The Italian term for the high-contrast lighting style common in film noir is chiaroscuro.
The word combines Italian terms meaning “light” and “dark.” In visual art, chiaroscuro describes the modeling of forms through strong contrasts between illumination and shadow. Cinematographers adapted the technique to create faces, rooms, and streets divided into dramatic pools of light and darkness.
In classic black-and-white noir, chiaroscuro often appears as low-key lighting, hard shadows, silhouettes, and beams of light cutting through blinds or doorways. These effects can suggest secrecy, danger, divided loyalties, or a character’s uncertain moral state. Gregg Toland’s cinematography in the early 1930s helped popularize related techniques that later became strongly associated with noir.
Chiaroscuro is not identical to every visual feature of film noir. Dutch angles, deep focus, expressionist sets, voice-over narration, and urban crime stories are separate elements that may appear alongside it. “Mise-en-scène” refers more broadly to what is arranged within the frame, while “expressionist” describes a wider artistic style rather than this specific lighting contrast.