An Analysis of Films Noir

What were later called New Wave movie directors in France were apparently quite taken by a type of film that came out of Hollywood in the 1940's. They called them Films Noir, dark movies. They were so fascinated by them that men like Jean Luc Godard and later Francois Truffaut tried to make similar movies themselves.

I've seen Godard's BREATHLESS, and Truffaut's MISSISSIPPI MERMAID, and while I appreciate their efforts and must admit that BREATHLESS came close to the mark, MERMAID came nowhere near it, although the vision of Catherine Deneuve's naked breasts in a few scenes were worth watching the entire movie to see.

Wondering about it, I eventually decided that the reason they seemed to fall short of the American movies was that the French, they are too intelligent. Part of the requirement of the dread-filled movies they were emulating is that its audience be not too discriminating in the brain-power department. The French audience presumably remained relentlessly logical. Even Belmondo's feckless would-be gangster in BREATHLESS moved through a world that made sense, a world which remained a rational one that still went on around him.

In the American movies, not necessarily. There is an aura of terror generated in them that subsumes logic and the sensible everyday, and the American movie audience suspends its disbelief enough to go along with it. There is also a saturation of darkness and shadows permeating many of the dark movies that came from our shores, and neither BREATHLESS nor MERMAID captured anything like the menace that darkness would have given their audiences.

Perhaps some of the gangster movies Alain Delon later made for awhile came closer, but I haven't yet seen any of them, nor THE BRIDE WORE BLACK, by Truffaut. Possibly he achieved what he was after in his BRIDE, but I skipped the chance to see it once on TV and have regretted it ever since. Someday!

I've given films noir considerable thought over the years. When did these dark movies begin? When did they end, and why?