Film Noir!

“Film noir was, above all, a style. It com­bined real­ism and expres­sion­ism, the use of real set­tings, and artis­tic shad­ow play.” Mar­tin Scors­ese, 1995

When Amer­i­can films were again allowed to be shown in Europe after World War II, sev­er­al styl­is­ti­cal­ly sim­i­lar films were released in the­aters at the same time: Audi­ences in the Old World saw pro­duc­tions such as John Hus­ton’s The Mal­tese Fal­con (1941), Bil­ly Wilder’s Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty (1944), and Fritz Lang’s Woman in the Win­dow (1944). In 1946, the French film crit­ic Nino Frank coined the term ​“film noir” (“black film”) for this genre. Today, depend­ing on the def­i­n­i­tion, this includes up to 400 pro­duc­tions made between 1941 and 1958. These most­ly low-bud­get ​“B‑movies” were pro­duced quick­ly and served as a test­ing ground for young direc­tors, includ­ing many Euro­pean émi­grés. They broke with tra­di­tion­al nar­ra­tive pat­terns and relied on expres­sive light-shad­ow con­trasts, claus­tro­pho­bic images, exper­i­men­tal cam­er­a­work, and com­plex nar­ra­tives. The­mat­i­cal­ly, they reflect a soci­ety in tran­si­tion, char­ac­ter­ized by vio­lence, mis­trust, and finan­cial depen­dence, and ques­tion the ​“Amer­i­can Dream.”