German Expressionism – and by extension, Film Noir – owes a debt to Gothic Literature a genre popular in the 18th and 19th centuries that blended the erotic and the macabre with much focus on decay, corruption and madness usually in an aristocratic setting. Directors like Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder and Otto Preminger brought this distinct European style to Hollywood and it was well suited to both horror movies and the emerging Film Noir movement. The rise of Nazi Germany sparked a cultural emigration that saw many German filmmakers (largely of Jewish descent) flee to America. Geometrically skewed angles, shadows painted on backdrops and themes of insanity and murder reflected a psychologically disturbed nation reeling in the wake of a horrific war. With a ban on foreign films, German filmmakers developed their own surrealist style. German Expressionism evolved during a period of cultural isolation in Germany directly following the First World War. German Expressionism and Gothic Literature The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920) is perhaps the most famous example of German Expressionism. While tame in comparison to Hollywood’s output today, these films caused quite a stir in France and there was a degree of moral outrage at their content. Shot in black and white with emphasis on expressionism, the subject matter often dealt with the ugly flip-side of the American dream organised crime, drug trafficking, prostitution and adultery. These films were tough, violent, raw and above all, dark. When these movies did reach French cinemas en masse in 1946, audiences noticed a marked difference in tone to the Technicolor epics and musical extravaganzas of pre-war American cinema. He applied the term to certain American movies made during the war which hadn’t been available to French audiences under the Nazi occupation. The term is usually credited to the French film critic Nino Frank who wrote an article called Un nouveau genre ‘policier:’ L’aventure criminelle, ( A new police genre: the criminal adventure) which appeared in the film magazine L’écran français in August 1946. Others land in a gray area and are hotly contested. Some movies fit anybody’s definition of noir.
It is style that defines them regardless of setting. Film Noir movies can be about anything and set anywhere. The problem is that Film Noir is not a genre in the way Westerns or gangster pictures are genres defined by plot and setting.
Dissertations have been written on the subject that struggle to define it. Film Noir – that group of shady, black and white crime flicks from the ’40s and ’50s – is notorious among students of film to pin down.
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