Readings and Readings About Noir
I read the following four stories about Noir:
This is the story of a criminal investigator who become so involved with a crime that she mimics the victim as her fantasy. This disturbing, sinister story not only is dark it includes many components of noir, murder, sex, alcohol, crime solving, and mystery. The alcoholic detective has a love interest with multiple guys at different stages, and for some reason pulls confidence out of changing her appearance to imitate a murder victim Annabelle Clark. This is just an odd story.
- The Postman Always Rings Twice by: James M. Cain
In this story the idea of Noir is prevalent. Femme fatale character, Cara, is involved with a bum Frank who both plot to kill her husband Nick. Each character seems to be somewhat of a con artist and sinister. Within this story there is plenty of deception, death and irony. The irony being both Cara and Nick dying in a car accident, both in the name of love.
In this story noir is seen straight from the beginning, the wording “bright boy,” “ought,” “nigger” give an old time feel when people actually talked in this manner. On the third page murder and killing is already brought up immediately throwing us into the noir theme, on this page there is also a cartoon of men at a bar with hats and trench coat fitting into the noir theme. Though the hit men don’t kill Anderson, they do tie up Nick and Sam, the fact that there was hired hit men in black trench coats couldn’t be anymore noir.
If not obvious from the title The Shadow, noir is seen in this story in that there is this mysterious man who acts as a somewhat vigilante for the town they are located at. In this specific episode there is a lot of deception involved between the Dubrille, Martin, and Evan. In a twist Martin planned to kill Evan and Dubrille and blame it on Corvet though The Shadow knew of Corvet’s death and allowed the fighting to continue. Sadly Shadow and Dr. Evan are the only two who seem to be honest people in the story.
Caps: All these reading had in common was that there was a murder or attempted murder, each revolving around the theme of death and darkness. Bring my to conclude that death and darkness play great parts in the concept of noir. Each story also included small components of noir such as mysterious strangers, alcohol, sex, and plenty of deception.