History of Film Noir & The Codes and Convetions of Noir

The term Film Noir is used to describe the era that stylish Hollywood film crime dramas were primarily used. The era that film noir was primarily used for these type of film was from the early 1940’s to the late 1950’s. The term noir came about in 1946 by a French film critic called Nino Frank. Cinema historians and critics defined the general rules of film noir after reviewing the past films and deciding on commonly used effects, prop’s, storylines, etc. Many of those who created potential film noirs later confessed that they were unaware of having created a distinctive type of film.







It was given its name of film noir after the second world war where the French named it. Meaning film of black & white. France was receiving a large flood of Hollywood movies in a short space of time because the French had been to busy fighting to play many movies during the second world war.






Cinema critics define film noir as stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize sexual motivation. Back when film noir was in its prime, it was associated with its usage of black and white styles and very low-key lighting, rain shadowing, Smokey settings, and over usage of lipstick. A lot of the storylines derived from the stereotypical crime fiction that appeared in the United States during the depression. Film noir was a big hit because most of the world had just been involved in WWII. The nations like the US and the UK had bad social conditions due to the men returning home and expecting to go back to their old way of working. The women like the jobs that they had been asked to fill while the men were at war. And many women refused to leave their job. This was illustrated by the strong roles women played in film noirs.






Film noir produced a lot of ‘B’ picture movies; because early films didn’t have a big budget or corporate backing to produce them like they do in modern Hollywood productions.






Some forms of German expressionism (Another style of early film) comes across very strongly in very early film noir. This technique uses extreme camera angles, angles that are not typically used in Hollywood films. This makes the viewer feel very strange as it is something they are not used to. Also colours in film noir tend to be very highly contrasted between black and white. There is not many mid-tones colours used (i.e. gray)


Classic film noirs (from the 1940’s/50’s) typically use black & white. Mainly due to this was the best techonolgy at the time. But modern film noirs or ‘Neo noirs’ as they are called illustrates certain aspects of the codes and conventions from old noirs. Like in Sin City 2005. It mostly uses the Black & White technique but in some scenes it also may let though some red to really draw attention to what the film is illustrating; Like a fem-fatal’s make-up, Or the blood of a victim.