History of film noir

The history of film noir.

The 1940’s
The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. While City Streets and other pre-WWII crime melodramas such as Fury (1936) and You Only Live Once (1937)—both directed by Fritz Lang—are categorized as full-fledged noir in Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's film noir encyclopedia, other critics tend to describe them as "proto-noir" or in similar terms. However ‘Stranger On The Third Floor’ may well now be the prime candidate for the ‘first film noir’.

Most of the film noirs of the classic period were similarly low- and modestly budgeted features without major stars—B movies either literally or in spirit. In this production context, writers, directors, cinematographers, and other craftsmen were relatively free from typical big-picture constraints. There was more visual experimentation than in Hollywood filmmaking as a whole: the Expressionism now closely associated with noir and the semi documentary style that later emerged represent two very different tendencies. Narrative structures also tended to be more pliable, sometimes involving convoluted flashbacks uncommon in non-noir commercial productions. In terms of content, enforcement of the Pruduction code ensured that no movie character could literally get away with murder or be seen sharing a bed with anyone but a spouse; within those bounds, however, many films now identified as noir feature plot elements and dialogue that were—in some cases, still are—risqué.

Some critics regard classic film noir as a cycle exclusive to the United States; Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, for example, argue, "With the Western, film noir. shares the distinction of being an indigenous American form...a wholly American film style. Others, however, regard noir as an international phenomenon. During the classic period of film noir, America as not the only country producing such films, France were too.