Val Lewton;

He was born on the 7th of May 1904 in Yalta which is in Russia. In 1909 he immigrated to the USA like many foreign people were doing around that time. He, his mother and sister stayed in New York. Val Lewton was a kind, sensative, non-confrontational man, this personality he had was strangely different to those who already worked in the film industry in Hollywood. He wrote 'obsessivly' including: fiction and non-fiction, poetry and journalism.

Lewton's mother had a job as a story editor in movies, this helped to get him into the business. In 1942 he was named the head of the horror unit at RKO studios. At the time, RKO was suffering financially and because of this they started a unit that would make horror B-movies that weren't very expensive, this was following an example that was sed by Universal studios.

From 1942-1946, he produced eleven films, listed below (in order of release):
Cat People (1942)
I Walked With a Zombie (1943)
The Leopard Man (1943)
The Seventh Victim (1943)
The Ghost Ship (1943)
Curse of the Cat People (1944)
Mademoiselle Fifi (1944)
Youth Runs Wild (1944)
The Body Snatcher (1945)
Isle of the Dead (1945)
Bedlam (1946)

Lewton mainly concentrated on atmosphere and suggesion rather than showing the audience the "monster", this was so he could get the audience to be psychologically afraid, instead of afraid of the visual effects.
Another way of playing with people psychologically was by using the "bus" -- it was named from the first time it was used in Cat People. "A woman was walking through the dark streets of New York, followed by something. Tension mounts, and the audience is on the edge of their seats, expecting an attack. Just then, a bus zooms loudly into the picture, its brakes squealing and its door opening, startling the viewers who have been primed for an explosion."

He represented black people as intelligent, capable, and normal, even though this wasn't the norm in society at the time because they were mainly seen as slaves and that was usually presented in films aswell however Lewton showed them in a positive light.
The main character was usually female and they all would have the same weakness, of falling in love with a bad guy that didn't treat them well.

In 1947-1950, he had "graduated" and was now making big-budget A-movies (at different studios not RKO), which included My Own True Love (1949) and Please Believe Me (1950). However these films weren't very successful due to things like the studio interference and they did no favours for his reputation. Then in 1951 he went back to low-budget films at Universal studios.

For the last few years of Val Lewton's life, he suffered from increasing health problems and in 1951 he had the "last of several heart attacks" and died.



I got this information from;
http://www.acm.vt.edu/~yousten/lewton/bio.html

Film Noir

Film Noir started in the 1930's where it was used in most types of genre. Back then films from the genre 'Film Noir' were known as black and white films, until 1940 when a film called "Stranger on the third floor" used some new cinematic techniques. These techniques were similar to the sort that we use for Film Noir now in the 21st century. The new effects used in this particular film were, dark or dim lighting effects, dreary settings, filtered lights and generally dark themes and characterizations. The early 1940's to late 1950's was known as the classic period of Film Noir. The early films were usually crime drama's, they included a sense of moral ambiguity (no right and wrong) which meant the audience would have respect for the 'villian' type characters because things happened to them which made the audience feel sorry for them.


The common character types that feature in Film Noir are, a Private eye, business man who was married to a trapped housewife which was usually the femme fatale character. The femme fatale character is an alluring and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. They are usually trapped housewives who charm a sales man or drifter character into freeing them from their husband who treats them badly (the business man). The Sales man and Drifter are seen as oportunists, they both seem to survive on their wits, they are good talkers which helps them to pursuade people, it also suggests that they could be shallow because they don't actually care about people's feelings but they act like they do.

They tended to be an atmosphere of fear, mistrust, loss of innocence, and paranoia between the characters.

The endings weren't optimistic.

There was a non-linear narrative used in some films - using flash-backs and flash-forwards.

There was a censorship in film at the time, which was enforced by they Hollywood production code. A few examples of this code were that, in the end the villians had to be show as getting punished for the wrongs they had done, and guns were usually only used by the police (who were enforcing the law) because if normal people were shown carrying and using guns it would then seem like they were premoting it to the audience.