11. For a discussion of the Americanization of French culture in general during this period, see Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Decolonization, and the Reordering of French Society (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995).
12. For recent books on these films in English, see Edward Byron Turk, Child of Paradise: Marcel Carne and the Golden Age of French Cinema (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); Alan Williams, Republic of Images: A History of French Filmmaking (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); and Dudley Andrew, Mists of Regret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995). For an amusing discussion of 'noir-like' aspects of French movies in the 1930s, see Manohla Dargis, 'Cool Chats,' The Village Voice, 6 July 1993: 50. The importance of noir in France both before and after the war has also been suggested in two essays by Ginette Vincendeau: 'France 19451965 and Hollywood: The Policier as Inter-national Text,' Screen 33, no. 1 (spring 1992): 5080; and ''Noir Is Also a French Word: The French Antecedents of Film Noir,' in The Book of Film Noir, ed. Ian Cameron (New York: Continuum, 1993), 4958.
13. Charles O'Brien, 'Film Noir in France: Before the Liberation,' Iris 21 (spring 1996): 720. Of course the term noir has an even older history; it describes the roman noir, or gothic novel, and in French literary criticism it suggests the decadent tendencies of late romanticism.
14. The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that The Maltese Falcon was 'worthy to stand with the English-made mysteries of Al fred Hitchcock' (25 October 1941), and The New York Times described John Huston as 'a coming American match for Alfred Hitchcock' (12 October 1941). Time magazine compared Falcon with films by Hitchcock and Carol Reed (20 October 1941). Wilder's statement is quoted from The Los Angeles Times (6 August 1944).
15. The omission of Germany is not surprising, given the historical circumstances.
The French 'rediscovery' of German cinema began in the 1950s and was stimulated by the French publication of Lotte Eisner's work on expressionism. See Thomas Elsaesser, 'A German Ancestry to Film Noir? Film History and Its lmaginary,' Iris 21 (spring 1996): 12943. In the mid 1940s, the French also failed to mention that the vogue for James M. Cain had started outside America: The Postman Always Rings Twice was adapted by the French themselves in 1939, and by the Italians in 1943. Among the British films that could have been discussed alongside the new Hollywood thrillers was Hotel Reserve (1944), which was based on an Eric Ambler novel. Directed by Lance Comfort, with James Mason and Herbert Lom in featured roles, this picture looks quite noirish in retrospect.
16. Nino Frank, 'Un nouveau genre 'policier': L'aventure criminelle,' L'ecran francais 61 (28 August 1946): 14; my translation. Hereafter, this work is cited parenthetically in the text. Frank mentions Hitchcock's Suspicion but only to note that he finds it an 'absolute failure,' unworthy of comparison with Double Indemnity.
17. Jean-Pierre Chattier, 'Les Americains aussi font des films noirs,' Revue du cinema 2 (1946): 67; my translation. Hereafter, this work is cited parenthetically in the text.
18. One exception was Sigfried Kracauer, 'Hollywood's Terror Films: Do They Reflect an American State of Mind?' Commentary (August 1946): 13236. Kracauer had recently completed From Caligari to Hitler, and he used the same arguments to discuss American 'terror films,' including Shadow of a Doubt, The Stranger, The Dark Corner, The Spiral Staircase, and The Lost Weekend. His essay is discussed in Telotte, Voices in the Dark, 45, and in Edward Dimendberg. 'Film Noir and Urban Space,'' Ph.D. diss., University of California Santa Cruz, 1992, 11663.
19. Andre Bazin, 'Six Characters in Search of Auteurs,' in Cahiers du Cinema: The 1950s, ed. Jim Hillier, trans. Liz Heron (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 37. Hereafter, Bazin's essay in Hillier's anthology is cited parenthetically in the text.
20. For information on Duhamel's involvement with surrealism, see Marcel Jean, ed., The Autobiography of Surrealism (New York: Viking Press, 1980). See also Jose Pierre, ed., Investigating Sex: Surrealist Discussions, 19281932, trans. Malcom Imrie (London: Verso, 1992).
21. Both the plots and the dialogue created confusion, and this confusion was not always to the liking of American reviewers. In The New Republic (24 August 1944), Manny Farber said that Double Indemnity was 'the most incomprehensible film in years.' He praised it for being 'less repressed than usual,' but he disliked the incessant talk: 'I think you could get at the Underlying Thread of this film the same as you could in The Maltese Falconby being allowed to take the dialogue home with you to study at length.'
22. Louis Aragon, 'On Decor,' in The Shadow and Its Shadow: Surrealist Writings on Cinema, ed. Paul Hammond (London: BFI, 1978), 29. I am indebted to Hammond's introduction to this volume, which provides an excellent commentary on surrealist film criticism.
23. Silver and Ward, Film Noir, 372. Among the other French writers who might be mentioned in this context is Gerard Legrand, a member of the surrealist movement, who wrote extensively on noir for Positif.
24. Marcel Duhamel, preface to Borde and Chaumeton, Panorama du film noir americain, vii; my translation. Hereafter, Borde and Chaumeton's work is cited parenthetically in the text. Duhamel alludes to several unnamed gangster films starring George O'Brien, and to William Wellman's Chinatown Nights. The Wellman film, however, was not released until 1929.
25. In the postscript to Panorama du film noir americain, Borde and Chaumeton also dicuss the James Bond movies. Notice that the first James Bond film, Dr. No, makes the protagonist seem rather like a cold-blooded killer and borrows several ideas from Fritz Lang's Mabuse pictures of the 1920s and 1930s. The second film, From Russia with Love, is vaguely indebted to the Orient Express thrillers of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene, which are strongly associated with noir.
26. Untranslated, the text reads, 'onirique, insolite, erotique, ambivalent, et cruel.' I have translated insolite as 'bizarre,' but there is no good English equivalent. It connotes the gothic, somewhat like the Freudian unheimlich, but with a more shocking or horrific effect. Judging from its frequency, insolite is the most important adjective in the Panorama.
27. For a brilliant discussion of Julliette, see Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman (New York: Pantheon, 1979). Carter points out that in contrast with Sade's Justine, who is derived from the virginal heroines of the sentimental novel, Julliette appropriates the values of patriarchy and uses them for her own ends. In one sense a radical, she is also a figment of the male imagination and a product of the system she exploits. Her most obvious representation in recent cinema is the antiheroine of John Dahl's The Last Seduction (1994), who uses all the men in her path and rides off victorious, in the back seat of a chauffeur-driven limousine.
28. Compare Sharon Stone's comments to a reporter about the role she played in Basic Instinct (1992): 'I never thought the character really cared about sex at all. That's why it was so easy for her to use her sexualityit had no value.' Parade Magazine (30 January 1994): 10.
29. Rebecca West quoted in Roy Hoopes, Cain: The Biography of James M. Cain (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), xiii. Hereafter, Hoopes's work is cited parenthetically in the text.
30. Hence the French treated Hollywood as if it were filled with primitives, unburdened by European sophistication. Godard, for example, argued that 'the Americans, who are much more stupid when it comes to analysis, . . . have a gift for the kind of simplicity which brings depth. . . . The Americans are real and natural' (quoted in Hillier, Cahiers du Cinema, 8).
31. Andre Gide quoted by Diane Johnson, Dashiell Hammett: A Life (New York: Random House, 1983), 322 n. 7. See also Perry Miller, 'Europe's Faith in American Fiction,' Atlantic Monthly (December 1951): 5056.
