The last genre I am researching is Film Noir.
Technically, Film Noir is not a genre, but the theme of dark, mysterious films involving murders, and detective narratives. Film Noir also refers to the decade of film post World War 2. These Film Noir films played on the suspicion, anxiety and pessimism of the time, which is reflected through these films, this is also evident simply from the title, which translates from french, literally as 'Black Film'.
A typical narrative of Film Noir, is a male main, central character who gets blamed for, often a crime or murder. There is often a female central character along with him, who is involved in the scapegoating of the the murder.
Film Noirs, take a slightly unstereotypical character approach, as the female character takes an active part in the film compared to be in a materialistic reward. The female will be heavily involved in the murder, an often would of been the one committing it to begin with. This si different to Action/Adventure in the fact that females take a more minor role and are made not particularly art of the main plot, just to add diversity and love to the narrative. This is possibly because in the 1940/50s where film and cinema was just starting out and stereotyped roles were not fully, if at all, established. Below is the trailer for Laura (1944, dir. Otto Preminger) which follows this plot line.
(http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZGgvraXiSJU)
This is a typical Film Noir, with the emphasis on the perfection of the central character, Laura (Gene Tierney), a virtuous character. Playing opposite her, is the love interest Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), who is a detective investigating murder, a murder Laura committed. This narrative lays on the deceit and secrecy that would be a know topic for the 1940, given the circumstances surrounding World War 2. This is a typical narrative for a film noir film.
According to (http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir6.html) Some modern Film Noirs are Se7en (1995, dir. David Fincher); Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005, dir. Shane Black). Simply the title of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, suggests violence, murder and a seducing lead female involved in this situation. Se7en follows the journey of two detectives as they follow a serial killer, although this sounds more of a horror or thriller, the third central character, after the two detectives is a female, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), suggesting a love interest, or at least a lead, unstereotypical role from her.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4YV2_TcCoE)
Se7en could also be classed as Film Noir, because of the element of the seven deadly sins as these involve deception and lust, which are similar to the concepts found in the original Film Noirs. The mise en scene found in se7en, is also similar to the original Film Noir films, for example, although classic Film Noirs are in black and white and Se7en uses a lot of low key lighting, and brown beige themes, which are all shown in the trailer above. The Costumes used in Se7en are also representative of the classic period of Film Noir, this is shown in the trailer above, where Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) in wearing a trench coat which is a popular fashion trend from the 1940/50s, relating back to the classic film noirs.
Used in this post:
http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html
copyrighted 2011, visited 1st December 2011,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037008/
copyrighted 2011, visited 1st December 2011,
http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir6.html
copyrighted 2011, visited 1st December 2011
As Filmsite is an organization, and is copyrighted from 2011, I regard it as a reliable source of infomation. IMDB is a known website, although it can be updated, is often classed as reliable, and it was only used for imformation that can be easily verified, such as the cast of the films included.
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