Lawrence Gipe
New Paintings: Casbah Noir
Works are oil on panel, 16" x 20", 2025
More Info: lawrencegipestudio@gmail.com
IG: lawrencegipe
“Casbah Noir” is a series of oil paintings derived from screenshots of film noir movies set in Colonial locales such as Algiers and Cairo. Acting on the success of “Casablanca”, Hollywood created this post-WW2 genre (which I informally call “Casbah Noir”), inventing an appropriately international American anti-hero whogets involved in intrigue between the Colonialist government and indigenous bureaucrats and rebels…
After 40 years of watching film noir, I noticed a subgenre from 1946-on that introduces an American lead character into the post-WW2 geopolitical reality of indigenous cultures overthrowing, or co-existing tenuously, with their colonial occupiers.
Though it doesn’t check every box as a genuine film noir, “Casablanca” (1942) is considered a predecessor to the genre, with its classic anti-hero Humphrey Bogart playing the character Rick. In the film, Rick symbolizes a non-interventionist America: “I stick my neck out for nobody”. By the film’s end - mirroring America itself in 1942 - Rick has seen enough, and will join he cause against the Axis. By 1946, the US position had changed from anxiety to interventionist triumph, and the new reality was reflected in this subgenre.
In some 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 sites; 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.
For instance, George Raft’s character in “The Man from Cairo” (1953) represents a new, confident American interloper, just as Rick represented an ambivalent American only 4 years earlier. His character mirrors the US’s willingness to take over as mediator, and later aggressor, in maintaining colonial status quo.
These works reference multiple screen captures from “The Man from Cairo”, as well as the template for Colonial -based Noir, “Algiers” (1941), and it’s musical remake, “Casbah” (1948).