“deadly woman”) role cast women as seductive,
autonomous, and deceptive predators who use men
for their own means. As a rule, the femme fatale is
a far smarter—and, thus, formidable—opponent for
the protagonist than other adversarial characters,
most of whom are corrupt and violent but are not
necessarily a match for the hero’s cynical intelligence.
More than virtually any other genre, film noir is
distinguished by its visual style. The name black film
references not just the genre’s attitude, but its look
as well. Noir movies employ lighting schemes that
emphasize contrast and create deep shadows that
can obscure as much information as the illumination
reveals. Light sources are often placed low to the
ground, resulting in illumination that distorts facial
features and casts dramatic shadows. Exterior
scenes usually take place at night; those interior
scenes set during the day often play out behind
drawn shades that cast patterns of light and shadow,
splintering the frame. These patterns, in turn, com-bine with other diagonal visual elements to create a
compositional tension that gives the frame—and the
world it depicts—a restless, unstable quality.
Film-noir plot structure reinforces this feeling
of disorientation. The complex (sometimes incom-
prehensible) narratives are often presented in
nonchronological or otherwise convoluted arrange-
ments. Plot twists deprive the viewer of the comfort
of a predictable plot. Goals shift, and expectations
are reversed; allies are revealed to be enemies (and
vice versa); narration, even that delivered by the
protagonist, is sometimes unreliable. Moral refer-
ence points are skewed: victims are often as corrupt
as their persecutors; criminals are working stiffs
just doing their job. Paradoxically, this unsettling
narrative complexity is often framed by a sort of
enforced predictability. Fatalistic voice-over narra-
tion telegraphs future events and outcomes, creat-
ing a sense of predetermination and hopelessness
for the protagonist’s already lost cause.Modern film noirWhile many modern noir films, such as
Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential(1997), set their stories in
places and times that directly reference the classic noir
films of the 1940s, others offer a revised genre experience
by relocating noir’s thematic, aesthetic, and narrative
elements to contemporary times and atypical locations. Rian
Johnson’s Brick(2005) [1] takes place within the convoluted
social strata of a suburban high school. Joel Coen’s Fa rg o
(1996) [2] unfolds on the frozen prairies of rural North
Dakota and the snow-packed Minneapolis suburbs. Erik
Skjoldbjærg’s Insomnia(1997) [3] trades ominous shadows
for the unrelenting light of the midnight sun in a village
above the Arctic Circle.(^12)
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SIX MAJOR AMERICAN GENRES 95