Essay 2 (Film Noir) Flashcards
General Beginning
- After WWII French critics realised that Hollywood films showed a new mood of cynicism, pessimism and darkness (Crime thrillers and melodramas)
- Darker lighting, Corrupter characters, fatalistic themes and hopeless tones
- Raymond Durgnat suggested that film noir is not a genre
- Urban nightlife films are not necessarily a film noirs and a film noir is not always concerned with crime and corruption
- Defined by tone and mood, not setting and conflict
- Hollywood films of the 40s and 50s
Influences of:
1. Thirties gangster film 2. French ‘poetic realism’ 3. Sternbergian melodrama 4. German expressionism
What 4 Hollywood influences from the 40s brought about film noir?
- War and Postwar disillusionment
- Postwar realism
- German Expatriates
- The Hard-Boiled Tradition
War and post-war disillusionment
-During the war there was a need for propaganda films in Hollywood
“The disillusionment that many soldiers […] and factory employees felt in returning to a peacetime economy was directly mirrored in the sordidness of the urban crime film”
Post-war realism
- After the war, every film-producing country had a resurgence of realism (Italy)
- Scenes were shot on actual locations
- The public’s desire for an honest and harsh view of America would not be satisfied through studio shots they were used to
- This realist trend broke film noir away from high-class melodrama
The German Expatriates
- In the 20s and 30s German filmmakers and technicians integrated themselves in the Hollywood establishment (No Germanisation)
- When Hollywood decided to paint it black, there were no better masters of chiaroscuro than the Germans
- Expressionist lighting came in full affect
- German expressionist influence seemingly incompatible with post-war realism due to its reliance on studio lighting
- Forming these to contradictory elements into a uniform style is what shapes film noir
- Film noir shows both realism and expressionism
The hard-boiled tradition
- Hard-boiled school of writers in the 30s
- Hemmingway, Hammett, Chandler, McCoy
- Tough, cynical way of acting and thinking that separated the world of everyday emotions
- Romanticism with a protective shell
- Writers had their roots in pulp fiction or journalism
- The hard-boiled hero was in reality a soft egg compared to his existential counterpart, but still tougher than anything American fiction had seen (?)
- This school of writing laid the foundation to create characters, plots dialogue and themes when film noir emerged
- They influenced film noir screenwriting as much as Germans influenced cinematography
What are the 7 common stylistic techniques in film noir?
- Most scenes are lit for night. Gangster sit in office during the day with the shades pulled and the lights off.
- Oblique and vertical lines are preferred to horizontal. (Expressionist influence) Obliquity adheres to the choreography of the city and opposes the Hollywood tradition of Griffith and Ford. This makes the screen unstable and restless. Light enters the room in odd shapes. This does not allow any character to speak authoritatively.
- Actors and settings are given equal lighting emphasis. Actors are often hidden in the realistic tableau of the city at night, and more obviously his face is often blacked out by shadows when he speaks. This is unlike lighting in the 30s, which accentuated the face through shadows. A fatalistic and hopeless mood is created.
- Compositional tension is preferred to physical action. Scenes are moved by cinematography around the actor, rather than having the actor control the scene by physical action. Measured pacing, restrained anger, oppressive composition.
- Freudian attachment to water. The empty streets are filled with rain and the rainfall increase in direct proportion to the drama. Docks and piers are second only to alleyways as the most popular rendezvous points.
- There is a love for romantic narration. The narration creates a mood of temps perdu: an irretrievable past, a predetermined fate and an all-enveloping hopelessness. There is no hope for any future, one can only take pleasure in reliving a doomed past.
- A complex chronological order is frequently used to reinforce the feelings of hopelessness and lost time. Convoluted time sequences are used to immerse the viewer in a time-disoriented but highly stylized world. The manipulation of time is often used to reinforce a noir principle: the how is always more important than the what.
Themes in film noir
- Raymond Durgnat divided film noir into 11 thematic categories
- In a Lonely place the heroes flaw is psychopathic violence
- In each noir theme, the upwardly mobile forces of the 30s have halted (?)
- Frontierism has turned to paranoia and claustrophobia
- The small-time gangster sits in the mayor’s chair, the private eye has quit the police force in disgust, the young heroine sick of going along for the ride is taking others for a ride. (?)
- Durgnat does not touch upon an overriding noir theme: a passion for the past and present but also a fear of the future
- In a lonely Place (He knows it will end before it ends/quote about immortality)
- Noir heroes do not want to look ahead, but survive by the day and if unsuccessful they retrieve to the past.
- Film noir techniques emphasise loss, nostalgia, lack of clear priorities and insecurity
- They submerge these self-doubts in mannerism and style
- Style becomes paramount
“It is not a very fragrant world, but it is the world you live in, and certain writers with tough minds and a cool spirit of detachment can make very interesting patterns out of it” –Chandler
3 phases
- War-time period (1941-1945)
- This was the phase of the private eye, the lone wolf, Chandler, Hammett, Greene and Bogart.
- Classy directors like Curtiz and Garnett
- Studio sets
- More talk than action
- The studio look of this period is reflected by films like Casablanca
- Post-war realistic period (1945-1949)
- Films tend towards the problem of crime in the streets, political corruption and police routine
- Less romantic heroes
- Proletarian directors like Hathaway
- Realistic urban look
- Psychotic action and suicidal impulse (1949-1953)
- The noir hero went crazy, seemingly in despair for over ten years
- The psychotic killer, (1. Subject of study; 2. fringe threat) is now is the active protagonist
- Phase of the B-noir film and of psychoanalytically inclined directors like Ray and Walsh.
- Most aesthetically and sociologically piercing
- After ten years of discarding romantic conventions, the noir film got down to the root causes of the period
- The loss of public honour, heroic conventions, personal integrity and psychic stability
- This period was self-aware, as they knew that it stood at the end of a long tradition based on despair and disintegration
General end
- By the mid 50s film noir had grounded to a halt
- A new style of crime film had become popular
- The rise of McCarthy and Eisenhower demonstrated Americans need to see a more bourgeois view of themselves
- Crime had to move to the suburbs
- Any attempt at social criticism had to be cloaked in ludicrous affirmations of the American way of life.
- Television demanded full lighting and close ups
- Undercut the German influence and colour cinematography
- Film noir was of the most creative periods in Hollywood
- Brought out the best in anyone: directors, cameramen, writers, actors
- Artist had the chance to work with previously forbidden themes (Even though still Hayes Code 1934)
- For a long time the emphasis on corruption and despair was considered an aberration of the American character
- Western with moral primitivism and gangster films with Horatio Alger values were considered more American
- Critics neglected film noir, because the films rely on choreography rather than sociology
- American critics were not used to a strong visual style
- Film noir is interested in style rather than themes
- American critics think the opposite way.
- The theme is hidden in the style
- It was easier for critics to discuss the themes of the western
- The film noir was like the gangster film a sociological reflection of the country, yet also engaged in struggle with the materials it reflected
- It tried to make America accept a moral vision of life based on style
- Promoting style in a culture that valued themes, forced film noir into artistically invigorating twists and turns
- Film noir attacked its sociological conditions and created a new artistic world that went beyond a simple sociological reflection
- A nightmarish world of American mannerism
- Because film noir was firstly a style, (working out its conflicts visually rather than thematically and being aware of its own identity) it was able to create artistic solutions to sociological problems.
In a Lonely Place: Information
- Directed by Nicholas Ray
- 1950
Starring:
- Dixton Steele
- Laurel Grey
- Det. Srg. Brub Nicolai
- Sylvia Nicolai
- Mildred Atkinson
- Captain Lochner
- Agent Mel Lippman
In a Lonely Place: Themes
- The evil that lurks beneath the surface
- Imprisonment (Being trapped)
- Domesticity, love and the inevitably tragic ending of romance in loneliness
- Paranoia
- Jeallousy
- Lonely and depressive mood, as well as romantic at times
- Uncertainty (truth vs. lies)
In a Lonely Place: Ideas
- The Sociological reflection through artistic choices on McCarthyism and the fear of spreading communism in the US (R. Barton Palmer)
- HUAC (House Un-American Activities committee)
- Hollywood 10
- You cannot trust anybody, just as Laurel cannot trust Steele (The shadows on the wall reflect this underlying fear)
- The films reflects upon thematics through its style, but I believe only certain techniques described by Schrader are existent
Stylistics that are visible/opposed:
- Maybe
- Yes
- Maybe
- Yes
- No
- No
- No
- There is almost always strong backlighting, but when the shadows fall strongly is significant
- This lighting intrudes where ever they are and unsettles their romantic union (reflects that there is something within them that will break them apart)
- When she is with Steele or in the house there are shadows, when she is outside with a friend there are not
-Frontierism turned into paranoia and claustrophobia
(Shown through domesticity and the relationship between Steele and Laurel)
-Reflexive of cold war and communism?
- The film is self-reflexive, as the book in the film reflects the narrative of the film
- Low-key lighting everywhere, but characters are rarely fully in the dark
- The timing of the film is significant, as the war is continuously reinforced (Steele was in the military)
- The style oppose the dominant mode of Hollywood
- Mildred Atkinson acts as a McGuffin
- The film shifts from murder mystery to romance
- Agent Mel occupies the same position as the audience
- The lonely place is what anger situates him in when it takes over control
- Loneliness is a self-inflicted condition
-The film seeks to maintain mystery
“Why do you want me to confess?”
“There is no sacrifice to great, for a chance for immortality”
-The line sticks out because he randomly says it to the waiter (?)
- Even though characters are not often hidden in the shade, their strong shadows can be seen on the walls in the houses (Could reflect upon the evil that is lurking beneath the surface)
- Many prison like fences that create shadows (Vertical lines suggest the thematic of being trapped in a relationship)
- The lighting often moves from Rembrandt (triangle) into fully black, suggesting the transition of their relationship going downhill and paranoia emerges
- Shadows are used to separate the two characters and their relationship.
- They both end up in a lonely place
In a Lonely Place: Scenes
When Brub visits Dixon
-He turns the light off
Dicks is together with Laurel and able to write
-Agent Mel’s face is framed between a fence, which besides the calm tone
of this scene could be read as the prison that Laurel is trapped in
-Reiterated by: “You go when I tell you to go and not
before”
-Maybe here there is no shadow of Steele on the wall, because it shows his
good side
Right before they kiss
- Compositional tension - He from a low angle/she from a high angle - Establishing a power dynamic
The scene where he describes the murder to Sylvia and Bred
- Only a small part of his face is lit from the front - Together with his smile, this creates a really creepy tone
Scene on the beach
-Looks like a studio set up
-When she goes running after him her large shadow
appears on the beach
Scene, in car after beating up the man
-Point of view shots from the car with only the headlines
revealing a certain part of the street
-In the car right, the side of Dicks face facing Laurel is
covered in shadows (Might signify the beginning of
their broken relationship and claustrophobia)
-Even stronger when he puts his arm around her and
asks for a cigarette (Really alienates the two and
shows his dark side)
-They switch places in the car and now
Laurel’s face is covered in shadows facing Dicks,
signifying her realisation that he is a maniac (more!)
“I was born when she kissed me, I died when she left
me, I lived a few weeks while she loved me”
-This reflects the plot and the thematic of his lonely
personality
Scene outside where Laurel and Sylvia are talking
-During the day
-Another seen like this is later when Dicks arrives at
Laurel’s house
-Not every scene lit for night
Final scene, where he chokes Laurel
-Once Dicks realises she is not wearing his ring, his
face is again covered in by shadows, also shadow
of him on the wall (Evil side of his personality)
-He lights his cigarette, which illuminates his
face
-The actual scene where he is choking her before he
gets interrupted by a telephone call is not lit too dark,
yet maintains frightening
-As he is about to leave through the entrance an
extremely dark shadow of him becomes visible on the
door (highlighting the lonely place he is now in)
