The Beginnings

In the early 1940s, post World War II, the rise of film noir began. Film noir is derived from French meaning “black cinema,” which is a perfect embodiment of what it is. Many credit films such as The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Laura (1944) as two of the first. These films “reflected the disillusionment felt in the country” by offering a harsher depiction of society. The German influence on these films, specifically referring to German Expressionism of the 1920s and 1930s, was also a major contributor to the way the films were aesthetically represented. In fact, a statistic found in “When Film Noir Reflected An Uneasy America” by Ryan Reft quotes that “between 10,000 and 15,000, Germans and central Europeans, roughly 70 percent of them Jewish, relocated to the city in what one historian calls one of the greatest exodus of writers and artists in ‘recorded history.’” Cities like Los Angeles and Hollywood, that also acted as the setting for a lot of films.

Adding the brutal story lines and showcase of the films together, the genre of film noir is a dominant part of how cinema is shown today. In fact, neo-noir was entirely born out of this history, a style that is discussed in more detail in later posts. Backtracking to a previous statement, it must be noticed that film noir was referenced as a genre. This breeds much controversy, this term for the collection of films. In fact, referring to filmsite.org, “film noir is not a genre, but rather the mood, style, point-of-view, or tone of a film.” In the essay “What is Film Noir” by Christie Hoerneman available by the Central Rappahannock Regional Library, she writes, in reference to Paul Schrader’s essay Notes on Film Noir, that there are four elements that identify film noir.

1. “World War II and post-war disillusionment,” which we also saw referenced from filmsite.

   1. Cynicism

2. Post-war realism

   1. An authenticity

3. German influence

   1. Aesthetics mainly brought

4. Hard-boiled tradition

   1. Fiction, mostly, is what this is based off of. The novels that inspire. The detectives and other characteristics among the writing that are shown on the screen.

However, the argument gets more interesting when reading “The Modern Noir has Atrophied (and It’s Not All True Detectives Fault)” by Angelica Jade Bastien, who is a New York and Vulture critic covering film and pop culture. In this, she writes that “Noir quickly solidified itself as a genre…” by a list of things that mirror Hoerneman’s elements, but ends with the statement of “But at its core, noir has always been a political genre,” which is something we explore in a further post.

The discussion of moods leads to an upbringing of the typicality of film noir - we have the lone wolf male character and the femme fatale and the death and destruction that wrecks havoc in the pursuit of righting past wrongs. The themes of film noir along with the plots were “often taken from adaptations of American literary works” that were crafted into darker depictions in reference to American society; a reflection, like mentioned earlier.