Target Audience Research Part I- Audience Expectations

In terms of target audience, owing to the fact that Film Noir is arguably not an actual film genre, it is difficult to separate a target audience. Film Noir is more a retrospective term used for the Hollywood style of film-making in the 1940s and 50s. Therefore, the target audience of the time was a mass American audience- Film Noirs had everything the two decades demanded: sex appeal from the Femme Fatales; a gritty, complex narrative storyline, usually a detective or gangster plot; murder; violence; crime; up-to-date fashion; glamour; interesting and innovative cinematography and sets, inspired by European impressionism and a likeable and mysterious main character, usually played by big Hollywood names. The fact is that in the modern day film market, there isn’t a great demand for Film Noir. It is a historic era of film, now, elements of which have been carried on throughout Hollywood and World cinema, but a style that is now dated. It seems movie buffs, students and artists look back on Film Noir with a sort of nostalgic wonder- the golden age of Hollywood.

Looking at audience expectations- again, these are somewhat limited by the lack of genre conventions and the aged nature of Film Noir. When looking at ImDb’s top 5 Film Noir films, we can ascertain some similar features in the openings of Film Noir, of which we can assume an audience would expect. For example, in all 5 there is a clear-cut and defined narrative hook- the opening of ‘Sunset Boulevard’ sees a murder scene, with the apparently omniscient narration giving some detail into the murder, and informing the audience that they are about to see how the murder came about. There is a definitive narrative hook, that draws in the audience and begins a mystery that, usually, our hero unravels.

Audiences of the time would have expected glamour, beautiful women, a villain, a hero, a mystery, a murder, violence- the classic detective story, with distinctive impressionist cinematic production. This was Hollywood in the 1940s + 1950s. A modern audience would expect the same things, but with a nostalgic eye- the glamorisation of alcohol and cigarettes in modern day is almost a distinctive feature of Film Noir, but in the age of Noir, such consumption would have gone practically unnoticed. Important and powerful women (Femme Fatales) were given cigarettes on screen for realism, as opposed to meeting conventions- in the early 20^th Century, if you were middle-upper class, you smoked. Cigarettes and liquor were part of a wealthy lifestyle. A 1940s and 50s audience would have been able to easily identify the class and importance of a character from their drink of choice- for example, a detective drinking whisky, brandy, vodka, would have been seen as middle-upper class, whereas a detective drinking beer would have been identified as more working class, or else wanting to appear as such.