The Strange Hope of Film Noir
A letter to my daughter
Dear J
You are nearly one month old.
When I first decided to write this letter, I figured it would be a good chance to provide you with a little wisdom. To share the answers. To let your future self know what your young(ish) father thought of the world you have been brought into.
One small problem. I don’t have any wisdom to share.
I thought fatherhood would help me find the answers. That all the great unknowns would start making sense. Unfortunately not. For your first few years, you will think I know everything. It will pass. By the time you read this letter, you’ll have long understood that I don’t have a clue what the answers are. I barely know the questions!
And that’s okay by the way. One thing you realise as you get older is that no one really has the answers. We’re all muddling through. More often than not, we’ll get it wrong. That’s part of the fun.
But I wanted to write you something. I wanted to share some form of wisdom, even if it wasn’t my own.
So I began to think. If I don’t have the answers, then who or what does?
The answer, when it struck, was as obvious as the pink polka dot onesie you’re currently wearing in the coffee shop next to me.
Cinema!
For the first weeks of your life, your mother and I have lived in the strange twilight zone that lies between exhaustion and restfulness. I’ve both never been more tired and never had more time to sit with you on our sofa watching films.
So that’s what we’ve done. Not just any movies, either. You and I have been on a project. At just four weeks old, you’ve already watched more film noirs than most people do in a lifetime, albeit while snoring softly on my shoulder.
(I needn’t tell you what film noir is. By the time you’re old enough to read this, if I’ve done my job as a father, you should already know your Bogarts from your Mitchums and your Rays from your Langs.)
One of my hopes for you is that you find a piece of culture that you fall in love with. It doesn’t have to be fancy or prestigious. It could be big or small, limitless or tiny in scope. I couldn’t care less what it is, to be honest. As long as you are passionate about it, that’s all that matters. It is through our passions that we make sense of the world. In my case, it is through movies – not just highfalutin ones, but silly ones, brainless ones, funny ones and scary ones –that I best understand those pesky questions I mentioned earlier. Every now and again, they even give me a glimpse of the answers.
And so, when I sat down to write this letter, I figured that surely, SURELY, the movies we’ve watched together in our first few weeks would provide some wisdom that I could share with you.
Now we reach the second problem. The lessons of film noir are not of the… heartwarming variety. I’d like to think that, by the time you’re reading this, you have learned some happier truths than the following:
Don’t be a criminal (for the record: I support this one).
If you’re going to break the rules, make sure you’re smart enough to get away with it (since you won’t read this until you’re older, I’ll admit to supporting this one as well).
Don’t act above your station (if anyone ever says that to you, you have my permission as a father to take appropriate countermeasures. A swift kick in the nuts would do).
Ambition is deadly (see above).
Trust no one (FALSE).
Beware authority (hmm… we’ll talk about this).
You can’t escape fate. (You are in charge of your own fate, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise).
See what I mean?
So, I’m stuck. I’m three-quarters of the way into my Great Lesson, and so far, I’ve found practically nothing of worth that I can teach you.
It all boils down to the fact that noir is not a happy genre. Quite the opposite, in fact. As one writer put it, the overriding mood is one of “despair, loneliness and dread.” Rest assured that, when your mother and I discuss the type of household we want to provide for you, those three words aren’t high up the pecking order.
And yet…
There’s a reason you’re not allowed to read this until you’re old and ear-pierced and far less interested in your Dad than you will be for your first few years.
By the time you read this, you will have had times when the world does feel a little like the dark, miserable place you see on the screen. As much as it pains me to admit it, there will be moments in your life when you feel as hopeless as Joan Bennett in The Woman in the Window, as angry as Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place, as trapped as Evelyn Keyes in The Prowler. We all have. It’s part of what it means to be alive.
And it is in these low moments that noir offers us hope. It’s a strange hope, but it’s hope nonetheless.
The detective who takes things into his own hands. The housewife who chases the thrill of her own desires. The middle-aged bank clerk who dares to be young. Noir would have you believe that these are fools stepping outside their rightful roles. I don’t see it this way. For all their bad choices, there is bravery in their ambition. They are not hopeless. They think they can make it better. They fail, yes. Often, they fail miserably. But they try. That means something. That’s enough. No matter what, you can always try.
There’s another kind of hope, too. For all its bleakness, noir is still one of the most breathtakingly beautiful genres. It’s easy to think that everything has to be perfect before you can be happy. That something is ‘missing.’ It’s not. It is within your power to find happiness in front of you, regardless of circumstance. To take pleasure from the small things, not just the big. There is beauty in the shadows.
I’ve been blabbering on for far too long now. I’ll say one more thing. No matter what happens over your next 80, 90, 100 years, you can always know that your first few weeks, spent watching some of the darkest films, were the most blindingly bright days of your Dad’s life.
Maybe fatherhood brings some answers after all.
Love
Dad
Heartwarming <3
❤️