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Rule #1: Choose a Dame with a Past and a Hero with No Future. The noir protagonist is inevitably some hapless schmuck who is doomed, suckered to death or ignominy by lust, greed or some darker subterranean self-destructive urge. And inevitably the catalyst for this fall is a dame. Usually blonde. Always gorgeous.
- Overview
- The cinema of the disenchanted
- Defining the genre
film noir, (French: “dark film”) style of filmmaking characterized by such elements as cynical heroes, stark lighting effects, frequent use of flashbacks, intricate plots, and an underlying existentialist philosophy. The genre was prevalent mostly in American crime dramas of the post-World War II era.
Early examples of the noir style include dark, stylized detective films such as John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941), Frank Tuttle’s This Gun for Hire (1942), Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944), and Edward Dmytryk’s Murder, My Sweet (1944). Banned in occupied countries during the war, these films became available throughout Europe beginning in 1946. French cineastes admired them for their cold, cynical characters and dark, brooding style, and they afforded the films effusive praise in French journals such as Cahiers du cinéma. French critics coined the term film noir in reference to the low-keyed lighting used to enhance these dramas stylistically—although the term would not become commonplace in international critical circles until the publication of the book Panorama du film noir americain (1955) by Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton.
(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)
The darkness of these films reflected the disenchantment of the times. Pessimism and disillusionment became increasingly present in the American psyche during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the world war that followed. After the war, factors such as an unstable peacetime economy, McCarthyism, and the looming threat of atomic warfare manifested themselves in a collective sense of uncertainty. The corrupt and claustrophobic world of film noir embodied these fears. Several examples of film noir, such as Dmytryk’s Cornered (1945), George Marshall’s The Blue Dahlia (1946), Robert Montgomery’s Ride the Pink Horse (1947), and John Cromwell’s Dead Reckoning (1947), share the common story line of a war veteran who returns home to find that the way of life for which he has been fighting no longer exists. In its place is the America of film noir: modernized, heartless, coldly efficient, and blasé about matters such as political corruption and organized crime.
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Many of the major directors of film noir—such as Huston, Dmytryk, Cromwell, Orson Welles, and others—were American. However, other Hollywood directors renowned for a film noir style hailed from Europe, including Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Jacques Tourneur, and Fritz Lang. It is said that the themes of noir attracted European directors, who often felt like outsiders within the Hollywood studio system. Such directors had been trained to emphasize cinematic style as much as acting and narrative in order to convey thought and emotion.
Controversy exists as to whether film noir can be classified as a genre or subgenre, or if the term merely refers to stylistic elements common to various genres. Film noir does not have a thematic coherence: the term is most often applied to crime dramas, but certain westerns and comedies have been cited as examples of film noir by some critics. Even such sentimental comedy-dramas as Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) have been cited as “noir-ish” by critics who find in its suicidal hero and bleak depiction of small-town life a tone suitably dismal for film noir. Such films are also sometimes designated as “semi-noir,” or film gris (“gray film”), to indicate their hybrid status.
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Other critics argue that film noir is but an arbitrary designation for a multitude of dissimilar black-and-white dramas of the late 1940s and early ’50s. Film scholar Chris Fujiwara contends that the makers of such films “didn’t think of them as ‘films noir’; they thought they were making crime films, thrillers, mysteries, and romantic melodramas. The nonexistence of ‘noir’ as a production category during the supposed heyday of noir obviously problematizes the history of the genre.” Yet it cannot be questioned that film noir connotes specific visual images and an aura of postwar cynicism in the minds of most film buffs. Indeed, several common characteristics connect most films defined as “noir.”
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jun 6, 2014 · And just what, precisely, are its rules -- rules so skilfully subverted by modern directors? A documentary from the BBC, originally aired in 2009, seeks to answer just that, shining a light on the dark corners of film noir. Plus, check out tips that will help you achieve your own film-noir-style lighting effects.
- Justin Morrow
Film noir (/ n w ɑːr /; French: [film nwaʁ]) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylized Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir.
- United States
- early 1920s – late 1950s
Jun 27, 2021 · Anti-hero protagonist. Femme fatale. Tight, concise dialogue. High-contrast lighting. Post-war disillusionment. Noir Genre. Film noir originated in a time of angst. This style of filmmaking was characterized by a painful time in history. Cynicism and pessimism from the Great Depression were ingrained in the American psyche.
