Really a Film-Noir?

I'm watching this on my computer and occasionally stop the film and read about it. In this thread, you discuss whether or not (or to what extent) Ace in the Hole is a Film Noir. It certainly has elements. Some people don't like to call a movie film noir if it only has elements of noir in it, so you'll hear people say that The Big Sleep is not a film noir.

One thing about AITH is that it contains so many comedy elements that at times it has the feel of a classic Hollywood comedy. This is a Billy Wilder move, so that shouldn't come as a shock to anyone.

Somebody asked what those elements are. I'll name a few:

There's the couple that is first to arrive after the story has broken in the papers. Most of what they say and do is meant as comic relief or simply comedy. There's even the sound effect when the husband tries to fit the shade to the camper.

There's the stupid and arrogant sheriff who makes me think of a lighter version of Buford T. Justice. And there is the rescue foreman who talks and talks without answering the question of when they'll be finished.

At the beginning, there is an almost screwball comedy atmosphere in the office.

And there is more to come.

Considering film noir was a retrospective label applied to these films in the 1950s and 1960s, rather than a label that was in the minds of the filmmakers when they made them, it's hard to pin down the exact characteristics of films noirs. For some people, Citizen Kane is a film noir; for others, it isn't, even though it shares many of the characteristics of the noir pictures.

Most of the makers of what later came to be called films noirs, considered their films to be melodramas. In that sense, Ace in the Hole fits the bill perfectly: it's a melodrama with a very bleak outlook on human behaviour. Films noirs don't have to deal exclusively with crime or detectives - that's a very reductive definition of the film noir type (I hesitate to say 'genre', because noir arguably isn't a genre) of the kind that you find in lazy journalism - they simply offer a view of the darker side of humanity (greed, exploitation, etc), often with the use of visual techniques derived from both German Expressionism and the documentary-like techniques and perspective associated with Neo-Realism.

'What does it matter what you say about people?'
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958).

Of course this is film noir. It's one of the blackest movies ever made!

Same goes for Sweet Smell of Success. No murder, detectives, or guns in that movie at all...but it's darker than anything you've ever seen.

... it's a film noir because it is a morality play set in (then) contemporary times, about a character who gives in to his temptations due to "ideals" that blind him to what is right. His character flaws lead to deadly consequences. Love is shown to be a predatory concept, one where poor shmucks love people who hate them and who can only be attracted to villains. These are very much themes in film noir.

Kirk murders leo, so yeah...Noir.

I know this is an old post and an old debate, but I'm of the opinion that Film Noir is a 'style' rather than a 'genre'.

So, to me, if it looks like a duck and talks like a duck... you know the rest.




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