Film Noir 1946

I am very pleased with the cover of my next novel, The Midnight Man. Created by graphic designer, Jayne Mapp for Hobeck Books, it captures well that 1940s film noir poster look which we wanted and many people who have seen it say how atmospheric and enticing it is. As part of its creation I made a ‘mood board’ for Jayne of film noir posters from the ’40s and, specifically, from 1946, when my book is set. I have, as those of you who follow me on social media will know, been sharing the posters which I collected, one a week, since earlier in the year. Today, when The Midnight Man goes on a number of platforms for pre-order (see below) I’d like to share some of them here.

1946 was a vintage year for film noir, with the release of classics like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Gilda, The Blue Dahlia, The Big Sleep, The Killers and, because there should always be a Hitchcock in a list of this type, Notorious. All a heady mix of violence, crime and passion, these films were hugely successful in their day and command cult status now. One of my own personal favourites and a film which influenced my novel is Green for Danger (dir. Sidney Gilliat) is also 1946 (see below).

   

The posters for these films have a lot in common; you only need to look at them together to see the black or dark backgrounds, the portraits of the star or stars and the slanted or shadowed lettering and slightly risqué taglines. Indeed ‘Slinky, sultry, sensational‘ the tagline for The Big Sleep, might apply to any of them. If it hadn’t been 1946 the adjective ‘sexy’ would have probably also have been included. The British film (the first made at Pinewood Studios) is something of an outlier, its tagline being more cerebral ‘Murder weapon or clue?‘ Unfortunately, I know little about the artists behind these posters. Many were never credited, as the posters were churned out, initially by hand, for the big studios, who didn’t want the viewers’ focus distracted from the film. For those who want to know more, I suggest The Art of the Noir: The Posters and Graphics From the Classic Era of Film Noir by Eddie Muller (Overlook Books, 2014). This is, essentially, a catalogue of film noir posters.

The writers of the books and screenplays for these films were better known – Raymond Chandler wrote the novel The Big Sleep, but also the screenplay for The Blue Dahlia. His novel was adapted for the screen by Nobel Laureate William Faulkner, no less. And they inspired later writers; the hair tossing scene in Gilda inspired Stephen King to pen Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (as well as spawning a thousand GIFs). Ernest Hemingway got his name above the title in the poster for The Killers, Burt Lancaster’s debut film, although the screenplay was written by an uncredited John Huston and Richard Brooks and credited to Anthony Veiller.

Cinema films feature in all three books in the Clapham Trilogy, of which The Midnight Man is the first. In the era before television, it was the mass entertainment medium of the time and people went to the cinema regularly, sometimes several times a week. Some of my characters go to see A Matter of Life and Death at the Odeon, Balham Hill; the Powell and Pressburger film was the Royal Premiere of 1946. In the second book in the trilogy, set in 1948, the film is Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes. I am, as you may have realised, a Powell and Pressburger fan and thereby hangs another tale, which I will doubtless return to.

I leave you with the rather different poster for Green for Danger, with Alastair Sim as a wonderfully lugubrious police detective, Inspector Cockrill of the Yard. Like the Hollywood posters it includes an image of a glamourous woman, but the focus is really on the detective (which I like). It was based on the book by Christianna Brand, who was married to a surgeon and got the idea for the story after watching him operating. She was, I am told, the author of the Nurse Matilda books, illustrated by her cousin Edward Ardizzoni. Nurse Matilda was the forerunner of Nanny McPhee.

The Midnight Man is now available for pre-order (published 30th April ) on Amazon for the paperback and ebook. If you do not shop at Mr Besos’ emporium there is Waterstones for the paperback and, of course, on the Hobeck website. If you want to support small, indie publishers ( and who doesn’t ) buy it direct from Hobeck!