I love old films. If I had the choice between seeing the newest blockbuster or curling up on the couch with a 1930’s movie, I’d pick the latter.
I was beyond excited when asked to shoot this film noir styled photoshoot.
So what is “Film Noir” you may ask?
Film Noir (literally ‘black film or cinema’) was coined by French film critics (first by Nino Frank in 1946) who noticed the trend of how ‘dark’, downbeat and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France to theatres following World War II.
Film Noir is not a genre of film, but the mood, style, point-of-view, or tone of a film.
Film noir films (mostly shot in gloomy grays, blacks and whites) showed the dark and inhumane side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love. Emphasized is the brutal, unhealthy, seamy, shadowy, dark and sadistic sides of the human experience.
Some of the most noteable Film Noir movies are:
Citizen Kane (1941)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
This Gun For Hire (1942)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Asphalt Jungle (1950
Touch of Evil (1958)