Film Noir

I found the articles on film noir particularly interesting because I'm in a class all about German Expressionism and Film Noir this semester. I'd heard the terms thrown around before, but I wasn't sure exactly what each genre referred to. I think it's important to realize what came before film noir in order to understand how it came into being. German filmmaking in the 1910s and 1920s was far ahead of its competitors-- they were visionaries experimenting with the science of filmmaking more than ever before. It's clear that German Expressionism had a clear influence on film noir. The high contrast lighting and vertical/oblique lines in the architecture of the set are just a few instances where expressionism shines through.

It's interesting to track the progression of international cinema and how it influenced American cinema especially during the times of war and post-war disillusionment. The 1930s saw the need for the cinema to act as a distraction from The Depression for its viewers, then the war needed the cinema to promote patriotism and produce allied propaganda, and it wasn't until after the war that film noir was really free to flourish into the stylistic genre we know today.