Film noir uses distinctive lighting, camera techniques, and set designs to create a unique aesthetic. Key features include high-contrast chiaroscuro lighting to highlight moral ambiguity, canted camera angles to make characters seem untrustworthy, and adherence to rules of composition to guide the viewer's eye. Costumes and confined settings also provide clues to characters and heighten tension. Locations are often crowded cities or isolated, creating feelings of entrapment or unease. These elements of mise-en-scène differentiate film noir from other genres through its dark, complex visual style.

1. Mise en scene of Film Noir

2. Film noir uses a variety of features in the form of their mise-
en-scene, and lighting to achieve a very distinct aesthetic
that allows film noir to differentiate itself from most other
forms of cinema. Foremost in these features is the usage of
complex lighting layouts to achieve sharp and distinct
shadows and silhouettes in strange or striking formations;
often in a chiaroscuro style to highlight features of the
characters and locations, such as questionable moralities
(Although it is not technically film noir but instead a simple
thriller, Headhunters is still a good example of this), or
alternatively black-and-white moralities as is the case in a
majority of binary oppositions (Again, while not strictly film
noir The Bond franchise performs this wonderfully).
Furthermore, lighting can be used to emphasise key
features/subtexts of a particular scene or shot, for instance in
The third Man, an enlarged shadow around a street corner is
used to exhibit the inevitability of the coming darkness, as a
synonym for danger or death.
Still from Jo Nesbo’s ‘’Headhunters’’
Still from Carol Reed’s ‘’the Third Man’’

3. Some more features of the mise-en scene of film noir appear in the
cinematography and shot composure. For instance, the use of canted
angles (or Dutch angles) used when filming individuals. This has the
effect of making the characters/sets shown within the shot seem
unnatural or untrustworthy. Furthermore, this shot has the effect of
(in some cases) leading the audience’s eye to certain points on the
screen through the use of leading lines in the scene (see the still to
the left; the eye is drawn along the window pane from the top of the
screen towards the man leaning pout of the window at the bottom,
one of the most effective ways to move the eye without moving the
camera). This effect is a direct contribution of German Expressionism
in cinematography and architecture to modern cinema. Another
typical method used in Film noir is the application of the rule of thirds
– as is seen in the above still – to draw attention to aspects that lie
along the thirds of the shot
Canted angle from Orson Welle’s
‘’Citizen Kane’’
Canted Angle from ‘’The Third Man’’

4. Another important feature of the mise-en-scene of film noir is the
clothing and setting. The clothing – although relatively unimportant
while watching the film at a glance – can say a lot about the character
and their motives, or lack of otherwise. For instance, in the film ‘LA
Confidential’, the police officer Ed Exley is well-kempt and clean,
compared to other characters such as Dick Stensland or Bud White.
This, while a minor detail, shows that his character is well-ordered and
‘clean’, so-to-say.
In addition to the costume, setting is also highly important. In many
cases, film noir is often set in single locations such as a hotel in the film
‘’Key Largo’’, and never really ventures beyond the size of cities, rarely
leaving one geographical location, thus serves to create a sense of
entrapment within the film. As well as this, specific scenes within the
films themselves are often set in either very crowded environments (as
is the case with LA Confidential), or in very open spaces (such as the
ruined post-war city of Vienna in The Third man). The use of crowded
environments serves to create a claustrophobic feel, heightening tension
by making important specific elements hard to spot, or pout of sight. On
the other hand, the use of wide open spaces serves to make the viewer
suspicious of whatever encounter may happen within the scene
Still of Ed Exley from ‘’LA Confidential’’
Still from ‘’Key Largo’’ – an example of a fairly
clustered environment