FILM NOIR

quick term search in any computer database that accesses entertainment publication reveals the naked truth: American critics, filmmakers, artists, and writers are still obsessed by film noir, nearly 60 years since the form supposedly finished its initial 20-or-so-year run of misogyny, corruption, and moral darkness. Its allure isn’t hard to account for; original noir and its newer offspring explore the tantalizing dark side of the human psyche, maintaining that decay and decline are the natural state of human beings. Happiness is fleeting in noir films; worse yet, it is a cruel illusion, a twist of fate which promises power, sex, and money but which delivers only suffering.