EXISTENTIALISM IN FILM
I could not say where or how existentialist themes first emerged in film. Often times, critics will point to the work of Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini as early examples. Indeed, these two men are titans in their art, and they will be discussed in this essay. However, it occurs to me that a certain genre of film being made in America during the late forties and early fifties perhaps deserves credit for treating very early, if not for the first time, subject matter and themes that might rightly be called "existential" while perhaps not directly inspired by formal existentialist thought. These films were shot in rich black and white, draped in shadows spliced by neon light bleeding intermittently through Venetian blinds, peopled by hard-boiled characters whose speech was tough and witty, who were hard drinkers and fast livers. They smoldered with a barely sublimated intense sexual tension. The French critics of the day were the first to hail the new style, which they called "film noir". Before I proceed, let me be quite clear as to how film noir might qualify as a genre worthy of our consideration in connection with existentialist film. As I said, I do not necessarily assert that the film noir genre is
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 4078
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page double spaced)
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