The History of Film Noir

The term ‘film noir’ literally translates from French as ‘black film’. Film noir originated from America, it started when film makers and directors fled from Germany during the 1940’s due to the war that was currently going on. They fled to America, and they started making films in America, and the reason for film noirs being so dark and unhappy is due to the fact that there was a world war going on at the time, and the atmosphere in society at this time, was one of depression and anger, and was a very unhappy time for civilisation, and this is reflected in film noir’s. This is why film noirs have such a dark atmosphere about them. During the time that film noirs were made not many people were interested in them, or really knew about them, due to cinema not being as widely popular in the 1940’s especially with the war going on, just added to the growing number of people who stopped attending the cinema. After the war was over, film noirs started to be screened in cinemas and became quite popular across Britain and America. Film noirs have never really died out, many of today’s films have been strongly influenced by film noir’s, films such as Ridley Scott’s ‘Blade Runner’ 1982, Adrian Lyne’s ‘Fatal Attraction’ 1987, and even Frank Miller’s ‘Sin City’ 2005, shows all the characteristics that you would traditionally find in a film noir.