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Shadowy low-key photography drew directly on expressionist cinema. The figure is taken from Museum of Modern Art, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

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Mondo Knows Facts

Film noir lighting came from German emigres

Shadowy low-key photography drew directly on expressionist cinema Many of the directors and cinematographers who shaped Hollywood crime films in the 1940s had trained in Germany and brought expressionist habits of hard shadows, odd angles and night streets. Low-key lighting hid parts of the frame and made the city look dangerous. French critics later named the cycle film noir. It sits in Mondo's movies & tv collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Museum of Modern Art

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Tags: film-noir, lighting, 1940s

Film noir lighting came from German emigres: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Shadowy low-key photography drew directly on expressionist cinema. The figure is taken from Museum of Modern Art, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a movies & tv fact?: Yes. It sits on the Movies & TV shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.