Origins and History of Film Noir

who discovered film noir?

Film Noir was first coined by French film critic Nino Frank he noticed that there was a trend of dark looks and themes in many American crime and detective films after the war. Many of these films reflected the resultant tensions and insecurities of the time period, and counter-balanced the optimism of Hollywood's musicals.

who?

what are film noirs?

Film noirs are a style/genre of cinematographic film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace. They were originally applied to American thriller/detective films.

what?

where were film noirs founded?

The noir films occurred in America during the war, but the actual word 'film noir' is french for 'black film'

where?

when were film noirs discovered?

Film noirs origanally occurred during the war but continued to be made during the forties and fifties.

when?

why were film noirs made a genre?

Many of the films during the 1930s and early 1940s were propaganda-type films that were designed to cheer people up during the hard times of the Great Depression and World War II. It was beginning in the early 1940s, that film noir, such as began to appear. The films of the 1940s reflected the disillusionment felt in the country, especially with the soldiers returning home and women losing their jobs at the end of the war.

Post-war Americans wanted an authenticity. Americans wanted a harsh view of society from the perspective of everyday people on the streets. In addition, ordinary Americans were not as interested in seeing the studio built streets they had been watching since the 1930s. They wanted to be watching actors in actual locations creating a raw sense of realism.

During the 1930s, many German and Eastern Europeans immigrated to the United States and helped influence the American film industry. Their main influence in film noir is with aesthetics. They brought along expressionist lighting, which used artificial studio lighting to create shadows, oblique and vertical lines, and irregular light patterns.

why?

Many books of a similar genre were turned into film noirs. What the books and films have in common is a cynical and bleak outlook with a tough main character. (These were known as hard-boiled fictions)