war, wartime atrocities, or other social problems resulting from the wartime conditions. The primary focus was on being realistic.
After the war, the themes and elements of noir films started to change. Facing a communist threat and the Cold War, the messages conveyed through these films varied. The
political, economic, and social issues were different from those themes during World War II. To compound this, bigger budgets were allotted for the film industry and Technicolor films
started to replace the black-and-white ones. The wartime constraints and materials were also lifted and the filming industry became more technologically advanced. During the Cold War
period, the cultural anxieties were based more on such themes as the atomic bomb, communism, xenophobia, organized crime, among others. The filming was also different as it
was more grayish than the traditional blackwhite contrast of the World War II era. The location shootings also changed to more suburban or small town settings. Eventually as the
threat of communism became more intense, many topics became blacklisted for noir films and even various writers, directors, producers, and actors. To add to that, the market was
already saturated with the noir style of film and viewers became bored. This led to the rapid decline of noir films by the mid-1950s. Films of the 1950s preferred to use brighter scenes,
colored images, and positivistic themes with an emphasis on religion and the family. Therefore, many places of worship and anti-communist messages were conveyed through
films of this era. The style of filming shifted to escapist and non-political stories, westerns, melodramas, science fiction, fantasy, musicals, as well as police movies and TV shows.
2.4 European Influence of Noir
Traditional noir films had European influences from Weimar Germans who produced more gothic horror, criminal psychology, and conspiracy films. French films also influenced
American noir films through their working class crime stories. Even British films influenced later classic noir films with the Hitchcock style of international intrigue stories.
Paul A. Cantor has a different perspective on how noir films reflect American societal concerns of the era.
In short, in viewing film noir, we may not be getting, as some critics have supposed, an unmediated look into the heart and soul of America. Rather, because in film noir
we are often looking through European eyes, we may be getting an unduly negative and pessimistic view of the American way of life. Film noir may be one more
example of a long tradition of European anti-Americanism, or at least a tendency to fault the United States for failing to measure up to European standards of civilization
and culture.
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This interpretation can be made due to the fact that many of these films were directed andor produced by Europeans, especially German expressionists. He wants to espouse the
idea that noir films may tell more about European culture than American culture due to the people behind the camera.
The sensibility of the films which would later be labeled noir certainly entertains close affinities to the sense of loss and cultural despair which many German language
exile filmmakers experienced in 1930s and 1940s America. These films frequently revolve around questions of war trauma, psychosis, memory, and amnesia, split or
doubled identity, featuring men driven from their homes, outsiders who cannot comprehend the political and social forces that determine their existence.
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Various expressionistic filming aspects were also very important to the noir atmosphere like subjective camera angles, distorted angles, chiaroscuro lighting, elongated
shadows, urban realism, moral decay, sexual temptation, and femme fetales.
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Expressionism was important to elevate the mood the director wanted to convey. For example, if a director
wanted to signal fear and menace, he would use dark lighting.
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Cantor, Paul A., “Film Noir and the Frankfort School”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009, p.157.
54
Germunden, Gerd, qtd in Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. New York: Nation Books, 2012, p.195.
55
Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. New York: Nation Books, 2012, p.196.
Another aspect that contributed to the noir thematic elements was in the writers and directors themselves who had experienced firsthand the horrors of the war. This was
especially true among the Jewish writers and directors who emigrated from Germany. One such example is Billy Wilder, who was responsible for directing the film Double Indemnity.
His whole family was killed in Auschwitz. This tragedy and living during the horrors of the war contributed to the dark themes found in the film. Many similar examples can also be
found, as noir films have a strong German influence due to the German Jewish expatriates. The pessimistic and politically provocative themes of noir crime films were due to
German Jewish émigré directors who liked to use psychological themes, expressionistic visual styles, and doom-laden worldviews as WWII broke out. Noir’s origins and themes can
also be linked to American hard-boiled detective and crime story writers like Hammett, Chandler, Cain, and Woolrich. However, these writers are all different in their writing styles
and themes. It also reveals that literary works combined with particular directors and screenwriters were significant in creating the particular noir style during and after WWII.
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2.5 Noir as a Reflection of American Societal Concerns
