The Film Noir Passport: From German Expressionism to Cleveland

"Your future is all used up." Marlene Dietrich, Touch of Evil

German Expressionism fueled Film Noir. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, with its distorted shapes, exaggerated sets and extreme shadows, set that tone of something not quite right lurking in the background, ready to take center stage. With each scene the uncomfortable viewer knew one thing: a crime will be committed.

There's a murder. There's a kidnapping. There's a master. There's a pawn. There's a narrator. There's a surprise twist ending. Nothing is what it seems.

That was 1920. The world had just seen its great war. And while German Expressionism began prior to the massive destruction, how could the film medium ever return to something naive?

It took another world war for America to give birth to Film Noir. The timing of things certainly didn't hurt - the horror of WWI fueled the darkness of 1930's pulp fiction and then talented filmmakers and actors fled Europe to America, bringing both the craft and the monstrosity to the big screen. Just as jazz, America's first major cultural contribution to the world, was first embraced by the French, so was Noir. They got it.

Noir showcased the urban landscape, often shot at night. This was in full contrast with the brightly lit Westerns, shot on sets with their faux rural pastures and American idealism. While the cowboy was the American son, the hero, the man who will save the day, the helpless love interest and his own town from the obvious villain, the anti-hero of Noir was the outsider, desperate to fit in. Not only did he rarely save his love interest, often she was the one who turned his world upside down before turning him in. In essence, he represented the immigrant moving away from his torn up shtetil to one of the big factory cities like New York or Chicago, looking for work, looking for redemption, looking for the American Dream.

Instead, the anti-hero, betting his hope, his few dollars and his soul on the magic get rich quick deal falls for the dame, loses everything and is then worse off than he began. And that's if he's still alive. According to J.I. Baker, "...noir illuminated - well, no, revealed - the dark side of the American Dream."

It's the story no biographer will write. No history book will feature. The characters in this genre are the celluloid negative of this illusion of American Exceptionalism. Because the price of all that is far more than the dollars of the average working man.

In the late 1800s Rockefeller founded Standard Oil in Cleveland. In 1920 Cleveland was the fifth biggest city in America. Because of its steel production it was a target city for Hitler. After WW2, C-town was considered "The Best Location in the Nation," "The City of Champions" and "The All American City." This was the place to be. To raise your family. To feel like you've made it. And to propel the next generation into even bigger greatness. In essence, 1940's Cleveland was like the Great American Cowboy Movie.

But over the next few decades things shifted. The sports teams quit winning. The factories shut down. Race riots. A river on fire.

Cleveland lost its identity. And from the 1950s till the 2000 decade, for fifty years it was a joke. The Mistake on the Lake. The place that lost its educated youth to the Brain Drain and its lakefront to eroded industry. Local beatnik poet D.A. Levy declared that Cleveland was living out a deep depression, was arrested for distributing obscene material to minors and at age 26 committed suicide.

2007 Cleveland, the setting for my script, and the year I first began writing it, proved to be the city's Tipping Point. The night of the last NBA Championship game between the Cavs and the Spurs, a friend and neighbor called and invited me to dinner. She's just lost a patient and she wanted some company. We both lived at The Statler, on East 12th and Euclid. We walked down to East 4th Street. Sat outside. Had dinner. "Hey, I said," let's walk by the stadium and absorb the energy. As we approached the arena, with the sun setting, I looked around and noticed something strange. "Do you see what I see?"

"What?"

"Every cop - on foot, on horse, on motorcycle, in a car - is here right now. You know what this means."

"No, what?"

"It means that there's parts of city that have no cops tonight. It's the perfect night for a crime to be committed."

My friend then stopped, turned to me and said, "And you write that story."
 
J.I Baker quote: Film Noir. 75 years of the Greatest Crime Films. Time Life. August 19, 2016.

Movie still: IMDb.com