film noir vs. detective/murder mystery

[Linas]

I cant tell what the difference between these two genres are. Can anyone break it down for me?

[Jazz Ad]

Detective/murder is one kind of film noir.
Film noirs aren't all detective movies but can be found in pretty much any style.

[Smurf-o-Deth]

To add to what Jazz Ad (correctly) said, two sub-genres, crime and detective/murder are mainly divided by tone and information: in crime, you know who did what to whom and how, and the point of the story is resolving that knowledge with the outcome; in detective/murder, learning the details is the thrust of the story.

Noir itself is just about the grittiness, the seedy underbelly, the cast-offs and failures. In other words, it's dark. Thus the name.

[bass12]

From "Reel Music: Exploring 100 Years Of Film Music" by Roger Hickman: "The term [film noir], first employed by French film critics in 1946, designates both a style of filmmaking and a film genre. Viewed as a style, film noire is dark and pessimistic. The images are black and white with strong contrasts of light and dark, creating deep shadows. Clearly indebted to 'Citizen Kane', the style can be found in a variety of films, including the melodramatic 'Mildred Pierce', the psychological thriller 'Spellbound', and the study of alcoholism, 'The Lost Weekend', all from 1945. The term [film noir] can also be applied to a sub-category of the detective or crime genre. The typical film noir plot is modeled after detective stories from the 1930s by American novelists such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler... Scenes often take place at night, frequently in a city with rain-slicked streets, and the stories contain multiple twists. Most of these films feature voice-over narration by one of the main characters... The prototype of the genre is 'The Maltese Falcon' (1941), but the movement clearly burst on the scene in 1944 with three classics: 'Double Indemnity', 'Murder, My Sweet', and 'Laura'" (2006: 182).

Hope that helps.

[Bongolation]

Here for further reading.

And possibly the noirest of them all.

[Linas]

Thanks for the info guys. Now that we've got that part covered, lets move this discussion to your favorite film noirs.

[bass12]

"Chinatown" is definitely a favourite, even though it's not from the classic film noir era. I'm also partial to Hitchcock, some of whose films are very noir-esque: "Rebecca", "Spellbound", "Notorious" are a few.