Sandy Hobbs
In “Defining film noir”, Cornwell and Hobbs note that some of the list makers they surveyed propose qualifications which suggest that for them the distinction between noir and other films is not clear cut. An example is Spencer Selby’s Dark City: The Film Noir (1984). It has an appendix (pp 201-203) called “Off-Genre” and Other Film Noir. It includes films not deemed by Selby as appropriate for the main film noir list which makes up the bulk of the book. Many of the films in this appendix are presented under a genre label such as Western, War and Science Fiction, implying that membership of another genre precludes these film being regarded as part of the Noir genre. It may also be assumed that Selby considers the films in the appendix have some features in common with those films he regards as true films noirs.
Under the genre label Horror, Selby includes only one named film, The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), but he also refers to “The Val Lewton Films 1942-46”. What do Lewton’s “Horror” films have in common with Film Noir? What about them leads Selby to exclude them from his main noir list?
Lewton produced eleven films at RKO between 1942 and 1946. Nine of these are generally treated as in the Horror genre. (The others are Mademoiselle Fifi and Youth Runs Wild.) The following account of the Lewton Horror Nine subjects them to the same analyses as employed in considering films noirs elsewhere on this website.
Cornwell and Hobbs suggested that the defining characteristics of American Film Noir might be found by comparing films widely identified as Noir with films of the same era which were not. In their conference paper Defining film noir 2 (data summarized in “Noir and Non Noir” on this website), they compared 42 noir films available to them with 42 other American films of the same era. This involved considering five aspects of the films: tense opening, voice-over, colour, adapted from a novel and set in contemporary urban America. It was this last which most clearly distinguished the Noir and Non-Noir samples. It was the case in 32 noirs (76 Percent) as opposed to 14 (33 Percent) in the others. Noir films were marginally more likely to be adapted from a novel (21 compared to 15) and have a tense opening (28 compared to 19). Noir were less likely to have an early voice-over narrative (9 compared to 15). Colour was also not a particularly strong distinguishing feature (none of the Noir sample were in colour but only 9 of the comparison group employed colour).
Considering the distinguishing features of noir films as they apply to the Lewton “Horror” films, namely Black and White (100 Percent) and set in Contemporary Urban America (76 Percent), we find the following. Only 2 of the 9 were set primarily in contemporary urban America. Like Noirs films, all Lewton Horrors are in black and white but this hardly distinguishes then from other Hollywood movies of the period.
Hobbs and Main’s Protagonist Report 1 (on this website) proposes an approach to analyzing film narrative. This focuses on establishing which character is the principal protagonist (PP). This may be most clearly seen where a character narrates in voice over. Another clear indication is where the narrative begins with a character arriving at a location and ends with that character leaving. Adopting this approach, they found that the PP in most film noir in their sample were adult male Americans.
Applying the same approach to analyzing Lewton’s Horror films, we found the results summarized in Table 1.
Table 1: Principal Protagonists in Lewton Horror Films
| Film | PP Actor | PP gender/social role |
|---|---|---|
| Cat People | Kent Smith | M US draughtsman |
| I walked With a Zombie | Frances Dee | F Canadian nurse |
| Leopard Man | Dennis O’Keefe | M US publicist |
| Seventh Victim | Kim Hunter | F US teacher |
| Ghost Ship | Russell Wade | M US 3rd officer |
| Curs of the Cat People | Ann Carter | F US child |
| Isle of the Dead | Marc Cramer | M US journalist |
| Body Snatcher | Russell Wade | M Scottish doctor |
| Bedlam | Anna Lee | F English “lady” |
In five of these nine films the PP is male, a common characteristic of FN.
In none of the characteristics examined do we find strong reasons why these films might call up the description “film noir’. The clearest FN characteristic noted in these analyses is the male PP in contemporary urban America. This is not a distinctive feature of the Lewton sample. Like the FN movies, Lewton Horror are all shot in black and white. It may be that a more detailed examination of the visual style might show up similarities between FN and Lewton Horror.
Perhaps Selby was influenced by aspects of noir films not included in the analyses we have undertaken. These might include other aspects of the narrative and aspects of the cinematography.
Another question which needs to be raised is why these Lewton films are labelled “Horror”. If it is because characters are shown being subjected to extreme threat, that might not distinguish them from FN. The same might be true of the depiction of psychological abnormality. The role of the supernatural in horror films might distinguish them from FN. All this must be speculative without clearer evidence of how the label “horror” comes to by applied to films. What do Lewton’s films have in common with the earlier films made by Universal?
My impression is that the label “Horror”, like “Noir”, is not employed according to a precise definition. For a time, the British Board of Film Censors had a category “Horror”. which I think was used very loosely before being abandoned in favour of “X”. It might be illuminating to explore which films were first labeled `horror’, and in what circumstances. Was the term used in normal film reviews or did it emerge in campaigns aimed at censoring some films?