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Film Noir
Film noir (; ) is a style of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood Crime film, crime dramas that emphasizes cynicism (contemporary), cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key lighting, low-key, black-and-white visual style that has roots in German expressionist cinematography. Many of the prototypical stories and attitudes expressed in classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Great Depression, known as noir fiction. The term ''film noir'', French for "black film" (literal) or "dark film" (closer meaning), was first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, but was unrecognized by most American film industry professionals of that era. Frank is believed to have been inspired by the French literary publishing imprint Série noire, founded in 1945. Cinema hist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Big Combo
''The Big Combo'' is a 1955 American crime film, crime film noir directed by Joseph H. Lewis, written by Philip Yordan and photographed by cinematographer John Alton, with music by David Raksin. The film stars Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte and Brian Donlevy, as well as Jean Wallace, who was Wilde's wife at the time. The supporting cast features Lee Van Cleef, Earl Holliman and the final screen appearance of actress Helen Walker. ''The Big Combo'' received positive reviews from critics. While the film's title cards feature a copyright claim, a notice was not properly filed. In 2007 the United States Copyright Office ultimately rejected the notice, leaving the film in the public domain. Plot Police lieutenant, Police Lieutenant Leonard Diamond is on a personal crusade to bring down the sadistic gangster Mr. Brown. He is also dangerously obsessed with Brown's girlfriend, the suicidal Susan Lowell. His main objective as a detective is to uncover the fate of a woman, related to Mr. Bro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cinema Of The United States
The cinema of the United States, primarily associated with major film studios collectively referred to as Hollywood, has significantly influenced the global film industry since the early 20th century. Classical Hollywood cinema, a filmmaking style developed in the 1910s, continues to shape many American films today. While French filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière are often credited with modern cinema's origins, American filmmaking quickly rose to global dominance. As of 2017, more than 600 English-language films were released annually in the U.S., making it the fourth-largest producer of films, trailing only India, Japan, and China. Although the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also produce English-language films, they are not directly part of the Hollywood system. Due to this global reach, Hollywood is frequently regarded as a transnational cinema with some films released in multiple language versions, such as Spanish and French. Contemporary Hollyw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Film Genre
A film genre is a Genre, stylistic or thematic category for Film, motion pictures based on similarities either in the narrative , narrative elements, aesthetic approach, or the emotional response to the film. Drawing heavily from the theories of literary genre, literary-genre Literary criticism, criticism, film genres are usually delineated by "conventions, iconography, Setting (narrative), settings, Narrative film, narratives, stock character, characters and actors". One can also classify films by the Tone (literature), tone, Theme (narrative), theme/topic, Mood (literature), mood, film format, format, target audience, or Film budgeting, budget. Hayward, Susan. "Genre/Sub-genre" in ''Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts'' (Third Edition). Routledge, 2006. p. 185–192 These characteristics are most evident in Genre fiction, genre films, which are "commercial feature films [that], through repetition and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters and familiar situat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melodrama
A melodrama is a Drama, dramatic work in which plot, typically sensationalized for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodrama is "an exaggerated version of drama". Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or extremely sentimentality, sentimental, rather than on action. Characters are often Character (arts)#Round vs. flat, flat and written to fulfill established character archetypes. Melodramas are typically set in the private sphere of the home, focusing on morality, family issues, love, and marriage, often with challenges from an outside source, such as a "temptress", a scoundrel, or an aristocratic villain. A melodrama on stage, film, or television is usually accompanied by dramatic and suggestive music that offers further cues to the audience of the dramatic beats being presented. In scholarly and historical musical contexts, melodramas are Victorian era, Victorian dramas in which orchestral music or son ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Série Noire
Série noire is a French publishing imprint, founded in 1945 by Marcel Duhamel. It has released a collection of crime fiction of the hardboiled detective thrillers variety published by Gallimard. Anglo-American literature forms the bulk of their collection: it features especially Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Horace McCoy, William R. Burnett, Ed McBain, Chester Himes, Lou Cameron, Jim Thompson, Rene Brabazon Raymond (under his pseudonym James Hadley Chase) and Peter Cheyney. Books from the series were adapted into episodes on the 1984 television series of the same name. This name became a generic term for works of detective, and is considered to have inspired the French critic Nino Frank to create in 1946 the phrase Film noir Film noir (; ) is a style of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood Crime film, crime dramas that emphasizes cynicism (contemporary), cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nino Frank
Nino Frank (27 June 1904 − 17 August 1988) was an Italian-born French film critic and writer who was most active in the 1930s and 1940s. Frank is best known for being the first film critic to use the term "film noir" to refer to 1940s US crime drama films such as '' The Maltese Falcon.'' Career Nino Frank was born in Barletta, in the southern region of Apulia, a busy port town on Italy's Adriatic coast. In the late 1920s, Frank was a supporter of the Irish writer James Joyce, along with a circle that also included Moune Gilbert, Stuart Gilbert (who helped to make the French translation of '' Ulysses'' in 1929), Paul and Lucie Léon, Louis Gillet, and Samuel Beckett. In 1937, Frank conferred a great deal with Joyce about the Italian translation of Joyce's ''Anna Livia Plurabelle''. During the Second World War and the Nazi occupation of France, Frank wrote for the collaborationist weekly ''Les Nouveaux Temps'', but he was known as a critic of the collaborationist Vichy gove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hollywood Film
The cinema of the United States, primarily associated with major film studios collectively referred to as Hollywood, has significantly influenced the global film industry since the early 20th century. Classical Hollywood cinema, a filmmaking style developed in the 1910s, continues to shape many American films today. While French filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière are often credited with modern cinema's origins, American filmmaking quickly rose to global dominance. As of 2017, more than 600 English-language films were released annually in the U.S., making it the fourth-largest producer of films, trailing only India, Japan, and China. Although the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also produce English-language films, they are not directly part of the Hollywood system. Due to this global reach, Hollywood is frequently regarded as a transnational cinema with some films released in multiple language versions, such as Spanish and French. Contemporary Hollywood ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noir Fiction
Noir fiction (or roman noir) is a subgenre of crime fiction. Definition Noir denotes a marked darkness in theme and subject matter, generally featuring a disturbing mixture of sex and violence. While related to and frequently confused with Hardboiled, hardboiled detective fiction—due to the regular adaptation of hardboiled detective stories in the film noir style—the two are not the same. Both regularly take place against a backdrop of systemic and institutional corruption. However, noir (French for "black") fiction is centred on protagonists that are either victims, suspects, or perpetrators—often self-destructive. A typical protagonist of noir fiction is forced to deal with a corrupt legal, political or other system, through which the protagonist is either Symptoms of victimization, victimized and/or has to victimize others, leading to a No-win situation, lose-lose situation. Otto Penzler argues that the traditional hardboiled detective story and noir story are "dia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and business failures around the world. The economic contagion began in 1929 in the United States, the largest economy in the world, with the devastating Wall Street stock market crash of October 1929 often considered the beginning of the Depression. Among the countries with the most unemployed were the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Weimar Republic, Germany. The Depression was preceded by a period of industrial growth and social development known as the "Roaring Twenties". Much of the profit generated by the boom was invested in speculation, such as on the stock market, contributing to growing Wealth inequality in the United States, wealth inequality. Banks were subject to laissez-faire, minimal regulation, resulting in loose lending and wides ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crime Fiction
Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, crime novel, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives or fiction that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. Most crime drama focuses on criminal investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and Mystery fiction, mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction and science fiction, but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has several subgenres, including detective fiction (such as the whodunit), courtroom drama, hardboiled, hard-boiled fiction, and legal thrillers. History Proto-science and crime fictions have been composed across history, and in this category can be placed texts as varied as the Epic of Gilgamesh from Mesopotamia, the Mahabharata from History of India, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hardboiled
Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition in the United States (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that has become as Political corruption, corrupt as the organized crime itself. Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are often antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Dick Tracy, Philip Marlowe, Nick and Nora Charles, Nick Charles, Mike Hammer (character), Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Slam Bradley, and The Continental Op. Genre pioneers The style was pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined by James M. Cain and by Raymond Chandler beginning in the late 1930s. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
