Neo-noir

Film genre

Description

Neo-noir is a revival of film noir, a genre that had originally flourished during the post-World War II era in the United States — roughly from 1945 to 1960. The French term, film noir, translates literally to English as "black movie" or "dark movie", indicating sinister stories often presented in a shadowy cinematographic style. Neo-noir has a similar style but with updated themes, content, style, and visual elements.

The neologism neo-noir, using the Greek prefix for the word new, is defined by Mark Conard as "any film coming after the classic noir period that contains noir themes and noir sensibility". Another definition describes it as later noir that often synthesizes diverse genres while foregrounding the scaffolding of film noir.