Film Noir

Forty years after Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton defined the challenge, critical commentators on film noir continue to grapple with it. Ironically, American writers did not immediately take up consideration of this indigenous phenomenon and the question of its "essential traits." Only gradually in a frequently cross-referenced series of essays in the 1970s did they begin to express themselves. There are now a dozen full-length books in English concerning film noir and undoubtedly more to …

…and perhaps even more widely cited than the Durgnat and Schrader pieces: Janey Place and Lowell Peterson's "Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir." "Visual Motifs" is actually two separate pieces. In the first part, Place and Peterson introduce the concept of what they call "anti-traditional elements," that is, a mise-en-scene by directors and a lighting scheme by cinematographers that radically diverges from the studio "norm." In doing so, they are the first to attempt a