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Ben Alder Film Noir
What is Film Noir Film Noir (literally 'black film or cinema') was coined by French film critics 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), and Laura (1944). A wide range of films reflected the resultant tensions and insecurities of the time period, and counter-balanced the optimism of Hollywood's musicals and comedies. Fear, mistrust, bleakness, loss of innocence, despair and paranoia are readily evident in noir, reflecting the 'chilly' Cold War period when the threat of nuclear annihilation was ever-present. 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, purposelessness and sense of injustice. There were rarely happy or optimistic endings in noirs. Sourced from: http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html
1940 1958 Orson Welles 1940 Raoul Walsh 1950 Otto Preminger 1961 Samuel Fuller
1972 Francis Ford 1976 Martin Scorsese 1989 Tim Burton 1993 Andrew Davis
2010 2002 Christopher Nolan 2006 Joe Carnahan 1996 The Coen Brothers
Forms and conventions of the genre Film Noir typically focuses on dark areas, the film will either be black & white or the visuals will be very toned down in colour, some will even use the focus of one colour to develop a scene or character. Characters in Film Noir will normally be regular people, Femme Fatales are used a lot in this kind of film.
Forms and conventions of the genre Dark Areas: Film Noir will have a lot of dark, secluded areas in which the characters may inhabit. This image is from the film Blade Runner, which is a weird but well made twist of a futuristic film with realistic restraints such as the lack of hover cars etc… Black & White: Since Film Noir originated when films were black & white a lot of films nowadays use this style and it still works. They may highlight colours like in Sin City or tone the colour scale down for a moody feel etc.
Forms and conventions of the genre Femme Fatale’s: In films most women are portrayed as more passive characters, doomed to a life behind the main male orientated cast. In Film Noir this is cast aside when Women become very dangerous characters indeed. Regular People: Noir films tend to have characters that are ‘believable’. These characters will be regular Joes or people with believable back story's etc that the audience could go as far as empathize with.
Forms and conventions of the genre Crime: Crime is used a lot in Noir films. It draws upon the story to focus on not only the good but the bad side of the case and such. A lot of the time even the good are slightly burnt at the edges… Detectives: Detectives are used a lot in Noir films. Normally main characters they are there because of the fact Noir uses Crime a lot. Detectives could be anything from main character to extra….
Films I Enjoy! Sin City I like Sin City because of the style it is filmed. It is based off a comic so the Noir style suits it very well. It uses a lot of dark places like standard noirs, the main characters are more hard-edged and there are of course a lot of strong prominent women. The Dark Knight I personally loved the story to The Dark Knight. It involves a twisted elaborate scheme from the Joker and the way Batman a hero figure has to be less than hero a few times makes the film very well made. Its very dank and dull like standard Noirs that don’t quite use the Black & White style… Blade Runner Blade Runner is a neo-future film from back in the early 80’s. The way they generated a futuristic film while thinking realistically without hover cars ended up looking brilliant. It is a dark film and starts off with a crime investigation, both staples of Noir Films…
Production Companies of Film Noir For Sin City and The Dark Knight. Being modern films they were produced by big blockbuster producing companies. Troublemaker made the Spy Kids series and Legendary Pictures has produced such films like 300 and Inception. In contrast most older Film Noirs were small time, mainly B-Movies due to them being cheap to make.
Films that gave me ideas Films that gave me ideas include: Sin City: The whole Noir filming techniques, the film is littered with examples of Film Noir filming techniques such as colour dulling and highlighting For my whole gambling story idea, I wanted to do a Crime picture so I then considered Crime that could be pulled off in a small film without being violent. So I turned to gambling, cards to be exact. I have watched a lot of TV that involved gambling. Mostly episodes in sitcoms or entertainment, but it has been pulled off in big pictures which cinched it for me.