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- Beginning arguably with the "Maltese Falcon" in 1941 and extending into the late 1950s, film noir depicted a nation in which the American dream was treated as a “bitter irony”, marriage as “absolutely horrific”, the police and politicians were “bleak, amoral and ugly”, and morality little more than situational; “anyone in the right or wrong circumstances, was capable of almost anything,” agues film historian Robert Pippin.
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Bars, lounges, nightclubs, and gambling dens are frequently the scene of action. The climaxes of a substantial number of film noirs take place in visually complex, often industrial settings, such as refineries, factories, trainyards, power plants—most famously the explosive conclusion of White Heat, set at a chemical plant. [205]
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Feb 22, 2017 · As the film draws to a close, its final scenes take place in Chinatown where Elsa displays her comfort with Chinese language and culture. She even depends on the Chinese underworld in her attempt to off O’Hara.
Film noir emerged in the early 1940s as a distinctive style within American cinema, marked by its dark, moody aesthetics and cynical narratives. Noir films often delve into psychological depth, examining the inner turmoil and motivations of their characters.
- Overview
- Influences
- Appeal
- History
- Critical Perspectives
- Further Reading
Film noir indicates a darker perspective upon life than was standard in classical Hollywood films and concentrates upon human depravity, failure, and despair. The term also implies a cinematic style: a way of lighting, of positioning and moving the camera, of using retrospective voice-over narration. Its narrative often relies heavily on flashbacks...
Hard-boiled popular fiction gave film noir its narrative models, major themes, and verbal style. The genre is commonly associated with the detective fiction of writers like Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) and Raymond Chandler (1888–1959), which first appeared in the 1920s and provided an alternative to the then-dominant British detective fiction of wr...
Given its doom-laden world, film noiroffers the voyeuristic pleasure of watching transgression play itself out. Audiences saw morally compromised people doing immoral things; stories involved the forbidden, the sinful. The films pushed the boundaries of contemporary censorship: their ads promised the titillations of easy women, violent men, and doo...
A rough overview of film noir begins in the early 1940s with films like The Maltese Falcon, which presented a new, darker perspective on the characters and themes of hard-boiled fiction. Two earlier films, the 1931 The Maltese Falcon and the 1936 Satan Met a Lady, had been based upon Hammett's novel of the same name. Both handled crime in the light...
The critical and theoretical commentary upon film noir has been extensive. The history of film noir begins with international criticism—essays written in postwar France assessing new developments in American film. The context and historical moment is important. New Hollywood films had not been available in France since the time of the German occupa...
Borde, Raymond, and Etienne Chaumeton. Panorama du film noir americain, 1941–1953. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1955. Published in English as Borde, Raymond, and Etienne Chaumeton. A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941–1953. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002. Copjec, Joan, ed. Shades of Noir: A Reader. New York and London: Verso, 1993. Gorman, ...
Jun 19, 2023 · Discover how Film Noir artfully reflected post-WWII America's social and cultural climate, its origins, and classic examples in this insightful blog.
Jun 27, 2021 · Film noir is a stylized genre of film marked by pessimism, fatalism, and cynicism. The term was originally used in France after WWII, to describe American thriller or detective films in the 1940s and 50s. Though, Hollywood’s film noir stretches back to the 1920s.
Jan 18, 2023 · Reviewing and gaining a depth understanding of prevalent themes in film noir help highlight how events in the film reflect the existing attitudes of its audience, whether the epiphanies...
