Film Vocabulary: Film Noir

Film noir is a film style and mood primarily associated with crime films, that portrays its principal characters in a cynical and unsympathetic world. Film noir is primarily derived from the gritty and hard-boiled style of crime and horror fiction of the Depression era (many films noir were adaptations of such crime novels). Film noir is first clearly seen in films released in the early 1940s. "Noirs" were historically made in black and white, and had a dark, high-contrast style with roots in German Expressionist cinematography.

The term film noir (French for "black film") was unknown to the filmmakers and actors while they were creating the classic films noirs. Film noir was defined in retrospect by film historians and critics; many of the creators of film noir later professed to be unaware at the time of having created a distinctive type of film.

The 1940s and 1950s were the "classic period" of film noir. Some film historians regard Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) as the first "true" film noir. Orson Welles's Touch of Evil (1958) is often cited as the last film in the classic period.

Many of the classic films noirs were low-budget supporting features without major stars, in which "moonlighting" writers, directors and technicians, some of them blacklisted, found themselves relatively free from the typical big-picture constraints. Many of the most popular examples of film noir center upon a woman of questionable virtue, and are also known as bad girl movies. Major studio feature films demanded a wholesome, positive message. Weak and morally ambiguous lead characters were ruled out by the "star system," and secondary characters were seldom allowed any depth or autonomy. In "A" films, flattering soft lighting, deluxe interiors, and elaborately built exterior sets were the rule. Film noir turned all this on its head, creating bleak, intelligent dramas tinged with nihilism, mistrust, paranoia, and cynicism, in real-life urban settings, and using unsettling techniques such as the confessional voiceover or hero's-eye-view camerawork. The noir style gradually re-influenced the mainstream--even beyond Hollywood.