Film Noir Lighting

The shadows in film noir are strongly pronounced, which really creates an element of mystery and darkness. The low-key lighting enables you to get a really defined shadow and they avoid spilling the light in order to really focus on the actual character or object. What film noir aims to do is prevent using any extra light as it takes away from the mood of the scene. Film noir is essentially a world of shadows and this is what makes it so obscure and curious as a genre. The chiaroscuro is what provides the dramatic impact and makes the scene adopt some depth.

No filler light would be used as filler light softens shadows and the whole point of the genre is to enhance these silhouettes. Predominantly, key lights would be used to accentuate the thing being shot and this means that they would use under lighting, top lighting and back lighting. These all create different effects and all three would be used at different times in film noir as they depict very different atmospheres. Back lighting would be used a lot as this would enhance the shadows. 


In this clip from The Maltese Falcon, the shadows are highly pronounced. There are shadows created by nearly everything. When the lights inside the house come on, shadows are still created from the lamps on the wall. The use of these silhouettes create a very crime/detective sort of atmosphere.