Neo-Noir and ‘Becoming-Murderer’ in Tonia Marketaki’s John the Violent

Ioannis o Viaios/John the Violent is a 1973 black-and-white film written and directed by the renowned Greek auteur Tonia Marketaki. It was made just before the fall of the Greek junta (1967–74) and in line with the modernist aesthetics and politics of New Greek Cinema. The chapter explores John the Violent, in the breach between Gilles Deleuze’s movement-images and time-images, and attempts to make readable the intersection between the neo-noir aesthetics and the existential and political powers of the film. The chapter argues that the neo-noir sensibility of the film lies not in the classic noir presentation, investigation and solution of a crime, but in the multiple fascination with what Deleuze calls the ‘powers of the false’ in crime and cinema. John, the psychologically troubled but charming protagonist, seems to have committed the murder of a woman, as he willingly confesses to the police. While this might be true or not in the fictional narrative, Ι‎ will attempt to illustrate how Marketaki undermines narrative verisimilitude and how John the Violent is less about the story of a psycho-killer and more a neo-noir about the existential and political processes of a becoming-murderer.