French Poetic Realism and American Noir: “It’s always too late’”

This paper investigates the connections between French Poetic Realism of the 1930s and American film noir and argues that their significance has been understated. The goals of this study are three-fold. It begins with an examination of the treatment of Poetic Realism in the most significant critical views of the genealogy of American film noir; then several films are analyzed in some detail to reinforce the connections and contrasts in specific French and American films. The paper concludes with several proposals about why the role of Poetic Realism has been so often presented as relatively insignificant.