The Film Noir genre is the product of the 1940’s which reflects the darker attitude of society representing depression, realism, and amplifying a new dynamic for women on screen. As World War II progressed, there was less money compiling in Hollywood. The little money collected affected the creative drive for the directors in how they were able to produce for their films. The smaller budget impacted money to spend on lighting, sets, costumes, as well as providing pay for extras to appear in scenes. In addition to the money limitation, the realism presented in this genre expresses the reflection on the darker tones in 40’s society. As War was active, many experienced turmoil in their personal lives. Serious situations stirring emotions …show more content…
Smoking was also heavily present throughout the film. The main character detective Marlowe illustrates subtle sexual tension between various female characters. The dialogue pace is fast as characters were often overlapping each other. There is not permanent narrative in the film. However, The Big Sleep only features a brief narrative introductory explanation. Crime dominates this film with guns, murders, blackmail, and thugs. The declared femme fatale in The Big Sleep portrayed by Lauren Bacall is Vivian Rutledge. Vivian is the character who becomes Marlowe’s love interest. Vivian’s sternness vastly overshadows her seductive appeal. She is very mysterious as well as coy when it comes to withholding information from detective Marlowe. Vivian does show vulnerability over time as she develops feelings for Marlowe amidst the dangerous environment they are inhabited. However, the younger sister Carmen Sternwood played by Martha Vickers could have a femme fatale essence about her. The meeting between Marlowe and Carmen is both edgy and seductive as the shot pans from the ground then proceeds to her figure to present an overly flirty Carmen. Marlowe dismisses the relationship because of the apparent age difference yet the film does not portray Vivian in this manner. The camera angles do not appear to have much variety, as they are mostly full framed shots. The lighting features mostly indoor lighting. Shadows are not a major highlight in most of the
Women’s roles in movies have changed dramatically throughout the years. As a result of the changing societal norms, women have experienced more transition in their roles than any other class. During the period of classical Hollywood cinema, both society and the film industry preached that women should be dependent on men and remain in home in order to guarantee stability in the community and the family. Women did not have predominated roles in movies such as being the heroin. The 1940’s film Gilda wasn’t an exception. In Gilda, the female character mainly had two different stereotypes. The female character was first stereotyped as a sex object and the second stereotyped as a scorned woman who has to be punished.
"Small and delicately put together . . ." (5). "Tall and rangy, strong looking . . ." (17). Chandler's descriptions of Carmen and Vivian, respectively, highlight his use or misuse of the typical female stereotypes in, The Big Sleep. From the initial physical description that Chandler gives, the reader can quickly see that the women are complete opposites. Carmen lacks color and does not appear to be healthy while Vivian is "worth a stare" (17). Carmen has sharp predatory teeth while Vivian has, "hot black eyes" (17). Chandler characterizes Carmen as the petite, helpless female who needs protection. Vivian, on the other hand, is a physically impressive, powerful woman.
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.
In Hollywood film women 's roles have varied quiet considerably between genres, geographical placement, and period settings. These factors contribute to the different representations of women 's roles in the film they are present in. The roles are diverse going from the traditional maternal role to that of manipulative murderer. Women 's roles in movies can be almost equal to the male roles, and the co-stars are not given the majority of the acclaims just because they are male. Society has set certain standards that women are supposed to follow. The most common image of women is that they are very passive and try to avoid conflict in any situation. More and more in society women are breaking down the social barriers that confine them to their specific roles. The films Rear Window and Resident Evil show women in roles that are untraditional for our society. These two movies help to show how women are rebelling against social norms and that they are taking more active and aggressive roles. In film noir’s we can see women represented as the femme fatale, a woman whose mysterious and seductive charms leads men into compromising or dangerous situations. In action movies we see the heroine who is strong both physically and mentally, and has the ability to use weapons. Women seem to be more trapped than men because they are supposed to live up to society’s standards dealing with beauty and size, which are more physical characteristics. These specific guidelines have been set by
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
In contemporary film making, “Hollywood-ization” generally refers to the re-creation of a classic work in a form more vulgar and sexually explicit than the original in an effort to boost movie attendance. After all, sex and violence sell. However, from the mid-1930’s to the 1950’s, “Hollywood-ization” referred to the opposite case where controversial books had to be purified to abide by the Production Code of 1934.[1] This occurred to many of James Cain’s novels as they moved from text to the genre of “film noir.” As has been said about Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, “The property, bought several years ago, was kept in the studio’s archives until now
Film Noir, a term coined by the French to describe a style of film characterized by dark themes, storylines, and visuals, has been influencing cinematic industries since the 1940’s. With roots in German expressionistic films and Italian postwar documentaries, film noir has made its way into American film as well, particularly identified in mob and crime pictures. However, such settings are not exclusive to American film noir. One noteworthy example is Billy Wilder’s film Sunset Boulevard, which follows the foreboding tale of Joe Gillis, the desperate-for-success protagonist, who finds himself in the fatal grips of the disillusioned femme fatale Norma Desmond. Not only does the storyline’s heavy subject matter and typical character
Film Noir was a result of it's time - The war had just ended and It was time where prohibition had influenced an abundance in crime and corruption. Film noir serves to highlight the darkest aspects of human beings. Society is making the machinery of it's own destruction.
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
After World War II, the American motion picture studios began releasing films shot in black and white, with a high contrast style known as Film Noir. Though the roots of this style of film was greatly influenced by the German Expressionist movement in film during the late 1910-early 1920’s, and films that resembled this style were made prior to the war, including the early films by Fritz Lang, a German director who fled Germany prior to the war to work in America, this film style would become prevalent during the post WWII era. Besides the shadowed lighting style and the psychologically expressive mise-en-scène, the film noir plot-lines often surrounded crime dramas and were greatly influenced by the pulp fiction novels of the period by authors like Dashiell Hammett and
Since the 1940’s, movies have predominately portrayed women as sex symbols. Beginning in the 1940’s and continuing though the 1980’s, women did not have major roles in movies. When they did have a leading role the women was either pretreated as unintelligent and beautiful, or as conniving and beautiful: But she was always beautiful. Before the 1990’s, men alone, wrote and directed all the movies, and the movies were written for men. In comparison, movies of the 90’s are not only written and directed by women, but leading roles are also held by older and unattractive women. In this paper I will show the variations and growth of women’s roles in movies from the 1940’s though the 1990’s.
To fully comprehend why and how this cinematic motion took place, it is valuable here to establish the wider social climate of France at the time, and the active forces which heavily shaped New Wave cinema. Between the years of 1945 and 1975, France would undergo “thirty glorious years” of economic growth, urbanization, and a considerable baby boom, all of which came to expand and radically alter the parameters of French culture (Haine 33). Beneath the surface affluence however, France was in a state of deep self-evaluation and consciousness. Following WW11, the
Discuss, in relation to two films, Marcia Landy’s assertion that ‘femininity is central to the early and late melodramas […] always present and always problematic’. ‘Film melodramas foregrounding women escalate in the latter part of the Ventennio. They offer problematic images of femininity, suggesting a crisis of representation inextricably tied to the figure of the woman. Woman appears as a malcontent, disrupter of the family, and corrupter of socially sanctioned behaviour.’ Melodrama was a cinematic genre that flourished in Italy under Fascist rule.
It is mandatory to examine the hero and essence of masculinity, which is portrayed by Phillip Marlowe in both the novel and film versions of The Big Sleep in order to analyze changes in the perception of female femininity. Throughout Henry Hawk’s 1946 film version of The Big Sleep, Marlowe’s characterization as the hero of the film demonstrates standard masculine qualities of a man:
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