Textual Analysis Of Film Noir

There are many ways to classify film noir, but in order to condense it for the purposes of writing the EE, I have chosen specific aspects to asses. Roger Ebert, noted film critic and former writer for the Chicago-Sun Times classifies film noir using 10 distinct aspects (some important ones are listed below) (RogerEbert.com): o At no point does the film trick the viewer into thinking there will be a happy resolution, there is always a sense of a bleak outlook o Love and death are highly connected o Locations in the film that allude to the night, to alleyways, and “taxi drivers and bartenders who have seen it all” This source is valuable because it provides insight into the viewpoints of an influential film reviewer about this genre of films. It also has limitations due to the fact that it only presents one opinion on the topic. …show more content…
The term was originally applied (by a group of French critics) to American thriller or detective films made in the period 1944–54 and to the work of directors such as Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, and Billy Wilder”. The Film Noir Foundation states this about film noir: “Highly stylized, overly theatrical, with imagery often drawn from an earlier era of German ‘expressionist’ cinema … crime thrillers and murder dramas with a particularly dark and venomous view of existence”. One limitation of the source is that it doesn’t give too many examples of film noir along with its descriptions (Film Noir