In the 1930's many films came out with a detective that used Denoument, which is were the detective pools together all the clues to discover who the real bad guy is, this time period was also a period of so-called Gentlemen detectives who don't use violence but intelligence to solve murders, they normally carry no weapons and have eccentric personality's, however this style of detective only survived until 40's as the relative success as films like 'The Kennel Murder Case' were very popular and successful. But the introduction of tough detectives who used more brute force made audiences more excited.
During the 40's and 50's the genre took a much darker tone due to the second world war. This lead to an increase in macho, tough guy detectives who were almost as bad as the bad guys they were meant to be catching, the genre began adding new crimes such as corruption, making them appeal more to the audiences as corruption was a major issue in the US at this time and tales of corrupt businesses during the second world war fuelled this idea.
Humphrey Bogart was one of the major actors and influencing figures of this genre, as he was able to fit into the cruel and violent world many of these films were based in, the clip above was from one of his films 'In a lonely place' this film was one of the first psycholgical films.
The 60's and 70's was were the period of 30's films were being made tributes, with many films going back to the old times of more classic detectives like Sherlock Holmes, but the lead film in this period was Chinatown by Roman Polanski, this film is considered as one of the best mystery films ever made and it won 9 awards. The film was also credited with providing more awareness of the water issues involving Los Angeles during the 1910's.
The 80's brought about several new versions of the mystery film as well as the reemergence of the film noir genre from the 40's, in a new style of film known as Neo-noir erotic thrillers, this added to the moody atmosphere with more sexuality being explored in the films and more and used a lot of sexually exolicit scenes, the best film of this genre was Sea of Love with Al Pacino. Other film styles that became popular in this time period was military and Police films, which were complex films based around military matters, cover-ups and conspiracies, some of these films include State of Play, The general's daughter and Bloodwork. These also led to the introduction of period piece films based around LA in the 40's and 50's, these often had some message about current problems. LA confidential was probably the best of these films because it won 2 academy awards and was nominated for 9.
