While the United States can indisputably lay claim to being the birthplace of film noir, arguably France and French cinema is almost as important to the development of the genre. The term ‘film noir’ - literally, ‘dark film’ - was first applied to the Hollywood crime movies of the 40s and 50s by French critic Nino Frank, who was believed to have been inspired by the French publishing imprint Serie Noire, which published translated editions of American hardboiled fiction to great commercial success. It was the French who would popularise the use of the term and in turn, create the genre framework that has become so important and influential to the history of cinema.
Arguably, the story of noir is one of the cinema of France and the USA in conversation with one another, and presented in this set are three classic French films from the 50s and 60s that clearly take their inspiration from the Golden Age of Hollywood noir: Henri Decoin’s Chnouf (1955), Édouard Molinaro’s Back To The Wall (1958), and Marcel Bluwal’s Paris Pick-Up (1962).
