Good article, overall.

Richard Schickel wrote:
The spirit of noir has never fully died. Indeed, the greatest noir of all, Chinatown, did not appear until 1974.

Great film, but "greatest noir of all"? I wouldn't go that far.

Tony D'Ambra wrote:
The dismissal of the influence of the European directors is defensive and does not help readers to understand the influence that these expatriates had. Existentialism is not even mentioned: the noir anti-hero is more of an outsider than a an urban refugee. And of course the French recognised the genre and provided an analytical framework.

I wouldn't say Schickel is being defensive, just because he's primarily focusing on the American cultural aspects involved, but I think he does gloss over the European influence. He mentions Fritz Lang and a few other European-born directors in passing, but at the very least, he should've tipped his hat to Lang's M.

Richard Schickel wrote:
There’s some dispute about what the first noir film was, but in my opinion the first truly great one was 1944’s Double Indemnity, which displayed most of the genre’s stylistic tics and narrative tricks.

In my opinion, The Maltese Falcon (the Bogart remake) is also "truly great," from three years earlier. I don't see how he can overlook that one. Double Indemnity is one of my favorites, though. If you're into Venetian blinds, it's a tough one to top. I consider it Fred MacMurray's best performance.

RE: Rerunning Film Noir