Pedric Killeen, a media scholar, arts journalist and lecturer on film and digital cultures from Ireland, brings some fresh ideas to the field of film noir research. His basic idea here is to approach the individual/main protagonist and read him and his actions in terms of a certain paralysis or state of shock he experiences while reflecting on his situation and power (or lack thereof).
Which may appear as inability to perform any sort of action and often proves fatal in film noir plots, that usually feature a race against the clock.
Killeen’s approach in The Dark Interval is based on conclusions from disciplines one would not expect in a film noir context, as his methods not only rely on film studies and the history of motion pictures, but also make use of certain schools of philosophy and the history of the visual tradition in painting, dating back centuries.
In many genre pictures, it is the protagonist’s uniqueness and loneliness that stopped him from becoming active or effectively engage in the many tasks he is being bombarded with. At the same time, this makes the protagonists, willing but unable to act, caught in conflicts. According to Killeen, noir “… is inextricably concerned with human beings caught up in states of passion.” His study is devoted to the “… seemingly paradoxical passion of passivity in film noir.”
This may seem like a paradox; and to Killeen, it actually is typical for the genre. He perceives “… that noir films – and noir images more generally – tend to relay conceptions of the human at its most indeterminate. Indeterminacy is itself a key thematic in noir.”
Naturally, films noir also affect audiences, and not simply through action and entertainment, but by presenting situations, as we watch people on the edge, situations when action is imperative. Which is what the individual may be familiar with, even if usually not under such dramatic conditions.
Nevertheless, the feeling of being at the center of attention, being the one who can or cannot alter things but is overwhelmed by both the lavish selection and expectations and options, and hence refuses to act, should evoke a familiar memory for many. This, in a nutshell, is what Killeen calls the “dark interval” and self-affectivity, while the air of such an interval may inform not just a split second reserved for a thought or an idea, but the entire film noir. He also aims to diagnose an iconography of bespoke self-affective passivity, which he identifies as critical awareness of one’s own being, a sort of hyper-awareness on the protagonist’s side.
The “dark interval” describes such moments (and intervals of complete stillness, a standstill, except for the occasional twirl of cigarette smoke) that for Killeen befalls most film noir protagonists sooner or later. That very instant, a brief moment that stands as symptomatic for the entire movie and represents the moment of arrested action, since it simultaneously is loaded with tension, emotion and high action and performance; however, only in the protagonist’s stream of consciousness, unbeknownst to audiences.
Compared to the mass of titles on film noir, The Dark Interval is rather complicated and exclusive, as it demands not just some background on genre history, production and iconography. Killeen frequently corresponds with the writings of philosophers Maurice Blanchot, Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze, household names for some readers, but probably not for the majority of film students and noir fans. His seven chapters (and a prelude text) deal with both the theory behind his approach and the respective films and characters who take part in those important moments of “passion.” Or as he calls it: “noir protagonists who – undergoing the suspension in the ‘dark interval’ – are confronted with the radical passivity and passionate becoming that subtends their sense of ‘self’ and indeed their very concept of existence.” Those intense moments he sees best described as echoes of a much older iconography, used by painters associated with Renaissance and Medieval art.
All chapters pick up recent tendencies to incorporate affect theory, a strategy that researches the affective qualities of the entire catalog of human sensorial experiences, whenever information – be it news, a novel, music, a feeling, a movie or whatever – are being presented.
Ole Anderson, leading character in The Killers (1944) and chapter 1, is the first main example he enlarges on. In chapter 2, it is Ed Crane in The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) and his display of (suppressed) passion, even though he appears mostly apathetic.
Cat People (1942) is at the center of the next text, a long excursion on Rainer Maria Rilke and Giorgio Agamben is used to analyze it. Chapter 4 is a detailed study of the masterpiece Alphaville (1965) and Killeen’s impression that here the “affective interval” unveils, while, by and by, the human potential to reclaim power and transform both characters, and situation is at work. The corresponding next chapter, on Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046 (2004), deals with a very different protagonist, who apparently favors the state of passivity and even wants it to continue. The Big Clock (1948), The Unknown Man (1951), The Long Goodbye (1973) and The Stranger (1946) inform chapter 6. Here, the author locates the dark interval as “a lapse in the socio-juridical order.” The two neo-noirs The Missing Person (2010), and The Big Lebowski (1998) are the subject of the last part, with focus on the respective endings of the movies. These are interpreted as “… ‘messianic time’ of arrest, suspension and inoperativity.” The last film, Transit (2018), is the topic of the coda text, and according to the author, it contains many of the individual aspects he encountered in the previous chapters, especially in terms of noir iconography.
The Dark Interval is quite an interesting read, if you are willing to go through a lot of affect theory, film theory, different canons of philosophy and are well familiar with some of Nietzsche’s texts. Studying the introduction and the prelude several times may be mandatory.
As much as a fresh approach to the genre is welcome, it is very likely that the sheer amount of philosophical background intertwined in his chapters could slow down readers a bit. Nevertheless, it is worth the time, as with each different approach to a film, one can watch it anew with that new perspective.
The book originally was published in 2022, this text covers the first paperback edition.
Review by Dr. A. Ebert © 2024
Padraic Killeen. The Dark Interval. Film Noir, Iconography, and Affect. Bloomsbury Academic (Thinking Cinema Series Vol. 11), 2023, 280 p.