Film noir started in the 1930s however films from that time period were not classed as film noir they were a set of films that were being called gangster movies which some film scholars believe film noir is just an extension of this genre but that is a topic still up for debate.
Film noir did not gain popularity until the 1940s one of the films that pioneered this new film genre was stranger on the third floor. Coincidently the first 20 years of film noir were the best years this genre ever saw 1940 through to 1960 were regarded as the classic period. Nino frank was a film critic born in Barletta-Italy; Frank is the first known person to coin the term film noir. This name was given to films that had a dark seedy undertone in Hollywood in 1946.
Film noir has usually convoluted storylines involving flashbacks and voiceover narration used as a structuring device; classic storylines usually involve a male hero who clearly has flaws and seemingly appear to audiences as an antihero. Some of the other classic characters are a hardboiled detective, corrupt policemen, femme fatales these strong women are directly reflective of what was going on at the time theses films were being made, women having important jobs helping America work in male absence taking jobs at steel mills for example and these women were made strong and independent and once men returned from the war they were struggling to come to terms with this new breed of self independent women who before they left were seen as second class citizens.
World War 2 had been a major factor in why these films were so dark, seedy, drenched in paranoia and pessimistic. The oppression of the Nazi Germans on many eastern European countries saw many talented Jewish directors move to Hollywood looking to make a career in directing bringing with them their own sad stories and emotions transmitting them into the films that they made.
Film noir started off as B movies this is what you used to get when you went to the cinema an A movie and a B movie two for the price of one. These B movies were usually made to test out new talent actors/directors due to the budget of these films being so low the studio paying for them didn’t tend to take much notice of them so the directors could put in more creative styles of their own choosing and have darker messages in the film.
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