In a Nutshell

Film Noir (literally, black cinema) is a style defined primarily in terms of light – or the lack of it. This style typified a variety of American genres in the 1940s and early 1950s. Noir is a world of night and shadows. Its milieu is almost exclusively urban. The style is profuse in images of dark streets, cigarette smoke swirling in dimly lit coctail lounges, and symbols of fragility, such as window panes, sheer clothing, glasses, and mirrors.  Motifs of entrapment abound: alleys, tunnels, subways, elevators, and train cars.

Often the settings are locations of transience, like grubby rented rooms, piers, bus terminals, and railroad yards. The images are rich in sensuous textures, like neon-lit streets, windshields streaked with mud, and shafts of light streaming through windows of lonely rooms.

Characters are imprisoned behind ornate lattices, grillwork, drifting fog and smoke. Visual designs emphasize harsh lighting contrasts, jagged shapes, and violated surfaces, the tone of film noir is fatalistic and paranoid. It’s suffused with pessimism, emphasizing the darker aspects of the human condition. Its themes characteristically revolve around violence, lust, greed, betrayal, and depravity. (Taken from DeVRy Literature Course, author unknown)

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Posted on August 31st, 2008 under Films • Tags: DeVry, film noir, Films, genre, light, milieu, studies, urban. • • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback