History of film noir

Film noir is believed to of started from the early 1940's to the late 1950's. This era of film noi is associated with a low key, black and white visual style. A French critic, Nino Frank was the first person to use the term film noir in 1946. Some of the first film noir were The Maltese Falcon in 1941, Murder My Sweet in 1944, Double indemnity in 1944, The woman in the window in 1944 and Laura, also in 1944 

Film noir covers many different plots such as the lead role, which tends to be a detective, plain clothes police man, ageing boxer, happiness grafter, a law abiding citizen lured into criminal life, or a victim of incident. 

In the beginning stages of a film noir, most features were American productions, from the 1960's onwards. However, film noir has been produced throughout the world. These all contain aspects from the originals from the 1940's. 

Film noirs reflecting the war, run down and beat up times of this period. It showed tensions and insecurities through the use of Hollywood films such as comedies and musicals. Fear, mistrust, bleakness, loss of innocence, despair and paranoia are readily evident in noir. This is to represent the time period.  

Classic film noir developed when the during and after the world war II they took the advantage of the post war ambience of anxiety, pessimism and suspicion. It was the style of black and white American film that first evolved in the 1940's, became prominent in the post-era, and lasted in a classic Golden Age period until about 1960 (marked by the last film of the classic film noir era, Touch of Evil (1958)). 

It is not specifically a genre but more of a mood or style and point of view for a film. Film Noir usually refers to a distinct historical period of film history – the decade of film making after World War II.