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Wednesday, September 4th, 2024 1:32 AM

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Inconsistent Usage of the Film Noir Genre Tag

So even before the new genres were added IMDb had Film Noir called out as a separate genre tag; I agree it should be called out as a separate genre; however, I have not seen it applied consistently.

To start at the top, there is no precise definition for Film Noir though most would agree that stylized crime dramas shot in low-key black and white in the 1940s and 1950s qualify as "classic" Film Noir. The Wikipedia article for Film Noir gives a pretty thorough overview of what comprises the genre and its key characteristics (1: link at bottom). Generally "classic" Film Noir does not extend before 1940 though many films from the 1930s - commonly cited examples being City Streets, Scarface, and You Only Live Once - are considered "Proto-Noir" or "Pre-Noir" (2) as they have many of the characteristics of the films considered classic Film Noir in the 1940s and 1950s, they just happen to fall outside that time period.

On IMDb, the Film Noir genre tag has been applied to many of these "Proto-Noir" or "Pre-Noir" films such as Scarface (1932), City Streets (1931), You Only Live Once (1937), The Roaring Twenties (1939), and Dead End (1937). More questionable films tagged as "Film Noir" include The Docks of New York (1928), Shanghai Express (1932), and Island of Lost Souls (1932). To start, films pre-1940 tagged as Film Noir could probably use a cleanup to determine if the tag is really appropriate.

The broader topic I wanted to discuss however, was that there are currently no Film Noir tags applied to films made after The Restless Years which was made in 1958 (3). This excludes the entirety of what would be classified as Neo-Noir for which there is a whole separate Wikipedia article (4) with well know examples including The Long Goodbye (1973), Chinatown (1974) and Taxi Driver (1976). None of these films include genre tags for Film Noir or Neo-Noir. Applying the same logic, we would (and do) also preclude sub-genres like "Tech Noir" (perhaps more commonly called Cyberpunk, which is now a secondary genre) which includes films like Blade Runner (1982) and the Matrix (1999).

The crux of the argument is this. If the Film Noir tag is applicable to films made before the 1940s why is the same not the case for films made after the 1950s? There is no hard cut off for when the "classic" Film Noir period ended, though most sources cite around the turn of the decade.

With the above context, I must ask what exactly is the criteria for Film Noir on IMDb? The official genre page (5) mentions it as a "subgenre [that] emerged in the 1940s and 1950s"  which would seem to exclude films tagged in the 1930s and even the 1920s.

If we are going to tag films from those decades as Film Noir, then films from subsequent decades (1960s, 1970s, etc.) should also be included. If the argument is that a film must be in black and white to be considered Film Noir, there is still inconsistency. Many of the films commonly cited as Neo-Noir from the 1960s (and even later) are shot in black and white, examples including the following: Cape Fear (1962), Shock Corridor (1963), The Naked Kiss (1964), and In Cold Blood (1967).

In short, there is no consistency in what is, and is not tagged as Film Noir on IMDb and the genre tag probably needs to have a closer look taken at it to decide what films it applies to and which films do not. Criteria like the following:

I. Does Film Noir apply to films made outside of 1940-1958 (currently it does, but only before 1940)

2. Does Film Noir only apply to films shot in black and white? (some color films from the 1940s and 1950s, like Leave Her to Heaven [1945] and Niagara [1953] are currently tagged as Film Noir)

3. Can a film made outside of the US/UK be considered Film Noir? I haven't really touched on this one because I feel like a general consensus needs to be developed around the first two questions before we open Pandora's Box too wide. Just for reference, currently films like Stray Dog (1949), Port of Shadows (1938), and Cairo Station (1958) are not tagged as Film Noir

This question has been irking me for a while (as you can probably tell given the volume of text I've vomited out) and I'm hoping this can help get the ball rolling if enough people see it to clean up the genre tag. Most other tags (Adventure, Western, Thriller, etc.) are applied pretty consistently, leaving this one the odd one out in a lot of respects.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir

(2) For description of City Streets as "proto-noir", see Turan (2008). For description of Fury as "proto-noir", see Machura, Stefan, and Peter Robson, Law and Film (2001), p. 13. For description of You Only Live Once as "pre-noir", see Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 9.

(3) https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=feature,tv_movie,tv_special,video&interests=in0000054&sort=release_date,desc

(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-noir

(5) https://www.imdb.com/interest/in0000054/?ref_=tt_gr

Employee

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1 month ago

@Musashi2020 Thanks for the comments.  This is all a little bit complicated as we know you can see.  We are not ready to make any changes to the noir Interests at this time as the Interests feature is still under development. We agree that neo-noir is a good candidate for a future Interest and its creation would address some of your points. 

The current definition we use for Film Noir is mostly inspired by an early 90s edition of The Encyclopedia of Film Noir which does include movies from the late 1920s and runs through to the last 1950s.  It covers largely US films and definitely only English language titles. It suffers from some omissions due to the availability of information at the time, so our listing go beyond the titles contained in the book.  The book does include a rare few colour movies; notably on the basis that films like Leave Her to Heaven are so deeply noir that it is almost sacrilege to watch them in colour.  I first saw LHtH and Niagara on a black and white TV in the early 1980s and I was surprised to later learn that they were shot in colour :-). The book also lists a good number of movies which are British, either by production funding or location shooting, however, almost all feature US cast members and/or are made by US directors/writers/producers. I am travelling at the moment so I do not have my copy of the book to hand to write too much more here from memory.  I am IMDb’s resident film noir fan though. 

We already use keywords for non-English brands of noir, and in the long-term such keywords might be best converted to Interests if sufficient titles exist, for example, french-noir, british-noir, spanish-noir, and japanese-noir.

Hope this helps. 

Champion

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1 month ago