Elements of Film Noir and its Implementation in the Contemporary TV-Series True Detective

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Film Science grade: 17 Justus-Liebig-University Giessen (Institut für Anglistik) course: Introduction to Crime Fiction language: English abstract: When researching for the topic of film noir it is inevitable to stumble upon keywords like nihilism femme fatales post-war American life or the adjectives dark gloomy and mysterious. But what is film noir? And why does it appear so bleak? In this term paper film noir as a movie genre in the 1940s will be examined and applied to the contemporary TV-series True Detective (2014). First of all it is important to provide a theoretical foundation. Therefore the history of film noir and how it developed will be discussed tersely. Afterwards the main elements that mark a film noir as film noir will be described. Themes like nihilism or pessimism are essential parts of film noir but so is murder and corruption. The characters are also quite dreary there is a male victim who gets seduced by a femme fatale and precisely that woman might be involved with the noir psychopath. Hence themes and characters are part of this term paper. Cinematic features are not to be forgotten: the extensive use of e.g. voice-over and cut-backs is also representative. It will be explained what the features mentioned before are and how they are applied in film noir. After the theoretical foundation is made the analysis of the HBO TV-series True Detective takes place. The choice has been made because many newspapers and articles considered True Detective as film noir and it was sapid to investigate whether this can be proven on facts or whether it is simply an assumption. After a short summary of the series the items themes characters and narrative strategies will be explored and applied to the film noir schema. Concluding the aspect of neo-noir will be taken into account and the decision will be made whether True Detective can be seen as a product of film noir.