The truth seeker can wear any costume, whether that be a private eye or a criminal. Their primary goal is to navigate the convoluted maze of the noir universe to find a critical answer.
The Hunted:
The noir protagonist is frequently pursued and hunted from the beginning to end of a film. He is usually a male and an outsider. He finds it difficult to connect with a universe which seems so ruled by chance, so inherently absurd. He may find himself drawn into rebellious criminal acts in defiance of this absurdity.
Femme Fatale:
The most subversive element in most film noir is the female character, who is often a femme fatale. The femme fatale is a black widow, the spider woman, from the male perception, an evil and castrating bitch. Strong female characters willing to use their own sexuality as a weapon in order to level the playing field against men.
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Chiaroscuro Lightning:
Low-key lighting in the style of Rembrandt or Caravaggio, marks most noirs of the classic period. Shade and light play against each other not only in night exteriors but also in dim interiors shielded from daylight by curtains or Venetian blinds. Hard, unfiltered side-light and rim light outline and reveal only a portion of a face to create a dramatic tension all of its own. Cinematographers such as Nicholas Musuraca, John F. Seitz and John Alton took this style to the highest level in films like Out of the Past, Double Indemnity and T-Men.
Odd Angles:
Noir cinematographers favoured low angles for several reasons. Firstly, this angle made the characters rise from the ground in an almost expressionistic manner, giving them dramatic girth and symbolic overtones. In addition, it also allowed the viewer to see the ceilings of interior settings, creating even more of a sense of claustrophobia and paranoia, appropriate emotions for the world of noir: High angles could also produce disequilibrium, peering down a stairwell over a flimsy railing or out of a skyscraper window at a city street far below.
Moving Camera:
For directors like Ophilis and Lang, the camera that slides across a room past an array of foreground clutter or tracks a character through a crowded cafe had a relentless and fateful quality. When combined with a long take, suspenseful sequences were subtly enhanced.
The Urban Landscape:
Noir films are often set in urban landscapes, particularly the cities of Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. The metropolis with its circles of light under streetlamps, dim alleyways, a press of shadowy pedestrians and wet, grimy streets is the perfect milieu for the nightmarish events of noir.
Flashback & Subjective Camera:
Whether introduced via a ripple effect or simply a smash cut, the past palpably intrudes in film noir via its flashbacks. The flashback can be filtered through a single characters point of view or ostensibly detached and objective: seeing the past gives a reality that no amount of speech can match.
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