The Characteristics Of Film Noir As A Fiction?

The classical Hollywood narrative is one of simplicity, linear continuity, and comprehensive storytelling, something typical American audiences were used to for most of films history. Quentin Tarantino, however, is not one to abide by the rules of cinema. The arguably auteur director reconfigures this narrative style with his 1994 classic Pulp Fiction. This film not only presented itself as a completely new and innovative take on what a film could be, but also created a foundation for which many films since have built their narratives from.

By all accounts, this movie reflects and highlights this interplay that exists between film and American Culture. As the world was riddled with battles and darkness, the movies of this time period reflected this sinister reality. Death was a major reality during this time period in America and it was no less a reality in The Maltese Falcon. The audience watches as the main character, Sam Spade, becomes involved in a grand scheme surrounding a priceless statue. Same Spade and his partner Miles Archer, both private investigators, meet a seductive and secretive woman named Ruth Wonderly who claims she is looking for her missing sister who is mixed up with a man named Floyd Thursby. As the movie continues, Spade receives news that Archer was murdered and is later accosted by a man who demands that he locate an irreplaceable statue (the Maltese Falcon). The story unfolds as Spade finds himself entangled in a dark and dangerous web of crime in which his only option is to find the Maltese Falcon, which is one thing they all seem to want. A dark and realistic outlook and mise-en-scene is not the only thing that linked this movie to the respective time period however. Also reflective of the time period is film noir’s dark, sexual, and seductive portrayal of

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.

The 1944 Crime and Drama film, Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder, showed the love story between an insurance representative and one of his client's wife who plotted to commit insurance fraud on his company, Pacific All Risk Insurance CO., in order to be together. The insurance representative, Walter Neff, met Phyllis Dietrichson during one of his visit to Mr. Dietrichson's home. Phyllis inevitably becomes interested in acquiring accidental insurances for her husband which includes double indemnity. Walter begins to suspect her intentions but shortly later, they began to have an affair and Phyllis proposes to kill her husband in order to receive the money. Walter agrees to this proposal and plans the perfect death so his company would

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

Among the common peculiarities of film noir, the distinct division between the male characters and the different representations of women reinforce notions of masculinity and gender roles. Furthermore, in the 1940’s film noir was Hollywood’s way to illustrate a world in where pessimism and suspicion dictated people’s lives. Mostly presented as detectives or a lone wolf, the men are portrayed as cold-hearted, disconnected, and cynical to show their hopelessness and disillusionment of the society they lived in. Along this depiction, multiple women are placed into different roles, to either play the seductress and/or a menace to the male protagonist. In the The Maltese Falcon film noir, the male protagonist is characterized as a typical male

In Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (dir. Billy Wilder, 1944), character Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) becomes enchanted by the seductive Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck). However, through an act of lust, Neff gets involved in a murderous scheme with Dietrichson. The entirety of the movie is a flashback as Neff recalls his scheme. He records his guilty testimony onto a dictation machine, which is partially overheard by his clever boss, Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson). Double Indemnity is composed of several shots, scenes, and sequences that intentionally provoke anxiety and alienation; these instances also contain elements that have a peculiar combination of realism and oneirism. In one of the earliest scenes, Walter Neff meets

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 employs several character archetypes to tell a story. Cultural changes and shifts in gender roles of post WWII America unsettled men when many women refused to regress back into traditional housewife tasks. This fear was manifested in cinema’s femme fatale. Deceptive and manipulative, femme fatales were there to seduce, betray, and destroy the film noir hero. Norma, along with being deranged, is all of these things. She is at home in her eerie film noir setting. Her movements showing her as a self absorbed echo of her career in silent era films and her voice and facial expressions set the listener on edge. Joe Gillis

Film noir, popularized in the 1940’s, can be defined as a type of crime drama, normally in black & white, with a somewhat depressive tone to it. Themes such as sexual deviance, promiscuity, crime, and all around pessimism were prevalent in these types of films. Film noir reflected the societal attitudes of the time as people were recovering from events like the great depression, and World War II, all while dealing with the anxiety of the cold war. These events all contributed to the popularization of film noir until the social revolutions of the 1960’s changed the general attitudes of American people. The film Double Indemnity can be defined as film noir for a number of reasons. At the most basic level, Double indemnity is a 1940’s crime drama,

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.

Tony Garnett’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) seems a quintessential film noir. The title suggests a fateful conclusion for the two main characters—a flawed drifter named Frank (John Garfield) and his restless female conspirator, Cora (Lana Turner). Garnett’s crime drama is crafted with the stylish devices usually characteristic of the film noir genre—low-key lighting; a flawed, inept hero; and an archetypal femme fatale. Certain thematic codes are also persistent: psychological conflict, paranoia, fate, and moral ambiguity. Three telling scenes communicate the noir stylistics effectively—where nearly all of the devices converge simultaneously: (1) Frank’s first meeting

In the article “Towards a Definition of Film Noir” by Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton tries to define what a film noir is and considers the element involved. As Borde and Chaumeton argue in article, “one could simplify the problem by assigning to film noir qualities such as nightmarish, weird, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel. . . often the noir aspect of a film is linked to a character, a scene, a setting ” (18). The problem of trying to define film noir is a difficult one, but the aspect of it can be applied to Double Indemnity. These aspects are seen in the film when Phyllis is hiding behind the door in the scene where for this purpose will be call Woman Hides behind the Door. The shot captures all three of the characters, and produces an almost nightmarish, weird and ambivalent shot, where both Walter and Barton are being wanted and they are not aware of who is watching them. The woman is seen in this shot as having all the power, and is cast in a key-light to show sharp shadows on her, to produce almost a black widow image by hiding in dark waiting for her prey.

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The film is about a group of 5 people fighting to find and keep the