HISTORY
The history of film noir can be dated back all the way from 1940s to
1950s. But before we get into the history of it, we have to understand what
film noir is. According to Paul Schrader’s Notes on Film Noir (1972), film noir is not a defined
genre which are usually being characterised by conflict and settings, but
rather it is being characterised by its mood and tone. He also mentions that film
noirs refers to films which portrayed the
world of dark, slick city streets, crime and corruption (Schrader, 1972, p. 8).
Now let us take a look at the history of film
noir. Film Noir was first applied
into Hollywood film by French critic Nino Frank in the year 1946. Back then it
was unrecognized by most American film industry professionals and cinema
historians. Before the notion was widely adopted in the year 1970s, many of the
films noirs were referred to as melodrama. As mention earlier, film noir begins from the year 1940s to the late
1950s and thus, there are many low key black and
white visual styles that came from German Expressionist cinematography. Between the years 1941 to 1948, about 20% of
film noir was adapted from hard-boiled detective novels written by American
authors such as Raymond Chandler, James M.Cain, Dashiell Hammett, and many
others.
As the period of film noir mainly takes place
during World War II, there were some changes on the perspectives of people on
how to judge a woman after the war. As they have changed their roles by having
economic independence and they are no longer being position at home without
having any education's opportunities. Thus by having equal knowledge as a male,
they have the chance to move into the traditionally male workplace to work. Therefore,
we can observe there is the existence of power of femme fatale unleashed over
the alienated hero in Noir films (Jack Boozer, 1999, p. 20). Film Noir is easily
identified by its dark, pessimistic and paranoiac mood in order to generate the
emotion to the people. It always shows 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.
DEVELOPMENT
Like time, film noirs have changed. Known as Neo-noirs, it often
maintains certain characteristic from film noirs but with a few new elements. One
of the few additional elements was that Neo-noirs was more violent than film
noir ever was. A good example would be Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas (1990). Throughout the movie, there are two scenes where
audiences can observe how the director straddles with the classical film noirs
and neo-noirs. Other films include David Fincher’s Seven (1995), whereby it was like an updated version of film noirs
with more violent and in colour. Even neo-noirs films like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) was one of the films
to claim the title “future noir”.
Other noticeable development was the way filmmakers portray the sexual content.
Similar to violent, the bar of sexual content was raise from classical film
noirs. Take Stephen Frear’s The Grifters
(1990) for example, the film features a relationship between a son and his
mother, a film characteristic which audiences would normally not get to watch
in a classical film noir. This proves that as time passes, filmmakers will
always take things into a new level, in this case, the evolution of film noirs
to neo-noirs.
Generally, as time passes, film must be modified to fit that
specific time period. Filmmakers of neo-noirs were faced with challenges to
keep their audiences disorient to maintain the key characteristic of film
noirs, while at the same time they have to come up with a brand new subject
matter. This is because audiences in film noirs and neo-noirs live in a two
completely different society. What may seem shocking in the past is no longer
shocking to the present day audiences. Although both of it shares the same
similarity, that is trying to reflect society, but each type has their
differences. Film noirs does what it supposed to do in the classical era, while
neo-noirs manage to disorient the audiences in the modern era. All of the
characteristic remains, the difference is that they have been developed and
modified for the audiences pleasure.
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