Film Noir

The 1946 film The Killers is a renowned film noir based off of Ernest Hemingway’s short story of the same title, focusing on the detailed backstory and investigation for the motive of the murder of Pete Lund/Ole Anderson, commonly known and referred to as “The Swede.” A film noir is a term made originally to describe American mystery and thriller movies produced in the time period from 1944-1954, primarily marked by moods of menace, pessimism, and fatalism. Although the film does not focus on the war itself at all, it still puts forth interesting new ways in how gender relations can be stereotypical as well as divergent proceeding the Second World War.

     Roman Polanski's 1974 film, 'Chinatown', revolutionized the film noir genre. Aside from the absense of voice-over, the film shares all the same characteristics with earlier noirs. That is, of course, except for the fact that ?Chinatown? is

When discussing American culture, the influence and interplay of film cannot be understated. We are a nation consumed with the media. Today, the movie business is one of the highest grossing businesses there is. We hold movie stars up as though they are super human. We closely watch their style, their dating lives, their party habits, and even their favorite restaurants, among many other things. We rely on movies to lift us up, teach us about other cultures and time periods, and even to teach us about our own culture. Often, movies reflect the time period they are filmed in and directly reflect the social tensions of that time and the film noir genre is no different. One of the most famous film noir movies out there, The Maltese Falcon,

Film Noir was extremely trendy during the 1940’s. People were captivated by the way it expresses a mood of disillusionment and indistinctness between good and evil. Film Noir have key elements; crime, mystery, an anti-hero, femme fatale, and chiaroscuro lighting and camera angles. The Maltese Falcon is an example of film noir because of the usage of camera angles, lighting and ominous settings, as well as sinister characters as Samuel Spade, the anti-hero on a quest for meaning, who encounters the death of his partner but does not show any signs of remorse but instead for his greed for riches.

Alexander Mackendrick’s, The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), is a ninety-six-minute film noir, that incorporates many techniques in cinematography to depict the dark and mysterious genre of film noir itself. This paper will go over the summary of the film, the concept of film noir, followed by a formal and social context of the film, that is the techniques in cinematography used to portray the essential theme of darkness or distrust in the genre of film noir – more specifically, the roles that women play in this particular film. Thus, Mackendrick’s The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) is a classic genre of film noir that uses extensive low-key lighting to portray a certain darkness in the world of film noir, and the darkness in each of the

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (n.d) defines noir as “crime fiction featuring hard-boiled[,] cynical characters and bleak[,] sleazy settings.” However, it could be suggested that “claustrophobic” would be a better descriptor, in place of “sleazy.” The term noir, as it relates to fiction, comes from “film noir,” which means “black cinema,” and was a term coined in France by French critic Nino Frank (Schurr, A., Crump, A., Rozeman, M., & Paste staff, 2015). The dark term was coined partially in reference to a particular subset of Hollywood films that were permeated with previously unseen levels of cynicism or disillusionment, this cynicism is generally attributed to the 1940s post-war dynamics (Hoerneman, n.d.). Film

Film Noir, a term coined by the French to describe a style of film characterized by dark themes, storylines, and visuals, has been influencing cinematic industries since the 1940’s. With roots in German expressionistic films and Italian postwar documentaries, film noir has made its way into American film as well, particularly identified in mob and crime pictures. However, such settings are not exclusive to American film noir. One noteworthy example is Billy Wilder’s film Sunset Boulevard, which follows the foreboding tale of Joe Gillis, the desperate-for-success protagonist, who finds himself in the fatal grips of the disillusioned femme fatale Norma Desmond. Not only does the storyline’s heavy subject matter and typical character

Film Noir was a result of it's time - The war had just ended and It was time where prohibition had influenced an abundance in crime and corruption. Film noir serves to highlight the darkest aspects of human beings. ‘Society is making the machinery of it's own destruction.

Film Noir Film noir is not a genre, but can be described as a style or mood for films made in the early 1940’s during the Great Depression time period, in which Hollywood went noir. Just the word Noir itself means “darkness or black” in French. This meant all the films showed dark aspects of modernity, murderers, political corruption, and organized crime reflected on the disappointment of the times. Film noir is characterized by elements such as Dark and shadowy lighting, flashbacks and voice over, and cynical men and women. All films have similarities and differences in which they accomplish falling into the Noir genre, for example “Raw Deal” and “Out of the Past”, two very different films but fall into the same category.

Film noir is a type of genre of film determined by moody hints of menace and pessimism. A collective of films which feature elements of film noir include Basic Instinct, Chinatown, Double Indemnity and Se7ev. The following analysis will draw a focus towards the 1974 American neo-noir mystery film, Chinatown, and reveal a comprehensive insight of its plot, protagonist, setting, conflict, stakes, antagonist and the theme - the controlling idea. This Robert Evans production was a Paramount Pictures release directed by Roman Polanski from a screenplay written by Robert Towne, Chinatown was inspired by the California Water Wars in the early 20th Century and is a multi-layered story combining both mystery and psychological drama.

Film noirs describe pessimistic films associated with black and white visual styles, crime fiction, and dark themes. Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 film noir directed by Billy Wilder. Sunset Boulevard presents many themes that are common with the genre film noir, but also introduces some differences from the typical movie in that genre.

Music had a number of distinctive characteristics for film noir and especially played a huge role in Laura, a classic film in 1944 that was directed by Otto Preminger with music by David Raksin. The hauntingly beautiful Laura theme was composed by Raskin which became one of the most popular melodies of that decade. The melody was played in the opening credits with such rich materials that it provided essentially all of the musical material for the rest of the film. The film follows a detective, Detective Mark McPherson, in his investigation in the murder of a beautiful advertising executive, Laura. There are quite a few characters that come into the film, one notable character being Waldo Lydecker, Laura’s old mentor and ex-boyfriend who at

After World War II, the American motion picture studios began releasing films shot in black and white, with a high contrast style known as Film Noir. Though the roots of this style of film was greatly influenced by the German Expressionist movement in film during the late 1910-early 1920’s, and films that resembled this style were made prior to the war, including the early films by Fritz Lang, a German director who fled Germany prior to the war to work in America, this film style would become prevalent during the post WWII era. Besides the shadowed lighting style and the psychologically expressive mise-en-scène, the film noir plot-lines often surrounded crime dramas and were greatly influenced by the pulp fiction novels of the period by authors like Dashiell Hammett and

audience) that he will wait in a café until he finds her. The café he

Film Noir as a genre is set in a specific period of time. It is also a genre that is considered to be related to a specific society - that of America from 1940-1958. Film Noir as a genre is a term that French critic Nino Frank coined to describe the new “film movement” emerging from Hollywood in the 1940’s, which appeared to be black and white, crime and detective films. But these two prominent characteristics do not form the genre alone. Stylistic film features such as mood, style and tone are very eminent in Film Noir however it was not always considered as a film genre, but this is what makes the film genre so distinctive. Film Noir was a “new movement” or cycle of films as it consisted of expressionistic lighting techniques such as low