film noir summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see film noir.

film noir , (French: “dark film”) Film genre that offers dark or fatalistic interpretations of reality. The term is applied to U.S. films of the late 1940s and early ’50s that often portrayed a seamy or criminal underworld and cynical characters. The films were noted for their use of stark, expressionistic lighting and stylized camera work, often employed in urban settings. The genre includes films such as John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941), Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past (1947), Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), and Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) and Sunset Boulevard (1950). The trend was on the wane by the mid-1950s, but the influence of these films is evident in many subsequent ones, including classics such as Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974) and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982). More recent examples include L.A. Confidential (1997) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001).

Billy Wilder Summary

Billy Wilder Austrian-born American motion-picture scenarist, director, and producer known for films that humorously treat subjects of controversy and offer biting indictments of hypocrisy in American life. His work often focused on subjects that had previously been considered unacceptable screen