“Noir Colonial” is a series of oil paintings based on screenshots from film noir movies that take place in post-colonial locales: Algiers, Cairo, etc; for 40 years , I’ve been watching these films , and after a time I noticed a “subgenre” from 1946-on, that introduces an American lead character into the post-WW2 geopolitical reality of indigenous cultures overthrowing their colonial occupiers.
In one of the earliest noirs, Casablanca (1942), Humphrey Borgart’s character Rick, symbolizes a non-interventionalist America: “I stick my neck out for nobody”. By the film’s end - mirroring America itself, Rick has seen the light and will join the cause against the Axis.
By 1946, the US position had changed from anxiety to triumph, and the new reality was reflected in a subgenre I call “Noir Colonial” (also dubbed “exotic noir” by one French critic). In many cases, the American presence is interjected into espionage surrounding Western powers and their struggle to police and maintain their colonial empires (usually this foreign power was French, as they 1.) suppressed particularly exotic Mediterranean locales; and 2.) offered producers the opportunity to get American actors together with the latest French actress - as a stranded French beauty was de rigueur in these narratives). Just as Rick symbolized an ambivalent American in 1942, George Raft’s character in “The Man from Cairo” (1953) represents a new, confident American interloper. At first, Raft is mistaken by local authorities to be an American spy working for French intelligence; and while hapless at first - and oft distracted by the French actress Irene Pappas - he soon catches on to the tangled web of corruption and straightens out matters, foreshadowing the US’s willingness to take over as mediator and later leader in maitaining colonial status quo.
There are multiple screen captures from “The Man from Cairo” that serve as sources for this series, as well as other films like “Rope of Sand” (1949) and “Sirocco” (1953). My goals in are post-modernist, with intent to re-examine the nostalgia and ideology embedded in these image/tropes by creating a meta-narrative, derived from multiple films from the era. An essay, “The American Presence in Post-Colonial Noir” would accompany an exhibition.