I have to admit, the huge film nerd in me gave a squeal of delight when I saw that this week’s topic was film noir. There’s not much I like more than a good mystery, and I’ve been in a huge noir phase lately. Seriously, just ask my friends—it’s gotten to the point where they’ll say, “You’ll like it. Somebody gets shot.” I’m not crazy, I swear! I just find pretty much everything about the noir genre fascinating. The overarching mystery, the antihero who tries to pull everything together, the femme fatale, the cast of generally terrible people they meet along the way…I love it all! As such, my favorite TV show has quickly become Breaking Bad, which owes almost its entire premise to film noir, and one of my all-time favorite movies is Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, which is considered to be one of the greatest neo-noir titles ever made. So naturally, I’m pretty excited to be writing about film noir this week!
To me, one of the most interesting aspects of film noir is the almost constant presence of darkness—after all, noir is French for black. I really like the way the Night World article says, “New York at night is more nocturnal than any other place onscreen”. This definitely holds true for Christ in Concrete. Director Edward Dmytryk wastes no time delving into the darkness of New York, as the very first scene after the establishing shots takes place in the dead of the night. The contrast between these two scenes—the first one panning around New York City in the day versus the spooky deserted alley at night and ominous backlit apartment—sets the tone perfectly for the noir mood of the film, mainly that things by day are not how they appear to be at night. Another scene that especially holds true to this theme is when Annunziata tells Geremio not to work late and come home for his birthday. He does come home, but by the time he staggers home it’s late at night and he’s very drunk, and he breaks down the door to slap the fed-up Annunziata. In other words, Annunziata wanting Geremio to come home seemed like a decent idea by day, but by night her plan had gone horribly wrong. Like I said, this idea of night vs. day is one of my favorite aspects of film noir, because I feel like I never know what craziness could possibly happen next.
