![]() So much so that audiences often need to inquire about the motives of narrative voices, how much they know and whether they are telling the truth, when and to whom they are speaking. While Double Indemnity carefully clues the spectator in as to who is speaking, when they are speaking, and from where they are speaking, other films use voiceover and flashback temporarily and more ambiguously. Narrative Innovations in Film Noir describes voiceover and flashback as the persistent style and narrative elements of Film Noir. Probably not used to this, the woman was still portrayed as suffering on screen. Women back in the 1940’s were still grasping their new found independence as they were given better job-earning power in the homeland during the war. Betrayal, double crossing and glimpse of how they became the way they are with the women usually destroying themselves to save the hero’s life. The cynical male character then meets a beautiful but promiscuous, double-dealing and seductive female with no moral standards who would use her sexuality, her feminine wiles to – driven by her ambition – manipulate the male character to do what she wants which is often to make him her fall guy, and often following a murder. Another example by the article is Detour where the male protagonist’s voice over (Tom Neal) persistently addresses an impersonal “you” giving the spectator the impression that he or she is the person spoken to–and assumes that the listener is smug, unsympathetic, and unbelieving. Narrative Innovations in Film Noir published by provides us with an example where Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff in Double Indemnity arrives at his office in the middle of the night and delivering into a dictating machine his confession for killing a man- for money (pause) and for a woman… He would then have occasional flashbacks throughout the film that are narrated by his voiceover confession. ![]() More often than not, the plot of a Film Noir evolved around a cynical, hard-hearted, disillusioned male character accompanied with a narrative voiceover. Noirs rarely had happy and optimistic endings which became its appeal. It became the metaphor to society’s evils and symbolic of the undercurrent moral conflict and sense of injustice. It made the violent, misogynistic, violent and greedy outlook of anti-heroes of Film Noir. These films often mirrored the consequential tension and insecurities of post war era where fear, paranoia, weariness and distress permeated the air people breathe. It was after World War II that these films were released in France. ![]() The term translates to ‘black film or cinema.’ They noticed the dark, downbeat and black looks and trending themes that were of American crime and detective themes. The term Film Noir was coined by the French film critics, Nino Frank the first among them in 1946. fully defines it as usually referring to a distinct historical period of film history, specifically to the decade of film-making after World War II, a period that is likened to the German Expressionism or the French New Wave periods. Rather, it is the style, the point of view, the mood, or tone of a film. Let us first note that Film Noir is not a genre. ![]()
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