Film Noir, American Workers, and Postwar Hollywood (review)

Daniel Broe explores the film noir crime and suspense story in the mid-twentieth century, focusing not exclusively on cinematographic analysis but instead discussing the plots in light of contemporary politics as a reflection on the worker within society at a given moment in time. In a brief preface, Boer notes that the book began in the Clinton-era 1990s as an examination of what seemed like a distant past—until with 9/11 he found that "we are again in an undeclared war, the war on terror, where in an even more concerted way than in the previous cold war, we are constantly reminded that this unseen, unknowable menace can strike at any moment." (xi) There is no clear dividing line between past and present. Instead, public fear recurs periodically taking on new names, the invisible threat having currently passed from the communist to the terrorist.

Broe's book is an intriguing interdisciplinary approach to the social sciences and the humanities. Labor unrest, Great Depression, World War II, and HUAC certainly were significant moments in U.S. history, which makes it all too plausible that they would be reflected—more or less directly—in a public media meant to entertain the paying masses. Broe suggests, "the film noir tough-guy language, which is often read as simply the protagonist's cynicism, is explicitly presented as a contesting the integrity of a working-class position when confronted with the raw power of an opposing class." [69] Then again, "Just as the empire Western […] positioned the spectator behind the barrel of a rifle firing at the Native American (and metaphorically taking aim at the budding anticolonial movements) […], so too the crime film positioned its viewer behind the wheel of the squad car responding to an all-points bulletin in a working-class neighborhood." [87-8]

Broe discovers different successive phases of Film Noir up to the high point of the McCarthy Era and subsequently follows the Neo-Noir through the 1980s and 1990s to the Bush II administration. Depending on the general sentiment (such as moments when the public sentiment shifted to a climate of public paranoia, as was the case at the onset of the Cold War), protagonists in the Film Noir would shift from sympathy-inspiring fugitives to hard-boiled law enforcers, thus shifting from a questioning law-enforcement to almost giving it a cart-blanche. Broe's wry conclusion for the post 9/11 film: "Be afraid, be very afraid, and never ask why." [125]

Broe structures his concise book into five main chapters: the Home Front detective as dissident lawman (-or, politically correct, -woman) followed by two chapters entitled Noir Part I and Noir Part II, of which the first deals with socialism, and the second with "Fugitive Kinds." The fourth chapter explores McCarthyite crime films. The final chapter is devoted to Neo-Noirers. In an appendix starting on page 129, Broe lists crime films for each of the Noir periods that he defined. The chapters typically start out with a few remarks as to historical context followed by examples including more or less detailed plot synopses. In discussing Neo-Noirers, Broe includes Errol Morris' 1988 The Thin Blue Line, which is actually a documentary tracing the story of a man on death row who was innocently convicted of murder; as all of Morris' films, it is a sophistical art work in itself far removed from traditional fact-recounting documentaries.

Due to its brevity, the book can necessarily be but a glimpse, reminding us of a more and more widespread practice in U.S. academia of publishing in book-format what should have been brilliant but concise articles. As they say: I am writing you a long letter because I did not have the time to write a short one. Broe's book also points to another problem of the American academe: the tendency introspectively to focus on national U.S. historiography without regard for the outside world. Film Noir, as the French name suggests...