In spite of all the many connections between film noir and the 1940s when it was produced in, there is still something more to this films.
Classic film noir is a form of entertainment characteristic of the 1940s. That’s when, for many historical and social reasons. its popularity reached a peak
By depicting a very specific reality, but in a stylised way, film noir went beyond its limits of time and circumstances.
World War II produced a fracture in American society. While men created their own social order at the front, women revolutionised their role at home
Veteran films betrayed a marked hostility toward (and by implication a fear of) postwar integration, the soldier’s difficulty in going back to civilian life
Just like in the 1920s, American cities had an explosion during the 1940s with remarkably similar emotional results. Film noir picked up that uneasy feeling
The femme fatale won’t renounce the advancement marriage had given her, nor the fulfilment of a relation with the hero and so a transgression is necessary
Suspense is not, of course, specific to the 1940s noir, but in these films it tends to occupy a specific place, marking the protagonist lack of control
With very few exceptions, films noir were B movies filmed on a budget, even the ones we now consider classics. They needed resourcefulness in place of money
Dialogues were very important in film noir, because, as much as the plot relied on the action, some of this action happened in dialogues.
By the 1940s, a vulgarised form of Freudian psychoanalysis was so familiar to the Americna public that Hollywood could use it in its plots
Disconnected from reality as he is, the noir hero persuades himself a particular achievement can unify his broken identity and so he pursues it obsessively