FILM NOIR:
Film noir is a term used to describe crime drama movies from Hollywood that are often focused on sex, crime, and corruption. Film noir movies were mostly made from the early 1940s to the late 1950s in the United States, and they were usually filmed in black-and-white. this style of filmmaking characterized by elements such 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.
Film noir is a term used to describe crime drama movies from Hollywood that are often focused on sex, crime, and corruption. Film noir movies were mostly made from the early 1940s to the late 1950s in the United States, and they were usually filmed in black-and-white. this style of filmmaking characterized by elements such 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.
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 storyline 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.
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 (“grey film”), to indicate their hybrid status.
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 post-war cynicism in the minds of most film buffs. Indeed, several common characteristics connect most films defined as “noir.”
LIGHTING AND SHADOWS:
The isolation from society of the typical noir hero was underscored by the use of stark high-contrast lighting—the most notable visual feature of film noir. The shadowy noir style can be traced to the German Expressionist cinema of the silent era. Robert Wiene’s Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (1920; The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) contains one of the best early examples of the lighting techniques used to inspire the genre. Wiene used visual elements to help define the title character’s madness, including tilted cameras to present skewed images and a dark atmosphere in which only the faces of the actors were visible. This Expressionistic style was later used by German directors such as Fritz Lang (Metropolis, 1927; M, 1931) and F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu, 1922; Sunrise, 1927).
These lighting effects were used in Hollywood by cinematographers such as Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane, 1941), John F. Seitz (Double Indemnity, 1944), Karl Freund (Key Largo, 1948), and Sid Hickox (The Big Sleep, 1948) to heighten the sombre tone of films in the genre. Classic images of noir included rain-soaked streets in the early morning hours; street lamps with shimmering halos; flashing neon signs on seedy taverns, diners, and apartment buildings; and endless streams of cigarette smoke wafting in and out of shadows. Such images would lose their indelibility with realistic lighting or colour cinematography.
During the 1950s film noir continued to deal with the disillusionment of the outsider, often presenting him as a confused member of a repressive society. Nunnally Johnson’s The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (1956) examined a businessman’s attempt to find meaning in his work and home life. Pickup on South Street (1953), directed by Samuel Fuller, attacked post-war American capitalism; its central character is a man who accidentally acquires a top-secret microfilm but will only part with it for a price, no matter how that may jeopardize the safety of his country. Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) went so far as to examine the brooding outsider’s attempt to change his own environment through a murder contract with another outsider. More often, however, the outsider is an inherently noble figure in a futile battle with corruption, as in Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958), cited by a plurality of film critics as the final film of the golden age of film noir.
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 (“grey film”), to indicate their hybrid status.
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 post-war cynicism in the minds of most film buffs. Indeed, several common characteristics connect most films defined as “noir.”
LIGHTING AND SHADOWS:
The isolation from society of the typical noir hero was underscored by the use of stark high-contrast lighting—the most notable visual feature of film noir. The shadowy noir style can be traced to the German Expressionist cinema of the silent era. Robert Wiene’s Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (1920; The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) contains one of the best early examples of the lighting techniques used to inspire the genre. Wiene used visual elements to help define the title character’s madness, including tilted cameras to present skewed images and a dark atmosphere in which only the faces of the actors were visible. This Expressionistic style was later used by German directors such as Fritz Lang (Metropolis, 1927; M, 1931) and F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu, 1922; Sunrise, 1927).
These lighting effects were used in Hollywood by cinematographers such as Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane, 1941), John F. Seitz (Double Indemnity, 1944), Karl Freund (Key Largo, 1948), and Sid Hickox (The Big Sleep, 1948) to heighten the sombre tone of films in the genre. Classic images of noir included rain-soaked streets in the early morning hours; street lamps with shimmering halos; flashing neon signs on seedy taverns, diners, and apartment buildings; and endless streams of cigarette smoke wafting in and out of shadows. Such images would lose their indelibility with realistic lighting or colour cinematography.
During the 1950s film noir continued to deal with the disillusionment of the outsider, often presenting him as a confused member of a repressive society. Nunnally Johnson’s The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (1956) examined a businessman’s attempt to find meaning in his work and home life. Pickup on South Street (1953), directed by Samuel Fuller, attacked post-war American capitalism; its central character is a man who accidentally acquires a top-secret microfilm but will only part with it for a price, no matter how that may jeopardize the safety of his country. Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) went so far as to examine the brooding outsider’s attempt to change his own environment through a murder contract with another outsider. More often, however, the outsider is an inherently noble figure in a futile battle with corruption, as in Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958), cited by a plurality of film critics as the final film of the golden age of film noir.
Filmmakers of the 1980s and ’90s, influenced more by the homages of the 1970s than the actual noir productions of the 1940s and ’50s, often employed elements of film noir in an offbeat context. Ridley Scott’s science-fiction drama Blade Runner (1982) revisited the use of set design to enhance the mood, an idea that can be traced back to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Richard Tuggle’s Tightrope (1984) features film noir’s theme of disillusionment in a police officer who discovers he is as much an outsider as the criminal he is pursuing. Perhaps the best contemporary examples of the genre are Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997), a bleak story of corrupt cops, and Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), a similarly dark story inspired by the crime novels of James M. Cain. Both films are presented in classic film noir style, the latter in black-and-white.
Despite recognition of the elements common to film noir, most scholars and critics continue to employ their own definitions as to what constitutes the noir style. Nevertheless, the golden era of film noir—the late 1940s through the early ’50s—is regarded as a benchmark period in American filmmaking, as well as a strong cultural checkpoint for the values of post-war America.
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