I’ve been playing a lot of L.A. Noire lately and it’s given me the opportunity to interact with my favorite genre of film in a new medium. The game gets so many aspects of Film Noir right whether it be the archetypes used for some of the characters or the use of light. One element stuck out for me and it always does. It’s the enormous amount of chilling distrust between characters.
Most of the storytelling and gameplay elements are built around a total lack of trust. You learn to not always trust what’s in front of you; to dig deeper. So, when Team Bondi provide the chance to take control of Detective Cole Phelps, I thought to myself “This is Noir!” No way could any character be so honorable and heroic. So trustworthy. The game builds such trust piece by piece and soon enough it seems as though Phelps can do no wrong. Now, I won’t drop any spoilers, but I will say that I was wrong. The story takes an insane, bone-chilling shift. Not only do you learn that you can’t trust the supporting characters, but not even your so called hero. I had felt this shift before…
In Nolan’s Memento, you are introduced to your hero, Leonard. He sets rules for himself while indirectly setting rules for the audience. You are told to trust no one. There are (as far as I can remember) 2 major shifts in the film (Nolan’s sort of mastered these shifts). At one point, the film builds trust in another character. In a matter of seconds, Nolan takes this trust and destroys it. He squashes it like a bug and you’re left thinking “Who can really be trusted.” It changes the whole film from that point on. The ending is, of course, a shift all on its own. The trust you once felt for Leonard, the character from which you learned to trust no one, is destroyed as well! It’s absolute genius. I found that I even began to question and lose trust in my own perception.
Film Noir is french for “Black Film” and the term is appropriate in more than one aspect. Yes, it can be used to describe the use of light or the dark characters. It best describes the lack of trust in every noir title. It’s not an era, but a feeling. You, the audience, are in the dark and you don’t really know it up until the very end… The proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel.”
