Conclusion: Noir Detectives, Rogue Cops, Undercover Men and Police Procedurals

Abstract

The crime series persisted into the late 1940s, but the detective crime genre in this period, and into the 1950s, became increasingly fractured, as if the comforting formal style of the mystery series could no longer contain the complexity of post-war American society. A range of thrillers and investigate narratives emerged in detective and police dramas, including hard-boiled noir, investigative thrillers in the noir mode, the police procedural, undercover narratives, and rogue cop films, even though, as noted in the previous chapters, many crime series persisted until the end of the 1940s. The closure of the B production units and the development of unit and independent production aided the demise of the series because more flexible forms of production created more autonomy and experimentation in Hollywood film-making (Maltby, 1983: 75) and the series no longer aligned with the less centralised planning structure of the studios. Although some units and independent companies focused on particular styles, such as the Val Lewton unit at RKO which continued to produce cheaply made horror films, others such as the Mark Hellinger unit at Universal, while focusing on crime, deployed a diversity of styles (Schatz, 1997: 386−7). Spicer (2002: 34) also discusses how independent producers, such as Enterprise Productions, which operated in the late 1940s, had the opportunity to develop a particular style as a result of aesthetic and political choices, in this case noir crime movies such as Body and Soul and Force of Evil, a freedom that would not have been possible a few years earlier.