(dramatic music playing) goodbye, baby. (gunshots) great noir poses the question: why me? that sense of knowing what you are doing is doomed and you can't stop from doing it. annenberg media ♪ and:

with additional funding from these foundations and individuals: and by: and the annual financial support of: hello, i'm john lithgow. welcome to "american cinema." the end of world war ii in 1945 brought an era of homecoming, of rediscovering family, of rebuilding. that year, hollywood premiered "the best years of our lives,"

a story of a returning veteran and his family that won the academy award for best picture of the year. but another picture premiered that year that portrayed a different version of america. it was called "detour," about a man who wandered from a life of little possibility to one of total doom. the motion picture association first reviewed the picture, they refused to give it a rating. it had broken a rule. the murderer was not brought to justice at the end. instead, he was left to wander aimlessly on american highways. for such stark stories, these films had their own look. though they were uniquely american, french film critics came up with the name that stuck: "film noir," which literally translates "black film." they were black and white, they were dark, and they were often raw. in this breed of film, the only law was rule of fate; the only order, a moral restitution where everybody dies at the end. but these films were always seductive.

listen to richard widmark tell you. it is hard to refuse a story of sex, money and murder, as you will see in "film noir." (music playing) (narrator) it was the 40's. right after the war. going to the movies was like going to a candy store. something for everybody. popular films were melodramas, romances, musicals. the big song and dance. (singing romantic song) (crack) but that's not my kind of movie. (dramatic music playing)

(laughter) (gunshot) (splash) (dramatic music playing) (crash) aaahh! (dramatic music playing) (screams) it was all very queer, but queerer things were yet to come. (narrator in shadows) you could always find me in a theatre around the corner. people le me liked pictures dark and mysterious. most were "b" movies, made on the cheap. others were classy models with "a" talent. but they all had one thing in common. they lived on the edge. told stories about life in the streets, shady characters, crooked cops, twisted love and bad luck. the french invented a name for these pictures

"films noir," black film, that's what they called 'em. about a darker side of human nature. about the world as it really was. as i growing, these films were part of my daily reality. in other words, i didn't analyze them, i was affected by them. (knocking at door) (martin scorsese) i related to them emotionally. who is it? police. (martin scorsese) the first film i can remember that had to do very clearly with what i knew daily, living on the lower east side was abe polonsky's "force of evil." it was about the numbers racket and it was about two brothers. it portrayed a world i hadn't seen on film before. in a very honest way, too. violation 974 of the penal code, policy. (martin scorsese) i grew up in a world that film noir images reflect. night life, people drinking in bars. gambling. you take the money from people who bet just like every other crook in this racket.

they call this racket policy because people bet numbers. that's why, policy. you make the film according to your mood, the circumstances, the way the story is written. the influence of the writer, the actors on you and so on. and if they're reflecting this sense of jeopardy in life, which is what exists in all film noir. (abraham polonsky) it's a correct representation of the system's anxiety. sometimes you feel as though you're dying here and here, here, you're dying while you're breathing. (abraham polonsky) and this is what this picture is about. how circumstances become more and more unendurable. and yet you must endure. freddy, what have you done? (errol morris) great noir poses the question, why me? why is this happening to me? and the very dark answer that it provides.

an almost unacceptable answer: for no reason. for no reason at all. buddy, you look like you're in trouble. (errol morris) noir is concerned with error, with confusions. i think i'm in a frame. don't sound like you. i don't know, all i can see is the frame. i'm going in there now and look at the picture. (errol morris) it's the noir idea. we don't know what's going on, but we do know something bad is out there controlling events. for me the great noir films are films about fall guys. a person who finds himself caught in a net. the more he struggles, the deeper and deeper he becomes entwined in nightmare. (man's thoughts) did you ever want to forget anything? did you ever want to cut away a piece of your memory? (paul arthur) "detour" is the first wave of noir production.

it lays out a blueprint for how the noir narrative works. there's a character who has a secure job at the beginning. has a secure relationship with a woman. the woman leaves to go to hollywood. and this man goes to join her. (man's thoughts) if only i had known what i was getting into. (paul arthur) this starts a journey where he, in an almost myth-like fashion, is picked up by a kind of messenger. but this man dies under mysterious circumstances. the hero takes on the identity of a dead man, the most desperate thing you can do in film noir. (man's thoughts) i saw at once he was dead and i was in for it. who would believe he fell out of the car? (kathryn bigelow) "detour" is quintessential noir insofar as it's so raw, it's so exposed. there is nothing to comfort you. (man's thoughts) instinct told me to run, but i realized it was hopeless. enter the heart of darkness, it is a descent into hell,

visually and internally, from which you cannot escape until it's over with. i knew him better. (kathryn bigelow) shortly thereafter, he picks up a woman, who coincidentally knows his true identity, traps him. you're a cheap crook. now, wait! shut up! you killed him. for two cents i'd change my mind and turn you in. please open the door. vera, open the door. don't use the phone, listen to me. (kathryn bigelow) he's a on a downward spiral from which he cannot emerge. and the more he tries to eradicate the situation, the worse it gets. (man) vera, don't call the cops, listen, i'll break the phone. (jean-pierre gorin) there is a complete wackiness in a film like "detour." there's the wackiness of getting a murder scene with a phone cord and someone yanking the stuff and on that level it's part three stooges, part marx brothers, part completely surrealistic.

it's sloppy, it's smelly. it's disreputable. what's nice about film noir, it's disreputable filmmaking. the last scene in "detour," didn't have a seal of approval. it was all made. (martin goldsmith) there is somebody who actually killed somebody and what is he doing? he's hitchhiking around. (man's thoughts) someday a car will pick me up that i never thumbed. (martin goldsmith) so i put in just a few lines. (man's thoughts) yes, fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all. i think noir hit people so hard it's because essentially at the core of it all they're tales of survival, in a completely naked fashion. a certain kind of hard film, full of difficulty and emotion.

and explosions of -- of emotional drama and anxiety was popular in the sense that people went to the movies to see that kind of thing. if you go back and look over the plots of film noir, you discover that more than a quarter of the total films have protagonists who identify themselves as war vets. (paul arthur) and what he discovers when he comes from the war is not a security in society, but rather quite the opposite. (announcer) multiplied and magnified, the insecurity of modern man was tragically demonstrated in catastrophe of total war. (paul arthur) one sees it, in a sense as the continuing experience of wartime trauma... in a domestic situation. now we start looking at each other again.

we don't know what we're supposed to do. we don't know what's supposed to happen. we're too used to fighting, but we don't know for. you can feel the tension in the air. (otto friedrich) psychiatry was just being discovered in this period. the refugee psychoanalyst coming from europe came to hollywood, spread the faith. and it sort of reached the filmmakers. please, please, i'm sick! can't you see i'm sick? you're sick all right. (otto friedrich) this seemed to offer an explanation to things. it was newer then and people thought that that's what drove people crazy. you're perfectly sane. i'd rather be insane and alive than sane and dead. (narrator) it started with prohibition -- the line between legal and illegal got fuzzy. nightlife went underground.

that made it even more seductive and dangerous. we could travel there safely in pulp magazines with writer raymond chandler and his private eyes. in a novelist like james cain, we could find ourselves sucked into a twisted triangle of love, betrayal and murder. he knew crime, the power of absolute seduction. crime is a left-handed form of human endeavor. experience has taught me never to trust a policeman. just when you think one's all right, he turns legit. one of the things about detective stories, murder stories, whodunits, is no matter how bad they are, i've never seen anybody walk out on one, because it's a riddle, it's a puzzle and you want to puzzle it out. well, it was about 7:00. anyway, it was dark. what were you doing at the office that late? i'm a homing pigeon, i always come back to the coop no matter how late it is.

i'd been out peeking under old sunday sections for a barber named dominick, whose wife wanted him back. i forget why. only reason i took the job was because my bank account was trying to crawl under a duck. (edward dmytryk) as far as the narration goes, i could have done that picture without narration and we discussed that. but we wanted to get the flavor of chandler. chandler writes differently than any writer ever wrote. he's become a fad as it were, he has his own style. (man's thoughts) we were watched. i didn't see anything, i felt it in my stomach. i was a toad on a wet rock, a snake was looking at my neck. (edward dmytryk) he was the first one to say, "i didn't mean it really, i was trying it on for size." just trying it on for size, lots of things still don't fit. "trying it on for size," is part of our language now, but he was the first one to ever write that line. one thing that came along in fiction was the private eye, the hard-boiled private detective. (ron goulart) not part of the system, kind of a loner.

hmm, you've got a nice build for a private detective. it gets me around. (ron goulart) you can't bribe him. you can't corrupt him. you can't even seduce him in many cases. (woman) you don't mind my sizing you up a little? most of us are ex-cops. i was fired by the d.a. this private eye could take you anywhere. down in the ghetto, into the underworld. you could go to haunts of the rich and famous. he gave you access to almost any level of society. (man's thoughts) it was a nice little front yard, cozy. only you'd need a compass to go to the mailbox. the house was all right, too, but not buckingham palace. i had to wait while she sold me to the old folks. it was like waiting to buy a crypt in a mausoleum. (woman) mr. marlow. (ron goulart) one thing about the private eye is he usually never got hurt. so he could take you into all these places

that you were curious about and yet get out of it alive. well, you have two groups, then they cross back and forth. you have hammett and chandler who were the most successful, from the pulps. and then you have writers like james cain who dealt with similar material but who never really lowered themselves to writing for the pulps. cain probably thought he was above that kind of writing. james m. cain had an enormous influence, an enormous effect on all writers. he was basically a novelist. he wasn't a bit interested in movies at all, at first. my husband. you were anxious to talk to him? (martin goldsmith) other screenwriters did it, but from his books. there's a speed limit in this state, mr. neff, 45 miles an hour. how fast was i going, officer? i'd say around 90. suppose you get down and give me a ticket. suppose i let you off with a warning this time. suppose it doesn't take.

suppose i have to whack you over the knuckles? he wrote with a meat cleaver, is what it was. he wrote with a hatchet. the classic cain situation, always the triangle. the guy falling in love with the other guy's wife and killing the woman's husband and then coming to no good end. (honk) what are you doing that for? why are you honking the horn? (narrator) life's a dangerous game. especially with a new breed of woman working all angles. making her own rules. film noir had its own rules, censorship. the hayes production code, it was hollywood's law. moral and ethical standards from a church social; the line you couldn't cross. i'm going to surprise you, it had a very good effect, because it made us think.

in other words, if we wanted to get something across that was censorable, we couldn't do it openly, we had to do it deviously. we had to be clever. and it usually turned out to be much better than if we had done it straight. it allows one's imagination to take over, where the material is not completely exemplified. haven't you tried to buy my loyalty with money? what else is there i can buy you with? (dramatic music playing) you look for oil, sometimes you hit a gusher. susan, tell me, come on, what's bothering you? (joe lewis) the scene in the film, "the big combo," with nick conte kissing her on the ebrow and then on the cheek and then on the chin and thenn the neck and all the time the camera is moving in on her close-up. and of course by moving in you eliminate nick conte.

the rest is up to the audience. let them supply the emotions. let them tell me where he went. let them tell me what he did. they were a three-man board now if i recall correctly and the first man to talk was a rather youngish guy who immediately lit into me like a 75-millimeter howitzer, how dare i shoot a scene as filthy as that. and what could i have been thinking of and all that. he accused me of everything. having a filthy mind and all. i let him talk, at the end of it, i said, "excuse me, sir, i don't quite understand what you mean. i don't know what's wrong with dollying in to a head close-up of a young lady. now please be more explicit." he says, "well tell me, where did richard conte go? you tell me that, where did he go?" i said, "i haven't the vaguest idea.

he may have gone off the stage for a glass of water, what are you referring to?" with my baby-blue's, you know. well, they allowed it. the sexiness of the noir film is precisely linked to the fact that those guys couldn't show this stuff. so you're obliged to charge the environment, to play games. and on that level noir films were attuned with desire. give me the key to that locker, martin. (janey place) what you really see in film noir is the emergence of a psychological phenomenon, which is that men have always been endangered by a strong sexual female. they're extremely driven, selfish, ambitious characters which are characteristics associated with male character. kiss me, mike. i want you to kiss me.

(woman) kiss me. the liar's kiss that says i love you. that black widow's sensibility comes up from the american male coming back and finding that the american female has changed her position in society. (paul schrader) she's worked during the war. she's much more independent. she may have had affairs during war. and that's very, you know, threatening to a lot of men. margaret will be giving up her job in a few months. don't kid yourself, darling, i'll take the six weeks maternity leave and then junior will have a nice nurse. you forget that you married a girl with a career. you can see it in art and icons throughout the ages, that that's a dangerous figure. a powerful, sexual female is a very dangerous figure. (janey place) and i think in film noir, what you see is the combination of things in a female that you don't see in film,

especially in american film very often. she's very smart, powerful and she's extremely sexual. you drop this? um hmm, thanks. (janey place) she uses her sexuality to get what she's after. and what she's after is not the man in the picture. he's another tool. what she's after is something for herself. the spider woman of film noir is identified in obvious ways. first, through her sexuality. they tend to be characters with long hair, tight clothes. (janey place) long fingernails that are actually composed as claws. they often smoke, which has always been the sign

of the woman of loose morals. you have examples of women corolling the composition by being shot in low angle and then cut to a shot of man shot from high angle, so they have visual dominance. the classic femme fatale to me is a woman that's getting the man into bed and then into trouble. (marie windsor) and i loved playing them because that's the character that people never forget. they love to hate me. what do you want? what are you waiting to see? what kind of a man you are, what you really are. try it on your own man. i'm trying you. (marie windsor) they also referred to my eyes as "bedroom" eyes. and that didn't fit very well for a goody-goody wife or a nice little girlfriend, somebody tending the home.

you're not strong or weak enough. what is there about a hoodlum that appeals to certain women? hoodlums, detectives, woman doesn't care how a man makes his living, only how he makes love. (kathryn bigelow) thers a certain male fantasy to this violent woman who is uncontrollable, kind of like an untamed animal. and i think there's something very seductive about that. so appealing, so dangerous, so lovely to look at, the darling of london, england, miss annie laue starr. (gunfire) (kathryn bigelow) somebody tamed and compliant is less seducte. the fact it's unobtainable, touch it, it'll scratch you, is very attractive. i think people like to play with fire. (joe lewis) i wanted a beautiful, innocent, lovable young lady

who was a demon. who was vicious and yet could charm you. i got the two of them together and i said, "peggy, you are a female dog in heat. and you, john, you're a male dog in heat. and you meet for the first time. now, you don't know whether one or the other is going to attack and so you size each other up. and all that desire comes out." the only way that this picture could succeed was a love story. a love story that could never, never work out, but yet have an audience rooting for them. i love the sense of doom in it and i love the sense of you can just see it coming. i want a guy with spirit and guts. (paul schrader) that sense of romantic longing and obsession,

and knowing that what you are doing is doomed and you can't stop from doing it. look, i don't want to look in that mirror and see nothing but a stickup man staring at me. you better kiss me goodbye, because i won't be here when you get back. come on, bart, let's finish it the way we started it, on the level. (martin scorsese) these people, they live right on the edge. and a lot of people identify with that. it's something that you react to emotionally. love in film noir usually takes the form of obsession. it's usually perversionalove so it's much more passionate and it becomes more deadly. everything is on the edge, therefore it burns up faster. they burn up life faster. (dramatic music playing)

(gunshot) (dramatic music playing) (gunshot) (dramatic music playing) (gunfire) (dramatic music playing) (crash) (click) (click) (bongo drums) (john bailey) there's an element in film noir a way light and shadow is used in such extreme contrast, it is almost religious or spiritual or philosophical. see any better this way? (john bailey) an age-old manichaeus dialectic of light against dark, good against evil. you can turn it off now, buster. you're wasting ur battery.

(john bailey) light sources themselves become part of the scene's content.t. (glass shatters) susie, what are you doing in here in the dark? (john bailey)very bright, hot sc and very deep, deep shadows. well, can we turn the light on now? (woman) no, we can't. because of all the things that happened during the war, the development of faster film stocks, the development of portable cameras, smaller dollies, more contained lighting units. it was possible at night, to go out on the streets using the lights in a controlled, dramatic way. the sense of the frame, the world essentially black, which it is at night. and what you see is what you choose to define and pick out with a little bit of light. and this became signature of film noir. (music playing) there's almost a giddy euphoria of being able to use lights

and the dramatic use of lights in late 40s, early 50s films. (music playing) (man) turn on the light again, cora, please. all right. waste ur money. (edward dmytryk) we wanted to spend as little time with the mechanics, lighting a set, that kind of thing, setups, to give ourselves more time with the actors, to get the best possible scenes out of them. with film noir what you did is you want it like that, throw a shadow on it, get a gobolt, you know. and that's all, the shadow did it. (music playing) (kathryn bigelow) it's perfect externalization of those characters, trapped, a trapped character. there is no light, there is no release,

there is no escape. things are very terrifying, mysterious if you can't see. so your imagination is forced to take over, which i think is the key to how noir material works on the subconscious. (woman) in here, walter. (john bailey) a lighting technique that became a signature of the noir films was the venetian blind, which was an effective way for the director of photography to create an interesting and unusual lighting pattern on an otherwise blank wall. and would create interesting psychological effects, depending upon the way they were slanted and adjusted. (romantic music playing) almost universally in noir film you see a tremendous sparseness in the production design.

sets have very simple and functional furniture. the walls tend to be just painted flats. you have the visual environment to create a tremendous sense of dramatic isolation and alienation. and that was part of the whole conceit of noir, of using lighting techniques to alter space psychologically. you can't underestimate the german influence in it all. and all the german expatriates who were filling the ranks of the hollywood crafts as well as director and writer. and they brought with them a dramatic and visual tradition that was very different from the more vaudeville or the more showman tradition of american films of the time. (john bailey) fritz lang did a trilogy of early gangster films, of the mabuse trilogy which had tremendous influence,

not only in german cinema, but also in this country. even going back before that, "the cabinet of dr. caligari," the sets were built in false perspective. tremendous sense of light and dark contrasts. tilted angles, fogrounding of objects. these became very prominent, i think, in film noir. (abraham polonsky) objects are not things that happen to be in a room. objects are things that we deal with in living. so floors are objects. the position of people towards each other are objects. when you make a movie you pay attention to everything all the time, or you're not making a movie. what you're doing is just photographing something. what are you trying to do? i'm trying to strap you to the electric chair. we don't like innocent people blown away. (john bailey) noir photography was concerned with showing environment.

i'm going to make you pay. they're trying to railroad me. i don't know why, i never stole dynamite. (john bailey) so the deep focus, foreground and background focus being equally sharp and a tremendous visual field opening up behind the actors gave a sense of environment and became a strong element in the noir vocabulary. take him in and book him. let's go. you say you found dynamite in the bathroom? yeah, well, pete found it. show him the dynamite, pete. can't you do something to help me? the deep focus was used in conjunction with wide lens. it was also used as a way of staging a scene without having to do a lot of coverage. a foreground actor would appear quite close to camera, a background actor would come in. they play a dialogue scene in one shot, the two actors, not looking at each other. foreground actor looking out this way,

the background actor looking at the back of an actor's head. they can't see each other, but are in a scene together. i'm here to arrest you. (john bailey) it's fine for the audience because they can see both. and the conceit seemed to work. it wouldn't work today because you'd want close-ups, you'd want to see the actors turn to each other. but it was a common method of shooting sometimes a three- four-minute scene in one shot because they had very short shooting schedules. get the young lady. anybody making a b-picture wanted to make a-pictures. so what we were trying to do was to impress somebody, usually the executives at the studio. and you couldn't impress them with the subject matter, because it was usually pretty trite. you couldn't impress them with the acting, which was not usually of the best. but you could impress them with setups for instance. i learned about setups on b-pictures primarily because i had to be inventive as hell. i wanted the executives who were looking at the rushes

to look and say, "hey, that guy's got -- you know that guy really knows where to put his camera." (woman) i hope it's not too crowded. (edward dmytryk) joe lewis was wonderful with setups, really wonderful. (joe lewis) we took a stretch-out cadillac and removed everything from it and in it they laid down a 2-by-12 board on top of that they put a little high hat and camera. and then they put a jockey seat for the operator. it was the first time they've ever used "button microphones." we had them all over the place, inside, outside. and then strapped to the top, we had two sound men with fish poles stretched way out with mikes. (man) i hope i won't be longer than i have to. (joe lewis) i got the two of them together and i said, "you know what you're up to. you run into town, look for a parking space.

he's going to go in the bank, he's going to rob the bank. a policeman will to come out, you're going to knock him on the head and get away." that's right, stand right there, okay? (joe lewis) whatever dialogue you want between you, whatever comes up, that's how you react. hi. well, that's a nice getup. i like it. good-looking gun. thanks. that's english? that's right. what show you with? (joe lewis) i was supposed to shoot that and had a four-day schedule. we shot it in about three hours. and far better i'm sure than what was in the script with the interior of the bank and the people laying down and the guy's holding their hands up and all that.

we left it to the audience's imagination and suggestion. (ringing of alarm) take off. all right. i told you to stay in the car. (joe lewis) the shot was so real, people on the street yelled, "they held up the bank!" and we kept on going, photographing as we went. the shot took two miles. two miles and without a cut. (paul arthur) a large portion of hollywood's technical community learned documentary technique working either within the u.s., or for various branches of the armed forces and so they were more schooled in how to shoot in a more raw, less studio-bound, less stylized fashion. and i also think the experience of the american public with documentaries during the war

led to a greater acceptance of semi-documentary realism in fiction films. shooting on location, it's a must for film noir because film noir is reality. it's reality as is. (man's thoughts) i just kept going down and down. it was like going down to the bottom of the world, to find my brother. (andre de toth) no matter how many great art directors you have you cannot afford to make it so used as a street is. it's impossible. somehow you feel it, even if you don't see it. that's the magic of film. you never know how it happens but it does happen. of course it was against all the studio rules. "we have the back lot, shoot it there." "i spent $2 million on that street, use it." (man's thoughts) i found my brother's body at the bottom there, where they had thrown it away on the rocks, by the river, like an old rag nobody wants. he was dead.

(martin scorsese) it's incredible city poetry, this body there, lying there. you know, i come from an area where sometimes you'd see a body in the street that way. it was important for film noir to represent real cities, not these vague constructions on a studio back lot. (narrator) christmas eve in new york. (paul arthur) but to use the look of the city as a part of its stylistic web. (jean-pierre gorin) when you're in the city, you've got a space which is immediately dramatic. and you've got immediately -- you're in a universe which is maze-like and claustrophobic. the characters arewaike smas in an aquarium where all sorts of stuff is happening. look at the first sequence of "pickup on south street." one guy, whose job is to steal purses,

open purses, a pickpocket in a subway. (paul arthur) the number of underground spots that we see in film noir is quite phenomenal. underground garages and subways and sewer systems. it's a manifestation of the underworld, of this secret labyrinth where criminals hide in shadows this is the image, representing a modern hell. (paul schrader) in dealing with a doomed world, you go for visual correlatives. it's hard to do a doom story on a pleasant, sunny day. (dramatic music playing) (martin scorsese) the image of richard widmark running in the streets in "night and the city" is a seminal film noir image.

you can't think of them without thinking of the image of a man running in the street at night. (dramatic music playing) somethg is more -- it's more dramatic. it's more dramatic. and the characters that come out at night are more fascinating, i think. that's really what it's about. (heavy breathing) (a.j. bezzerides) i think our world is headed for chaos and not very many people seem to be shivering about it. we ought to be shivering in our boots right now. well, i'm so tired of gangster pictures by then, i'd seen them all and so forth, that i thought the new feelings should be put into it and i made it more political. (a.j. bezzerides) writers shouldn't separate themselves from their reality. they should bring the reality to what they're doing.

how did you get that? (a.j. bezzerides) at that time in the 50s, the nuclear stuff was new and it was kind of frightening what was going on. manhatn projt, los alamos, trinity. (a.j. bezzerides) i was affected strongly by what i readn the pers, what i'd heard on the comments on the radio and television. and these somehow got into the story. i think a story of this kind should have that same feeling because we live in a world, we're not living in a movie. and the movie should reflect the world, the motion pictures should reflect the world in some way. when i saw "kiss me deadly" when i was 12 years old i didn't understand it. i had no idea what was happening in it. it was shocking and very strong, but to this day, the end, i don't quite understand, but it's one of the pivotal films. (a. bezzerides) at the very end, the girl wants it, boy, she wants it, then she flings open the box. she doesn't know.

she thinks it's something precious that's measured in dollars and cents. but it has to do with security, the future and man's existence. (screams) well, it obviously ends with a holocaust, you know. this doomed character finally finds the bomb and the world is over. and it's sort of the -- it prefigures "strangelove," which carries that to the same degree in a comic fashion. but it's just a matter of these doomed characters, when are they finally going to explode and then take the world with them? (explosion) (paul schrader) it's sort of the end of the line, you can't go much further.

(announcer) dominating one half the world, communism stays solidly opposed to the western concept of democracy. with over 750 million people under communist rule, nearly one-third of the population of the earth, soviet russia holds a commanding position in the future destiny of the world. since world war ii ... (new announcer) it is a way of life, an evil, malignant way of life. it reveals a condition akin to disease that spreads like an epidemic and like an epidemic, a quarantine is necessary to keep it from infecting us. i guess huac is the transition. that's how america moved into the cold war. moved from the post-war era into the eisenhower era. i guess that critical period there from '52 to '54, where the shift occurred with the red scare movies

and then where communists started becoming the villains. the noir cycle or series ends for a number of reasons. the mood of the country shifts, from a dominant anxiety. the 50s key word is togetherness. (announcer) the public has been told that television has finally emerged from the experimental phase. and curiosity alone is expected to sell thousands of sets. (paul arthur) the nuclear family, the turn towards a private suburban existence, away from the conflicts of modern man in the city. (narrator) some say that was the end of film noir, but i don't see it that way. film noir was a look, a tone, a feel.

the shadows are still deadly, murder still stalks the streets love and violence still share the same bed. and fate can still put the finger on you for no good reason at all. life doesn't change, cause people don't change. (upbeat music playing) (martin scorsese) "mean streets" became a very clear attempt at doing a film noir in color. what i was trying to do is blend what i knew as reality with that style. what are you doing? what do you mean, what am i doing? (martin scorsese) a theme of a young man trying to hustle money and being in conflict with some very powerful forces and not understanding the danger he's in until everything around him falls to pieces. what did he say? he said i didn't pay him? he's a f--- liar, where is he? you paid him? yeah.

last week? yeah. last tuesday? yeah. (martin scorsese) i think of it as noir in that i love the noir film. in that as much as possible an homage, my version of noir. but in reality i was trying to get as close as possible to my experience. now, wait a minute. what? well, you're right. i'm right? yeah, was it -- last tuesday? yeah, that's last week, before the one next week. i guess i'm responding to hearing my uncle speak or my aunt or my father talk about films they liked, but they said, "oh, that scene, you know what they did." he said, "no, but they'd never show that, though." or "they'll never show the -- the real workings of how these guys in organized crime deal with each other." or, "the real workings of a guy who really owes money." so my intention was: why not? why not really show it? i borrow money from you cause you're the only jerk-off that i can borrow money from without paying back, right?

ya know that's what you are -- that's what i think of you, a jerk-off. (joe bailey) color brings in a certain level of relationship to reality. i mean, the real world is in color. film noir, black and white is abstracted, more stylized. i don't give 2 s--- for you or nobody else. i think there've been a number of color films that have used noir elements, both visually, stylistically and in terms of character and plot, themes. arthur penn comes to mind. "bonnie and clyde," "night moves." certainly "chinatown," i think, pre-eminently. larry kasdan's, "body heat." what's your name, anyway?

ned racine. maddy walker. wow, you all right? yes, i'm fine. my temperature runs a couple of degrees high, 100. i don't mind, the engine or something. maybe you need a tuneup. don't tell me, you have the right tool? i don't talk like that. when i started out i didn't know if i would ever get to direct another film after "body heat." so i wrote something i thought i could get through and would give me the license to go very stylish. i had never directed anything except for a few student films and i wanted to do everything with a camera i could think of. so i picked a genre that gave you enormous license for that, which was film noir. that's it. that's it. we're going to kill him and i think i know how. it's real then?

it's real all right. if we're not careful, it's going to be the last real thing we do. (lawrence kasdan) i wrote a sort of standard film noir story, but it was really about something else for me. it was really about something that i was seeing in friends, which was this desire to hit the big score very quickly. and that's really the story for the central character. he just sort of is impatient and things aren't going as well or as pleasurably, as sensually as he would like. and a woman comes into his life that seems to open the door, where he can have everything he wants, immediately. he has a gun. where? (thump, gunshot)

(thud) (lawrence kasdan) the character of ned racine that bill hurt plays is not so very different from a lot of people i know and a certain american type. in fact, the villainess, if she can be called that, has the same kind of drives. she's just a hardworking woman who wants to get it all. if you never trust in me again, you'd probably be smart. but you must believe one thing, i love you. i love you and i need you. (john bailey) violence and sexuality have become much more graphic. i think a key element in noir was that tension or repression. filmmaking techniques have also become so much slicker.

there's a lot more money available. we don't make b-movies really that deal with that material. b-movies tend to be like slasher films and so forth. a-movies usually have a very strong production budget and design budget. and film noir films inherently were b-movies, low-budget. and they had certain physical limitations and restrictions that became part of the filmmaking vocabulary. and i don't think we use those so much anymore. there's been many attempts to emulate that style. but that style was tied to a time and a place. and that time and place is gone. if somebody wanted to make a film using that dialogue, that very terse, chandler, hemingway dialogue, would it sell today? i don't know. i don't think so.

i do really feel this genre is a historical genre. when you speak of german expressionism, you speak of a specific time. when you speak of the nouvelle vague, that's a specific time. and the film noir is a specific time. we don't make film noir anymore. it's just semantics, you know, what makes noir? who defines noir? who defines american films? who defines what's good and bad in american movies? the dangerous thing is in any moment in history we have some machine, some cultural, critical media working to define what's good and bad. but it's all up for grabs. we'll know in maybe 50 years from now, we'll look back and see what stood the test of time. people didn't change in 40 years. so if you have seen life truly 40 years ago, it should stand up today. of course, some of the problems are slightly different, but basic human problems are still the same.

look, mister, i'm so tired, you'd be doing me a big favor if you'd blow my head off. (gunshot)

annenberg media ♪

and: with additional funding from these foundations and individuals: and by: and the annual financial support of: for information about this and other annenberg media programs call 1-800-learner and visit us at www.learner.org.

funding for this program [with captioning] was provided by: additional funding is provided by: and: narrator: each video episode has three parts.