Is Film Noir Left Wing?

Yeah, kinda

If there is one thing that separates Film Noir from Crime Films, it's the protagonists.

In a crime film, the protagonists are usually officers of the law: city detectives, G-men, or crusading prosecutors. They uphold the status quo and exemplify the virtues of the establishment. The main exception to this is the sub-genre of the Gangster Film. Here, the story is almost always a rise and fall tale, from The Public Enemy to The Godfather to Goodfellas. These, in their own way, show that Crime Does Not Pay.

In the early 1930s, before the Production Code was fully enforced, the Gangster Film entranced a public battered by the Great Depression with charismatic anti-heroes who defied society and the law. One of the objectives of the tightening of the Code in 1934 was to remove the Gangster Film from theaters; these films were viewed as dangerous to the social order, glorifying criminality and implying that the glittering upper levels of society were corrupt.

In the 1940s, writers and directors rediscovered criminal anti-heroes and fought a running battle with the Production Code, through the vehicle of Film Noir, to engage audiences with crime, sex, and doom. The Hollywood Production Code insisted that crime not be shown to pay, but that didn't require that the forces of good needed to triumph. Noir after Noir flirted with nihilism and rejection of the social status quo time and time again, at least in the movies that mattered.

Anyone could be a protagonist in a Noir Film. Noir makes the case that no one is immune from the forces of darkness. The innocent or slightly bent are only one moment of weakness or coincidence away from falling into ruin and doom. Right living doesn't save you when you are falsely accused of murder or a loved one is tangled up with bad characters. And you can't depend on the system to save you, since the system is almost certainly corrupt. You are alone in the universe and the universe is pitiless.

The institution of marriage was undermined in Pitfall, Double Indemnity, and The Postman Always Rings Twice. A murderer allows another man to go to the chair in his place in Scarlet Street. In The Killing and The Asphalt Jungle, the focus is all on the criminals, with the audience sympathizing with them as their brilliant schemes fall apart and their shot at a life-changing paydays slips through their fingers.

A common theme was the absence or ineffectiveness of the police. In Detour or Born to Kill the cops don't show up until the dark justice has already been delivered. In some Noirs, amateurs are forced to uncover or thwart killers, like Thieves Highway, The Blue Dahlia, or Key Largo. The brutal or corrupt cop appears in Crimewave, Touch of Evil, On Dangerous Ground, or Where the Sidewalk Ends.

.The anti-capitalist and anti-Puritan moral order messages of Film Noir shouldn't have been a surprise, considering the men who wrote and directed them.

John Huston, who helped create Film Noir with The Maltese Falcon, was a co-founder of the Committee for the First Amendment, a Hollywood group that tried to stand up to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Eventually, he left the country, in part out of disgust with the Red Scare.

Billy Wilder, whose Double Indemnity helped define Film Noir and who went on to write and direct Noir classics like Sunset Boulevard and Ace in the Hole was also a co-founder of the Committee for the First Amendment. He and Huston were the only ones who opposed a vote of the Film Director's Guild to demand members take Oaths of Allegiance to the U.S.

Jules Dassin, director of the innovative Noir Naked City, and director of Thieves Highway and Night and the City, was a subject of the Hollywood blacklist. Dassin was actually a former member of the Communist Party and he wound joining John Huston in foreign exile in the 1950s.

Fritz Lang, who directed many classic Noirs, is an interesting case. His final German production, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, was banned by the Nazis, but at the same time he was offered the leadership of German Studio UFA by Nazi propaganda head Joseph Goebbels. Lang chose to leave Germany; his wife stayed behind as an ardent Nazi. His first Hollywood movie, Fury, was intended as an anti-racism statement, but was toned down by the studio. He helped found the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League in the 1930s and directed several classic anti-Nazi films in the 40s, such as Manhunt and Hangmen Also Die. His Film Noirs were among the darkest of the genre.

Robert Aldrich, director of the Noir classic, Kiss Me Deadly, was a leftist who narrowly escaped scrutiny from HUAC when a production company he was employed by had many of it's members blacklisted. His long string of movies in various genres almost always featured biting and violent critiques of society.

Orson Welles, who wrote and directed perhaps the definitive Film Noir: Touch of Evil, worked in the 1930s as a stage director and actor for the Federal Theater Project, an offshoot of the FDR government's WPA. Not surprisingly, the FTP was a haven for liberal/leftists, producing social commentary works and ground breaking racial productions. Welles himself directed an all-Black version of Macbeth. When hired to direct Touch of Evil years later, he re-wrote the screenplay to insert the racial elements and the theme of American exploitation of Mexicans.

The period of the Golden Age of Film Noir, from the mid-forties to late fifties was also the age of The Red Scare. The Hollywood Studios, eager to smash the power of labor unions, joined with regressive elements in the Federal Government who sought to purge society of not only communists, but leftists and non-conformists. It was a war, an ugly battle that claimed lives and destroyed careers. Just speaking up in public was enough to risk a great deal.

Liberals and leftists who could still work in Hollywood found an outlet in Film Noir for critiques of capitalism, racism, and social mores. The fact that most of the movies of the genre were B pictures, largely safe from close scrutiny by Studio Heads, or were Poverty Row productions, helped to keep it flourishing through dangerous times.

Crime fiction, of all fiction genres, should always be a safe home for social criticism, especially that directed at the excesses of capitalism. This stream of literary rebellion goes back as far as Les Miserables, maybe further. Regardless of your political leanings, we should all embrace the darkness.