Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented. - General Principles, Section 2, Motion Picture Production Code 1930
In film noir, degradation and death seem to lurk in every nightmare alley, behind every venetian blind in every seedy apartment. -David Oberbey, In the Shadows, Movie of the Forties, 1982
No character can speak authoritatively from a space which is continually being cut into ribbons of light. - Paul Schrader, Notes on Film Noir, Film Comment, Spring 1972
Those last two quotes are from two gentlemen who understand the minutia of film noir in far greater detail than I ever shall. If you'd like more just do some searching: the net is filled with great and insightful essays on noir. If you'd rather visit your local library or feel like shelling out some dough to Amazon.com for your own copy, you can pick up all four volumes of The Film Noir Reader, each of which contains collections of great essays on noir, including Schrader's authoritative, Notes on Film Noir, as well as interviews with those that made it happen.
But for me, this is how I've always defined film noir:
Kathie: Oh, Jeff, I don't want to die!
Jeff: Neither do I, baby, but if I have to I'm gonna die last.
- Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum, Out of the Past, 1947
Other definitions include:
A few more definitions:
Walter Neff: It's just like the first time I came here, isn't it? We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder. And I was thinking about that anklet.
- Fred MacMurray, Double Indemnity, 1944
Vivian: Why did you have to go on?
Marlowe: Too many people told me to stop.
- Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, The Big Sleep, 1946
Ellen: Why don't you go to the police?
Philip: I'm my own police.
- Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd, This Gun for Hire, 1942
Sam Spade: Haven't you tried to buy my loyalty with money and nothing else?
Brigid O'Shaughnessy: What else is there I can buy you with?
- Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor, The Maltese Falcon, 1941
Vargas: How could you arrest me here? This is my country.
Quinlan: This is where you're gonna die.
-Charlton Heston and Orson Welles, Touch of Evil, 1958
Henry: My motto is: "If you want something, get it now!"
- Burt Lancaster, Sorry, Wrong Number, 1948
Kitty: Who do you think you are? My guardian angel?
Millie: Not me, honey. I lost those wings a long time ago.
Joan Bennett and Margaret Lindsay, Scarlet Street, 1945
And there are many more. Amazingly, even today critics and viewers alike debate if film noir is even a genre or not. Working within the confines of the Production Code produced an ambiguity so great in many a filmmakers' work that the films themselves, especially in the darker crime genres, remain wide-open to interpretation today. Nevertheless, everyone knows what noir is, don't they? It's those images, it's that dialogue. It's that loner with the gun and the relentless need to make sense of it all. It's that woman, the one who says she wouldn't hurt a fly, but that you'd never turn your back on. It's that crazy son of a bitch with all the money and the power pulling the strings behind the scenes but missing the one thing he really wants. It's all those things. Or maybe it's none of them. Maybe it's all just a trick of light and shadow. The search for the perfect definition continues. Until we find it there's one thing I can say for certain: It's the stuff dreams are made of.
Or should that be nightmares?
