Rita Hayworth in *Gilda* (1946), Sidney Poitier and Mildred Joanne Smith in *No Way Out* (1950), Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in *Double Indemnity* (1944), and Humphrey Bogart in *The Maltese Falcon* (1941). Background photo: Donald Edgar / Unsplash.

‘Tis the season for Sam Spade, dimly lit alleyways, rotten dames and the blues.

Emily Dickinson once wrote in a letter that “November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”

To be honest, I haven’t really read Dickinson (I read the internet) but a piece in the Paris Review by Sadie Stein nearly a decade ago wondered “What did Norway convey to Dickinson, who had never left New England? A bleaker, more romantic version of the same? […] But however she intended it, it’s so evocative.”

Well, it’s November in Norway. The sun is setting by 4:30pm, I still haven’t bought my seasonal supplements (placebo?), and the sadness is coming in full force. November has always felt like that month that just sat between the shenanigans of Halloween and the holiday season, a sort of unwelcome but necessary existential stopgap. Instead of a crisp crunch every time you tread over fallen leaves, they’ve become a mush of sorts, an oatmeal of orange, yellow and brown. Squelch, squelch, squelch.

The melancholy this time of year is inescapable, but as I pour Baileys into my nightly hot chocolate, I can’t but wonder if there’s a kind of beauty to the blues. With an inclination towards constantly setting a certain mood, the art I ingest becomes more and more curated. I begin listening to more Miles Davis than I usually do, relishing the walk home at night as if I’m Jeanne Moreau in Elevator to the Gallows. I keep a pack of cigarettes on my desk that I bought in Barcelona just for the “vibe”. I start ordering an Old Fashioned at the bars I frequent, as if slowly sipping on the mix of whiskey and bitters will give me an air of mystery. And I get an email from Criterion that it’s finally November Noir.

“Shadowy atmosphere, seedy characters, pulp philosophy, and cynicism as thick as smoke: there’s nothing like film noir.”

Every year, the Criterion Channel unveils their November Noir streaming picks, a collection of both the creme de la creme and hidden gems (and at least several people on Letterboxd complain about the absence of Double Indemnity or The Big Heat). The film noir has become the mood of the month, and not just because of its alliterative suitability. Its potency hits a peak when the days get dark fast and there’s a slight nip in the air. So what exactly is film noir?

Legendary director and screenwriter Paul Schrader, who we have to thank for Taxi Driver and American Gigolo (both films that have noir traits), published Notes on Film Noir in 1972 which offered a thorough overview and description of the films that necessitated this categorization. In this seminal piece, Schrader writes that “the new mood of cynicism, pessimism and darkness which had crept in American cinema” by the mid-40s was not a genre, but instead a period of filmmaking defined “by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood”.

Schrader’s noir extends from 1941’s The Maltese Falcon to 1958’s Touch of Evil, yet he argues that all major Hollywood films of this era have “some noir elements.” It’s a cinema defined by a sense of disillusion felt across the United States post-WWII, artistically inspired by the hordes of German artists who sought refuge in the country and a long-standing tradition of “hard-boiled” writing (think a tough and cynical [anti]hero with a romantic interior).

“The over-riding noir theme: a passion for the past and present, but also a fear of the future. The noir hero dreads to look ahead, but instead tries to survive the day, and if unsuccessful at that, he retreats to the past. Thus film noir’s technique’s emphasize loss, nostalgia, lack of clear priorities, insecurity; then submerge these self-doubts in mannerisms and style. In such a world style becomes paramount; it is all that separates one from meaninglessness”

Usually keeping with stories contemporary to their production, be they centered on a specific social problem or crime, some academics have argued that noir extends beyond its original timeline in the 1940s and 1950s. Farran Smith Nehme’s piece on what she calls “gaslight noir” looks at the moodiness and paranoia, featured in films such as Gaslight and Hangover Square, that take place in the flicker of the wick in Victorian and Edwardian era set films. Following noir’s hey-day, the latter half of the 20th century saw a flurry of stylistic homages in Blade Runner and Chinatown.

A Style for the Bitter Romantic

For me, much of the noir’s appeal this time of year stems from a need to self-mythologize when the going gets tough. As Schrader writes, “there is a love of romantic narration […] [which] creates a mood of temps perdu: an irretrievable past, a predetermined fate and an all-encompassing hopelessness.” You could ask “well why aren’t you interested in watching Scandinavian Noir while in Scandinavia?” And to that I say: it’s not its time of year yet. Scandinavian Noir, with its cold calculated bleakness, suits the deep winter months of sub-zero temperatures and Marius sweaters.

Classic noir belongs in the unease of November, its iconography steeped in lights reflecting off freshly soaked streets, trench coats and a sense of in-betweeness. In between the warmth and cold. In between the holiday seasons. It evokes a sentimentality wrapped up in bitter jadedness, an icy exterior that only melts part way. So why not embrace the cynicism of a failed cuffing season, the melancholy of solitude and a worthy distraction from oncoming exams?

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of