− Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, 17 August 1988) was an Italian-born French film critic

Film criticism

Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...

 and writer who was most active in the 1930s and 1940s. Frank is best known for being the first film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 critic to use the term "film noir

Film noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...

" to refer to 1940s US crime drama films such as The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)

The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Bros. film based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and a remake of the 1931 film of the same name...

. He was born in Barletta

Barletta

Barletta is a city and comune located in the north of Apulia in south eastern Italy. Its current population is 94,140.It is famous for the Colossus of Barletta, a bronze statue, representing a Roman Emperor...

, a busy port town on Italy's Adriatic coast, in the Puglia region.

Career

In the late 1920s, Frank was a supporter of Irish writer James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

, along with a circle that also included Stuart and Moune Gilbert (Stuart Gilbert helped to do the French translation of Ulysses

Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...

in 1929), Paul and Lucie Léon, Louis Gillet, and Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

. In 1937, Frank conferred a great deal with Joyce about the Italian translation of Joyce’s Anna Livia Plurabelle. During the Nazi occupation of France, Frank wrote in the collaborationist weekly Les Nouveaux Temps, and he was known as a critic of the collaborationist Vichy

Vichy

Vichy is a commune in the department of Allier in Auvergne in central France. It belongs to the historic province of Bourbonnais.It is known as a spa and resort town and was the de facto capital of Vichy France during the World War II Nazi German occupation from 1940 to 1944.The town's inhabitants...

 government’s censorship policies.

Frank also wrote for the French film magazine l’Écran français, a socialist-leaning magazine that was founded by the Resistance during World War II, and which continued after the war. The magazine had the backing of French film directors such as “… Jacques Becker

Jacques Becker

Jacques Becker was a French screenwriter and film director.Becker was born in Paris, in an upper class background. During the 1930s he worked as an assistant to director Jean Renoir during his peak period, which produced such cinematic masterpieces as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game...

, Marcel Carné

Marcel Carné

-Biography:Born in Paris, France, the son of a cabinet maker whose wife died when their son was five, Carné began his career as a film critic, becoming editor of the weekly publication, Hebdo-Films, and working for Cinémagazine and Cinémonde between 1929 and 1933. In the same period he worked in...

, Jean Grémillon

Jean Grémillon

Jean Grémillon was a French film director. After directing a number of documentaries during the 1920s, many now lost, he had his first substantial success with the dramatic feature Maldone in 1928...

, and Jean Painlevé

Jean Painlevé

Jean Painlevé was a film director, actor, translator, animator, critic and theorist. He was the son of mathematician and twice prime-minister of France, Paul Painlevé.-Upbringing:...

; writer/scenarists Pierre Bost, and Jacques Prévert

Jacques Prévert

Jacques Prévert was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain very popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. Some of the movies he wrote are extremely well regarded, with Les Enfants du Paradis considered one of the greatest films of all time.-Life and...

; critics Georges Sadoul

Georges Sadoul

Georges Sadoul was a French journalist and cinema writer.Once a surrealist, he became a communist in 1932. He was a journalist of the Lettres Françaises....

 and Léon Moussinac; as well as Albert Camus

Albert Camus

Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...

, Henri Langlois

Henri Langlois

Henri Langlois was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema...

, André Malraux

André Malraux

André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...

, Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

 and Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...

.” L’Écran français was a “serious publication”; in contrast to other film magazines with their “cheesecake” photos and star gossip, L’Écran français was printed on yellow paper and carried articles on a range of film criticism issues written by critics and notable figures from French cinema. Frank eventually rose to the position of Editor-in-Chief of l’Écran français.

According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Frank had several writing credits for film and television production. In 1944, he penned the dialogue for Service de nuit and adaptated the novel for the screen. In 1945, he did a film adaption of La Vie de bohème. In 1947, he is credited for La Taverne du poisson couronné (Confessions of a Rogue), and in 1952, he is credited with Camicie rosse (also known as Les chemises rouges in France or Red Shirts). In 1974, Frank is credited with adapting the novel Stefano for a TV production. Frank also did other writing and translation work, such as translating Leonardo Sciascia’s 1979 book Nero su nero ("Black on Black") from its original Italian, in collaboration with Corinne Lucas.

Coining of “film noir” term

Frank is often given credit for coining the term “film noir

Film noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...

” to describe a group of US drama films that were shown in French theaters in the summer of 1946: John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)

The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Bros. film based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and a remake of the 1931 film of the same name...

, Otto Preminger’s Laura

Laura (1944 film)

Laura is a 1944 American film noir directed by Otto Preminger. It stars Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews and Clifton Webb. The screenplay by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, and Elizabeth Reinhardt is based on the 1943 novel of the same title by Vera Caspary....

, Edward Dmytryk’s Murder, My Sweet

Murder, My Sweet

Murder, My Sweet is a 1944 American film noir directed by Edward Dmytryk, and starring Dick Powell, Claire Trevor, and Anne Shirley. The film was released in the United Kingdom under the title Farewell, My Lovely, which is the title of the 1940 Raymond Chandler novel it is based on, and also the...

, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, and Fritz Lang’s The Woman in the Window

The Woman in the Window

The Woman in the Window is a film noir directed by Fritz Lang that tells the story of psychology professor Richard Wanley who meets and becomes enamored with a young femme fatale....

. During the Nazi occupation of France, US films were not allowed in France, and so the summer of 1946 was the first opportunity for French audiences to see these US World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

-era movies.

In 1946, Frank and fellow critic Jean-Pierre Chartier wrote the two earliest film articles that described Hollywood crime dramas from the 1940s as “film noir.” Frank’s article, “Un nouveau genre ‘policier:’ L’aventure criminelle,” (“A new police genre: the criminal adventure”) was published in the socialist-leaning film magazine L’écran français in August 1946. Frank’s article listed “…rejection of “sentimental humanism,” the “social fantastic,” and the “dynamism of violent death” as being obsessive French noir themes and called attention to the American proclivity for criminal psychology and misogyny.” Frank’s article stated that “...these "dark" films, these films noirs , no longer have anything in common with the ordinary run of detective movies...”, and the article “…reflects the difficulty of finding a suitable label for these 'dark films” (English translation from Lee Horsley’s book).

Frank’s article states that the “film noir” films “…belong to what used to be called the detective film genre, but which would now be better termed the crime
, or, even better yet, the crime psychology film.” Jean-Pierre Chartier's essay, from November 1946 appeared in the conservative-leaning Revue du cinema. Chartier's essay, titled "les Américains aussi font des films 'noirs' " ("the Americans also make 'black' films") criticized "...what he deemed the common thread of film noir, the “...pessimism and disgust for humanity.” Frank and Chartier’s use of the term “film noir” may have been inspired by Gallimard’s series of “hard-boiled” detective and crime fiction books called the “Série Noire”, which included both translated works by American writers and books authored by French writers that were modeled on the US crime novel style. French writers Thomas Narcejac and Pierre Boileau, who wrote several novels that were adapted into films, may also deserve some credit for developing the term “film noir.” Narcejac and Boileau’s novel D'entre les morts was adapted into Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

's Vertigo

Vertigo (film)

Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...

, and their novel Celle qui n'était plus was adapted into the Henri-Georges Clouzot

Henri-Georges Clouzot

Henri-Georges Clouzot was a French film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best remembered for his work in the thriller film genre, having directed The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, which are critically recognized to be among the greatest films from the 1950s...

's Diabolique

Les Diaboliques (film)

Les Diaboliques , released as Diabolique in the United States and variously translated as The Devils or The Fiends, is a 1955 French black-and-white thriller feature film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot and Paul Meurisse...

.

Charles O’Brien’s research indicates that the term “film noir” was used in French film reviews and newspaper articles in 1938 and 1939, to refer to French films such as Quai des brumes (1937) by Marcel Carné

Marcel Carné

-Biography:Born in Paris, France, the son of a cabinet maker whose wife died when their son was five, Carné began his career as a film critic, becoming editor of the weekly publication, Hebdo-Films, and working for Cinémagazine and Cinémonde between 1929 and 1933. In the same period he worked in...

 and La Bête humaine

La Bête humaine

La Bête Humaine is an 1890 novel by Émile Zola. The story has been adapted for the cinema on several occasions. It is based around the railway between Paris and Le Havre in the 19th century and is a tense, psychological thriller....

(1938) by Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...

. O’Brien states that he found a “dozen explicit invocations of film noir” in the late 1930s, such as the paper L'lntransigeant, which called Quai des brumes a "film noir” and the newspaper Action française, in which a January 1938 film review by Francois Vinneuil called Le Puritain "un sujet classique: le film noir, plongeant dans la débauche et le crime." (“a classic subject: the film noir, plunging into debauchery and crime”).