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Negative Effects Of Film Noir

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Film Noir: The dark side
Background

Film noirs came to prominence during and after the World War II and lasted through the ‘Golden Era’ till 1960. Film noir can be defined as a film movement and not just a genre of film because it emerged at the time of political disturbance (1941-1958) – Second World War and Cold War. Feelings of fear, mistrust, and ambiguity, loss of innocence, pessimism and paranoia are evident in noir films, reflecting the disruption and disillusionment prevalent in the American society after the Second World War. The criminal, violent, misogynistic, hard-boiled, or greedy perspectives of anti-heroes in film noir were a metaphoric symptom of society 's evils, with a strong undercurrent of moral conflict, purposelessness …show more content…

Low-key lighting, silhouettes, limited dialogues and a sense of urgency and crime highlighted the genre. This was popularised by Warner Bros. who had little funds for their films. So part of their set and characters would be kept in the dark - hiding unnecessary information from the viewers. The cinematic style however immensely loved by the viewers. Towards the end of the 1950s film production companies started to have more funding for films and use of darkness was not a necessity anymore. New elements were introduced to generate the same thematic setting. This was the slow birth of neo-noir. Neo-Noir, unlike the classical Noir, wasn 't completely restricted. While Noir was more about detective stories and gangsters, Neo-noir could broaden the scope and include human complexities and anti-hero narratives to its scope. Interestingly, The Godfather, in spite of being made in the 1970s stuck to the classical film noir story-telling. On the other hand, ten years earlier, Godard 's Breathless was the first film which brought neo-noir to international attention, and ever since then people dared to step out of the classical structure and experiment with it. Breathless broke all traditional structures of classical noir story-telling by introducing fast cuts, jump cuts, comic reliefs and stronger female protagonists. Ever since then, a lot of sub-genres were born, namely Science-fiction neo-noir like Blade Runner, horror neo-noir The Shinning, neo-noir crime films like Drive, transgressive neo-noir like The Fight Club and also seen in graphic novel adaptations such as Sin City. Neo-noir, unlike its classical counterpart was used immensely for character-driven plots and a lot of importance was given to the hero 's inner battle as opposed to its outer battle. By breaking away from the classical roots,

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