Film Noir Cinematography Analysis

Beside that, Cinematography is also one of the element that play important roles in film noir. This can be seen when Dixon (2005) explained that in film noir shot in black and white, interior setting is always suffused with shadows and exterior settings are usually at night, with wet streets and rain. It is true because most of the film noir are shot in night with wet streets and rain, night scenes are able to create the ‘ darkness ’ mood and feeling while wet streets and rain can create the fear. Furthermore, according to Dixon (2005), he mention that the imbalanced camera set-up in film noir and the camera sweeps in on the protagonists in their most intimate moments. It is true also if the imbalanced camera set up in film noir such as dutch angle and low angle shot, it shows that something are going to happen, but it depends on the director and cinematographer on what visual they want to show to the audiences.
According to Conard (2007), the cities of classic film noir are shadowed in chiaroscuro

to create a galaxy of meanings, association, and signifiers. In this statement, most of the film noir will shot in chiaroscuro lighting with high-contrast lighting to create the deep shadows and focus points when they shot in black and white film as shown in the movies before the contemporary era (1940-1960) such as Double Indemnity (1944) and Touch of Evil (1958). Other than that, Ginnette Vincendeau (2009) mention that,

…”American Film Noir” in this most common sense to cover a body of films made in Hollywood in the 1940s-1950s, often based on a crime literature, pervaded by a sense of gloom, and characterized by visual motifs of dark, low key lighting, strong shadows and unusual composition.(pg.50)

In this statement, Ginnette mentioned that film noir was a film made in Hollywood in the 1940-1950s and it was characterized by several cinematography techniques which are the low key lighting technique to create the high contrast with strong shadow and unusual composition of shots, for example the dutch angles and inverted frames. These also can be known as strange camera angles which tilts the scene or frame at a drastic angle while other techniques including distorting or turning the camera movement horizontally. Then, according to Richard Martin (1997),

…there is a catalog of visual and narrative “markers” that apparently are intended to signify the films “noirishness” including low-key lighting, claustrophobic framing, imbalanced frame compositions, tilted camera angles, light filtered through venitian blinds and reflected off rain-washed streets that invoke the forties’ film noir.(pg.29)

In this statement, Richard also mentioned the same statement as Ginnette, the cinematography technique of low-key lighting, imbalanced frame composition, reflection of rain-washed streets and other were a significant of film noir.

It is true because most of the film noir greatly influenced by the German expressionism style, where most of the scenes are shot in night time, uses of extreme artificial lighting in film, chiaroscuro lighting creates the high contrast lighting to produce the focus points, deep shadows and obscured scene such as rain to highlight the confused emotions of the character in films. According to Jerold J. Abrams (2007), he mentioned that the evolution of film noir, Neo noir have been formed after classic noir, while neo noir is certainly new but some things never change. In this statement, although neo noir are formed after classic noir, but the techniques of film noir in classic noir are still retained and continue to be used in Neo noir

films.