Genre conventions for Film Noir

1. Film Noir

2. Double
Indemnity has
an abnormal
narrative as it is
shown through
flashbacks.
Gun crazy has a
more linear
narrative as the
film is told from
beginning to end
in chronological
order.
The big sleep
also has a
linear
narrative that
is
chronological
from
beginning to
end.

3.  The typical story lines for Noir movies are some
disruption happens at the beginning of the movie,
this is where you are introduced to the main
character. Next the main character, normally a
male detective or inspector of some kind,
investigates the disruption. Normally around
about here they meet the femme fatal character
and the antagonist or anti-hero of the movie.
Something would normally happen around about
half way through that would cause the hero’s
attempt at fixing the disruption to be halted, this
could be the hero being captured or one of their
main companions being killed. In the end the main
character would have a victory over the villain of
the movie, this would even be sometimes at the
cost of his or the femme fatal’s life.

4.  All three movies share
similar iconography, such
as the appearance of guns
and cigarettes. As well as
these there are other
objects that connote
iconography, such as
Venetian blinds that create
atmosphere by
fragmenting the light in a
room, dark alleyways,
bars, rain, red lipstick and
trench coats.

5.  There are similar character in all
three movies, they all share a
male protagonist that is normally
the hero that you root for. They
also have a female love interest
who is more often than not
normally useless in fights and
helpless, Gun Crazy is an
exception though as the female is
very hardy in fights and capable
of using weapons. There is also a
female protagonist in most
movies of this genre, a Femme
Fatal, who is not like other
females in the way that she is a
lot more intelligent and slightly
more ruthless and more helpful
to the main character.

6.  All of the movies are filmed in black and white,
this is due to the fact that they are low budget
“B” movies. This lead them to having a much
more raw visual style that didn’t look as crisp
and clean as bigger budget movies so the Black
and white was used to save money. However
this became popular and lead to it becoming a
classic film trope. The sound is very foreboding
tension building that is mainly ‘big band’ style
instruments. The technology they had was
slightly primitive when it came to the editing
so it was basic. The lighting is commonly
chiaroscuro which helps add drama and
tension to the clips. Common film noir camera
angles are low and high angle shots, for
example the movie ‘Touch of Evil’ (pictured
here) has a high angle shot to show that one
character is above another and has more power
in the situation.

7.  The settings for all three
movies are quite similar,
they are often in offices,
normally owned by the
main character. They also
normally take place in
cities, this links back to
the alleyways
iconography as they are
more common in big
cities. There is normally
and interior shot of a
home belonging to the
victim, femme fatale,
detective or villain.