Task 2.1 Research into Existing Products

The Detective from The Maltese Falcon

Film noir has a stereotypical story. This is the spider and the fly. This is when the detective is drawn in by a femme fatal into a web of deceit. This is how most films are set out. On the other hand, there are not requirements for the characters unlike gangster films and there is not requirement for locations unlike Weston films.


Film noir is a French term which means 'black film'. In 1930, it was when the depression  hit America. Cinemas allowed people to escape the reality of the depression. By 1939, there was more cinemas than banks. Independent cinemas need rights in order to show A list films. A list films are the movies that are guaranteed to bring in the most amount of profit when shown at the box office. Cinemas and film companies thought of a way in order to make profit on less profit making films as well and A list films. This was called block booking. This is when independent cinemas buy blocks of films from studios which included A-list films and B-list films. Within these blacks, a cinema could gain 100 films. The blocks were always purchases before films went into production. Studios were guaranteed profit on B-list films because cinemas were changed at a flat rate. The more B-list films made, the more profit that the companies would make as long as they kept the prices low. In 1948, the Supreme court of US ended block booking. This meant that companies had to cut back on B-list films because the distribution had to change. B-list films also changed by the way they were filmed and the audiences of these films were going to change.

The femme fatal in Maltese Falcon

A lot of films and stories were made. This included popular genres such as Weston, Gangster, Sci-Fi, Horror, Pulp Fiction and Crime novels. Pulp fiction became the basis for many films noirs. During this time, the finance in the film industry was high which mean that companies could experiment with films. A low budget experiment created film noir especially in the crime genre. Film noir is based on German expressionism. Artists were escaping Nazi threat in Germany and pursue a career in Hollywood. World War 2 left people in disillusion and feeling numb. This is a common theme that is in the majority of film noirs. To be able to gain the information to create this common theme, it was documentary film makers that came to Hollywood. These people film documentaries about the war which caused them to know about the impact that the war left people in. These film makers dealt with serious issues in their films like murder, sex and crime. This led to a code being made.

Film makers were bound by a motion picture production code called the "Hays Code". This code censored subjects that people found inappropriate. This resulted in directors having to be more suggestive rather than explicit in their films. They hid the ugly business in the shadows of the scene. In the late 1960's, there were higher budgets. There was also more risky content being put into films which then led to the Hays Code becoming non existent.

Due to block booking ending, this meant that there was cuts made within studios. This resulted in film makers losing their jobs but they found new employment which was in television. I Love Lucy was a television series. This programme used lighting set up which eliminated shadows. This was created by Karl Fruend. They found out that footage from a live multi media camera production could be cut together seamlessly. Flat lighting was also used for technical purposes. This kind of lighting contrasted with the moodiness in film noirs. Television and films were at war due to this. This kind of lighting is still used today. In the late 1950s, colour production became practical. In film noirs, harsh backlighting was used in order to create separation in black and white. When colour productions became practical, it meant that harsh backlighting wasn't needed because the differences in colours showed the separation.

The first classic film noir film was Stranger on the Third Floor. This was released in 1940. The plot is about a newspaper reporter and how his statement was used in court in order to convict a murder suspect but he had doubts about the conviction. The doubts were brought on by the newspaper reporter finding his neighbour dead in a similar way. The next film noir film was Double Indemnity  by Billy Wilder. This was released in 1944.