Film Noir

Film Noir

Film Noir is a film genre or style, as well a cinematic term translated from French to Mean “Black Film”. It was originally applied to certain Hollywood films by French Critic Nino Frank in 1946. Film Noir’s Glory days are mostly considered to have taken place in Hollywood between the 1940’s to the 1950’s.
As a genre or a style it is generally used for stylish crime dramas, often including elements from other similar genres like Gangster films. Noirs are usually black and white with specific lighting and settings for certain scenes to create a different mood and look. The light is usually a low-key scheme that produces a light and dark contrasts which intern also create dramatic looking shadows which will usually cover an actor’s face or possibly an object meaningful to the plot of the film.   Character narration has also become one the norms for the genre.
Though most associate the black and white or Greyscale look of the film to Noir, there have been a few films in which colour has been used in the genre; such films as ‘Leave her to Heaven’ (1945) and ‘Vertigo’ (1958) have been considered noirs by a select number of critics. The structures of the stories tend to revolve around a crime a detective, Private eye or even just a person is struggling to solve; murder is usually the main crime. Usually the suspect behind the crime, committed it the first because of Greed or the usually jealousy. On some occasion the protagonist is sometimes the one held responsible for the crime and intern tries to clear his or her name by finding the one really responsible. False suspicions as well accusations are quite frequent with in the plot of the films. Betrayals and double crosses and conspiracies are not far behind either. The protagonists of the films are quite often loners mostly, quite alienated and usually flawed. They sometimes also carry different morals to normal people and sometimes act like they don’t care about solving the crime because they have... [continues]

Read full essay