movies

Film noir was first identified at a distance. In 1946, Italian-born French critic Nino Frank coined the term to describe a cycle of coolly cynical crime thrillers produced by Hollywood earlier in that decade, but only recently available in Paris. “These ‘dark’ films, these films noirs, no longer have anything in common with the ordinary run of detective movies,” wrote Frank of films including Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944), The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941) and The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944). But the term still has legs, with films as recent, and as far removed from Hollywood, as the Chinese crime procedural Only the River Flows, which was released this summer, inspiring critics to reach for the word noir.

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Those inspired to travel further into homegrown noir should check out the new season beginning this week at BFI Southbank, Martin Scorsese Selects Hidden Gems of British Cinema, co-curated with Edgar Wright, which contains such gritty British classics as It Always Rains on Sunday (Robert Hamer, 1947), a noirish and sexy drama starring Googie Withers and John McCallum as an East End housewife and her fugitive ex-boyfriend. In a recent interview for Sight and Sound magazine, Scorsese talked about how the influence of gothic literature imbues the Brit noir with gloom and horror: “There’s a toughness in the British style that doesn’t have any room for compromise.”

The journey continues. Online, aficionados use the hashtag #Noirvember as an excuse to explore the world of noir. This November, the Film Noir Fest in Weston-super-Mare will screen noirs from around the world, not least London noirs and Mexican films of the 1950s, including El Bruto (1953), a rarely shown title directed by Luis Buñuel.

As for new films that take on the noir mantle, such as Only the River Flows, they simply create more flashbacks into film history, forging connections between film-makers and films united by a shared cinematic mood. One that lingers, dangerously.