“BLACK MOVIES”: GENRE MEMORY OF THE NOIR FILM LANGUAGE IN THE SYSTEM OF AUDIOVISUAL TRANSFORMATIONS (1970s – 2010s)

Abstract

The issue of “genre memory” in the noir film language is one of the most relevant problems in the modern study of “black” cinema evolution. In spite of the fact that in the recent years, noir has significantly expanded its traditional artistic “cover”, the study of features and ways of its transformation is one of priority vectors of the research. In the context of audiovisual transformations of the early 21st century, noir is represented by at least two genre constructions (post-noir and neo-noir), which also need to be studied in areas related to “diffuseness” of genres and “hybridization” of artistic film language. The main stages of the formation of noir genre paradigm are considered by the authors. These stages are defined and analyzed in the context of tools of artistic film language: compositional and plastic techniques, stylistic solutions and “genre iconography”. Defining three main periods in the development of the “black” cinema, the authors outline its main typical-specific roles, which form various strategies and forms of existence of classical “genre memory” of noir in different systems of cinematic art thinking. Noir showed an extremely high potential for modification, which led to the expressiveness of its subgenre convention. Example of a number of films shows how directors use or borrow traditional aesthetics of noir with the help of expressive means of cinema. In many cases, semiotics of the “black” cinema becomes an object for the search for new artistic and stylistic solutions, which further confirms the genre elasticity of noir. All of the above allows us to state the existence of a kind of “noir” ontology in artistic film tools, which first of all appeals to the lacuna of “genre memory” using particular range of techniques.