CODES AND CONVENTIONS OF FILM NOIR

Film Noir’s primary moods were bleak and pessimistic and included moral corruption, desperation and paranoia. They took advantage of the post-war anxiety and fear of the cold war, this is evident in Kiss Me Deadly (1955).

Film Noirs were mostly shot in greys, blacks and whites, this showed the dark cynicism and emphasised the pessimism and anxiety of them. Settings were usually shot with single-source lighting in dark and gloomy rooms. Other settings included urban night scenes with deep shadows, rain-slicked streets and dark alleyways. On many occasions they featured disorienting scenes and skewed camera-angles, sometimes called a Dutch tilt. A great example of a Film Noir featuring this type of cinematography is You Only Live Once (1937).

The music in Film Noir was the heart and soul of the theme of the film and often had a melancholy quality. One of the main sounds in Film Noir was sultry jazz songs sung in smoky nightclubs.

Often a Film Noir story involved a cynical male character, known as the hero, who encountered a beautiful but promiscuous woman, known as the Femme Fatale. She would seduce him and manipulate him into becoming the fall guy often following a murder.

The heroes could be anything from hard-boiled detectives or private eyes to petty criminals or even murderers. Heroes were often low-lives involved in violent crime and corruption. They were usually sinister and disillusioned men that were struggling to survive until ultimately, they died. The Maltese Falcon (1941)

The Femme Fatales in a Film Noir were gorgeous, predatory and manipulative women. They would use their seductive skills to lead the disillusioned heroes into committing a crime of passion and twisted love such as murder. Whenever the hero in a Film Noir was a detective or private eye, he would become involved or trapped in a case that would lead to evidences of corruption, irresistible love and death. Whoever the hero was, the Femme Fatale would use menacing actions and bring them both to a downfall, such as Double Indemnity (1944).

The narrative of Film Noir was often complex and typically told with background music, flashbacks, witty dialogue and often first-person narration. A common plot of Film Noir was that a hero would suffer amnesia which made it easier for him to suffer his downfall at the hands of the Femme Fatale.