Post War Trauma: Robert Wise's The House on Telegraph Hill

SteynonLine ^ | October 24, 2026 | Rick McGinnis

[Twotone]

Once it was agreed that there was such a thing as film noir, two questions remained: Which films are film noir and what makes a film noir... noir? The arguments have persisted since then: Is The Maltese Falcon the first actual film noir? What is the best film noir? Is it Double Indemnity? Out of the Past? Gun Crazy? Is Touch of Evil the last classic noir, and when did neo-noir begin? Can it be noir if it's in colour?

Everybody has an opinion and if you have one, be prepared to have your intelligence questioned.

But very few of the genre's fans will argue that film noir was inevitable – a reaction to the state of the world after a decade of economic depression and a cataclysmic world war sewed doubt and unease in every sensible person. In Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Screen, Foster Hirsch credits its birth to "a particularly disruptive time in American history; the forties began with the specter of war and concluded with the Congressional witch-hunt for communists, as well as the prospect of a war in Korea."

I'd argue that that theory – like the whole critical creation of the film noir genre – is largely a matter of hindsight. But Hirsch does diagnose something fundamental in American society that created fertile ground for the anxiety and pessimism of noir: "Even though the theater of action was on foreign soil, American lives were profoundly changed by the war. American cities may not have been directly under fire, but still the daily rhythm of life shifted; if there were no bread lines, there were at least war rations."

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TOPICS: History; TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: movies; robertwise; telegraphhill