Schraeder & Film Noir

I found Schraeder's article on Film Noir very helpful and informative. I had always heard the term film noir but never quite understood what it meant. He describes it as a style, rather than a genre, that is characterized by tone and mood along with the lighting and camera techniques it uses. Film Noir increased after WWII, when its audience was looking for harsh honesty about the world they were in. It is interesting to see that after the war the audience would have wanted to see this type of film, but Schraeder also considers this period the most creative in film, which I am not sure I would agree with. I found that the techniques used in film noir are very creative but more just a break with traditional ways of making films.

Schraeder describes some of the stylistic techniques used in film noir. He says that the majority of scenes are lit for scenes at night, and horizontal lines are used as rarely as possible. The lighting used creates shadows for the actors to fade into and the setting is lit the same way as the actors, creating less of a distinction between the two.