There is no refuting, be it directly or indirectly, the works of certain painters had a massive impact on the visual stylization of film noir. As for the films themselves, these can be divided - broadly speaking - into two separate groups, one of which would be partial to an objectively unflinching view of the world, otherwise referred to as realism and the other a conveyance by means of distortion and aesthetic - a decidedly more subjective and somewhat disturbing perspective of mankind (expressionism). Artists and movements that host a relevance to film noir include the following:
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Caravaggio (1571-1610) Considered the most radical artist of his time, Caravaggio's religious paintings are striking for their extreme contrasts of light and shade (chiaroscuro) and their implicit sense of violence, the personification of realism as ordinary working folk were employed as models as opposed to their more attractive counterparts (an undeniable influence for director Roberto Rossellini and his upcoming neo-realist subjects).
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| Gustave Courbet keeping it Realist. |
Realism : Though this is quite often used in a generic sense to mean the pictorial rendering of the visible world in an elaborately detailed and manner of precision, when spelled with an upper-case R, it refers to a movement in mid-nineteenth century France that had forsaken the idealization of academic art in lieu of a more down-to-earth subject matter, very often the life of a peasant. Jean Desire Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) made perhaps the boldest social commentaries with his works and would be the leading light of the Realism movement.
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| ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER (1880-1938) 'Davos under Snow', 1923 (oil on canvas) |
Expressionism : This is an artistic movement that expressed the unique and often tormented inner vision of the artist through exaggeration and distortion. It was of particular importance in Germany during the first few decades of the twentieth century.
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| Dali, Pardon? |
Surrealism : An international movement, originating in France in the 1920's, that attempted to produce works of art that drew directly from the unconscious mind. Dreams, humor and sexuality were especially valued as being untrammeled by the encumbrance of logic.Salvador Dali,unequivocally the most famous Surrealist painter would design the dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's mesmerizer Spellbound (1945) Dali designed an earlier dream sequence for Fritz Lang's 1942 Moontide, but his montage would be edited out and replaced in the eleventh hour as it was deemed as being far too disturbing for the general public to embrace.
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| Lionel S. Reiss’ 1946 watercolor, “Going Home (Near Bloomingdale’s and the 59th Street Elevated), From the Ashcan School Movement. |
Ashcan School: An informal group of American painters who worked at the beginning of the twentieth century and some of whose work centered on the everyday work of the urban poor. George Bellows (1882-1925), who was associated with the group, is perhaps best known for his noirish depictions of boxing matches in which the straining bodies of the fighters are spot-lit by a harsh raking light.
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| Hopper's New York Office |
Edward Hopper (1882-1967) The artist's cool and restrained urban scenes center on solitary individuals within the city confines who are suffused with an overall sense of malaise. His most lauded work - the painting Nighthawks (1942) shows three customers in an illuminated Metropolitan diner, a work which Hopper created contemporaneously to the early age of film noir.