MovieChat Forums > Track of the Cat (1954) Discussion > How many fans think this Western is an e...

How many fans think this Western is an example of Film Noir?


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“Genres may appear to be bound by systems of rules, but an individual genre movie inevitably transgresses those rules in differentiating itself from other movies in the same genre. The rules of a genre are thus not so much a body of textual conventions as a set of expectations shared by audiences and producers alike.” Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction, p. 109

I think the film is mainly a Western, though a very interesting and unusual one.

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I really think that it's a bad idea to try to spread a definition so far that it becomes meaningless. "Chair" is a useful word because it defines something quite specific, however varied a chair can be. PART of the definition of "chair" is "an object to sit on" but if we started to call couches, beds, crates, trunks etc "chairs" just because we can also sit on them then the word would lose its usefulness.
Just because a film might have some darkness, some obsession etc, doesn't make it a film noir.
Track of the Cat has so little in common with what would normally be considered film noir that I can't even understand how the question even occurred to you.


Track of the Cat is barely a Western, it may have the setting but it doesn't have many of the usual characteristics of a Western. It's really closer to a Man vs. Beast story like Moby Dick, or Jaws (and lots of horror films), crossed with a heavy dose of family psychodrama.

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I agree with John-367 that it is more a family psychodrama than a western. Noir I don't know. No fancy shadows and gloomily looking from under hats in this one. Mitchum striking a match under a bush hiding for the storm is laughable (but not meant to be comedy).

with [cheese]

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I think John-367 has the right idea. Track of the Cat is like something that Herman Melville, Jack London and Eugene O'Neill might have collaborated on if they had all ended up in Hollywood.

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and that's what makes it great!




Key to winning baseball games? Pitching, fundamentals, and three run homers.-Earl Weaver

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Sheila Beers
I agree that it is. The mostly black and white set adds to the suspense and emphasizes the symbolic struggle of good and evil.

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Not remotely film noir. It lacks the gritty urban environment, the pervasive amorality, and the existential ending. Simply being depressing and morose doesn't qualify every black-and-white picture as film noir. Nor does filling a film with neurotic characters constantly yelling at each other.

See "Rififi," "The Killing," and "Elevator to the Gallows" for archetypes. "The Asphalt Jungle" qualifies too, even though the producers felt they had to insert a sappy police captain to show that righteous elements were still protecting society. Video stores tend to toss every black-and-white crime picture into a "film noir" section, but in fact, not all that many movies qualify as true film noir.

Real film noir is also not a pretentious filmed play, like this bomb whose author centers on a Keats sonnet for his intellectual bona fides and then shows that he has no idea what it's about. (Keats did not fear ceasing to be; he was afraid only that he would not have time to put his poems down on paper before he died, and that he would not see his love again.)

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Me!

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I agree that this film, when all is said and done comes across as a pretentious filmed play. What were they thinking?

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