This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. If an article link referred you here, you might want to go back and fix it to point directly to the intended page.
Film noir is primarily derived from the hard-boiled style of crime fiction of the Depression era, (many films noir were adaptations of such novels), and may first be clearly seen in films released in the early 1940s.
Noir turned all this on its head, creating bleak but intelligent dramas tinged with nihilism, mistrust, bleakness, paranoia and cynicism, in real-life urban settings, and using unsettling techniques such as the confessional voice-over or hero's-eye-view camerawork.
Noir films, traditionally fl and white, tended to include dramatic shadows and stark contrast—using low-key lighting and monochrome film, typically resulting in a 10:1 ratio of dark to light, rather than the more typical 3:1 ratio.
Film noir is a distinct branch, sub-genre or offshoot of the crime/gangster and detective/mystery sagas from the 1930s (i.e., Little Caesar (1930), Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1932)), but very different in tone and characterization.
Noirs were rooted in German Expressionism of the 1920s and 1930s, such as in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) or Fritz Lang's M (1931), and in the French sound films of the 30s.
The criminal, violent, misogynistic, hard-boiled, or greedy perspectives of anti-heroes in film noir were a metaphoric symptom of society's evils, with a strong undercurrent of moral conflict.
Feeds |
Contact