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More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts
"Film noir" evokes memories of stylish, cynical, black-and-white movies from the 1940s and '50s―melodramas about private eyes, femmes fatales, criminal gangs, and lovers on the run. James Naremore's prize-winning book discusses these pictures, but also shows that the central term is more complex and paradoxical than we realize. It treats noir as a term in criticism, as an expression of artistic modernism, as a symptom of Hollywood censorship and politics, as a market strategy, as an evolving style, and as an idea that circulates through all the media. This new and expanded edition of More Than Night contains an additional chapter on film noir in the twenty-first century.
408 pages, Paperback
First published October 16, 1998
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January 31, 2020
Beyond genre.
January 2, 2014
More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts by James Naremore is easily one of the most comprehensive books of its kind. Structuring his examination of film noir on the definition of the term leads him to look at a variety of films and how they can fall under the category, thus providing the reader with a host of films that demand revaluation.
Naremore approaches the inspection of film noir like a detective - he doesn't know precisely what Film Noir is, but he does know of the many visual and thematic elements that occur in the many phases of what is referred to as a genre. As he clearly states in the opening chapter, "despite scores of books and essays that have been written about it, nobody is sure whether the films in question constitute a period, a genre, a cycle, a style, or simply a "phenomenon"" when they talk about film noir.
But furthermore Naremore states that the way we perceive the qualities of this particular kind of film is a formal one. As he sees it, "noir is almost entirely a creation of postmodern culture- a belated reading of classic Hollywood that was popularized by cineastes of the French New Wave, appropriated by reviewers, academics, and filmmakers", thus putting into question whether the actual qualities of film noir were intentional or just a characteristic of a creative wave birthed by the mother of invention, the need and desire to make movies with little resources.
Placing an historical date on film noir Naremore locates it in Paris between 1946 and 1959 during the period of adjustment after World War 2 when people viewed life in a particular existential mode after seeing the horrors of war that had ravaged Europe. In 1946 a writer named Boris Vian was asked to create a series of murder novels that would rival the popular Série noire publication, and Vian synthesized the themes of William Faulkner's "Sanctuary", and Richard Wright's "Native Son" in violent nature, upon which "J'irai cracher sur vous tombes" (I'll spit on Your Graves) was created and became a hot-seller piece of fiction. Made into a film in 1959, it stars Christian Marquand as Joe Grant, a light-skinned African-African, who goes to a small Southern town to investigate the lynching death of his brother. He gets involved with a beautiful heiress who may be involved in the murder. The plot definitely sounds like a typical noir setup given the clandestine nature of murder, disguise and detection that the narrative includes. It was this coloring of a tale that set the European film reviewers onto a philosophical bent in regards to how a filmmaker thematically had organized his material, and this was fueled by the dearth of American films that had been made on the cheap, previously unavailable to audiences overseas during war time and now were showing in movie houses across Europe particularly in France where many of the outspoken film critics were residing.
Given the catalogue of stylistic elements, Naremore also offers possible suggestions as to when the first film noir appeared, suggesting D.W. Griffith's Muscateers of Pig Alley from 1912, and Louis Feuillade's film Fantomas from 1913 as possibilities. These are extreme early examples because as Naremore sees it, the elements of noir are not schematized enough to be grouped into genre. What we perceive as film noir is more a way of treating a subject, rather than a genre. We almost always recognize the visual and thematic qualities of noir and can catalogue them but these are never hard and fast absolutes. Things like high-contrast shadows, wet dark streets, and revolvers in the hands of nefarious characters wearing fedora hats, sexually suggestive beautiful mysterious women, plots to dupe good-natured folks out of money, or a robbery, or murder, and always crime motivated at some level by a character's hubris - these are the stereotypical tropes of a style. But there are noir themes that always involve characters plotting some shadowy activity, with the unexpected hand of fate intervening. These and other elements are utilized by filmmakers to create a condition of noir for a viewer.
Throughout More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts Naremore examines films that contain some condition of noir, and his historical survey covers films from the earliest period through the advent of television, and even looks at how noir has been absorbed into print marketing, clothing, and even personality. More recent films such as Michael Mann's Collateral from 2004 about a hit man who uses a cab driver in Los Angeles to chauffer him to his victims is steeped in the noir tradition. The entire action takes place at night in ethnic neighborhoods in a city that, in the words of hit man Max played by Tom Cruise is "Too sprawled out and disconnected", adding to the sense that there is a basic inability for anyone to ever really know anyone else, a true existential treatment of this story. The film is shot in high-contrast digital video making use of a varied color pallet to bring out richness in the night scenes. Naremore also makes note of the film Sin City from 2005 which pushes high-contrast black and white imagery to the extreme creating a cinematic comic-book world steeped in religious iconography, murder, revenge, pedophilia, sadism, and ultimate redemption. Highly stylized, Sin City wallows in its noir-ness and the production utilizes computer imagery extensively requiring all the actors to perform before a green screen which later had a captivating environment overlaid onto it. Sin City at times breaks all rules of Physics with characters jumping from buildings to the street many floors below without harm, or being hung by their necks without physical injury all to create an ultimate statement about post-modern urban existence.
The book also includes substantial historical support such as the introductory page from the Breen Office from the 1940s, a coverage page for films in production. One interesting instance of the Breen dictum is that in movies transgressors should be punished at the films conclusion. Naremore questions how films such as This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, and Laura could have been produced since the line separating sympathetic and unsympathetic characters is blurred, thereby diverting our attentions from the good guy to the bad guy by highlighting positive characteristics of the killer, and misdirecting the empathetic bond of the viewer with the characters in the film. It is the fact that these studio products of the time got through the system and released which is what makes them ripe for study as noir artifacts. In This Gun For Hire the killer played by Alan Ladd is asked by a client played by Laird Cregar what it feels like to kill someone and the relationship, at least from Cregar's side, has a tone of latent homosexual longing to it. This kind of suggestive characteristic may have been accepted by the Breen office because the characters are criminal types and in the eyes of a potential audience subject to alternate lifestyle activities.
More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts also includes a section that examines how Film Noir has affected styles in fashion, and how the layering on of particulars of film noir is used to sell products such as cologne, cars, and other things given the sensitivity the viewer has to the tropes of this style of film. For any film lover who wants a comprehensive explication of Film Noir Naremore's book will have you reviewing many of the classic noir movies with a new perspective, and will introduce you to some films you will want to see for their noir tone. It's a great read.
Naremore approaches the inspection of film noir like a detective - he doesn't know precisely what Film Noir is, but he does know of the many visual and thematic elements that occur in the many phases of what is referred to as a genre. As he clearly states in the opening chapter, "despite scores of books and essays that have been written about it, nobody is sure whether the films in question constitute a period, a genre, a cycle, a style, or simply a "phenomenon"" when they talk about film noir.
But furthermore Naremore states that the way we perceive the qualities of this particular kind of film is a formal one. As he sees it, "noir is almost entirely a creation of postmodern culture- a belated reading of classic Hollywood that was popularized by cineastes of the French New Wave, appropriated by reviewers, academics, and filmmakers", thus putting into question whether the actual qualities of film noir were intentional or just a characteristic of a creative wave birthed by the mother of invention, the need and desire to make movies with little resources.
Placing an historical date on film noir Naremore locates it in Paris between 1946 and 1959 during the period of adjustment after World War 2 when people viewed life in a particular existential mode after seeing the horrors of war that had ravaged Europe. In 1946 a writer named Boris Vian was asked to create a series of murder novels that would rival the popular Série noire publication, and Vian synthesized the themes of William Faulkner's "Sanctuary", and Richard Wright's "Native Son" in violent nature, upon which "J'irai cracher sur vous tombes" (I'll spit on Your Graves) was created and became a hot-seller piece of fiction. Made into a film in 1959, it stars Christian Marquand as Joe Grant, a light-skinned African-African, who goes to a small Southern town to investigate the lynching death of his brother. He gets involved with a beautiful heiress who may be involved in the murder. The plot definitely sounds like a typical noir setup given the clandestine nature of murder, disguise and detection that the narrative includes. It was this coloring of a tale that set the European film reviewers onto a philosophical bent in regards to how a filmmaker thematically had organized his material, and this was fueled by the dearth of American films that had been made on the cheap, previously unavailable to audiences overseas during war time and now were showing in movie houses across Europe particularly in France where many of the outspoken film critics were residing.
Given the catalogue of stylistic elements, Naremore also offers possible suggestions as to when the first film noir appeared, suggesting D.W. Griffith's Muscateers of Pig Alley from 1912, and Louis Feuillade's film Fantomas from 1913 as possibilities. These are extreme early examples because as Naremore sees it, the elements of noir are not schematized enough to be grouped into genre. What we perceive as film noir is more a way of treating a subject, rather than a genre. We almost always recognize the visual and thematic qualities of noir and can catalogue them but these are never hard and fast absolutes. Things like high-contrast shadows, wet dark streets, and revolvers in the hands of nefarious characters wearing fedora hats, sexually suggestive beautiful mysterious women, plots to dupe good-natured folks out of money, or a robbery, or murder, and always crime motivated at some level by a character's hubris - these are the stereotypical tropes of a style. But there are noir themes that always involve characters plotting some shadowy activity, with the unexpected hand of fate intervening. These and other elements are utilized by filmmakers to create a condition of noir for a viewer.
Throughout More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts Naremore examines films that contain some condition of noir, and his historical survey covers films from the earliest period through the advent of television, and even looks at how noir has been absorbed into print marketing, clothing, and even personality. More recent films such as Michael Mann's Collateral from 2004 about a hit man who uses a cab driver in Los Angeles to chauffer him to his victims is steeped in the noir tradition. The entire action takes place at night in ethnic neighborhoods in a city that, in the words of hit man Max played by Tom Cruise is "Too sprawled out and disconnected", adding to the sense that there is a basic inability for anyone to ever really know anyone else, a true existential treatment of this story. The film is shot in high-contrast digital video making use of a varied color pallet to bring out richness in the night scenes. Naremore also makes note of the film Sin City from 2005 which pushes high-contrast black and white imagery to the extreme creating a cinematic comic-book world steeped in religious iconography, murder, revenge, pedophilia, sadism, and ultimate redemption. Highly stylized, Sin City wallows in its noir-ness and the production utilizes computer imagery extensively requiring all the actors to perform before a green screen which later had a captivating environment overlaid onto it. Sin City at times breaks all rules of Physics with characters jumping from buildings to the street many floors below without harm, or being hung by their necks without physical injury all to create an ultimate statement about post-modern urban existence.
The book also includes substantial historical support such as the introductory page from the Breen Office from the 1940s, a coverage page for films in production. One interesting instance of the Breen dictum is that in movies transgressors should be punished at the films conclusion. Naremore questions how films such as This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, and Laura could have been produced since the line separating sympathetic and unsympathetic characters is blurred, thereby diverting our attentions from the good guy to the bad guy by highlighting positive characteristics of the killer, and misdirecting the empathetic bond of the viewer with the characters in the film. It is the fact that these studio products of the time got through the system and released which is what makes them ripe for study as noir artifacts. In This Gun For Hire the killer played by Alan Ladd is asked by a client played by Laird Cregar what it feels like to kill someone and the relationship, at least from Cregar's side, has a tone of latent homosexual longing to it. This kind of suggestive characteristic may have been accepted by the Breen office because the characters are criminal types and in the eyes of a potential audience subject to alternate lifestyle activities.
More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts also includes a section that examines how Film Noir has affected styles in fashion, and how the layering on of particulars of film noir is used to sell products such as cologne, cars, and other things given the sensitivity the viewer has to the tropes of this style of film. For any film lover who wants a comprehensive explication of Film Noir Naremore's book will have you reviewing many of the classic noir movies with a new perspective, and will introduce you to some films you will want to see for their noir tone. It's a great read.
February 3, 2026
As a noir fan, this was absolutely fascinating. I love that it includes a list of the films it discussed. One that it doesn't mention though that really surprised me: The Matrix.
April 15, 2008
In his introduction Naremore writes that "film noir has become one of the dominant intellectual categories of the late twentieth century operating across the entire cultural arena of art, popular memory, and criticism." He also notes that "noirness" is pervasive and has taken on something approaching mythology, and certainly one of his missions is to overturn thinly researched mythologizing and replaced it with rigorous critical analysis. With this book Naremore solidly establishes the actual contexts from which film noir sensibility originated and further developed. The depth of research in this study is stunning and should make More than Night the starting point for future noir studies. If nothing else, don't trot out typical noirisms without consulting this book first.
May 3, 2024
Naremore offers such a comprehensive study on noir cinema with this one, provided rich details and dizzily dense references to measure its boundary over decades of development. Instead of linear (it’s chronological, but logically, not really) investigation, a parallel of equivalent perspectives and angles are explored to both demystify and affirm the ambivalent nature of the discursive construction of what we term “noir”. The dedication kind of leaves me in awe, and I may very well rewatch Double Indemnity and Out of The Past a few more times, along with the film gris I have been missing out on.
July 22, 2018
J. Naremore is no film critic, and I would say that the weakness of this book, albeit a necessary one, are the detailed (and quite boring) plot summaries he writes for several pictures. Apart from this minor inconvenient, the book is brilliantly crafted - and reading it was a pure, intense pleasure; and more than that, a journey full of nostalgia and lucidity. Noir, as Naremore points out, has always been a fertile ground - but alongside his erudition, it becomes a vast territory carefully mapped.
Read
November 10, 2022Just a tremendous opening up of the idea of noir into the broader world of art, literature, politics, culture, everything. Expands understanding of and enlivens the historical period of the original noirs by treating noir and all its precedents and ancestors and mutations correctly as participants of an ongoing, ever-relevant dialogue, as fully-living contributions to our world, instead of as historical relics to be treated with condescension.
November 14, 2023
This feels like mandatory reading for fans of noir. I really appreciated the perspectives on the formation of the noir genre, and some of the clear, specific reviews.
A bit dated now, would love to have newer references and some thoughts on how the genre has been interpreted lately.
I will admit to resenting the criticism of two of my (now previously) favourite films: Miller's Crossing and LA Confidential, ha.
A bit dated now, would love to have newer references and some thoughts on how the genre has been interpreted lately.
I will admit to resenting the criticism of two of my (now previously) favourite films: Miller's Crossing and LA Confidential, ha.
October 6, 2020
A side note: Nobody has written on Manny Farber and his 'termite art' better than Naremore!
November 16, 2021
Great book with loads of information for anyone interested in film noir (and literature in the same vein).
September 11, 2011
James Naremore’s More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts is one of the best books about film that I’ve read. Naremore explores not just the style of noir but also its political implications. He also offers an unusual perceptive insights on neo-noirs, and why some of the early neo-noirs, like Polanski’s Chinatown, were so good, while some of the later ones, like L. A. Confidential, were so bad (although he does have a very high opinion of David Lynch’s Lost Highway, one of my favourite films).
I was particularly interested in his remarks on French film noir of the 1930s and on British film noir of the 40s and 50s. His observations on the film noir style in areas other than film, such as radio and television, were also fascinating. Naremore goes into his subject in depth but always remains entertaining and readable. All non-fiction should be this good.
I was particularly interested in his remarks on French film noir of the 1930s and on British film noir of the 40s and 50s. His observations on the film noir style in areas other than film, such as radio and television, were also fascinating. Naremore goes into his subject in depth but always remains entertaining and readable. All non-fiction should be this good.
January 20, 2013
More than night it's an extraordinarily rich in most of its parts. Each episode is an independent unity, a look on noir cinema from a different point of view (or as the subtitle of the book says, a different context). Maybe because of this, the book is slightly irregular: the last chapters fall a bit in the review & listology that it's the worse flaw of movie critics nowadays. Anyway, the three first chapters are writing on movies at its best: specially the third, entitle "From Dark Films to Black Lists", which explains the fascinating relation between left-wing politics, censorship and noir.
February 8, 2011
Prof. Naremore's book has that rare combination of great scholarly erudition allied to an accessible and lucid writing style - it makes for a superb read, a veritable tour de horizon of the subject, and an unmissible book for anyone mildly interested in the most contested and beloved of all film genres. To paraphrase Raymond Chandler, the quality of his writing is about as conspicuous as a tarantula on an angel cake.
March 25, 2007
Great commentary on vintage noir like Double Indemnity and The Third Man as well as "neo noirs" such as Chinatown, Devil in A Blue Dress and Pulp Fiction.
October 10, 2007
Had this guy as a professor and he is THE BOMB!
April 7, 2010
Read intro and first chapter. An informative and interesting survey of noir.
November 23, 2011
Hard to imagine a better take on the subject, and highly readable. James Naremore rules (see: his Welles book)
March 17, 2014
An incredibly informative book that is actually written to be understood. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
January 10, 2016
A book on film noir - a topic that used to intrigue me. Adding this book since I've added a new shelf called "movies".
December 26, 2024
One of our great film academics brilliantly explores an entire genre.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews