Movie Noir : Film Noir

When discussing American culture, the influence and interplay of film cannot be understated. We are a nation consumed with the media. Today, the movie business is one of the highest grossing businesses there is. We hold movie stars up as though they are super human. We closely watch their style, their dating lives, their party habits, and even their favorite restaurants, among many other things. We rely on movies to lift us up, teach us about other cultures and time periods, and even to teach us about our own culture. Often, movies reflect the time period they are filmed in and directly reflect the social tensions of that time and the film noir genre is no different. One of the most famous film noir movies out there, The Maltese Falcon,

Film Noir was extremely trendy during the 1940’s. People were captivated by the way it expresses a mood of disillusionment and indistinctness between good and evil. Film Noir have key elements; crime, mystery, an anti-hero, femme fatale, and chiaroscuro lighting and camera angles. The Maltese Falcon is an example of film noir because of the usage of camera angles, lighting and ominous settings, as well as sinister characters as Samuel Spade, the anti-hero on a quest for meaning, who encounters the death of his partner but does not show any signs of remorse but instead for his greed for riches.

Alexander Mackendrick’s, The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), is a ninety-six-minute film noir, that incorporates many techniques in cinematography to depict the dark and mysterious genre of film noir itself. This paper will go over the summary of the film, the concept of film noir, followed by a formal and social context of the film, that is the techniques in cinematography used to portray the essential theme of darkness or distrust in the genre of film noir – more specifically, the roles that women play in this particular film. Thus, Mackendrick’s The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) is a classic genre of film noir that uses extensive low-key lighting to portray a certain darkness in the world of film noir, and the darkness in each of the

The leanness in the writing of literary noir is as fascinating and noteworthy as the moody lighing and deep shadows in much of noir film. Short, clipped sentences riddled with occasionally near-nonsensical metaphors, spattered with begrudging remarks, and often given a cynical, broody tone. My favourite pairing of this clipped, broody tone is with an unreliable narrator, one who either never tells the full truth, unless it suits them, or who embellishes on the truth at unpredictable

Film noir, literally meaning ‘black film’, refers to 1940s style detective thriller films that are typically dark in both themes and visual style (Luhr 2004, pp. 93). Although Fargo explores gruesome crimes inspired by the “grim theme of desperation”, the film’s visual palette is oppressively white, both in terms of its bleak snow-covered landscape and its predominantly White-Christian, suburban Upper Midwestern setting (Luhr 2004, pp. 93). Moreover, Fargo challenges film noir conventions in its revelation of the crime’s culprits at the very beginning of a linear and straightforward plot (Bordwell

Alfred Hitchcock is widely regarded as a prime example of an auteur, a theory that emerged in the 1950s by Truffaut, in the ‘politique des auteurs’ of Cahiers du Cinema (Tudor 121). The auteur theory, as defined by Andrew Tudor, is premised on the assumption that “any director creates his films on the basis of a central structure”(140) and thus, if you consider their films in relation to each other, commonalities can be found within them. These commonalities work to demonstrate the view of the director as “the true creator of the film” (Tudor 122). Evidence of an auteur can be found in examining a director’s creative tendencies, in their distinctive themes and motifs, stylistic choices,

Again, the audience is not presented with a perfect copy of such a personality in the character of Norma Desmond; her “appeal” is arguable, considering her hefty age of fifty, and her deception is not exclusive to her victim, but has cast a much heavier net upon herself. However, Norma is still manipulative in the sense that she uses the appeal of her wealth to keep Joe under her control. In this way, she strips him of his pride and manhood by taking him on as her dependent, and eventually into her “boy toy” (for lack of a better term) by inducing his guilt with her suicidal threats. Whether or not she deserves the audience’s pity is no matter—Norma fits her role as the femme fatale since she uses Joe entirely for her own purposes, and eventually brings him to his very literal demise.

Many people from different countries across the world have been coming to United States, including Austrian director Billy Wilder. He directed many film with different genres including Film Noir. Film Noir translates to “Dark Film,” the name was given by the French after watching Hollywood crime thrillers that began to show after World War II. These films typically had dark lighting style closely related to those in German Expressionist films. However, Film Noir borrows its form from influences of major Hollywood popular genres, using themes that were related to social context and civilian life in the United States. Two films that demonstrate how Film Noir was influenced by Hollywood and the social context in America include Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Ace in the Hole (1951) both directed and written by Billy Wilder.

Film noir is the perfect medium to reflect the bleak nihilism of post world war one in

Film Noir is a French term that added style to black and white American films that first evolved in the early 1940’s, which became noticeable in post war era because of the dramatic revelation of moral and emotional truths (Mayer 3). Traditional women are those with attributes of; caring women, loving mother, devoted wife, and faithful women. Those attributes are disapproved and disliked by the femme fatale character. A femme fatale women, Phyllis Dietrichson is nicely represented in James Cain crime novel(1943) and later adapted to the screen by Raymond Chandler in Double Indemnity (1944), this female is dissatisfied with life, and that is why she uses manipulation and self-awareness as a powerful tool for her own desires. The atrocity this alluring woman exposes is cold-hearted, but ultimately creates a portraying delusion to vulnerable men. While pretending to be innocent is all just an illusion of a demented personality. This deception can bring anyone into his or her own destruction, if fallen into the delusion. The character wants to be in overall control and be capable of defeating a man by bending them to their will. However men will still have overall control and will not be over powered by

This paper will discuss various elements of mise-en-scene, specifically; character development, lighting, performance, costume, makeup in the film "Casablanca".(Michael Curtiz,1942) The setting of the story sets the tone for the entire film. Shots of tanks and planes show the violence of war that coincides with the cutthroat city that is Casablanca. From there, those sentiments are reinforced when a man is shot in the street while another man pick pockets someone whom is distracted. The mood of the movie stays on the dark side of things when we enter Rick's Café, where we meet our protagonist played by Humphrey Bogart. In this scene we are treated to the jaded portrayal of night club owner. We see his utter disregard for a French woman

I naturally feel at kin with the French journalistic styled terminology called; ' film noir, ' - I adhere to spicing up ordinary narratives, especially remakes of a theatre production - 'Gaslight ' originally was a screen play. Any attempt to

What makes for a classic Hollywood film? Increasingly, films have evolved to the point where the standard by which one calls a “classic Hollywood film” has evolved over time. What one calls a classic film by yesterday’s standards is not the same as that of today’s standards. The film Casablanca is no exception to this. Although David Bordwell’s article, “Classical Hollywood Cinema” defines what the classical Hollywood film does, the film Casablanca does not exactly conform to the very definition that Bordwell provides the audience with in his article. It is true that the film capers closely to Bordwell’s definition, but in more ways than not, the film diverges from Bordwell’s definition of the typical Hollywood film.

According to film theorist Thomas Schatz, “a genre approach (to film) provides the most effective means for understanding, analyzing, and appreciating the Hollywood cinema (Schatz vii).” His approach to film is strongly supported by theorist Edward Branigan’s and the narrative representation of character interaction (Branigan), and André Bazin’s arguments that the objective reality pressed against audience interpretation.

Film Noir as a genre is set in a specific period of time. It is also a genre that is considered to be related to a specific society - that of America from 1940-1958. Film Noir as a genre is a term that French critic Nino Frank coined to describe the new “film movement” emerging from Hollywood in the 1940’s, which appeared to be black and white, crime and detective films. But these two prominent characteristics do not form the genre alone. Stylistic film features such as mood, style and tone are very eminent in Film Noir however it was not always considered as a film genre, but this is what makes the film genre so distinctive. Film Noir was a “new movement” or cycle of films as it consisted of expressionistic lighting techniques such as low