Tech-noir

Tech-noir (Better known as Future Noir, also called science fiction noir) is a hybrid genre of film or other works of fiction combining the film noir and science fiction or cyberpunk genres such as seen in "Blade Runner" (1982) and "The Terminator" (1984). It is a form of Neo-noir concentrating more on science fiction themes. The term was coined in "The Terminator" as the name of a nightclub, "Tech Noir." The director James Cameron wanted a name for the particular style he was invoking.

History

Precursors

Neo-noir

While it is hard to draw a line between some of the noir films of the early 1960s such as "Blast of Silence" (1961) and "Cape Fear" (1962) and the noirs of the late 1950s, new trends emerged in the post-classic era. "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962), directed by John Frankenheimer, "Shock Corridor" (1962), directed by Samuel Fuller, and "Brainstorm" (1965), directed by experienced noir character actor William Conrad, all treat the theme of mental dispossession within stylistic and tonal frameworks derived from classic film noir.

The first major film to work a new angle on noir was French director Jean-Luc Godard's "À bout de souffle" ("Breathless"; 1960), which pays its literal respects to Bogart and his crime films while brandishing a bold new style for a new day. In 1973, director Robert Altman, who had worked on "Peter Gunn", flipped off noir piety with "The Long Goodbye". Based on the novel by Raymond Chandler, it features one of Bogart's most famous characters, but in iconoclastic fashion: Philip Marlowe, the prototypical hardboiled detective, is replayed as a hapless misfit, almost laughably out of touch with contemporary mores and morality. Where Altman's subversion of the film noir mythos was so irreverent as to anger many contemporary critics, around the same time Woody Allen was paying affectionate, at points idolatrous homage to the classic mode with "Play It Again, Sam" (1972). The most acclaimed of the neo-noirs of the era was director Roman Polanski's 1974 "Chinatown", which raised noir to a black apogee.

The turn of the decade brought Scorsese's black-and-white "Raging Bull" (cowritten by Schrader); an acknowledged masterpiece—often voted the greatest film of the 1980s in critics' polls—it is also a retreat, telling a story of a boxer's moral self-destruction. From 1981, the popular "Body Heat", written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, invokes a different set of classic noir elements, this time in a humid, erotically charged Florida setting. Working generally with much smaller budgets, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have created one of the most substantial film oeuvres influenced by classic noir, with movies such as "Blood Simple" (1984) and "Fargo" (1996), considered by some a supreme work in the neo-noir mode.

Psycho-noir

Another reworking of the film noir style can be seen in 1980s and 1990s psycho-noir films. The work of David Lynch—particularly "Blue Velvet" (1986), "Lost Highway" (1996), "Mulholland Drive" (2001), and the "Twin Peaks" cycle, both TV series (1990–91) and movie, "" (1992)—shows the influence of film noir filtered through a uniquely individualistic vision. Director David Fincher followed the noir science fiction of "Alien³" (1992) and the immensely successful neo-noir "Se7en" (1995) with a film that earns much greater regard today than it did on original release, the psycho-noir "Fight Club" (1999).

cience fiction noir

Beginning in the 1960s, the most significant trend in film noir crossovers or hybrids has involved science fiction. In Jean-Luc Godard's "Alphaville" (1965), Lemmy Caution is the name of the old-school private eye in the city of tomorrow. "The Groundstar Conspiracy" (1972) centers on another implacable investigator and an amnesiac named Welles. "Soylent Green" (1973), the first major American example, portrays a dystopian, near-future world via a self-evidently noir detection plot; starring Charlton Heston (the lead in "Touch of Evil"), it also features classic noir standbys Joseph Cotten, Edward G. Robinson, and Whit Bissell. The movie was directed by Richard Fleischer, who two decades before had directed several strong B noirs, including "Armored Car Robbery" (1950) and "The Narrow Margin" (1952).

Development of tech-noir

The cynical and stylish perspective of classic film noir had a formative effect on the cyberpunk genre of science fiction that emerged in the early 1980s; the movie most directly influential on cyberpunk was "Blade Runner" (1982), directed by Ridley Scott, which pays clear and evocative homage to the classic noir mode (Scott would subsequently direct the poignant noir crime melodrama "Someone to Watch Over Me" [1987] ). Scholar Jamaluddin Bin Aziz has observed how "the shadow of Philip Marlowe lingers on" in such other "future noir" films as "Twelve Monkeys" (1995), "Dark City" (1998), and "Minority Report" (2002). [Aziz (2005), section "Future Noir and Postmodernism : The Irony Begins."] The hero is the target of investigation in "Gattaca" (1997), which fuses film noir motifs with a scenario indebted to "Brave New World". "The Thirteenth Floor" (1999), like "Blade Runner", is an explicit homage to classic noir, in this case involving speculations about virtual reality. Science fiction, noir, and animation are brought together in the Japanese films "Ghost in the Shell" (1995) and "" (2004), both directed by Mamoru Oshii, and the short "A Detective Story" (2003), set in the "Matrix" universe.

References

*cite journal|year=2003|month=January - February|title=Tech Noir|journal=Artists Using Science & Technology|volume=23|issue=2|url=http://www.ylem.org/Journal/2003Iss02vol23.pdf