The History of Film Noir

Film Noir (literally 'black film or cinema') was coined by French film critics (first by Nino Frank in 1946) who noticed the trend of how 'dark', downbeat and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France to theatres following the war, such as The Maltese Falcon (1941) Murder, My Sweet (1944), Double Indemnity (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944).

Key Noirs are; the Maltese Falcon, a Touch of Evil, Double Indemnity, the first ‘true’ noir film is ‘stranger on the third floor’, with the last film noir being ‘touch of evil’. ‘Stranger on the Third Floor’ was released on August 16th 1940; whereas ‘Touch of Evil’ was released may 21st 1958. Films made after this period, like ‘Se7en’ (1995),’ L.A. Confidential’ (1997) or even ‘Bladerunner’ (i982).

Classic film noir is inspired by German expressionism, many of the stories and a lot of the attitude of film noir is derived from the hard boiled school of crime drama, this emerged during the United States during the depression.

The film noir genre and noir films are deeply inspired by German expressionism; it is a cinematic movement of the 1910s and 1920s, closely related to developments in theatre, photography, architecture, painting, etc. German expressionism moved to American film noirs when important film artists that had been working in Germany moved over to the U.S., they moved over to the U.S. due to offers from the ‘booming’ Hollywood film industry and the growing threat of the Nazi power.

The first Film Noir could have been a pre-world war 2 crime drama called Fury which was released in 1936 and was directed by Fritz Lang as it was categorized as a Film Noir even though it came out before the big period of Film Noir in America, but another movie is commonly stated as the first Film Noir and a true Film Noir, it was called Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) which was directed by Boris Ingster, this could be because it falls into the time period of Film Noirs or that crime melodramas were no really seen as Film Noir before this period as well.

When looking at Film Noirs we can see there are a many different types of characters in any one Film Noir. Thematically, film noirs were most exceptional for the relative frequency with which they centered on women of questionable virtue—a focus that had become rare in Hollywood films after the mid-1930s and the end of the pre-Code era. The signal movie in this vein was Double Indemnity (1944), directed by Billy Wilder, these characters are referred to as, femme fatales. A hardboiled detective or some form, however, the prevalence of the private eye as a lead character declined in film noir of the 1950s, a period during which several critics describe the form as becoming more focused on extreme psychologies and more exaggerated in general. A prime example is Kiss Me Deadly (1955) here the protagonist is a private eye, Mike Hammer. Hammer overturns the underworld in search of the 'great whatsit'... [Which] turns out to be—joke of jokes—an exploding atomic bomb.

Analysis of similar text: Sunset Boulevard

Sunset Boulevard

Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American Noir film directed by Billy Wilder. I will be talking about the opening of this movie.
The film has an opening shot of a kerb which has the name of the movie written on it. It then pans across the road whilst the names of the actors, the director and so on appear on the road. The opening just like we would expect from film noirs is set outside as film noirs were well known for being set outside. Throughout the opening a tense music track is played over the top and this gives the viewer an insight into what they can expect from the movie.
Once the titles have finished a voice over begins and it starts to introduce the story and what is happening in the opening scene. As the voice over begins asynchronous sirens can be heard, then the police cars come into the shot and elliptical editing is used to show us the journey of the police cars, towards the scene of a murder where a body floating in a pool has been found. During this scene both the shots used and the voice over notify us of the backdrop of the movie, L.A as we recognise the big palm trees that are seen in L.A.
The movie has one clear narrative that we can see from the 3 minute opening and that we recognize as a narrative that is used in many film noirs and that is flashbacks. The whole movie is basically an entire flashback as it starts with the finding of the dead body and then the rest of the film goes back 6 months and tells us of how the murder came to happen. From the shot of the dead body in the pool a transition is used as the shot fades away from the body and brings in a shot of an L.A street. The shot then pans across to a small apartment block where one of the apartments has an open window which just like the narrative that we have seen fits with the typical settings of some film noirs as in many, film noirs small apartments or hotel rooms are seen a lot, take for example L.A confidential a neo noir, a small rundown hotel room is used as one of the settings of the movie, it is used as a place to take criminals and beat answers out of them. From the pan we are taken into the open window and there we see the narrator of the movie. Once introduced to him we recognise him from near the beginning of the movie as he was the body found floating in the pool, because of this we know what is going to happen to him but we don’t know how so this keeps the viewer guessing and make them keep watching as they will want to see if they guess right about why he gets killed and most of all who kills him.

Sunset Boulevard opening

This was the opening sequence to the Film noir Sunset Boulevard.

The reason why it does not play is that the author removed this video from youtube so the video will not work.

Film Noir Mind Map.

Film Noir.

I am going to make a 2-3 minute film opening of a Film Noir. My group includes Adam Burford and Robert Myers. This is all part of my media coursework.