Why is film noir a significant sub genre?

BY MICHAELA MCCOLE

Conventions of Film Noir

In film noir there are many conventions such as the lighting is very low key. This means that it makes the atmosphere very eerie and makes you think about the setting. Another convention is there are shadows, following the person and also sometimes behind the character. This creates a very dull mood and makes you wonder about who it is and what will happen. There is also shadows from the venetian blinds which shows that the character is in a trap. Also there are prop conventions such as guns, hats, alcohol and dark coats. The weather they use is a clear convention as most of the scenes are dull, dark and normally raining or bad weather. This reflects the mood in the scene for example in LA confidential where the scene is rainy when it was a bad scene. They would also use non diagetic sounds, for example they would put music over the top of a scene to create an eerie atmosphere and build tension.

Hays code
Hays code was that in films you wasnt allowed to actually show violence. This meant that films had some violence in it, however the film wouldnt actually show this violence to the audience. The reason behind doing this was that unlike now they didnt have an age certificate on films, therefore everyone could watch any film they wanted to. There was no restriction on films back then. Some film directors bended these rules in their films, for example they may put a certain scene with violence or sex scenes they made it seem obvious to the audience the things they are trying to portray but in a sneaky way.

This image is an example of hays code, this image is a complete depiction of film noir. It shows a murder that takes place during a dark and rainy night in what appears to be an abandoned street. The killer is a beautiful woman who probably seduced the dead man and killed him when he was least expecting it.

Lighting and shadows

The lighting in Film Noir is very specifically done, and they have done this in a specific way to show Film Noir. The lighting is made to look very specific such as weird large shadows, mysterious shadows on someone's face or even to cover their face.

There is a certain shadow with the venetian blinds, this especially shows in Double Indemnity when the blinds shadow shows on the characters face, this shows and looks like theyre in a trap and usually in a shot, there is only one of them in this trap and this shows that theyre in a trap usually of the other person. Also there is the lighting that creates shadows over the character, this could make the shadow on everything but their hands, or their face.
The lighting can also be so that there is a strip of lighting across the characters face, this shows especially their facial expressions so you focus on their face.

Camera angles
There are lots of camera angles in Double Indemnity such as the low angle shots, these shots show power of the person whos higher. Similarly the high angle shots, shows that the higher person has more power over the person who is lower. A lot of time in Film Noir the bad character has the low angle shot, and the good character has the high angle shot, this portrays the power of specific characters. The camera angles can also show the characters face in a weird angle which creates mystery for the audience.