Transcript Background to Film Noir

Background to Film Noir
American Cultural History
1940 - 1949
• The 1940's were dominated by World War
II. European artists and intellectuals fled
Hitler and the Holocaust, bringing new
ideas created in disillusionment.
• War production pulled the USA out of the
Great Depression. Women were needed
to replace men who had gone off to war,
and so the first great exodus of women
from the home to the workplace began.
• Rationing affected the food they ate, the
clothes they wore, the toys with which
children played.
Images of Women in Noir
Changes in Society
• After the war, the men returned, having
seen the rest of the world. No longer was
the family farm an ideal; no longer would
blacks accept lesser status. The GI Bill
allowed more men than ever before to get
a college education. Women had to give
up their jobs to the returning men, but they
had tasted independence.
Theatre
• The theater turned to abstractionism. Thornton
Wilder's The Skin of our Teeth (1942) was
bizarre and difficult to understand but won the
Pulitzer Prize.
• Tennessee Williams wrote of self-disillusionment
and futility in the Glass Menagerie (1945) and
Streetcar named Desire (1947).
• In contrast Musical Theatre was reborn, with
Agnes de Mille's technique of dancing in
character in Oklahoma (1943). Carousel (1945),
and Annie get your Gun (1946).
Film
• The forties were the heyday for movies. The Office of War declared
movies an essential industry for morale and propaganda.
• Most plots had a fairly narrow and predictable set of morals, and if
Germans or Japanese were included, they were one-dimensional
villains.
• Examples are Casablanca, Mrs. Miniver, Lifeboat, Notorious, Best
Years of our Lives, Wake Island, Battle of Midway, Guadalcanal
Diary, and Destination Tokyo.
• Citizen Kane, not fitting the template, was one of the masterpieces
of the time.
• Leading actors were Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine
Hepburn, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford,
Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, Jimmy Stewart, Marlon Brando,
Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Lana Turner.
• Walt Disney's career began to take off, with animated cartoons such
as Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942).
• During the war years, the studio produced cartoons for the
government, such as Donald gets Drafted (1942), Out of the Frying
Pan into the Firing Line (1942) and Der Fuehrer's Face (1943).