You're my meat

FOC--oh, OK, and noted Phoenix scribe and former curator of the Harvard Film Archive--Gerald Peary tumbles to an interesting bit of nomenclature.

As y'all know, films noir weren't called thus when they were being produced. The name came later, courtesy of a bunch of French movie brats who saw movies like The Maltese Falcon and Laura all in a bunch once the postwar distribution floodgates opened up again.

So, was there a name for these flicks, you know, in house? Here's what Gerry found...

A new academic book, Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir (Johns Hopkins University Press), offers a dizzying new term for “noir” scholars to ponder, one gleaned from author Sheri Chinen Biesen’s first-hand research. Biesen asserts, “By 1946 Hollywood publicity and critics had identified these innovative films as a bold new trend called the ‘red meat crime cycle.’ ” Red-meat movies! Biesen assures the reader that the term was “circulated widely.” What a pungent phrase! If she’s right, here are grounds for a significant revision of thinking about “noir.”

I pored over Blackout, eager for Biesen’s proof. She quotes one Fred Stanley in the New York Times in 1944 as saying, “Hollywood will depend on so-called ‘red meat’ stories of illicit romance and crime for a major share of its immediate non-war dramatic productions.”

Okay, that’s a start. And? And? Alas, that’s the only example in speech or writing from the 1940s she can muster. My harsh conclusion: Fred Stanley alone was the “red meat” man, in one article. Biesen’s claim that by 1946 the term “red meat” was “circulated widely” seems spurious.

Red meat or thin gruel, the cinetrix will be watching Mildred Pierce tomorrow afternoon. Cue Sonic Youth....