Film noir and jazz music as a genre: The use of jazz music in Hollywood film noirs between 1950-1959

Jazz and Cinema are two separate forms of modern art; yet from the historical point of view, they seem to have developed almost in parallel with one another. Since the times of silent motion pictures, jazz music has continued to collaborate with cinema, being still a very important mean of expression today in many productions, whether popular or artistic. Furthermore, the fact that Jazz being part of Film Noir as a mean of expression and as a musical language, has been a central subject of various arguments. In fact, in the post-war American society in many different cases, these two art forms, Jazz and Film Noir, have been considered together for their eccentric nature, the similarities in the topics that they dealt with, their distinctive formative features and their relations with the subcultures and underground world. The transitions which have happened both in Film Noir and Jazz especially during the 50's, have created new trends in the relation between the two. The purpose of this research is to analyze this relation between Film Noir and Jazz which existed in this particular time period. More specifically, it aims to put forth how Jazz as film music takes its form according to the cinematographic features and the themes of the movies and how it is used and what it represents in them.