Major Project Research- Neo-Noir

Throughout the 1940's and 50's noir took over the cinema, the low key lighting and german expressionist style cinematography had launched a new style for Hollywood films that is still used in many films today. The noir style dominated the Hollywood cinema creating a style that is used in a lot of modern films that they name neo noir. The new neo noir film are see as "knowingly allusive, richly intertextual; yet increasingly the fictive and social universe of the late 1940's and 1950's they invoke"(Langford; pg 211; 2005). These neo noir films have taken many different components from the original noirs, for example Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010) is considered a neo noir due to the period it is set, Teddy Daniels the main charcter wears typical noir style clothing and the lighting in specific parts of the film is very low key contrasting lights and darks to their extremes. This is a very subtle noir style but is evident as it makes the film seem different to what the audience is used to. Another film that takes neo noir to the extreme is Sin City (Miller, 2005). Sin City has an extremely distinctive style from most other films, it is a graphic novel adaptation and they have kept that element within it but also included the neo noir style of black and white with extreme contrasts between light and dark and a gritty effect to make the shots seem rough and almost like they have noise on them. I also love how the colour red is used as an extra colour in the final render as this gives the clear conotation of danger for the character who wears it and the audience is clearly entertained by the gruesome red squirts of bloof that appear in some scenes. Vertigo is another film that has a noir effect within it but is subtly hidden behing Hitchcock's unique style. The opening scene is the real noir part as Scottie is dressed to be the mistaken hero whilst the setting around him is created to look like the desolate and isolated area that noir films use so often.
The neonoir genre is what I would like to aim for in my piece, I want to give the effect of the 1950's- 60's as this will further make my film more relevant to the mood I want to capture, isolation and helplessness as the character spirals into his own trap.

Barry Langford; Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond; 2005; Edinburgh University Press Ltd.