Film Noir

What is noir?
Film Noir began in the 1940s and was one of Hollywood's original, artistic movements.

During and immediately following World War II, movie audiences responded well to this original,In 1946 a Paris retrospective of American films said that during the war there was a significant increase in popularity towards visually darker and more sublime films. It was then made that “film noir” ”or "black film" is a new type of Hollywood product.

Few, if any of the artists in Hollywood who made these films called them “noir” at the time. But the vivid co-mingling of lost innocence, doomed romanticism, hard-edged cynicism, desperate desire, and shadowy sexuality that was unleashed in those immediate post-war years proved hugely influential, both among industry peers in the original era, and to future generation of storytellers, both literary and cinematic.

To this day the debate goes on as to whether “noir” is a film genre, circumscribed by its content, or a style of storytelling, identified by its visual attributes. The debate — in which there is no right answer — is only one of the things that keeps noir fresh for successive generations of movie lovers.