1 Based on your reading of the article "The Neo-Noir 90's" provide a description of the content and visual element of the film noir during its classic period.
Based on the reading I think that the visual style of the films were in a more depressed, and crime committing settings. As stated in the article "AFTER WORLD WAR II French critics became aware of a new mood gloomy, doomy and dangerous--in Hollywood movies, They coined a term, film noir, to describe these crime-infested, shadow-draped, black-and-white movies". When I hear gloomy I picture bad weather, cloudy, cold, and dark outside, which usual put people in a more down mood, causing or adding to their depression. The words Crime-infested I imagine more gun play, murders, criminals, and law enforcement on the scene. The movie titles, and story lines of the B-movie classic films associates with violates as well. "Gun Crazy," young lovers kill with no motive; in
Nicholas Ray's tortured "In a Lonely Place," the cocky Humphrey Bogart
of "The Big Sleep" is replaced by a paranoid, violent Bogie. At the end
of the line, in 1955, came Robert Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly." After reading the titles of these films I visualize a black and white film with a lot of killings, and other criminal activity. I also envision a lot of smoking, and drinking, and other wrongful behavior promoted in the films. The article illustrates that "The new lounge-lizard culture, flaunting such retro poisons as martinis and cigarettes, invites us to glamorously rebel against an age of abstinence and political correctness". It seems as if the noir films used alcohol, and cigarette smoking as a style for their characters, "bad boy" image for the guys and a form of "sex appeal" for the women.
