Some Of The Greatest Use Of Value: Film Noir

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there was a movement in movies that was termed "Film Noir". Essentially, these were films were made in Hollywood, but outside the Hollywood studio system. They were heavily influenced by the German filmmakers who had fled World War II Europe, and focussed on the darker side of human behavior (crime, dirty-dealing, psychological motivations, insanity, etc.). Since they dealt with such shocking (for the time) material, they often didn't get full Hollywood funding. Operating on shoestring budgets meant that often times these films were shot with a limited number of lights and cameras. So, images often had extremely directional lighting and an entire scene would often take place within one shot. As a result, the filmmakers were forced to look for the most interesting angle from which to shoot and found extremely creative ways of lighting their subjects, resulting in some of the most beautiful back and white images on film. Check out some of the film-still examples below and see what you can glean from both their use of dynamic contrast and the sense of compositional organization.