Research into Film Noir.

This is a post about Film Noir. If you scroll further down on my blog you will see a prezi which looks at film stills from this genre. So, Film Noir means 'Black Film' deriving from the french word 'Noir' for Black. The most distinctive part of this genre is the crime which is put accross in a stylish manner. This genre was first around in the early 1940's to the late 1950's. Films such as Casino Royale and Blade Runner utilise this type of genre. The common plotline to Film Noir genres are murder investigations, the female and male characters which have been wrongly accused of a crime and complicated plots are further ensued by flashbacks and flash forwards with the narrating tying in together, which makes us assume that we can trust the male character. The film noir genre is not like the average film you get nowadays! Film noir is filmed in black and white mainly and with a sense of mystery and tension in the camera shot instead of films which are in colour. The visual motif of the film noir genre are very iconic because they can tell us quite a lot about the character. For example, if the character is holding a gun and hasn't taken of his hat whilst walking into a room, we think that he is superior and quite thug looking. But, if we see a character who is trying their hardest to prevent something horrible from happening to another character then we see them as a hero. Characters personalities and what they have to use tell us a lot about them. The tone and outlook of film noir must be bleak, defeatist and pessimistic. The normal ending to this type of genre is that noone gets more than what they deserve and they always get what's coming to them. Commonly, there is a lot of sexual tension between the hero and the female lead. This makes the viewer want to watch it so that they can end up together even though we know the hero might have some sort of terrible dilemma. Film noir also keeps the viewer guessing right to the end. This is to show tension so that the viewer is interested in watching the rest of the movie.