Oak Street Films

The release of Psycho in 1960 without Production Code approval is often seen as marking the end of Hollywood’s long-honored program of self-censorship, and in a sense the release of that film serves as a rough point of departure for the deluge of sleazy exploitation films that would swamp the urban and drive-in markets for the next twenty years. There had been films of “questionable” moral character since the very beginnings of the cinematic form (take Eadweard Muybridge’s zoopraxiscope photographs for example, which include some of the very earliest “skin flicks” among their number at a time before the celluloid cinema as we know it today had even been invented). With Psycho’s success, however, came a certain fading of the Puritanical silliness that had previously kept such films far from the open market, and suddenly all manner of previously taboo subjects (perversions, festishes, homosexuality,  etc.) became quite acceptable in films–so long as nothing was made too explicit, of course.

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I suppose it’s no coincidence that the term neo-noir only applies to films made after 1960 or so (the end of true film noir is often popularly seen as coinciding with Orson Welles’ stunning 1958 film Touch of Evil); the social and political climate which gave birth to the classic films noirs–the Great Depression and World War II being the most recognizable historical signposts of that era–had by that time begun to shift to one of revolution and anti-establishment protest. Noir had always been about the moral and existential quandaries born of a world seemingly poised to destroy itself.  By the time the 1960’s had headed back to the dressing room and the 1970’s had slouched onto the stage, a new kind of malaise had infected the popular consciousness, and it’s one from which we still suffer today: namely, cynicism and a general sense of collective self-disgust. The political, ethical, and psychological inclinations of a Polonsky or a Tourneur had in some fundamental way lost their social currency, and it is for this reason that film noir ceased to be a common cinematic type–not, as a more cursory examination of film history might lead one to believe, because of a sudden shift in film aesthetics. The “revolution” of the 1960’s had failed, and so irony (the handmaiden of cynicism) became a dominant artistic mode. It is within this unfortunate set of historical circumstances that Buzz Kulik’s Shamus is situated.

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