed and retouched interview conducted by Calderwood with Guillermo del Toro and Kim Morgan as part of "the tout" for the new version of NIGHTMARE ALLEY. "Retouched" seems like a good description: del Toro is an eloquent fellow, but reading his responses really gives the impression that they were polished for publication. In it, there is his relentless attempt to connect his film with some form of ongoing political critique of America, while insisting that [William Lindsay] Gresham's novel is highly autobiographical (when it is more likely that Gresham's obsession with the world of the carnival and his fascination with the Tarot had coalesced into a richly lurid fictional depiction of a composite of characters he'd met or who he'd been told about). It appears that the "shut eye" concept--coming to believe in one's own patter about the creative project one is trying to put across to the public--may be enveloping the husband-and-wife team as well.

Finally, there is a review of the new film from Eddie [Muller], where he treads as lightly as possible on the production, positioning himself in the "rave with minor reservations" category. It's an interesting tap dance, where Eddie notes the Icarus theme of the original story but pretends not to notice how that is subverted by the filmmaker/screenwriters into a Oedipal tale (with additional scenes and pseudo-talismanic characters--the "pickled devil baby"--that do not appear in the source novel). He also states that he won't compare performances between the two versions, and--then goes ahead and compares performances between the two versions. (While he praises Rooney Mara to the skies, note that it's Coleen Gray on the cover of the magazine.) Eddie also endorses the "arming of Lilith Ritter" even while he tiptoes into an admission that "superfluous gore" seeped into the film--a significant portion of which came from giving Lilith a gun (and a strange body scar that also was not found in the novel). Frankly, given his friendship with Morgan, Eddie should've delegated the review to his "managing editor" Vince Keenan (Vince is actually "editor-in-chief," Eddie--that was a revealing Freudian slip in the email blast announcing the new issue...) or to someone else with no noticeable conflict of interest.

The new NIGHTMARE ALLEY has many strengths, but they are mostly technical. Even its supporters acknowledge that it is too lengthy; some of these (including Muller) note the strong uptick of violence, particularly in Stan Carlisle, who is not presented that way at all in the source novel or in the 1947 version. Muller attempts to suggest that such criticisms stem from the "churlish" curmudgeons who disdain virtually anything modern; but he simply runs away from the issue of the two films' comparative fidelity to Gresham's novel. He leaves what really matters about the true worth of the film unexamined, possibly in hopes of swaying the wobbly attendance figures that the film has been receiving since its fatefully delayed release on December 17 (originally scheduled for December 3 and no significant challengers at the box office, it lost two more weeks due to delays in completion of the final edit and thus ran into the blockbuster SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, which obliterated all of its competition from Day One and continues to do so as 2022 begins).

It appears that, barring an unforeseen turnaround, NIGHTMARE ALLEY's box office fate will be entirely left in the hands of what American movie moguls still call "the overseas market." The good news is that as a director originally from Mexico and with a solidly established international reputation, del Toro is solidly positioned to draw robust audiences for the film outside the US. (His Oscar winner THE SHAPE OF WATER, for example, did twice as much business in foreign markets.) He is already at work on his next film, a mixed live-action/stop-motion version of PINOCCHIO. His wife's screenwriting career may be another matter entirely, however.

PROSELYTIZING FOR FRENCH NOIR

We're not at all enamored of the recent coinage that has become an annual "event," particularly on Twitter: "Noirvember." Too slick, too glib, too calculated: strike three and you're out. But one suspects it will be with us for the foreseeable future. 

Which, of course, means that occasionally we find a need to use the term to our own advantage. Since THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT festival has been in operation, it's had its own monopoly on "Noirvember," given that it's the only film noir festival to actually occur in November. 

In November of '21, other places got  into the works. Two theatres in Boston featured "Noirvember" fests this year. One figures that it's only a question of time before the Film Noir Foundation decides to get into the act somewhere.

In the meantime, THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT got back in harness at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco after a twenty-three month hiatus. (2021s schedule, segmented into an October "prequel," a November "main event," and a December "coda," brought viewers a total of 17 films, including seven festival favorites from previous years.) 

Above, a shot of French noir evangelist Don Malcolm at work in front of his "flock," and a look at the 2021 festival artwork, based on the poster art for one of the films in this year's festival, DEATH OF A KILLER (1964, directed and starring Robert Hossein).

ANATOMIZING PASTE MAGAZINE'S TOP 100 NOIR LIST

The accompanying table is the crux of our analysis of Paste Magazine's kluge-y Top 100 noirs list.

We call it that because the placement of the films based on their release dates (1940s-50s: classic; 1970s-up "neo") and the total number of films in each of these global time frames seems a bit too convenient. See if the pattern displayed in the table--sorted by poll rank and then distributed by decade--speaks to you in a way similar to the way it speaks to us:

First, the total number of "classic noirs" (late 1930s to late 1950s) just happens to add up to a round number (60). 

Second, the total number of "classic noirs" in the Top 30 is egregiously lopsided. Only CHINATOWN and BLADE RUNNER--two films seriously displaced from stories set in the present-day--made the cut. 

Third, that numerical arrangement permits the 70 subsequent films to split exactly between "classic" and "neo"--35 apiece.

All of this is just a bit too convenient...

While there are many films that clearly belong in a Top 100 list, there are some odd choices at various places in the poll, which also suggests that the list was arrived at "by committee" and not from any kind of empirical input.

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW and THE BIG SLEEP are simultaneously oddball and mainstream choices for #1 and #2 on the list, which also suggests "committee" as opposed to something that would reflect a prevailing consensus (which would heavily favor films like DOUBLE INDEMNITY--which was rated #3--and OUT OF THE PAST--slotted at #7).

So--an odd, quirky, "kluge-y" list that could be picked apart by looking at the films as they rated by decade--which could reveal some seriously odd distortions. We don't have time to do that now, but we may come back to it later on. 

To read the full article (with copious commentary on each film included in the Top 100), click on this link:

https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/the-100-best-noirs-of-all-time

USING THE NOIR-O-METER FOR "FACTOR ANALYSIS" OF TCM's "MARCH BADNESS"

Famous "barroom analyst" Eddie Muller has devised a sendup of college basketball's "March madness" that uses Twitter for the thing it was meant for: mindlessly entertaining polls that occasionally reveal something interesting within a sub-group. "March Badness" (a name doubtless conjured up after several libations) is an amusing conceit, but whether the poll means anything at all depends on how it is executed (and we don't mean choosing between the noose and lethal injection!). 

The voting is underway, and a few surprising results as the contest snakes its way down to the so-called "ultimate noir villain" have prompted us to look more closely at both the poll's initial construction and the related factors involved with each villain. Is there a predictable pattern in the voting results that might hold up no matter what pair of villains face off? The short answer: probably. Whatever art/artifice was used to generate the noir "field of 16" (semi-conscious choice, drawn out of a hat, ouija board) may not matter in terms of who wins. 

The long answer is below, focused on an interesting anomaly in the voting that cropped up in the first round: bratty little Veda Pierce (Ann Blyth) from MILDRED PIERCE knocked out the formidable Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) from OUT OF THE PAST. Veda is the only teenager on the list (though Annie Laurie Starr isn't much older, and certainly isn't psychologically) and yet there she is (as you can see in the table below...) ready to face off against giggling madman Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) in KISS OF DEATH.

That anomaly made me think that we can apply two control measures to create a form of "factor analysis" to predict results in these polls. I'll deal with the second first, which is simply the number of "rating votes" that the film in which the villain appears has received at the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB).

The primary factor for our purposes is a "noir element" taken from our old friend the "Noir-o-Meter," which those who occasionally frequent (is that an oxymoron?) this blog will remember (presumably neither wisely nor too well). The element that matters to us for "badness" is the "fatal(e)" element, which we make more verbose with the following: "degree of peril produced by fatal(e) characters." The element has a maximum of 15 points (out of the 200-point scale), so it has a good bit of significance in the overall method and it has enough room for gradation (which I've tried to make as systematic as possible). That said, it is still a subjective measure, and some will not agree with our conclusions (of course, some people never agree with anything).

The "factor analysis" is to compare the two films by the "fatal(e) value" and their likely familiarity to voters (the IMDB vote total). In the table (above) we show the "factor relationships" with a two-character code. If a film has a "fatal(e)" character rating higher than its opponent and it has more votes cast in the IMDB poll, we code it "xx." If it has a higher character rating but fewer votes, it's coded "xy." If it has a lower character rating but more votes, the code is "yx." And if it has both a lower character rating and fewer votes, the code is "yy." (Chromosomes, you can start your engines...)

There are two more possible categories we should mention, which occur if the character ratings are identical. With a tie score in factor 1, we assign a "z" to that factor, so a tie in the character rating plus more votes produces a "zx" code, and a tie in the character rating plus fewer votes creates a "zy" code.

What we see in the results is that the character rating code predicts the winner almost all of the time (at least thus far--we have only 7 results in from the poll as yet, so things could change). Any factor code beginning with "x" has a 5-1 record; only that Veda Pierce, with a character score well below that of Kathie Moffat and (surprisingly) fewer votes, pulled off a win with a factor code beginning with "y."

In the one case where the character scores were identical (Kasper Gutman in MALTESE FALCON and Johnny Prince in SCARLET STREET), the film with greater familiarity seems to have carried its anti-hero to the next plateau in "Eddie Muller's Badness Valhalla" (which is a great name for a stage act, BTW: "Eddie will be here all week--try the veal!").

So if we were to predict what will happen via the "factor analysis," we'd see Mr. Brown (Richard Conte) overcome his opponent Vince Stone's (Lee Marvin) greater visibility (check the IMDB vote totals: shockingly, THE BIG COMBO is the least-seen of these films). At that point, he'd be up against the Fat Man, and their character scores are much closer than the IMDB votes; thus one would figure that Gutman will win in the second round.

If Veda can take down Kathie freakin' Moffat, she's probably a match for Tommy Udo (particularly since Veda is young and lithe and has no need for wheelchairs). So in this bracket it's Veda vs. the Fat Man, and it's hard to vote against a man who enjoys talking to a man who likes to talk. In that scenario, Gutman is still on his seventeen-year quest to be the biggest baddie of them all ("not just in girth!" he grunts: "I'm not made out of lead...I'm no phony!!"). To which we say: thank God that Gutman is not made out of lead--he'd be the original immovable object if he were...

Over in the other bracket, we figure Phyllis D. (Barbara Stanwyck) will take down J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) thanks to the "xx" code (and that honey of an anklet: our male voters don't miss a trick!). In the other contest, let's first admit that the IMDB vote total for NIGHT OF THE HUNTER vis-a-vis DETOUR is just staggering, and since the two villains are tied in the Noir-o-Meter's "fatal(e)" category, we have to go with Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) over the fearsome Vera (Ann Savage).  So it's Phyllis vs. Harry in the semi-finals. 

And in that round, Phyllis will take out Harry, with the other bracket simply too close to call due to the "Veda anomaly." Gutman would beat Tommy Udo rather handily, but folks seem to cotton to these teenage vixens (says something sick about present-day society, if ya know what I mean...) and Veda just might commandeer that wheelchair from Tommy's victim, lure Gutman into it, and push him down the stairs!

Either way, however, I think it's safe to assume that the eventual winner of this is going to be the lady whose blonde wig freaked out Paramount's Buddy DeSylva so much that he compared his femme fatale to George Washington. Despite that lamentable attribute, Phyllis Dietrichson is almost certain to be the baddest when all the votes have been counted (except the ones they will be suppressing in Georgia). 

And at that point, Eddie may want to start to get worried when this is all over, and in one of his booze-encrusted dreams, Phyllis sidles up to him and says: "Bourbon will be fine, Eddie." Time to go on the wagon, Muller!

CORNELL WOOLRICH AND THE NOIR-O-METER

A recent post at the Blackboard from Dan Hodges--long-time jouster against the "hard-boiled paradigm" that continues to distort the popular understanding of film noir--focused on problems of interpretation he encountered in discussions of the Cornell Woolrich "melo-noir" NO MAN OF HER OWN (1950), starring Barbara Stanwyck (in a role that gave that great actress much to work with on both sides of her emotional register--even though she is, like Joan Crawford in this time frame, often ten years too old for the parts she is playing).

Dan's aversion to the hard-boiled has only hardened over the years, but it appears to me that some of the noir/melodrama dynamics that we have discussed during those times have actually rubbed off on his writing. His claims for the greater emotional depth and avoidance of "deterministic" narrative sequences that we find in melodrama is at least an unconscious admission that noir needs to connect with a greater spectrum of human emotion in order not to become clichéd and formulaic. That said, melodrama also needs noir to sharpen the edges of that emotion in ways that connect it with life-and-death situations.

Dan spends many paragraphs discussing minute plot details in order to debunk an overly "hard-boiled" analysis by academic Mark Osteen. There are some good points in his argument, but he meanders within a series of actions within NO MAN OF HER OWN that don't really connect to one another. He's also a bit too concerned about the difference between the two competing source materials for the film (Cornell Woolrich, who often recycled and revised story elements, did just that with the material combined into the script for the film--the novel  I MARRIED A DEAD MAN and the earlier short story "They Call Me Patrice."

Though Dan remains innately suspicious of our Noir-o-Meter (see previous posts for details about how this "how noir is it" method operates...), we think that its ability to isolate the structural/dramatic roots of "noirness" via an integration of "hard-boiled" and "melodrama" (which we sometimes think of as Empedoclean forces at work within the aesthetic/philosophical underpinnings of noir) is just the ticket to establish a different viewpoint about NO MAN OF HER OWN that gets beyond most of the messy specifics and puts it (and other writings of Woolrich as adapted into film) into a context that is both coherent and consistent. 

Woolrich is unique among the major literary sources for film noir in his juxtaposition of psychological motivations for aberrant behavior and exaggerated, outlandish plot devices. This combination often produces a sense of dread that is often interpreted as being hard-boiled, but in fact is not. When the often almost transparent plot contrivances are superimposed, the formulaic aspect of pulp fiction is highlighted, which reinforces the perception that his narratives reside in the realm of the hard-boiled.

The noir-o-meter ratings for nine films adapted from Woolrich's work dispel this notion, however. The particular ratings that shine a light into this area are "ratio measures" that compare the intensity of "hard-boiled" elements in noir with the analogous strength of those elements derived from "melodrama" (or more traditional dramatic/theatrical structures). One of the surprises discovered via the application of this method was that the "melodrama" elements are stronger in application and intensity than the "hard-boiled" elements as they manifest generally across film noir. (In aggregate, the measures are about 12% apart: the "hard-boiled" element score 6.2 on a scale of ten, while the melodrama elements grade out at 6.8.) What we call the "melo rate" for noir sets itself at 112 as manifested in over 1,000 film noir titles. When we isolate on the character elements, where much of the meaning within the action is operating, we see that the relative strength of the hard-boiled elements is 89--reinforcing this general relationship by its opposite measure.

From there, the question shifts: where do Woolrich's films grade out using this scale? Are they all over the map, or do they show a pervasive pattern. If the former, we either have a stylistic/thematic inconsistency in Woolrich's work, or we have a method that doesn't (work, that is!). If the latter, then we would seem to have a method that captures tendencies within noir with a solid degree of accuracy.

And here are the results for nine Woolrich noirs (in the table below). The most intensely noir of the group is THE CHASE (1946), which features a highly menacing, borderline psychopathic fatal(e)-type character (Steve Cochran). Despite his presence, the overall "hardboiled" character score is only average (due to a triangle relatioship between Cochran, his estranged wife Michèle Morgan, and the beleaguered protagonist Robert Cummings). The early noir STREET OF CHANCE (1942), despite a somewhat plodding protagonist (Burgess Meredith) contains both menacing and ambiguous characters, but the relationships between the main characters are low-key, which (again) diminishes the film's "hard-boiled" characteristics. Three films with unlikely/unsuspected/unusual villains, PHANTOM LADY (1944), DEADLINE AT DAWN (1946) and THE WINDOW (1949), edge higher up the "hard-boiled" character scale while still retaining pronounced "melodrama" aspects. BLACK ANGEL's murder set-up is a combined blackout/wrongly accused plot (one that Woolrich was drawn to and used on several occasions) but the emotional connection between Dan Duryea (he of the "lost twelve hours") and June Vincent (the crusading wife of the "wrong man") keeps the hard-boiled at bay. 

And, along with NO MAN OF HER OWN, films with freakish coincidences, obsessive characters, and odd circumstances/backstories--I WOULDN'T BE IN YOUR SHOES (Woolrich at his most inspirationally contrived) and NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES (his most atmospheric work, saved from its own hokum by a brilliant performance from Edward G. Robinson)--are the films most charged by melodrama, and with noticeably little hard-boiled characterization.

So what we see in Woolrich is a writer whose works work against the "hard-boiled paradigm," but who often finds himself lumped in with the other originating sources of noir (Hammett, Cain, Chandler and Burnett) who are more distinctly hard-boiled. Thus the methods within the noir-o-meter confirm a good bit of what Dan Hodges is saying about the narrative understructure of film noir, while (unlike Dan) suggesting that the dialectical relationship between the two forces is what makes these films distinctive and unique. The averages at the bottom of the diagram (removing THE CHASE, as it is somewhat anomalous in its intensity) show how Woolrich's work is pretty much the opposite of the "hard-boiled paradigm"--but is still as noir as it gets.

A BIT OF SURPRISE WHEN FATALES AND DISTRESSED WOMEN OCCUPY THE SAME FILM...

It has been awhile since we acquired Dan Hodges' list of noirs with both femmes fatales (FF) and women in distress (WID). Some of the films haven't been viewed since the initial modifications of the Noir-o-Meter, so for the time being we can only include 18 of the 25 films Dan identified.

However, the findings from these films are sufficient enough to refute a surmise we made earlier about how this sub-group would appear on the "Tough-Tender" distribution chart. For those coming into this just now, we use measures from the Noir-o-Meter that quantify the relative strength of noir elements by their root source--either "hard-boiled" ("tough," criminous) or "melo" ("tender," emotional, pyschological). The first uses all elements from the major subgroups--character elements, visual elements, and plot/screenwriting elements--to calculate a "melo" rate. (Somewhat surprisingly, melodrama elements are stronger in overall intensity within film noir as a while than the hard-boiled elements--a finding that lends support to Dan's notion that the "hard-boiled paradigm" has been oversold in terms of defining and understanding noir.)

The second focuses on these relative intensities only in terms of the character elements, and it inverts the measure in order to give us a two-dimensional graphic. (You can see many of these in earlier posts here). The upshot is that the nearer to the left and top a noir graphs by this method, the more "hard-boiled" it is; the nearer to the right and bottom, the more "melo" it is.

So that gets us to the 18 films for which we currently have up-to-date Noir-o-Meter data that have both femme fatales (FF) and women in distress (WID) present in them. Keep in mind that Dan only notes the presence of these character types, he doesn't try to measure the intensity of those characters in the films. With such a small sample size, we probably can't take advantage of the fact that the Noir-o-Meter does provide gradations for various character-based characteristics, including femmes fatales, hommes fatals, and other peril-creating and life-disrupting characters. But we can get a look at the "tough/tender" distribution for these films...here it is:

As you can see, this distribution does not show all of the "Noirs with FF +WID" falling into the "melo" range. While only a plurality of these films are in the "hard-boiled" range, there are enough of them to make us reconsider the dynamics between FFs and WIDs.

Often the FFs and WIDs in a noir do not directly interact--these are often found in policiers (a good example from our list here is Cop Hater (1958), where the two women know each other, but have no interaction in terms of the plot actions which define them as FF or WID).

In a melo-noir such as Jealousy (1945), however, the interaction is more overt--in fact, in that case, the FF actually tries to murder the WID. While that may sound as though it would qualify for the "hard-boiled" side of things, the development of the women's interactions in the film leads to an emotional conflict and a sexual/psychological competition, which is firmly within the "melo" axis.

Interestingly, there are a number of films that score above the overall noir averages for each of these measures. These are the group appearing in the upper right quadrant. One of these films is Hugo Haas' feisty noir potboiler Hit and Run (1957), where the likely femme fatale is inverted into a woman in distress by not one but two scheming males. Here it is male actions that lift the hard-boiled elements more than the presence of an alluring woman who fits the definition of femme fatale but is a late tangential addition to the plot development.

The peril-inducing function is a more active initiator of the narrative action, and is not limited to these two female categorizations. That's why there is no monolithic shift into the "melo" region when a FF is joined by a WID. This is because the policier sub-genre is often distinctive enough to absorb such a character without losing its "toughness."

ANDRÉE CLEMENT CENTENNIAL TRIBUTE @ ROXIE JULY 26

We will honor the most unusual actress in France's "Old Wave" era, Andrée Clément (1918-1954) with a special double bill at San Francisco's Roxie Theatre on Thursday, July 26th.

Clément made only 13 films due to long-term health issues (she died at age 35 from the complications of tuberculosis) but she made an indelible impression in post-WWII French cinema with an intensity of performance that caused Louis Jouvet (who directed her stage performances in the early '40s) to call her "my angel of darkness" and left Serge Reggiani slack-jawed with wonder after his scenes with her in Serge Debecque's mysterious melodrama COINCIDENCES (1947).

We kiddingly call Clément the "original Goth girl" due to the youthful intensity she embodies--a cross between attractive gawkiness and sinister (self-)possession. She first manifests this during a brief appearance in Robert Bresson's LES ANGES DU PÉCHÉ (1943) as a young nun best described as "overweening with devotion."

But our MIDSUMMER NIGHTMARE! event on July 26th showcases two of Clément's more substantial roles: first, in Henri Decoin's LA FILLE DU DIABLE (aka DAUGHTER OF THE DEVIL, 1946) where she embodies a desolate psychological space as a young girl masterminding a gang of provincial thugs. Her performance is unsettling and unique--and started a brief vogue for such a character type to appear in other films (in the aforementioned COINCIDENCES, and in an initially more conventional role rewritten for her in the film BETHSABÉ).

We follow LA FILLE DU DIABLE with Marcel Blistene's MACADAM, the first post-WWII descent into the "back streets of Paris," where Clément is the long-suffering daughter of a manipulative matron (the legendary Françoise Rosay) who runs a brothel from her modest Parisian flat!

MACADAM has strong "star power" in its other roles, with significant screen time for Simone Signoret and Paul Meurisse, who would shortly become major stars. But it's the poignant and ultimately shocking sub-plot of the relationship between the madam and her daughter that provides the key emotional payoff in the film--and it's Andrée Clément's performance that stays with you when the lights come up.

Clément's 100th birthday occurs on August 7, and it's encouraging to know that someone in the world of cinephilia is paying tribute to such a uniquely talented and compelling actress. It's a pity that her entire filmography isn't being shown in 2018 to commemorate the all-too-brief brilliance she shared on-screen. Long live the original "Goth girl"!!

PINPOINTING TYPES OF FEMALE CHARACTERS IN THE "TOUGH-TENDER" CONTINUUM

Extremely interesting research opportunities will continue to arise from the use of the Noir-o-Meter™ to examine the narrative and tonal range in film noir. We've been showing some examples of that in a series of posts here, including the most recent one which broke out the "hard-boiled" vs. "melo" orientation of the films being screened in the upcoming Noir City LA series (April 13-22).

Dan Hodges, a leading proponent for the revised examination of the narrative interrelationships in film noir (most notably in his trenchant, polemical "Against the Hard-Boiled Paradigm"), has engaged with a portion of the "noir elements" approach. Responding to the most recent blog entry here via its incorporation at the Blackboard, Dan notes the ratio of "women in distress" (WID) vs. "femmes fatales" (FF) in the upcoming Noir City series, showing that even the small sample size (19 films) produces a result that tends to confirm his claim that "femmes fatales," along with "hard-boiled detectives" are much more of a minority presence in films noir.

We're not at all surprised to see this, of course, and it would be interesting for Dan to apply his breakouts of WID and FF to the greater subset of films noirs shown at Noir City SF, where we anticipate similar results.

Here, however, our most useful followup exercise is to follow Dan's initial statement in his post, where he suggests a possible typological correlation between the type of female characters prominent in individual films noir (WID or FF) and the subtype of those noirs themselves (as measured by our "tough-tender index" and displayed in our recent charts).

We do this by adding a color code to those films in the NC series where Dan has identified the presence of WIDs and FFs. The question is whether the films, once identified in this fashion, will conform to the "spatial location" in the chart (a pictorial representation of a kind of "noir narrative continuum") with respect to the "hard-boiled" and "melodrama" regions we see depicted there.

When we do this, we do see such a tacit correlation, albeit with some overlap, as the color-coded version of the chart indicates:

Color key for the chart is as follows: green for Femme Fatale (FF); red for Woman in Distress (WID); purple for Homme Fatale (HF); black for the presence of both FF and WID in the same film.

Our "Homme Fatale" film from NC LA 2018 (in the upper portion of the top right quadrant on the chart) is He Walked By Night, a police procedural that portrays the most ruthless of criminals via one of noir's most chilling performances (from Richard Basehart). The more purely criminal a character is, and the less interaction with either society or the opposite sex, the more purely "hard-boiled" a noir is likely to be.

Approaching the other end of the scale (the black data point furthest to the right in the the lower right quadrant) is the film that Dan identified as being one of roughly two dozen noirs that have both FFs and WIDs present in the story. This film is Jealousy, a rare B-film from emigré director Gustav Machaty that depicts a shifting, complicated quadrangle of characters who form a series of mutating triangular relationships. (And remember that we identified the "degree of triangulation" noir element as a means by which the sub-types of noir are separated from one another: the more triangulation of characters, the more likely the noir is "melo"; conversely, the least amount of emphasis on triangulation is present, the more likely the film is "hard-boiled.)

In the in-between, we're not surprised to see some overlap in films with WIDs or FFs, because the noir elements overlap in many differing combinations and these impulses are capable of mixing. However, note that we do see a distinct visual trend even amidst the presence of an overlap--the WIDs, even in this small sample, do move toward the "melo" region, while the FF's move toward the "hard-boiled" region.

Using larger data samples, of course, is the next step for such a visualization effort. We're highly confident that this trend will be confirmed once that's undertaken. We are also asking Dan to supply his list of the films where both WIDs and FFs are present, so that we might map their location on such a chart. Our current theory is that the greater presence of women--even those of such competing "types" as FFs and WIDs--is likely to create a sub-class of "melo-noirs" that are more focused on female psychology in a world where so much is stacked against them.

Once we have Dan's list, we can test this theory, and report the actual results. Stay tuned!

"TOUGH-TENDER" DISTRIBUTION FOR NC LA 2018

The Noir City LA (they like to call it "Noir City Hollywood") festival schedule for 2018 is out--20 films over ten days. It's more of a kitchen sink approach, looser (and better) than the rather contrived "Noir from A to B" gimmick that the Film Noir Foundation has employed of late.

The films skew into the 50s (thirteen of them were released in 1950 or later, including another Muller-Ellroy noir conjunction built around L.A. Confidential) and present two interesting Paramount titles that the FNF boys have finally turned their attention to after churning out so many mediocrities from Universal--The Turning Point (1952), one of the first (and arguably the best) of the Kefauver "organized crime noirs," and The Scarlet Hour (1956), Michael Curtiz' quirky remake of Double Indemnity, where the difference in tone and attitude between the 40s and 50s noir is summed up perfectly by the character played by Elaine Stritch.

Better late than never, at any rate. And add to that turn of phrase the fact that the FNF is following in the footsteps of Elliot Lavine and at last screening noirs with some actual social relevance, as evidenced by their Joseph Losey triple bill (The Prowler, M, and The Big Night, all made in 1951).

As noted, this is a bit of a step up from recent efforts, and continues the FNF's retrenchment into American noir.

With the schedule announced, we are once again in the position of being able to graphically present the films on the "hard-boiled to melo" scale that we've been employing in recent posts. We don't think you'll be surprised to see that NC LA 2018 skews toward the hard-boiled side of things:

The films with the high "hard-boiled to melodrama" character element ratios (those in the upper left quadrant of the chart) are He Walked by Night, Kiss Me Deadly, Dragnet, and Armored Car Robbery. The films with a high "MELO RATE" (those in the lower right quadrant) are Jealousy, The Turning Point, and Night Has A Thousand Eyes. The rest of the films in the series are reasonably close to the overall average for these measures, though the graph shows that there is still a significant skew toward the hard-boiled.

The series plays at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood from Friday, April 13 through Sunday, April 22.

HOW DO SPY NOIRS DIFFER FROM "STANDARD" FILM NOIR?

We specialize in loaded questions. But it's one that must be asked and answered, in order to fully demonstrate that the analytical approaches in the Noir-o-Meter™ align with the continuing research that Dan Hodges is conducting regarding a key aspect of film noir's evolution--the rise of the "spy noir."

Using the noir elements, it's possible to make general statements that go beyond Dan's purely narrative approach. (As we will see, the Noir-o-Meter might well help Dan do a more thorough job of discriminating between which spy films are "noir" and which are not--his decision to lump in any and all of the films that contain even a soupçon of noirish visuals might well explain some of the results that we will examined below.)

The charts below show the aggregate values of the noir elements (using the 26-element system as opposed to the still-in-development 27-element system with a reduced value for "flashbacks") for the entire classic noir database (films from US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Scandinavia, Japan, Korea, Mexico and other South American countries). These are raw values--the second chart scales these to the 200-point system to show the range of intensity that these elements possess.

Alongside the overall data are the analogous data values for just over 70 "spy noirs" comprising a large percentage of the films identified in various sources and synthesized into a single group in Dan's research. The side-by-side comparison of these values will show the differences in emphasis and intensity that the Noir-o-Meter detects for "spy noirs" as distinct from the overall set of films in the database:

Note that elements which come from the "hard-boiled" components of noir are shown in blue, while those that come from the "melodrama" understructure are shown in green. The DIFF column is based on a scale where 100 means that the intensity value is exactly equal between noirs as a whole and "spy noirs."

As you can see, the "spy noirs" are, as a group, around 20% less intense than the overall population of films noirs. All elements where "spy noirs" are at least 15% less intense have had the raw "spy noir" values and the DIFF measure put into bold type for ease of reference. 13 of the elements--half of the entire element grouping--are at least 15% less intense. Only three elements--violence relative to character development/interaction; exotic/remote/barren location setting; and a betrayal/double-cross--are more intensely present in "spy noirs" than in noirs as a whole.

Examining these differences by element types is instructive. Given that "spy noirs" have a more rigorously formulaic approach to establishing character, it's not surprising that the intensity of noir attributes as possessed by characters in "spy noirs" is significantly lower. By contrast, there is much less of a difference in the visual elements.

But note that plot/screenwriting elements show the greatest dip in intensity. This is because so many of the early "spy noirs" do not partake of any of the narrative strategies that first developed in melodrama in the late 30s and early 40s (a trend that is traced in David Bordwell's recent book REINVENTING HOLLYWOOD). Later on, these techniques began to be applied to spy noirs as well, but they were "late to the party" in terms of this narrative innovation (and this is reflected in the numbers).

The hard-boiled/melodrama "balance in tension" within film noir is what the Noir-o-Meter succeeds in quantifying for us, and we can see how this relationship differs in "spy noirs" as compared to noir as a whole. The intensity of both element clusters is lower in "spy noirs," but the greatest drop is on the "hard-boiled" side. As a result, "spy noirs" trend toward the "melodrama" understructure by roughly another 10%, focusing more on actions and visuals than on flamboyant manifestations of character. When the "ruthless" character is part of an assumed worldview as manifested in the the "spy noir's" dramatic context, the actions of those characters are less outside the norms of behavior than what we customarily see in film noir as a whole. Hence the "hard-boiled" portrayal of character is diminished.

Thus the hard-boiled to melodrama character element ratio is lower as well, though it is not as pronounced (down to 84 from 89).

Now let's look at the same data expressed in the 200-point system of the Noir-o-Meter. We've color-coded for levels of intensity:

We highlight in bold type the elements which have the greatest drop in intensity in the spy noirs--and, per the discussion above, you can see that it's the elements in the "character" and "plot/screenwriting" element types that have all of these.

The "decriminalization" of the "spy noir" is most evident in the difference seen in the noir element entitled "story told from the perspective of the criminals." Though spies in "spy noirs" often commit acts that in other contexts would be considered criminal in nature, they are seldom treated that way within these films. The suspension of moral rules within this narrative sub-universe gives them a "pass" in this area, even though we don't see characters in spy noirs as any more "morally ambiguous" than the garden-variety noir character.

All in all, "spy noirs" are definitely noir as seen by the Noir-o-Meter, though they are much closer to the 100-point dividing line. This is largely due to the fact that the early "spy noirs" grade lower in many of the elements measured here--the average Noir-o-Meter™raw score for "spy noirs" made up until America's entry into WWII is just over 90. That average rises to 109 for those films made in 1942 and beyond.

DO AMERICAN "WAR NOIRS" TEND TOWARD "MELO"?

One of the theses that Dan Hodges (the indefatigable critic of classic film noir's deceptive "hard-boiled paradigm") has promulgated is that the American noirs made during World War II (particularly those made from 1940-43, before the war effort reached its peak of effectiveness and prospects for Allied victory began to significantly improve) were different in tone and character than those which began to appear in 1944-45 throughout the rest of the decade.

While virtually all noir scholars (including Dan) don't  accept the notion that film noir is not primarily an American phenomenon (Dan is more open to this fact than most, but has wanted to couch this as a function of the rise of "spy noir"), what becomes clear when we apply the analytic tools built into the Noir-o-Meter™is that American noir is significantly less "hard-boiled" in the years 1940-43.

Using the measurement tool we've been applying variously in recent posts--a scatterplot depiction of the degree that characters in noirs skew toward the "hardboiled," measured against the overall "MELO RATE" (using all three element types--character, visual, and plot/screenwriting)--we can see that what Dan used to call the "war noirs" (as discussed in his essay for Film Noir Reader 4) definitely skew to the "melo" side of the chart:

(Recall that films whose scores land in the upper left quadrant are more "hard-boiled," while those that land in the lower right quadrant are more "melo.")

The chart tells us that Dan was indeed onto something, especially when we compare it to the master chart that appeared several posts previously. "War noirs" are rarely "hard-boiled": as a group, they are noticeably different than the films which are made after WWII.

This chart does not include any of the spy noirs that Dan has uncovered in his most recent research. We'll include them in a subsequent presentation, which will deal more specifically with the relationship of "spy noir" to the overall notion of film noir, along with a parallel examination of a significant sub-category from France that Dan (and virtually all other students and scholars of film noir) overlook as they cling to an Anglo-American paradigm for how to define the "essence" of noir.

What is the name of that significant sub-category? According to scholar Colin Crisp, it's called the "provincial gothic." Its application will eventually be seen as pivotal to a more complete structural understanding of how the noir "virus" seeped into the bloodstream of melodrama and ran rampant, with various sub-categories and sub-types taking their turn in the limelight before a coarser, more calcified concept of noir's essence coalesced, coagulating critical appraisals of it almost from the dawn of the attempts to assemble and evaluate its history and significance.

DO FRENCH NOIRS TREND TOWARD "MELO"?

We are getting enough data in the Noir-o-Meter to take a look at this question. And we can do so using the same method we've been using to examine the "spectrum" of film noir (in our previous posts, which do not include the French noirs graphed in the chart below).

The "revisionist" camp (which has to be extremely precise in identifying exactly what it is revising, as there are so many "revisionists" out there...) has one wing which wonders about the hard-boiled, while also (usually to a lesser extent) turning a skeptical eye to the claims of "American exceptionalism" when it comes to film noir.

What if we discovered that the earliest manifestation of film noir, which is (arguably) the French--who begin in the early 30s, as expatriated directors with various flavors of "dark cinema" in their previous work make their way through France and influence the "local talent"--what if we found that these earliest manifestations of noir were by and large much less "hardboiled" in nature? What would that say about the "American brand"? Would we start to see it as something that was influenced by historical and aesthetic conditions unique to it and that it might at last be seen as a kind of aberration to what developed previously and elsewhere?

It's entirely possible that such might need to be the case...at least, the preliminary results from our mapping of "tough vs. tender" as it applies to French noir is concerned. (For this to be fully mapped, of course, we'll need to go past the 60 or so noirs in this initial mapping--we'll need to create the Noir-o-Meter data for all 507 French noirs that we've unearthed to date.)

But the chart below, using the same approach ("Hardboiled vs. melodrama character element ratio mapped against the overall MELO RATE") shows us that French noir looks a lot more like that subset of American noir with high scores in character triangulation--the ones we've taken to calling "melo-noirs." Take a look:

Note that the distribution across the chart is a great deal tighter than what we saw in the American sample. "Hardboiled-to-melo" character element ratios with high "hardboiled" scores are less frequent and not nearly so extreme here, in the French noir universe.

Now there are many, many more French noirs to add to the database, including a number of the "poetic realist" films (which turn out to be just one of three major sub-types of film noir that developed in France during the 1930s). So we can't be totally sure that this distribution is totally accurate...but it's an intriguing indicator of some potentially game-changing perceptions about film noir. Stay tuned!

WHICH NOIR ELEMENTS HELP SEPARATE FILMS INTO SUB-TYPES? A LOOK AT TRIANGULATION...

We've seen that it's very possible to graph noirs against the data in the Noir-o-Meter™ (most recent post). Here is a more global look at the distribution of the "noir universe" based on the parameters used previously--a two-dimensional scatterplot mapping the level of "toughness" (hard-boiled) in the character elements vs. the overall relationship between hard-boiled elements and melodrama elements (what we call the MELO rate).

As you can see, this chart--which uses about 40% of the current Noir-o-Meter database--gives us a very good sense of how the noirs range from "tough" (to the left and up) to "tender" (to the bottom and the right).

From here, there are dozens of ways to slice the Noir-o-Meter data to look for patterns and trends. Since the different types of elements can co-exist, it's likely that many of the "noirest" films based on their raw scores (the 200-point scale that's assigned via scoring each of the 27 noir elements) will be closer to the mid-point (and you can see on the above chart where that is, as we've drawn in the averages for these two measures--it's where the red and the green lines cross). That's something we'll examine in a subsequent post.

Right now, we're interested in seeing if we can find any of the noir elements that isolate or cluster films in either the "tough" or "tender" region of noir. The elements that are likeliest to help us do this are, in fact, the ones derived from melodrama. And among the likeliest in that category is the element entitled "Degree of character triangulation."

Why this one? Because romantic triangles involve feelings and emotions. They evoke vulnerability in characters. It stands to reason that films which have a marked emphasis on character triangles are going to skew toward the "tender" side of the graph.

So we separated a sizeable subset of the Noir-o-Meter database into two groups: those which have a score of 9 or 10 in "degree of character triangulation" (an element assigned a maximum of 10 points), and those which have a score of 5 or less. We are surmising that this should produce two graphs that will give us some significant spatial separation.

Let's begin with the "tough" side...which we should find with films whose "degree of triangulation" is below average (5 or less is definitely below the overall average of 6.7/10). Here's what that chart looks like:

(Note we didn't include the axis labels that you saw on the first graph--but they are the same as above. And as you can see, we added some shading effects in the graph...because we're suckers for greyscale.)

Looks like that gives us mostly films in the upper left quadrant, which is where the "tougher" noirs are located.

Now--will we get a similar clustering when we look at the films whose "degree of triangulation" element score is 9+? Let's take a look:

And the answer is a resounding "yes." Films with a high degree of triangulation between characters have a strong tendency toward high MELO RATEs and low hard-boiled-to-melodrama character element ratios, pushing a larger preponderance of them toward the bottom right-hand region on the graph.

Of course, this too is not monolithic in nature, just as was the case for the low triangulation subgroup. But as you can see, at this level of triangulation there really are only a few films that cross over into the "tough" side of noir.

We can probably expect a graph of those films whose "degree of triangulation" scores are in the mid-range (6-8) to fall roughly halfway between these two extremes.

Which means that it looks like the "triangulation" element is a kind of bellwether for separating film noir sub-types.

We'll want to look at the films in the lower left and upper right portions of the graph, as these groups tend to resist the separation effect. Their placement may tell us something that those films have in common--higher or lower raw scores, for example.

At any rate, these uses of the data in the Noir-o-Meter provide strong indications that the system is fundamentally sound in its assumption that noir's dualism is ultimately its most defining characteristic, the quality that gives it its essential tension and allows it to be a protean form that operates across a wide range of story types, even invading established genres. Stay tuned for more...

A HARD BOILED FESTIVAL USING THE NOIR-O-METER...

While the Noir-o-Meter™ is an item that often provokes eye-rolls among aesthetes due to its quantitative approach to film criticism, its advances over the past ten years are quite promising. Film noir, that ever-elusive concept, is slippery because of its multiplicity of dualisms--and one of the most significant is the tension between the "regular rules" of (melo)drama and noir's effort to "crash in" on those rules by inverting them.

As we defined more clearly the elements that exist in varying gradations within film noir, we were able to determine which of these stemmed from melodrama--elements that are more totally assimilated into the "rules of drama"--and those which arose from noir's "hard-boiled" incursion into character and story. Noir tries to explode beyond the normal rules of drama, which is why the techniques of expressionism and the desire to "novelize" narrative, often to the point of radical disjunctures in time (flashbacks and other non-linear narrative devices) became associated with noir.

The Noir-o-Meter can tell us "how much" noir there is in a film (it can do this for "regular melodramas" such as NOW, VOYAGER, or even for comedies, in order to show us how far the "regular rules of drama" take us toward noir--about one-third to two-thirds of the way, as a general rule). More interestingly, it can show us the "shape" of that noirness by looking at the ratios between elements derived from melodrama and elements which stem from the "hard-boiled." (That latter is often mistakenly considered to be the true and only defining set of characteristics for noir, but this is a grossly inaccurate oversimplification that persists to this day due to the circumstances under which noir was first popularized by film critics.)

Two measures that the noir-o-meter calculates help us show us the total dimension of the noir universe as the films occupy a version of the "stellar sequence" (noirs are not literally "red giants" or "white dwarfs," of course: this is just a rough analogy for what is really a distribution of wide-ranging sub-types). When we look at each group of elements--those which deal with the characters, those which address the visual information that films provide over and above traditional verbal/written storytelling, and those which anatomize how storytelling is altered and shaped toward a subversive inversion of standard plot and screenwriting techniques--we can compare the intensity of the elements which stem from the "regular rules of drama" (what we call the "melodrama elements") and those elements which come from forces that subvert/invert those rules (what we call the "hard-boiled" elements).

These measures, when applied, can distribute films noirs across a universe-like grid which demonstrates how much range exists within these elements as they combine and collide in individual films. Here we are going to look at the subset of those films that fulfill the region of that grid which houses the toughest, most hard-hitting, least melodramatic, and unsentimental examples of film noir.

How do we do this? We calculate two measures from the Noir-o-Meter data and create a scatterplot for them. What are these measures? The first compares the totals for the two "element sources" (melodrama/hard-boiled) across all the three element types (character/visual/plot-screenwriting). The second focuses only on comparing the totals in the character elements. The idea is that the character elements, where the action in the film has its most direct and immediate contact with the viewer, are the ones that give us the visceral "feel" of the action. So, if the character elements show a tilt toward the hard-boiled, we will get a measure that captures just how "tough" the film seems to the viewer.

Our first chart (above) shows a group of 150 films that have a hard-boiled-to-melodrama character element rate of 100 or higher. (The average for the more than 1500 films scored in the Noir-o-Meter DB for this measure is 89). The data points to the left and toward the top of this chart show the "toughest" films.

Think of this chart as the top slice of the film noir universe, with the next slice that you'd see being the one where the bulk of the films reside--in the middle region of a noir "galaxy" where these measures are both close to the overall average. On the other side of that large region will be the films that are the opposite of our "hard-boiled" extreme--those melodramas whose intensity has been coupled with at least near-criminal behavior and darker psychological conflicts than what is customary in films that otherwise are derived from the "regular rules of drama." (We'll look at that region in a subsequent post.)

The second chart zeroes in on the top end of the region depicted in the first chart. (You should be able to tell what subset of the data is common to each). These are the 32 films where the ratio between the character element comparison (hard-boiled v. melodrama) is at least 1.5 times as strong as the overall hard-boiled/melodrama ratio (what we call the MELO RATE).

The film at the top left of the chart in each case is Anthony Mann's BORDER INCIDENT. Those of you who know the film already will probably not be surprised that it grades out in such a manner. It is a particularly tough, violent, even grisly police procedural that features nasty, brutish, even racist characters who are caught up in an issue that still plagues America today: "illegal" immigration across the US-Mexico border.

The other film that seems well-separated from the pack of "tough films" (the one at the intersection of 50 on the horizontal axis and 200 on the vertical) is another film in which Anthony Mann participated (he completed the film on behalf of the original director, Alfred Werker). Many of you will nod in recognition upon reading its name: HE WALKED BY NIGHT, a film that still astonishes many for Richard Basehart's incredibly cold-blooded portrayal of the central criminal character.

These thirty-two films would make for quite a film noir festival, one which would demonstrate the most extreme manifestation of "toughness" that could likely be displayed. It might not be the most bitter, however, since that quality often contains melodramatic overtones that would color some of the other noir elements and add character relationships that would move the MELO RATE upward (to the right, as is evident by comparing the second chart with the first).

Take a look at my Blackboard post for a list of the films that are shown on the second chart.

FILM NOIR ORIGINALS VS REMAKES PER IMDB RATINGS

An interesting little study from Solomon at the Blackboard about the IMDB ratings of classic noir originals (40s-50s-60s) and their various remakes. As the line chart (below) indicates, none of the 40+ films in the sample had the remake score a higher rating than the original, though 5 of them had scores that were at least 90% of the original:

The average IMDB score for remakes is just about 80% of the score achieved by the originals. It's also clear that the folks who opted for remakes picked some of the better films of the classic noir era, which probably made it more difficult to match the scores.

The data that would be really interesting here would be to see the average for those folk who saw each film and cast votes for both in the IMDB ratings. That's a level of detail we don't have readily available, however. Our guess is that the score gap is somewhat greater, with the remakes scoring in the low 70% range among such voters.