A term literally meaning "black film," coined by French film critics to describe a certain type of moviemaking that became prevalent in America during the 1940s and early 1950s. In content and theme, films noir are concerned with corruption, betrayal, cynicism, and disillusionment. The look of the films matches their mood: odd angles, oppressive compositions, indoor scenes shot either in dark or dimly lit rooms, and outdoor scenes inevitably shot at night, often on rain-drenched streets.
While many films noir were made by directors with European backgrounds, such as BILLY WILDER, FRITZ LANG, MICHAEL CURTIZ, OTTO PREMINGER, and Robert Siodmak, the noir style was actually ushered in by ORSON WELLES when he made Citizen Kane (1941), a pensive and gloomy movie that owed much to German Expressionism. The film noir changed audience expectations concerning heroes; it was the movement that gave birth to the Hollywood antihero, one of the earliest examples of which was HUMPHREY BOGART's Sam Spade in JOHN HUSTON's version of The Maltese Falcon (1941). Certainly, Bogart was the classic film noir antihero.
America lost its innocence during World War II, and that change was reflected in the films noir that began to proliferate during the early 1940s, such as This Gun for Hire (1942), Double Indemnity (1944), Laura (1944), and Phantom Lady (1944). But films noir soon exploded in popularity in the second half of the decade due to millions of disillusioned soldiers who returned home with a harsher view of life, coupled with the new, apocalyptic presence of the atom bomb. That troubled, disturbing world view was very much in evidence in scores of dark and somber movies such as Spellbound (1945), The Killers (1946), Out of the Past (1947), Body and Soul (1947), and Ride the Pink Horse (1947).
As deeply pessimistic as the 1940s films noir were, they had nothing on the violence and gloom and doom of their early 1950s counterparts. For instance, The Enforcer (1951) presented a society in which it seemed as if criminals ruled everywhere except inside police headquarters. In The Big Heat (1953) Lee Marvin, the villain, displayed unprecedented sadism by scarring Gloria Grahame's face with scalding coffee. Finally, the darkest film noir of them all was Kiss Me Deadly (1955), a movie containing one of the most nihilistic climaxes in Hollywood history.
Fewer films noir were made in the later 1950s, and they all but disappeared during the 1960s, but there have been occasional intentional (often darkly nostalgic) recreations of that style of moviemaking in the 1970s and 1980s, most memorably in Chinatown (1974), Farewell, My Lovely (1975), Body Heat (1981), and Blood Simple (1984).
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