The History of Film Noir.

The 1940’s and 1950’s are usually known to be the classic period for American film noirs, most film noirs were low modestly budgeted features without major stars. Film noirs are usually shot in greys or black and whites this emphasized the brutal, shadowy, dark and sadistic sides of the human experience. The protagonists in film noir were usually driven by their past or by human weakness to repeat former mistakes.

Films noirs began in the 1940’s with films such as ‘ The Maltese Falcon’, this indicated a new and darker view on characters and the fiction. Film Noirs also usually refer to a historical period of time. Film Noir was coined by French film critics (first by Nino Frank in 1946) who recognized how 'dark' and black the themes were of many American crime and detective films viewed in French theatres following the war, Including The Maltese Falcon 1941, Murder My Sweet (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Laura (1944). A variety of films reflected the resultant tensions and insecurities of the time period, and counter-balanced the optimism of Hollywood's musicals and comedies. Fear, mistrust, bleakness, loss of innocence, despair and paranoia are the key success to a film noir, reflecting the Cold War period when the threat of nuclear annihilation was present. When men went to war, and left the women that’s how the women become dominant this led to the term ‘ femme fatale’. 'Stranger on the third floor' was the first full featured film noir. The popular noir couple were brought together in George Marshall's post-war crime thriller The Blue Dahlia (1946), with an Oscar-nominated screenplay by Raymond Chandler (the only work he ever wrote directly for the screen). Alan Ladd portrayed returning war veteran Johnny Morrison who discovered that his wife Helen (Doris Dowling) was unfaithful during his absence. When she turned up dead and he became the prime suspect, he was aided in the case by the mysterious Joyce Harwood (Lake) - the seductive ex-wife of his wife's former lover.