Film noir: Film noir means black film and often can be called a dark and light film, otherwise known as Chiaroscuro. So often these films were in complete black and white or only had a small number of characters in colour, these were usually very important characters. This genre usually used a downbeat detective and a villain that was high in power, in terms of society and there is usually a feme fatale. This means that the female in the film is almost like a spider as she sets the trap for an unsuspecting detective/male and is often the murderer that they are looking for but in the end she proves to be a fatal character. However when we talk about fatal characters it generally won’t be a case of the villain wins as in cinema for many years it was prohibited to how a villain overcoming good in the fear it would affect people in society. Another part of film noir is there is often a voice over or monologue from the main character to start with as they often explain what has happened or is happening. This also carries on throughout the film as the story is actually them telling the story of what has happened up until the film catches up to the present, at this point we usually see the twist, in most cases this would be the feme fatale. Film noirs also use many clichés as in the films, for example it generally depicts women as weak and need protecting while also branding their sex appeal as in these films they are objectified. They are also seem to have a British accent in some of the films in order to define class as they want to be seen as higher middle class. This cliché also helps with the objectifying of the women as this is almost a fetish for some men in that time. Genre developed at the time which allowed film noir to take off and it developed because of the industries fierce competition as at the beginning of the film industry there were five big companies, warner Brothers, Columbia, MGM, Universal and Paramount. Due to this competition genre was developed quickly as they had to quickly establish what people wanted to see and film noir became very popular so was established quickly. These companies were all based in Hollywood as during the first and second world war a large number of Europeans migrated to America and the film industry in Europe was already quite big so it meant that the industry in America would almost boom in terms of size and this meant that the film makers from Europe could then make high quality films, one genre already developed there that had some success was by a German who had fled from the war. He was a photographer and had made many photos in that style and it proved to revolutionise film and for that time period it was mainly European people who made the films at the time. Other characteristics of a film noir may be the lighting as it only uses one key light as the whole concept of a film noir is to live in the shadows and to focus on the darkness so it makes sense that they work with minimal lighting. Another common characteristic of the film noirs is the sound, firstly there is ambient sound that is often used in the form of the cities sounds such as the horns of cars or the sound of bars and people walking the streets. The other form of sound used is non-diegetic sound as the commonly used jazz music is added to the films due to the popularity of jazz at the time and its common use in the inner cities similar to the cities used in this genre.