Essay: Presentation of a Film Genre Film Noir

Sample Essay

Genre is a vague form of category in which one can subcategorize different types of art. There are several genres of the movies which are often debated by many critics. There have been different stylistic movies which have been released in Hollywood. The picturizing of large number of movies every year using different themes and styles makes categorizing of movies into subcategories difficult.

It is therefore useful to learn about them. Some of the most common genres of the movies are action, film noir, war movies, horror films, science fiction, comedy etc.   For this research paper film noir has been considered for the analysis of the development in this genre. This paper is based on the thesis statement that film noir could be viewed not only as a way of presentation of film but also a definite film genre. In this paper we shall discuss the three historical periods in the development of film noir discussing narrative, stylistic, technological and cultural shift about this genre.

The classic period of development of film noir dates back to the period after the World War II and the term unlike others was introduced not by the industry but came from critiques of American movies. The term film noir was coined by French critics after the World War II.  The French were deprived of watching the American movies due to the Nazi occupation in the year 1945.  However, one year later French people were allowed to watch American movies and many French critiques started to write reviews of these American movies in the year 1946  (Grant). It was the outcome of their efforts that the term film noir came into existence which represented a unique genre of the American movie. The first book that was published on the Film noir as a new emerging American movie genre was Panorama of American Film Noir. The authors of the book were two French critics named Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton. It was their contributions that the unknown genre of the movies was made visible to most of the film critics. Even though the genre was given specifications that assisted in identifying and listing movies such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), Notorious (1946), The Big sleep (1946) etc. (IMDb) under the category of film noir.

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