Film Noir

Gats and gams, broads and bullies, bullets and babes, crooks and cons, dark and deadly, fateful and fatal.
All these words refer to film noir.  They are all elements of the noir film and the style which makes noir, noir. There has long been a dispute over what noir is or isn't.  But one thing is for sure, it is cool.
     The term, coined by the french was used to explain the new american films of the mid forties.  The films made in post war america were done on the cheap and because sets were not elaborate minimal lighting was used.  Hence the term "black film". Yet not only were the pictures dark, the themes were dark.  Be it the rise of existentialism or the popularity of pulp fiction or the emergence of B movies, noir was a motif and style which told the story of flawed characters and their inherent demise.  These immoral heroes and villains were not easily recognized as noir blurred the lines of right and wrong while defying convention.
As fate would have it those born to lose would lose and if these poor souls showed any virtue it was lost on the sins of lust, betrayal, revenge and greed.

"Fate or some mysterious force has put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all." Final lines spoken by Tom Neal in the movie Detour.
With their absence of a moral code these fools are driven to act with instinct and these actions come with consequences. Desirous to be free form the conformity of the masses it is their freedom which drives them to their undoing.  Born of noir is the ultimate anti-hero.  They have a code to which they will uphold no matter the cost.  And the cost is often death.  These men and women represent the id of human nature.  They are cowards, drunks, bullies, violent, sexually deviant, and maniacal.  Driven by  pleasure (dames, booze, money, kicks) and a personal freedom which flaunts style over matter and the inability to develop any relationship of depth.  The era of noir lasting roughly from 1945-1957 gave us gritty characters, dark images, contrasting shadows and light, dialogue drowned in neorealism, moody men and women, defeated souls and charged sexuality.  They gave us black and white cool.

The noir film perhaps is best summed up by the nature of the  characters to drive themselves toward their destined defeat, either by action or non-action they inevitably lose to the overt unpredictable enigma of life.  Some noir films to see: Out of the Past, Double Indemnity, Touch of Evil, Kiss me Deadly, Detour, M, Vertigo, The Killing, Raw Deal, Somewhere in the Night, Blonde Ice, Naked Alibi, I Wake Up Screaming, The Asphalt Jungle and many others.
Some noir reading: A Girl and a Gun by David N. Meyer, Dark City by Eddie Muller, The Film Noir Reader by Alain Silver and James Ursini, and many others.
Some comic book noir: 100 bullets by Brian Azzarello, Sin City by Frank Miller, Criminal by Ed Brubaker, Cross Bronx by Michael Avon Oeming, Marvel Noir-various titles

"This is the end, my only friend, the end.  The end of laughter and soft lies, the end of nights we tried to die"- Jim Morrison