FILM NOIR AND THE AUTEUR IN DOUBLE INDEMNITY essays

FILM NOIR AND THE AUTEUR IN DOUBLE INDEMNITY essays As a cinematic genre dating back to the mid 1930's, film noir is generally defined as a dark, suspenseful thriller with a plotline revolving around crime or mystery. Following World War II, film noir gained much recognition when Hollywood thrillers, such as The Maltese Falcon (1941) with Humphrey Bogart and Sidney Greenstreet, could be seen in the French cinemas. The term itself is derived from the roman noir, used in the 19th century to describe the English romantic horror novel, better known as Gothic Romanticism and linked to such authors as Horace Walpole, Ann In the genre of film noir, a particular blackness of physique, such as dark, wet city streets or the use of shadowing, tended to be an important element as well as the depiction of a dark world of corruption, violence and crime. In France during World War II, the genre provided a vehicle for films of a high caliber that were not objectionable to the occupying authorities, in this case the Nazis. Soon after the war, film noir became popular with the French post-war generation of filmgoers and was enthusiastically adopted by some filmmakers, especially Melville Godard in In most instances, film noir involves the use of several special techniques usually brought about through photographic ingenuity and innovation. Basically, film noir includes the application of sharp-edged shadows and camera shots, strange angles and settings which are often bleak and mundane. In addition, film noir is often incorporated into an atmosphere of hard urban reality, such as city streets, back alleys, rundown hotels, dark, smoke-filled barrooms and dimly-lit cafes. One of the most familiar themes associated with film noir contains a hero who is not a criminal but a weak, ineffective man who is tempted by a beautiful and mysterious woman, a motif that can be traced back to Homer's Odyssey. In this so-called "double story," the wom...