Week 6, 10-1-14, Hollywood-The Studio System, Stars, Art and Industry: Part 1-STUDY OF FILM NOIR/American Genre Flashcards
Alfred Hitchcock first discovered America,
Shadow of a Doubt
Darkness in shadow of a doubt
Hitchcock sees darkness as less an infiltrating outside force than as the repressed backside of normalcy.
Murder in Shadow of a Doubt
Charlie
Image of Charlie
Charlie emerges as a virtual parody of the handsome-dandy image cherished by “normal” society.
Who disgusted Charlie?
disgust for the kind of rich women he has killed in the past
What is shadow of a doubt really about?
about awakening, the simultaneous darkening and enlarging of the world
You wake up every morning of your life and you know perfectly well that there’s nothing in the world to trouble you. You go through your ordinary little day and at night you sleep your untroubled, ordinary little sleep filled with peaceful, stupid dreams. And I brought you nightmares…
What Uncle Charlie says to niece Charlie
“The cities are full of women, middle-aged widows, husbands dead, husbands who’ve spent their lives making fortunes, working and working. And then they die - from what scene?
Dining Room scene
– But, they’re alive! they’re human beings!
-Younger Charlie
If you ripped off the front of houses you’d find
“Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you ripped the fronts off houses you’d find swine?”
DOUBLE INDEMNITY Dir/
Billy WIlder
Double Indemnity Hero
A disillusioned anti-hero with questionable ethics meets a dame with gorgeous gams that can’t be trusted.
Double Indemnity Universe
dark universe of film noir
Double Indemnity based on
actual 1927 criminal case of Ruth Snyder and her unfortunate husband
Double Indemnity gets its name from
insurance policy clause which pays the beneficiary double in the event that their spouse dies accidentally.
Double Indemnity Narration paints
indelible portrait of a weak and corrupt man painfully aware of his imminent demise
Double Indemnity visuals
gorgeous black and white cinematography employs shadowy interiors and chiaroscuro lighting
What did Double Indemnity visuals create?
creating visual markers that reflect each character’s internal conflicts and motives.
What did Double Indemnity visuals hint at
hint at a sense of imprisonment
The long silent street of film noir, a street where it is always night, and where the songs are always sad. That street is usually a dingy urban alley or a dank sidestreet, but in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, it was a deceptively quiet suburban avenue.
Just a quote from reading
What do Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson do?
they plot the murder of her husband are followed by the obsessive, relentless Keyes
Double Idemnity ancestors
Silent German Expressionist
What did Writer (Cain) of Double Indemnity think about movie?
Cain felt Chandler (screenwriter) had done a better job on the film of Double Indemnity than Cain had done on the novel
Who coined the phrase film noir
French film critics who noticed the trend of how dark and black the looks and themes
film noir is not
not a genre, but rather the mood, style or tone of a film.
Beginning of film noir
Huston’s “The Maltese Falcon”
End of film noir
Orson Welles’ 1958 “Touch of Evil”,
Span of Classical period
“classic noir period”, spanned the interval just after World War II, until the early to mid-1950s.
Film noir protagonists and social mainstream
drowning outside of the social mainstream.
What did film noir come to represent?
America’s stylized vision of itself, a cultural reflection of the mental dysfunction of a nation in uncertain transition.
melancholy, alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt and paranoia.
Moods of film noir
Film noir hero
the anti-hero
2 women of film noir
The Madonna (good wife, or good-girl) & the Femme Fatale.
Film noir’s gloomy grays, blacks and whites show _______
the dark and inhumane side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love
expressionistic lighting, disorienting visual schemes and skewed camera angles, circling cigarette smoke, existential sensibilities, and unbalanced compositions. Settings are often interiors with low-key lighting, venetian-blinded windows, and dark and gloomy appearances.
Common visual elements of film noir
Common film noir plot device
flashbacks, voice-over narration
These women were black widows who slowly drew in the heroes with come-hither looks and breathless voices.
Femme Fatales
How did some film noir heroes survive?
Some of the heroes learned to play by the rules of film noir and survived by exposing corruption
While soldiers went to war, film noir exposed a darker side of life, balancing the optimism of Hollywood musicals and comedies by supplying seedy, two-bit criminals and doom-laden atmospheres.
Quote from reading
Film noir gave us a peek into
gave us a peek into the alleys and backrooms of a world filled with corruption.
women are confined by the roles traditionally open to them — that their destructive struggle for independence is a response to the restrictions that men place on them.
Femme fatale ultimately destroyed by societal roles from men & not by self
Femme fatale trapped
femme fatale is trapped within the male-female relationship and resorts to murder as her only means of escape.
What proves film noir showed more progressive view of women?
noticeable lack of balancing images of traditional women and families.
Who established the archetypal film noir detective-hero?
Humphrey Bogart The Maltese Falcon (1941)
What film makes the audience aware of the camera and the director even before the opening credits have begun to roll.
Touch of Evil (camera glides along behind a car, roams through the streets, and slides over the tops of buildings )
Quinlan in touch of evil and angles
Initially Quinlan is filmed from a low-angle perspective. Because of the low-angle shot, his enormous body dominates the screen, emphasizing his power and confidence. Later, when he has been caught planting evidence and then committing murder, Quinlan is seen almost exclusively from above; the effect is to make Quinlan look small, isolated, and trapped.
Vargas and Quinlan, which is protagonist?
both men are flawed, and it is not clear which man is the protagonist
Result of Vargas pursuing Quinlan
He pursues Quinlan relentlessly, and in doing so he neglects and endangers his own wife
In the end of Touch of Evil Vargas ______
destroys Quinlan, but he does not understand the tragedy of Quinlan’s fall, nor does he restore order to the town or closure to the film — he only leaves a vacuum.
Welles and Touch of Evil in regards to 50s
Welles altered film noir conventions developed for the 1940s in order to comment on the American psyche of the 1950s
In Touch of Evil, men and women are even more alienated from one another than they were in the classic period of film noir; it is the traditional married woman whose very existence is a threat, while a prostitute — the ultimate unmarried woman who never demands commitment from men — is seen as unthreatening and nurturing.
Quote from readings
Paul Schrader calls what “film noir’s epitaph” ?
Touch of Evil
Shadow of a Doubt about what facade?
Facade of American dream
What was rare about Shadow of a doubt?
It was a critical film of US, which was rare in a time of war
Americans that left for WWII came back to what?
A WHOLE different America, where women didn’t go back to house wiving and were workers
Laura Mulvey theory
scopophilia
Scopophilia
Desire to look
Equation of scopophilia
1/2 voyeurism (desire to look at others) 1/2 narcissism (self ID)
Who is film audience made to ID with?
MALE
Psychology in film noir
Freudian psychoanalysis
Femme Fetale and motherhood
Seen as barren and infertile
Double Indemnity beginning is
The ending
Double Indemnity writing
made to get around the code
Third Man filmed where?
Vienna
What’s special about Vienna
It’s a divided City
When was 3rd Man shot?
3 years after end of war on location
3rd Man has GREATEST
Entrance scene of Orson Welles
Orson Welles character
the selfish harry lime
Movie begins with ho dead?
Harry Lime
Nobody know what about Lime’s death?
Who is the 3rd man who carried his body?
Third Man Music
Fun and unique zither score SINSTINCT
Famous third man whimsical scene
ferris wheel scene, lime meeting
How many cuts in ferris wheel scene?
78 (Lots of quick edits)
Game changer in 3rd man
Lime’s grave dug up
Holly ends up doing what?
Turning his friend in and killing him himself
Raffifi dir
Jules Dasin
Jules Dasin
American Noir director. Had to flee US b/c of McCarthy blacklist, made a career for himself in France
Crane shot at beginning of touch of evil pre-dates
steadi-cam
Lighting in touch of evil
some lighting done with pulsing neon street lights
Orson Welles cop in TOE
Crooked- sets up crimes to “solve”, solves em every time
Touch of Evil originally seen as _____ but now seen as _____
B-grade, masterpiece
Orson Welles Notes
Described exactly how he wanted TOE to be done, studios didn’t listen. Released edited version of his notes=brilliant (postmortem)
