12 ingredients of film noir

Film Noir 12 Ingredients

Ingredients

• 1- Dark shadowy contrasting images in black and white. Usually at night in urban settings

• 2- Hard boiled, cynical, delusional, these characters are usually likable

• 3- A male protagonist- usually facing a moral delima or some kind of threat. He is usually a brooding sardonic disillusioned, scared and insecure, alienated from society

• He is a loner in an urban landscape (Helps individual style) shot through his eyes a world dominated by corruption where there is a fine line between right and wrong

Ingredients

• 4- Femme Fatal (deadly woman)

• Gorgeous, unloving, predatory, manipulative and desperate. Typically stronger

• Alluring, sassy, who is dangerous, who suffers for independence

• 5- Often a Crime or Detective story: influence of hard boiled authors on the narrative style

• 6- Use of voice over narration

• 7- Flashbacks- a wavering past and present. Inextricably linked

Ingredients

• 8- Crisp, witty dialogue with great one liners

• “when you’re slapped you’ll take it and like it”

• 9- Angst American style (dread and doom) gloomy neurotic feeling of anxiety/depression

Ingredients

• 10- Healthy dose of paranoia and insecurity, betrayal, or being trapped

• 11- No happy ending, a happy ending turns a Noir into a film gris or a melodrama in Noir style

• 12- Distorting camera angles, expressionate. Distorted closeups and chiaroscuro lighting that fills the frame with shafts of light and shadow to create a world of claustrophobia and fear