High Contrast, Low Key: Film Noir

Images of Film Noir

I didn't know I was doing film noir, I thought

they were detective stories with low lighting!

                                                                      --Marie Windsor, noir icon

Murder, My Sweet

I thought I’d do something a little different for my post this week. Instead of writing about this or that I thought I’d make it visual. Images from film noir. Images that inspire much, though not all of my work. And I don’t think I’m alone. I think a lot of us have been inspired one way or another by film noir and much of noir is its visual look.

The film noir aesthetic is full of iconic images – some might call them tropes. Either way, they’re striking, they affect us, and they hit us on a subconscious level. Iconic images of shadows, rain, fog, neon, darkness and night, dark streets and alleys, Venetian blinds, oblique angles and reflections, low key lighting, guys with gats, femme fatales and plenty of cigarettes, smoke and smoking. They’re mostly urban, though one of the best, Out of the Past, is largely rural. And, of course, pretty much all are in striking black and white.

I’ve broken the images up into various categories. Of course, one pic might fit into several categories and pretty much all have low key lighting, so there’s no category for that.

It’s hard to narrow down all the great images to a reasonable number for a blog, and I’m sure I’ve left out some good ones. But here goes. And feel free to add your own choices in the comments. I don’t think you can put pictures in but you can tell us about them and the movies they’re from.


Oblique Angles and Striking Images

D.O.A.	Fear in the Night	Born to Kill
The Big Heat	Sunset Boulevard	Strangers on a Train
Sunset Boulevard	D.O.A.	Fear in the Night
Phantom Lady	Fear in the Night	The Lady from Shanghai
He Walked by Night	The Lady from Shanghai	The Maltese Falcon
Nightmare Alley	Black Angel	Dark Passage
The Postman Always Rings Twice	The Third Man	The Third Man

Touch of Evil

Shadows, Reflections and Venetian Blinds

The Killers	Crack-Up	Double Indemnity
Fear in the Night	He Walked by Night	The Maltese Falcon
The Narrow Margin	The Narrow Margin	Pitfall
Somewhere in the Night	The Crooked Way	The Woman in the Window

Fog and Rain

The Big Combo

Follow Me Quietly

The Narrow Margin

Scarlet Street

The Blue Dahlia

Smoking

The Postman Always Rings Twice

The Maltese Falcon

Out of the Past

Out of the Past

Pitfall

Streets, Alleys and Neon

Act of Violence	Act of Violence	Act of Violence
The Blue Dahlia	Born to Kill	Criss Cross
The Crooked Way	Cry Danger	Cry Danger
Dark Passage	Dark Passage	D.O.A.

Kiss Me, Deadly

The Lady from Shanghai

People, Femme Fatales and Guys with Gats

Gun Crazy

Crack-Up

Scarlet Street

The Big Sleep

Born to Kill

D.O.A.	Dead Reckoning	Detour
D.O.A.	Double Indemnity	Double Indemnity
The Postman Always Rings Twice	I Walk Alone	The Blue Dahlia
Laura	The Big Sleep	Out of the Past
Out of the Past	Out of the Past	The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

The Crooked Way

Too Late for Tears

In a Lonely Place and Detour

Lobby Cards, Title Cards, Posters

***

The author as a boy with gat, lucky rabbit's foot and the
shadow of noir over him.

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And now for the usual BSP:

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