Studies of Film Noir 

Film noir begin in the early 1940s and the late 1950s, the film noir genre generally refers to mystery and crime drama films. Movies of this genre were characteristically shot in black and white, and featured stories involving femme fatales, doomed heroes or anti heroes, and tough cynical detectives. The term “Noir” is originally French which means “Black film” or “dark Film”, was first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, but was unrecognized by most American Film industry professionals of that era. Cinema historians and critics defined the category retrospectively.

These are some characteristics of film noir, an oppressive atmosphere, French film critics (first by Nino Frank in 1946). Who noticed the trend of how dark,downbeat and black. The looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in france to Theatres following, the war such as “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) and Murder, My sweet (1944). Awide range of films reflected the resultant tensions and insecurities of the time period and counter-balanced the optimism of Hollywood’s musicals and comedies. Fear, mistrust ,bleakness , loss of innocence, despair and paranoia are readily evident in noir. It always show the characters in a dark side that reflect the bad cultural of the society and violence, it tends to make it as a reflection which people could actually see from the society and from there understand more on the cultural side for that particular time.