Visual Patterns of Film Noir as Seen in Murder My Sweet

The Film Murder My Sweet utilizes a very complex and nearly incomprehensible plot common to noir. This complex plot transports the viewer into an otherworldly setting, which instills feelings of terror and foreboding. While it is this complex plot full of twists and turns upon which the film is based, it is in the plot's visual manifestation on screen that these emotions are created. 

In their article, Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir, Janey Place and Lowell Peterson acknowledge the importance of visual elements in film noir. "Nearly every attempt to define film noir has agreed that visual style is the consistent thread that unites the very diverse films that together comprise this phenomenon"(65). 

Were one to read the script of Murder My Sweet these feelings induced by various visual techniques throughout the film would be entirely absent. The film relies on the visual to achieve its desired effect on the viewer. The opening sequence of the film can be looked at as a stylistic model upon which the remainder of the film is based. This tone setting opening sequence takes many traditional film noir visual tropes and magnifies them in order to create a filmic environment based on the familiar and ordinary but which is extremely terrifying and unnerving.

The visual motifs in Murder My Sweet can be seen as boarding on those common in the horror genre. The lighting and use of shadow in the opening sequence is particularly noteworthy. While the creation of areas of shadow and bright light is common in noir this sequence takes this convention a step further. Place and Peterson discuss the usage of "low key lighting", low key to fill light ratio, in film noir (66).