"It is not a trivial description of film noir to say that it simply indicates particular patterns of nonconformity within Hollywood" (David Bordwell) Discuss.

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“It is not a trivial description of film noir to say that it simply indicates particular patterns of nonconformity within Hollywood” (David Bordwell).  Discuss

Recently it has been considered that Film Noir originated within the United States as “a particular type of American thriller”.  According to James Naremore the standard histories suggest that Film Noir originated within America “emerging out of a synthesis of hard boiled fiction and German expressionism” . Unlike gangster and western pictures which can be defined within specific genres due to the conventions of their settings and conflicts, film noir cannot be categorised to a specific type of genre, but instead is recognisable due to its use of “more subtle qualities of tone and mood”.  French critics originally created the term film noir to define the new looking American films.  In France the term ‘Roman noir’ had been used to describe French hardboiled detective novels and seeing the obvious link between content of the American films and French literature the phrase was coined.  One of the main problems with film noir is the fact that there is nothing which links together all aspects which are used to describe noir “not the theme of crime, not a cinematographic technique, not even resistance to Aristotelian narratives or happy endings”, therefore it is not surprising that critics and writers have not been able to find sufficient characteristics to categorise noir as a specific type genre but rather as a type of tone.  In general the term film noir refers to the films produced in the forties and fifties “which portrayed the world of dark, slick city streets, crime and corruption”

Film noir emerged during a period of political instability 1941-1958, which was a period of time which encompassed both the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War.  The United States was caught in a time of anxiety, insecurity and paranoia and the ideology of the American dream was in tatters.  The American national identity was also under severe strain and it was from this climate of turmoil that a new breed of cynical, pessimistic and dark films entered the American cinema. “Never before had films dared to take such a harsh uncomplimentary look at American life, and they would not dare to do so again for twenty years”   during the war the first distinctive and uniquely film noir appeared in the form of “The Maltese Falcon”(1941), this film included many of the key intonations which are said to combine to create the effect of a film noir, such as having many of the scenes lit for night, “doom-laden narration and compositional tension rather than action”.

Noir films illustrated a great difference in both content and form in comparison to most of the other films being produced within Hollywood during this period, which up until 1941 had mainly consisted of melodramas, swashbucklers, biopics, musicals and gangster/topical films which were arguably the closest ancestors of the noir film.   Film noir as a movement did not conform to Hollywood’s expectations as up until the end of the thirties and the depression “movies were needed to keep people’s spirits up”.  Therefore film content was closely monitored as film companies and producers were very conscious of the social effect that pictures could have upon society.  However after America had passed through its troublesome economic and social era the beginnings of the film noir movement emerged as “a delayed reaction to the thirties”, bringing a darker, more sinister type of cinema to the silver screen.  As soon as the war was over “American films became markedly more sardonic-and there was a boom in the crime film”.  This reaction was due to the fact that for fifteen years American film producers had been restricted by moralistic and fearful production codes and now finally artists and audiences were able to view material which was less optimistic and more realistic.  The resurgence of realism was not restricted to American cinema, but was in fact reflected worldwide.  Within America it was represented within films such as the noir classic, “The Killers” (1946) which has been described as “one big low blow”and had some scenes filmed in the actual locations depicted.  In this sense film noir can be seen perhaps as not conforming to the conventions of Hollywood, but rather reacting to the social demands of the time for a more honest and harsh view of the United States, quenching the Americans thirst for realism.  In Paul Schrader's opinion “The post-war realistic trend succeeded in breaking film noir away from the domain of the high-class melodrama, placing it where it more properly belonged, in the streets with everyday people”.  When films from the realism period of film noir are compared to the previous studio film noirs, the studio versions seem to lack in gritty unconventionality which the realistic counterparts maintain.  During this period of time film noir was not the only movement of film production that was basing its storylines and pictures on more realistic aspects of life, many different genres were all following the same trend in order to capture the market at the time.

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Nonconformity may have been cited within film noir due to the influence of foreign directors who would have produced films different in style and content to the traditional Hollywood film.  One of the key influences behind the emergence of film noir was the influx of German expatriates in the twenties and thirties.  Filmmakers and technicians fled to Hollywood to avoid the oppression within their own countries and gradually “integrated themselves into the American film establishment”.  In the late forties when film noir burst forth there were a large number of Germans and Eastern Europeans working within the movement, famously ...

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