Social and political factors

The disillusionment of Americans in the late 1930s following World War I, the 1929 stock market crash and the 1930s Depression saw the demise of the dream of America a welcoming haven and land of unlimited opportunity where anyone, through hard work, could make their future.

  • Rootlessness and increased urbanisation were aspects of the 1930s Depression. Failed crops and inability to repay mortgages saw people kicked off their land and having to move in search of work toward cities where they often felt alienated. Noir narratives most commonly take place in the streets, low-rent apartments and hotel rooms of cities where characters are often transient.
  • The prospect of an endless Cold War through heightened political hostility and military tension between America and the Soviet bloc after World War II is also seen as an influence on the themes and mood of film noir. The insecurity, fear and paranoia this engendered was further fuelled by Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican senator, who drove the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee, which sought out and blacklisted anyone believed to have communist sympathies.
  • Postwar gloom and a resultant sense of meaninglessness were also attributed to revelations of the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps and the exploding of atomic bombs by the Americans in the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The latter further raised the possibility of nuclear annihilation.
- Media Studies - A resource book for Year 13 Students, Chesterman, S & Winnall, A

Post-war disillusionment gave film noir a mood and a social context. Victory in World War II did not bring the peacetime happiness that many had anticipated. Many wartime veterans were feeling isolated after they return. This disillusionment is also evident in non-noir films of the era.  Disillusionment came from many directions.
  • Women, who had been encouraged to join the work force during the war, now felt pressured to leave it to make room for returning veterans. 
  • Labour unions, many of which had been forbidden to strike during the war, now demanded long-awaited benefits. 
  • The defeat of the Axis powers did not bring about international security, because the Cold War emerged, generating anxiety about Communist infiltration. 
- www.filmreference.com


World War II: American Involvement and the Aftermath
The forties are pretty well defined by World War II.
  • US isolationism was shattered by the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour [which effectively drew America into the conflict in the Pacific]. Japan surrendered only after two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
  • Unemployment almost disappeared, as most men were drafted and sent off to war.  The government reclassified 55% of their jobs, allowing women and blacks to fill them. First, single women were actively recruited to the workforce. In 1943, with virtually all the single women employed, married women were allowed to work.
For Americans victory abroad (at the end of WWII), perhaps surprisingly, was followed at home by an aftermath of social frustration and disappointment called the ‘post-war malaise’. There were widespread industrial disputes (strike action being unpatriotic in wartime), continued rationing of many consumer durables, race riots, sickening photographic evidence of the Holocaust [although there were rumours at the time, it was only after the war ended that Americans learned the extent of the Holocaust] and a frightening potential future revealed by the Atomic bomb.
- www.bighousefilm.com


Post-war disillusionment gave film noir a mood and a social context. Victory in World War II did not bring the peacetime happiness that many had anticipated. Many wartime veterans were feeling isolated after they return. This disillusionment is also evident in non- noir films of the era.
Disillusionment came from many directions.
  • Women, who had been encouraged to join the work force during the war, now felt pressured to leave it to make room for returning veterans. 
  • Labour unions, many of which had been forbidden to strike during the war, now demanded long-awaited benefits. 
  • The defeat of the Axis powers did not bring about international security, because the Cold War emerged, generating anxiety about Communist infiltration. 
- www.filmreference.com

 
The United States emerged from World War II as a world superpower, challenged only by the USSR. While the USSR conquered some of the defeated countries, the US implemented the Marshall Plan, helping war-torn countries to rebuild and rejoin the world economy.
Disputes over political ideology and control led to the Cold War.
  • The United States treated communism as a contagious disease, and anyone who had contact with it was under suspicion – even American citizens.
  • Across the globe, the United States clashed with the Soviet Union over such issues as the Soviet dominance over Eastern Europe, control of atomic weapons, and the Soviet blockade of Berlin.
  • The establishment of a Communist government in China in 1949 and the North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950 helped transform the Cold War into a global conflict, in which United States would confront Communism across the globe.
  • In an atmosphere charged with paranoia and anxiety, there was deep fear at home about “enemies within” sabotaging U.S. foreign policy and passing atomic secrets to the Soviets.
  • After World War II the United States and the Soviet Union began a nuclear arms race that continued unabated throughout the 1960s. For most of the 1950s both countries concentrated on manufacturing atomic and hydrogen bombs and the intercontinental bomber force necessary to deliver them.
  • Both countries also developed short-range and intermediate-range missiles that could be armed with nuclear warheads, as well as nuclear weapons to be used on the battlefield. This led to widespread nervousness and anxiety about the possibility of an all-out nuclear war and total annihilation.