Film Noir
Film Noir best described and known as Black Films, a well known style of Hollywood crime and drama, and its epoch associate with an unobtrusive black-white visual technique. The “standard phase” of American film noir was generally regarded in the 1940s and 1950s.
All film noirs have the element of crime usually murder. Motivations for the crimes are generally greed or jealousy, for example in Double Indemnity (1938) show the greed in how Phyllis Dietrichson, played by Barbara Stanwyck, showed on how much greed she wanted to get rid of her husband. She wanted money and she wanted it fast, Phyllis didn’t care who to kill but wanted to figure out how to do it. There will be in all film noirs an investigator, whom is prevalent, but far from dominant. False suspicions and accusations of the crime are a common trait in the plot. The heroes in the plots of film noir, who are morally questionable, are often fall guys of some sort.
Film noir is by and large associated with municipal settings in cities such as, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco etc. In many scenes of the film noir there is usually including settings within bars, lounges, night clubs and gambling venues. These are the scene where all the action tends to be! Commonly in film noir there is a lot of filming set at night or at the same time as it is raining.
Like any other movies now and days are very fancy with angels and lightning and in reality it isn’t what the audience pay attention to. Film Noir are very precise with their lightning and angels in order for the audience to grasp the idea on how powerful or how pitiful they may seem over the screen. Being a black and white movie the lightning, shadowing and on the slightest camera move is very important to Noir. The low-key lighting schemes of many classic film noirs are associated with stark light/dark contrasts and dramatic silhouette patterning, known as chiaroscuro. The shadows of Venetian blinds or banister rods cast upon an actor, a wall, or an entire set, are an iconic illustration in noir. Why are venetian blinds such a fixture in film noir? Casting shadows like the vivid stripes and prominence on distorted diagonals lend visual tension and air of volatility, ambivalence, or even an imprisonment, at times suggesting cage or prison bars, to a scene, and whether the light streaming in through the window is from the sun, a streetlight or a neon sign. The light through the blinds creates the impression is that it's always darker and more claustrophobic inside the room, where the characters are confined, than it is outside.
Film noir is also known for its use of low-angle, wide-angle, and skewed, or Dutch angle shots. The women usually look low-angels so the audience can see how powerful they are over the men, while the men have very high-angles to show their weakness over the female. Other devices of disorientation relatively common in film noir include shots of people reflected in one or more mirrors, shots through curved or frosted glass or other distorting objects.
The femme fatale is a fancy French word for "deadly woman." The females in film noir were either of two types of women, dutiful, reliable, trustworthy and loving mother and wife, or femmes fatales very mysterious, duplicitous, double-crossing, gorgeous, unloving, tough-sweet, unreliable, irresponsible, manipulative and desperate women to achieve her hidden purpose by using her beauty, charm, and sexual allure. In some rare occasions the female may be lying to the detective instead of her charm to achieve her goal on getting what she wants and the way she wants it.
The females in Film Noir are a good in archetype of literature and art. In the film The Lady from Shanghai (1947) is a great example of the female being the victim being caught in a situation from which she cannot escape. The femme fatale, who had also transgressed societal norms with her independent and smart, menacing actions, would bring both of them to a