Film Noir

EPISODE 045: LESSONS IN FILM HISTORY (GENRE)

 

Featuring: Notorious (1946); Maltese Falcon (1941); Double Indemnity (1944); Sunset Boulevard (1950); The Third Man (1949)

 

Taking direct influence from German Expressionism, American filmmakers rebranded the dark and paranoid into their own film noir. Popularized in the 1940s and subsequently revived into contemporary movements of neonoir and neon noir, this postwar film genre took Expressionism’s heavy contrast and overlaid it onto stories sourced from hardboiled crime fiction novels of the 1930s. WR&P cohosts Ryan and Kevin dissect four iconic titles from this classic American film genre while utilizing Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946) as a comparative film to cut against.