Film noir

(Notable media: Taxi Driver, Blade Runner, The Dark Knight, Sin City, Notorious, Memento, Drive)

Here is a good video that defines what film noir is and its conventions; this is where I got all of my new information. Defining Film Noir

Film noir is a genre of film recognized for its use of chiaroscuro – an effect created from high saturation and a monochromatic pallet – and was the main genre of film in the 1940’s and 1950’s. However, it has since become a niche genre and the new films in this genre have ditched the chiaroscuro and have been dubbed “neo-noir.” However, for the purposes of this project, I will neo-noir and film noir to be one genre as the two are largely similar (the two biggest changes are the time period and the use of chiaroscuro). Film noir, unlike sci-fi, does not have a lot of variations within its formula; most film noir films involve a detective or a private eye (this was especially apparent in when film noir was at its prime and can still be found in modern installments of the genre such as The Dark Knight) but no matter what they are, the main character ends up in a worse place then where they started. This “worse place” can be a lot of things: sometimes they are a little more insane in the end than in the beginning (such as the case in Taxi Driver), other times they lose someone who was important to them (Memento), or sometimes they just die at the end (The Dark Knight trilogy). Another important aspect of noir is the time period the film takes place in. This is important because the time period influences the thematic focus of the film; which becomes apparent when comparing movies like Notorious – which came out in 1946 and has an anti-fascist theme because of WWII – and Taxi Driver – which as anti-war themes because of the draft and the Vietnam War.