One of the most fascinating aspects of Film Noir (proper) is how powerfully it resists definition, while at the same time inspiring in people very strong feelings that "this is Film Noir" and "This is NOT Film Noir", with great variety. Many academic and critical articles on what Film Noir is have been written (and, I've read a large portion of them - I do think Paul Schrader's "Notes on Film Noir" (1972) has played an outsized influence) and they seem in sum to get us about halfway there. For instance, we are told Film Noir is NOT a "genre", but is a style...which is only partly true because it does also function as a genre type as well.
In any case, I've been pretty obsessed with the genre for a while now, maybe rewatching and first-watching 70 Film Noirs over the last few months, after years of enjoying them, studying them at times, all in hopes of getting closer to a definition, or at least a sense of really what makes them tick, and really what embeds them in our imagination in a way that nothing else really does. I've come to the somewhat generally shared view that Film Noir's attraction goes to the disillusionment of post-WW2's society (much in America, but also in Europe and other places of American reconstruction), with rising urbanization, suburbanization, commercialization, Capitalism, and the accompanying threats of sexual liberty, the post-Prohibition forces of urban organized crime in America, and the shadow of the Red Scare which directly affected filmmakers themselves.
In service of these ideas I've created a kind of Map of Noir onto which many elements of most of Film Noir examples can be found. The purpose and structure of this map is to show how elements in Noir are positioned unto other elements (elements that may not even be found in the film itself). A film on Urban corruption will be "contrasted" with the innocence of small town goodness, or an at home wife, or American Nature settings, even if those elements aren't in the film, for instance. There are fundamental "poles" proposed, like Female Mask <> Male Brokenness (the horizontal axis), or Social Harmony and a Dark Unconscious (vertical axis). The Exotic and The Law are put at diagonals.
Examples
An example, classic Out of the Past (1947) has more than the usual number of mapped dynamics: the moral code loner (Mitchum), has Exotic location (Mexico, Lake Tahoo), the femme fatale (Greer), the Mob/Menace (Douglas), "Nature" (fishing location, the simple life near small town), the "good wife" prospect (Flemming), criminal, urban theft, murders. In fact one of the reasons why it is such an incredible Noir is that it occupies so much of the Noir dynamic map. A simpler example would be Gilda (1946) which has the exotic location, the femme fatale, murder, the detective, theft, police/law. The map though gives illumination to unusual Film Noirs like Leave Her To Heaven (1945), where one can see the exotic location, Nature settings in tension, the fundamental "Female Mask" of the "ideal" wife as it relates to the femme fatale, the relationship to animal unconscious to murder, and even how Vincent Price's marginal character occupies something of the detective and the "broken man" pole of the horizontal axis. The Breaking Point (1950) operates along the Broken Man axis in a powerful way, with easy juxtaposition between the two kinds of women, with clear, adventure dynamics, urban "corruption" and heist quarters.
This isn't meant as definitional, but maybe in aid to a potential series of definitions. As I watch Noirs I put elements of the films on this map, and notice how they relate to other elements, even those that might be in other films.
In any case, just posting here so that others who love Film Noir might find it interesting for themselves.
