As a cinematic genre dating back to the mid 1930's, film noir is generally defined as a dark, suspenseful thriller with a plotline revolving around crime or mystery. Following World War II, film noir gained much recognition when Hollywood thrillers, such as The Maltese Falcon (1941) with H...

"Mulholland Drive is a place where dreams and nightmares meet." David Lynch What do an aspiring actress, a beautiful stranger, a frustrated film director, a sinister cowboy, a gritty assassin, and a scary sorcerer all have in common? They are all the key characters in master cult dir...

What were some of the elements of film noir in the 1940's and 50's and can they be seen as symptomatic of cultural anxieties? Film noir is a French label on the American film phenomenon. It wasn't until Post-war France that they could see many American films. The French observed th...

"Double Indemnity" is a classic example of the film noir style and also set some standards for movies to come. This paper will provide examples and show that the following film realized the success of this flick. Film noir is not necessarily a type of genre but rather a tone that branched of from ...

David De Souza Comm. 307 3/12/01 Unit Two films Now, Voyager In "Now, Voyager" Bette Davis plays Charlotte Vale, the spinster daughter of an domineering, high-society Boston matron. Charlotte is so completely under her mother's thumb that, in her first scene, we see her hiding cigarettes from her ...

The Matrix (1999) is an extension of the existentialist motifs of the mid 20th Century set in the 23rd, for its obvious influences from the American Noir Style. This is apparent when looking at the five points of this existentialism. First, Thomas A. Anderson (Keanu Reeves), a.k.a. "Neo," is por...