ies of film noir, and then continued in the new uncertainties of the Cold War period, especially in the years immediately after World War II when American society was straining to recover from the war while also trying to adapt to the new line-up of international friends and enemies. This also explains why the style became so pervasive, since it was speaking to the national psyche that existed at the time, and that psyche did not kick in only for one genre of film but was "in the air," as it were.
By the time Blade Runner is produced, the film noir is a style that is used primarily to evoke a sense of the past and not because it derives from the zeitgeist of the time. Blade Runner is a science fiction movie that deliberately evokes the trappings of the forties private eye film and that uses the film noir style as a way of doing this efficiently and effectively. Like the classic film noir, Blade Runner takes place almost entirely at night. It is a night that seems to hang over the city like a pall, and the main character in fact escapes fro
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