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Introduction Coming to Terms With Film Noir and Existentialism
“Let’s get the details fixed first.”1
—Sam Spade to Caspar Gutman in the film The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The alleged official arrival of existentialism to the United States was marked by the much publicized visit of French existentialists, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to New York soon after World War II. Newspapers and popular magazines, aware of the American fascination with French culture, focused much of their attention on the personalities of companions Sartre and de Beauvoir, and the fashionable trend of the movement back in Paris. The American press reported a virtual cult following for existentialism among young Left Bank bohemians, who were conspicuous by their black garb and heavy makeup, chain-smoking, enthusiasm for nightclubs and American jazz, and their talk of meaninglessness and despair.