Laura Movie

Laura as Film Noir

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Laura as Film Noir

Introduction

During the war years of the 1940s , there emerged a film genre in American cinema that film critics recognized and termed film noir . The term film noir literally means "black film " in French , although the adjective noir also denotes dark emotions , including gloom and sadness both of which are also appropriate in the of the film noir genre . Developing from a confluence of filmic and literary styles and traditions , film noir 's visual and

narrative themes and motifs created a critical , cinematic look at American culture and society . This argues that Otto Preminger 's film Laura (1944 ) is an excellent example of film noir and shares many of the attributes of genre , especially in regards to its characters , cinematography , mood /atmosphere , narrative devices , and music

Film Noir

Although the extensive literary origins of film noir have been traced to the Gothic novel of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the sensation novel of the mid- and late nineteenth century , the most immediate literary influence on film noir is the genre of American "hard-boiled " detective or crime novels of the late 1920s and 1930s Termed by French literary critics as "La Serie Noire (and occasionally referred to in later decades as romans noirs ) the hard-boiled novels were often characterized by a dreary atmosphere , individual and institutional corruption , pessimism , graphic sexuality and violence These hard-boiled novels were popular in the United States and in Europe some were adapted into films noir during the 1940s (Borde and Chaumeton 13-15

The visual influences on the development of film noir cinema include German Expressionism , the Strassefilm (gritty films about banal crimes produced in the cinema of Weimar Germany , Poetic Realism in films - including many directed by Marcel Carne and Julien Duvivier - of French cinema in the late 1930s , and American Expressionist films of the 1930s and early 1940s . German Expressionism and Weimar-era Expressionist films contributed much of the emphasis on "distortions , alienation fragmentation " and a focus on "states of mind , feelings , ideas perceptions , dreams and visions , and often paranoid states " that became core aspects of film noir (Borde and Chaumeton 16-17

The Strassefilm (literally "street film ) lent to later films noir its emphasis on dark , urban settings , replete with criminals , underworld crime , and menacing and tempting women . In the context of its romantic and criminal narratives , French Poetic Realism contributed an emphasis on "doom and despair " to the formation of film noir (Naremore 11 . Many of the American Expressionist films that influenced the visual style of film noir are those horror films of the early 1930s (Dickos 7 . Finally the political and economic unrest in continental Europe during the 1920s and 1930s served as an impetus to many talented European filmmakers - including Otto Preminger among many others - to leave Europe and begin working in Hollywood . Many of these filmmakers served as a "medium " by which developments in European cinema (e .g , German Expressionism French Poetic Realism ) entered the...