James M. Cain, who wrote the novels, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Mildred Pierce, said in 1946 that the changes seen in Hollywood movies like Double Indemnity (1944):
“ [have] …nothing to do with the war [or any] … of that bunk… it’s just that producers have got hep to the fact that plenty of real crime takes place every day and that makes it a good movie. The public is fed up with the old-fashioned melodramatic type of hokum. You know, the whodunit at which the audience after the second reel starts shouting, “We know the murderer. It’s the butler. It’s the butler. It’s the butler.”
From Alain Silver and James Ursini (ed), Film Noir Reader 2, pp 12-13
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Hi! “Antonio” Tony D’Ambra,
That could have a “ring” (no pun intended, (“Postman Always Rings Twice”) I would think more than a “ring”) of truth to it!…[What writer James M. Cain, said in 1946… about why producers decided to “turn” out films based on “crime stories”]
Because after all his (James M. Cain’s) novel “Double Indemity” was probably based on one of the most notorious crimes during that century that of real life husband killer/for insurance money… “Ruth (Brown) Snyder in 1927.”
dcd4e
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Cain’s great books, made into films during the war, had nothing to do with the war because he wrote them before the war, but it’s a stretch to think that the war had nothing to do with Hollywood’s willingness to adapt them as mainstream movies.
The whole world went noir in 1939, and the darkness hit America head-on in 1941, and it would have been strange indeed if Hollywood movies HADN’T reflected the new realities in distinct new ways. Hollywood looked backwards to the dark fiction of the 30s, like Cain’s, and forward to the atomic-era crime thriller. It might have pleased Cain to think that it was solely a matter of his personal style finally being recognized as commercial by Hollywood, but it makes no sense to divorce the new bleak mood of Hollywood thrillers from the greatest global catastrophe in human history.
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Thanks Dark City Dame and Lloyd for your comments.
I deliberately didn’t add my own commentary as my views on this are pretty clear, and I also wanted to leave readers to make their own judgement.
While Cain had some ‘authority’ to speak on the subject, perhaps in 1946 he was too close to it all, and frankly, I find his reasoning surprisingly simplistic.
Lloyd and I have our differences on this score, but I think he is essentially right in his comments and Cain’s reasoning is off-base.
Thanks again to both of you for enriching this post.
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“The Film Noir Style was born out of an era of an uncertain future when the world was running amok with fascism in Europe and Asia, war or the rumors of war, and new technology that brought the word “Atomic” into every-man’s daily language. The thread of nuclear annihilation was coupled with the fact that men had been replaced at the work-place by the women they went to war to defend, and the “Red Menace” of communism became the modern equivalent of the Salem Witch-Hunts from the 1690’s…” Writer R.Fisk
Oh! don’t get me wrong!…Like writer Ren Fisk, I think that the “war” (in the 1940s) coupled with the threat of “nuclear annihilation” (in the 1950s) played a “major” role in Hollywood producing films with what we know today as that Film Noir Style too!
J.M. Cain said,“ [have] …nothing to do with the war [or any] … of that bunk…”
Granted author James M. Cain, maybe?!? correct to a “certain extent,” (and believe me, I am “stretching” the words “certain extent” and “completely”) but I don’t think “completely” when he said, Hollywood producers, were influenced only by “crime” in the daily newspapers and there was “no connection” what so ever with what was occurring during the 1940s and 1950s in Europe and America.”
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Thanks DCD and for the great Fisk quote. This is what makes film noir so interesting: there is no fixed view as to its origins and its popularity with post-war audiences. Though we can all agree that the war and post-war anxiety did influence film-making during the period.
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