Film Noir Fiction Analysis

The film industry has gone through many different eras and genres, but one of the most significant in all of the industry’s history was film noir. Film noir is not necessarily a type of genre but rather a tone that branched off from the crime/gangster sags of the 1930’s. It has certain elements such as crime, sex, greed, and violence that are supposed to represent the same type of evils found in society. As any noir film, Double Indemnity also contains a moral conflict at the base of its plot. Film noir is generally defined as a dark, suspenseful thriller with a plot-line revolving around crime or mystery. Film noir gained more recognition after World War II. Particularly because Hollywood thrillers were been watched in French cinemas. The idea of film noir

Film noir movies, a genre disassociated with the war was made in the 1940’s. This genre reflected how Hollywood felt during the challenges of the war and post-war. It had somber dark plots, untrustworthy femme fatales and cynical heroes. The movies were set in low key lights and seedy, smoky rooms. In the films, the women were seen as “glamorous and dangerous” who wanted power and wealth, where as the men were depicted as weak and were not able to be a hero. The minor characters were traumatized by violence and sex. In Woman in a Window and Scarlet Street, the lead male is traumatized by a beautiful woman. The film, Mildred Pierce, follows a housewife from a restaurant worker to one that owns several restaurants.

Film noir is a famous era of filmmaking that defined the cinematic experience in Hollywood for a whole decade. No film can correctly represent such a influential cinematic era like Gun Crazy directed by Joseph H. Lewis. Gun Crazy is a unique expression of film noir of the 1950s that utilizes many cinematic elements in unparalleled ways to tell its story in a distinct fashion. Lewis uses cinematic techniques such as lighting, composition, editing, music, and mise-en-scene of the opening sequence to establish the tone and character motivations of the story.

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.

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

Films have been around for a very long time starting from the silent era leading to the classical phase up until today, and with time comes change and adapt to what’s current and popular. However, one thing that has stayed constant are the upcoming of film genre. One of the primary ways to identify and differentiate films are by their genres and styles. This lays out the foundation of the film using many factors like iconography, language, conflicts, lighting and story plot. One of the most iconic styles in the cinematic world would have to be the typical gangster films. Two of the most recognizable gangster films of their time were the Public Enemy (1931), along with the film Scarface (1983). Although these two films were shot in completely different eras of the U.S. we see both encounter the same stages in life despite the time change. This goes to show that these two films strongly symbolizes and demonstrates just what the gangster genre is all about in terms of social context, themes, conflict and iconography.

The characteristics of crime films are illegal activities, violence, and conflict or drama between two or more characters.

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 employs several character archetypes to tell a story. Cultural changes and shifts in gender roles of post WWII America unsettled men when many women refused to regress back into traditional housewife tasks. This fear was manifested in cinema’s femme fatale. Deceptive and manipulative, femme fatales were there to seduce, betray, and destroy the film noir hero. Norma, along with being deranged, is all of these things. She is at home in her eerie film noir setting. Her movements showing her as a self absorbed echo of her career in silent era films and her voice and facial expressions set the listener on edge. Joe Gillis

Film noir, popularized in the 1940’s, can be defined as a type of crime drama, normally in black & white, with a somewhat depressive tone to it. Themes such as sexual deviance, promiscuity, crime, and all around pessimism were prevalent in these types of films. Film noir reflected the societal attitudes of the time as people were recovering from events like the great depression, and World War II, all while dealing with the anxiety of the cold war. These events all contributed to the popularization of film noir until the social revolutions of the 1960’s changed the general attitudes of American people. The film Double Indemnity can be defined as film noir for a number of reasons. At the most basic level, Double indemnity is a 1940’s crime drama,

“Genres are not systems, they are a process of systematisation.”(Neale 1980). Genres are both a method of nomenclature, dividing literature according to its style, subject and context. Genre constantly re-imagines, challenges, and expands its boundaries to reflect zeitgeist of the society at the time and to become a barometer of the social and cultural concerns of the audience. Likewise, crime fiction as a genre has evolved from traditional conventions. Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and Cornell Woolrich's It had to be Murder, whilst obeying and selectively utilising a few original conventions, manifest the ideology and social concerns of the postwar 1950s society in aspects of the modus operandi of the investigation, gender roles and the shift

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.

Borde and Chaumeton, two French film scholars who coined the name “film noir”, also offered ideas on what a “classical noir” is. The two write that “the presence of constant crime” is a characteristic of classical noir that is present in and throughout noir films (Borde and Chaumeton 19). Like Schrader, Borde and Chaumeton agree that authority

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.

Tony Garnett’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) seems a quintessential film noir. The title suggests a fateful conclusion for the two main characters—a flawed drifter named Frank (John Garfield) and his restless female conspirator, Cora (Lana Turner). Garnett’s crime drama is crafted with the stylish devices usually characteristic of the film noir genre—low-key lighting; a flawed, inept hero; and an archetypal femme fatale. Certain thematic codes are also persistent: psychological conflict, paranoia, fate, and moral ambiguity. Three telling scenes communicate the noir stylistics effectively—where nearly all of the devices converge simultaneously: (1) Frank’s first meeting