can never awaken. He is a doomed figure journeying through an underworld of crime and deception until the final betrayal by the femme fatale that he has fallen for. Expressionist lighting schemes and camera angles convey a sense of entrapment as the hero makes his way through an often labyrinthine plot.
In film noir, Expressionism found a worthy subject in the archetypal Indian antihero “The visual style of film noir conveys the dominant mood (male psychological instability and moral uncertainty, paranoia, claustrophobia, a sense of doom and hopelessness, etc) through expressive use of darkness: both real, in predominantly under lit and night time scenes, and psychologically through shadows and claustrophobic compositions which overwhelm the character in exterior as well as interior settings. Characters (and we in the audience) are given little opportunity to