What is Film Noir?
Film Noir is a cinematic term used to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, in particular those which deal with cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. It is regarded as extending from the early 1940's to the late 1960's and it's influence can also be seen in more modern ventures.
It is associated with a low black and white key which took influence from experimental German cinematography. Many of the stories and the attitudes of Noir derive from hard-boiled crime fiction born from the US great depression.
Film Noir is French for "black film", first applied to these Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946. Before 1970 however this notion was not widely accepted and they were referred to as 'melodramas'. It is still debated whether Film Noir should be classified as a specific genre.
It encompasses a range of plots. The main figure could be a private eye, a detective, an ageing boxer, a hapless grifter, a law-abiding citizen turned to a life of crime or even someone who was caught up in it all from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
10 'Noir' films - New and Old:
- Chinatown (1974)
- Millers Crossing (1990)
- L.A Confidential (1997)
- Mulholland Drive (2001)
- Blue Velvet (1986)
- Citizen Kane (1941)
- Road to Perdition (2002)
- Dark City (1998)
- Angel Heart (1987)
- Brick (2005)
Top rated 25 Noir Films on IMDB
10 facts about Noir films
Stacked heels and camera trickery were used during the filming of the 1946 version of 'The Big Sleep', to make Humphrey Bogart - who was shorter than female co-stars Lauren Bacall and Martha Vickers - appear taller.
In the Coen's noirish thriller Miller's Crossing, the line "Jesus, Tom" is said seven times, by four different characters.
According to the BFI, The Third Man is the “greatest British movie ever made”. Oddly, it also comes in at 57 in the American Film Institute’s “Top 100 American films”.
Because Orson Welles turned up two weeks late for the filming of The Third Man, men in “fat suits” had to be used as body doubles for several shots.
Cecil B DeMille was paid $10,000 and a brand new Cadillac for his cameo in Sunset Blvd. When Billy Wilder went back to him to film a necessary close-up, he demanded another $10,000.
There are three Maltese Falcon statuette props left in existence, and each is valued at over $1m – more than it cost Warner Bros to make the actual movie.
Pierce Patchett’s brothel in LA Confidential, in which the prostitutes are film star lookalikes, is based on a real place in 1940s Hollywood.
Noirish high school thriller Brick features a number of references to classic film noirs: the “long-short-long-short” car horn signal employed by the main character is stolen from Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon.
While filming Chinatown, Jack Nicholson often stalled shooting to watch basketball on a portable TV. Director Roman Polanski eventually became so enraged he smashed the gogglebox with a mop.
While often described as a genre, many claim film noir is more about the use of a visual style – i.e. low key lighting – and tropes such as “the femme fatale”, “the cynical detective” and a plot riddled with mystery and deception.
1940’s Stranger on the Third Floor, starring legendary noir character actor Peter Lorre, is widely regarded as the first ever film noir. Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958) is often called the last of the classic noirs.
“Neo noir” movies that consciously echo the noir style include Body Heat (1981), Shattered (1991) and Basic Instinct (1992) – Sharon Stone’s sex vixen might be the most OTT femme fatale in cinema.
The Coen brothers often tip their hats to film noir while twisting its conventions: Fargo swaps a gritty urban setting for the supposedly wholesome rural Midwest, while The Big Lebowski casts a lazy stoner in the detective role.
Scholars are divided on whether film noir is a recognizable genre like the Western or the musical. Most agree that the term is best used to define a style and a period in American cinema, rather than a distinct genre. The points below help to illuminate this definition.
The term film noir, French for "black film" was first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946. It was not used by filmmakers of the time, and was not in common parlance until decades later.
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and complex motivations, but elements of the noir style are recognizable in a wide variety of genres.
Both literary and cinematic noir are loosely defined by: (i) the subjective point of view; (ii) the shifting roles of the protagonist; (iii) the ill-fated relationship between the protagonist and society (generating the themes of alienation and entrapment); and (iv) the ways in which noir functions as a socio-political critique.
The primary literary influence on film noir was the school of American detective and crime fiction, led in its early years by such writers as Dashiell Hammett (whose first novel, Red Harvest, was published in 1929) and James M. Cain (whose The Postman Always Rings Twice appeared five years later), and popularized in pulp magazines such as Black Mask.
Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s, but the dominant style is considered primarily a post-war phenomenon.
Cinematic elements of film noir include low-key lighting, chiaroscuro effects, deep focus photography, extreme camera angles and expressionist distortion.
Voice–over and flashback were persistent stylistic and narrative elements of film noir movies. Double Indemnity and Detour are examples of movies that successfully used these techniques.
Many film noir stories include a femme fatale character. A femme fatale is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. The phrase is French for "deadly woman". A femme fatale tries to achieve her hidden purpose by using feminine wiles such as beauty, charm, and allure. Although typically villainous, femme fatales have also appeared as anti- heroines in some stories, and some even repent and become heroines by the end of the tale. Femme fatales of history and literature include the convicted spy Mata Hari, Mohini of Hindu mythology, Cleopatra, and the Biblical figures Eve, Delilah, Salome and Jezebel.
Major examples of film noir include: The Maltese Falcon (1941) – although not entirely in the true noir style, often considered the first film noir, and certainly one of the earliest films to employ the cynical hard-boiled style, particularly in its dialogue, taken almost entirely from Dashiell Hammett’s landmark 1930 detective novel of the same name Double Indemnity (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Out of the Past (1947), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Crossfire (1947), T-Men (1947), Criss Cross (1949), They Live By Night (1949), Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), The Big Heat (1953), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Touch of Evil (1958), generally considered the last film noir
Other films not considered strictly film noir but exhibiting many of the characteristics: The Third Man (1949), To Have and Have Not (1944), Notorious (1946) - and a few other Hitchcock movies
Examples of neo-noir (more contemporary films that employ elements of the style, usually self-referentially or as homage): Chinatown (1974), The Long Goodbye (1973), Body Heat (1981), Pulp Fiction (1994), Blade Runner (1982) – an example of noir style used in an unrelated genre, in this case, science fiction.
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