Film Noir Production

11Noir’s Rebirth and Neo-Noir

“You can’t bluff someone who’s not paying attention.”

(House of Games)

Noir’s Rebirth

As film noir became more and more a product of the ultra low-budget Poverty Row companies in the latter 1950s, the stories became more brutal and fatalistic. The female characters became more and more dependent on the male characters, displayed most clearly in the Mike Hammer PI films. Female empowerment was served a severe setback and noir was corrupted into more of a sensationalist crime film, rather than a character-driven story of mystery. Many film scholars have said that Orson Welles’ 1958 movie Touch of Evil, written by Welles and based on the book Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson, marked the end of film noir. Perhaps this ...