Film Noir Lecture at the Library

French critics were the first to notice an important trend in many American films of the 1940s. They called it film noir or “black film”. These films were darker than normal, both visually and thematically, and seemed to reflect a willingness to confront life as it really was rather than follow the traditional Hollywood approach of serving up the sugarcoated version of reality. They also seemed to usher in a new era of psychologically complex, sexually provocative, and disturbingly violent film making.