Discovering Film Noir Style

I definitely number myself among those who didn’t really know what a film noir entailed until watching Double Indemnity and reading the Schrader and Place/Peterson articles (in that order). It was particularly interesting to watch and then read because it allowed me to identify the stylistics of film noir, which are really the heart of noir, before I was told about them. Throughout my notes there are mentions of nearly all of the techniques mentioned by Schrader in “Notes on Film Noir”: scenes lit for night, diagonal and vertical lines, lighting emphasis placed equally on actor and setting, more “compositional tension” than physical action, a complex timeline and romantic narration. The only thing that didn’t jump out at me was what Schrader calls a “Freudian attachment to water,” though the shot of Walter framed in the doorway of his balcony as it pours outside now sticks out in my mind. What Schrader says is true: “[F]ilm noir’s techniques emphasize loss, nostalgia, lack of clear priorities, insecurity, then submerge these self-doubts in mannerism and style” (58).