Q 01/05

Which French critic first applied the term 'film noir' to Hollywood films in 1946?

A) André Bazin

B) Nino Frank

C) Raymond Borde

D) François Truffaut

Answer · why

B) Nino Frank

He was probably inspired by the Série noire crime-fiction imprint launched a year earlier.

Q 02/05

Which decades are generally regarded as the classic period of American film noir?

A) The 1940s and 1950s

B) The 1930s and 1940s

C) The 1950s and 1960s

D) The 1920s and 1930s

Answer · why

A) The 1940s and 1950s

At the time, most of these pictures were simply called melodramas.

Q 03/05

What did most Americans call films now labelled noir before the term caught on in the 1970s?

A) Thrillers

B) Gangster pictures

C) Melodramas

D) Whodunits

Answer · why

C) Melodramas

Historians and critics defined the category retrospectively.

Q 04/05

Which two French critics wrote the 1955 Panorama, the first extended study of the subject?

A) Bazin and Truffaut

B) Godard and Rivette

C) Sadoul and Sartre

D) Borde and Chaumeton

Answer · why

D) Borde and Chaumeton

Borde and Chaumeton called noir 'oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel'.

Q 05/05

Noir's shadowy visual style has its roots in which artistic movement?

A) Italian Futurism

B) French Impressionism

C) German Expressionism

D) Soviet Constructivism

Answer · why

C) German Expressionism

Émigrés such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak and Michael Curtiz brought the look to Hollywood.