In every important way it seems to me it is, but others may feel differently.
shareI feel there is a greater sense of realism than with most Film-Noirs. And it is also very low key, i.e. it is not over-dramatised.
shareClassicly, film noir deals with the shady side of American urban life and was made during the late forties and fifties. This film is too new and too British to considered true noir.
shareWell, it is true that "Spy" deals with the shady side of European, rather than American urban life. But most people accept "Rififi," "Elevator to the Scaffold" and "The Third Man" as authentic films noir, not to mention the Melville movies made around the same time as "Spy". That's not to mention "The Conformist". The dark themes, compromised hero, complexity of plot, starkness of lighting, expressionist camera angles, shadowplay, pessimism, etc etc, of "Spy" are all characteristic of noir.
shareThe trouble is if you broaden a definition too far it loses its usefulness and precision. If you include, say, The Conformist, then you are including a film so far way from the original Film Noir films that the term then tells you much less about the films which inspired it.
TSWCIFTC also has no femme fatale. Contrary to your list of attributes, it has few or no camera angles which could be labelled expressionist, has little or no "shadowplay" in the sense of making a particular feature of shadows and the photography is no more stark than many mainstream b/w thrillers or serious dramas of the time.
To say that TSWCIFTC has something of the same tone as a Film Noir is one thing, to try to include it in the definition is just misleading.
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This film is too new and too British to considered true noir.
I was thinking something similar watching it and disagree that the cinematic quality was not noirish because of a lack of shadows. It was a late black and white film when the British spy genre was all about 60s colour. Also you cannot have more moral ambiguity and lives spinning out of control as you have in these characters.
Leamus's speech to Nan about spies not being moral philosphers; "they are drunks, queers, hen pecked husbands seedy little civil servants playing cowboys and inidians." How noir is that.
Note also that a component of Film Noir was European exile directors bringing the darkness, authouratarianism and corruption of pre-Europe into a US setting. This is the post war chapter of that dark history.
So yes I agree with the OP it is a Euro Film Noir, just transported into a later genre.
Very well put.
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So?
It qualifies on many counts.
What important ways? I don't get anything close to that impression from it, no. It's a spy film.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiYF7pUPuFs
I don't care as much about labels as I do if its a good movie or not. I like the idea of the genre, but if a movie is borderline noir, who cares how its labeled?
Love's turned to lust and blood's turned to dust in my heart.
There are two main ways of thinking about noir. One is as a genre, the other as a style, the idea that a film from any era, even the future as in something like Blade Runner, can be made in a noirish way. In the latter definition it is pretty far down the noir alley.
shareNo, it's film BLANC. Get it? Cause snow :D
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