Martinez Jose
Mrs. Blaker
English 101
16 December 2013
Film Noir
The end of World War II in 1945 brought a new era of rebuilding, and rediscovering. During the 1940s going to the movies was comparable to shopping at a candy store: there was something for everyone. It was during this time that America premiered the greatest stories in Hollywood’s history. These stories depicted a fraudulent Hollywood unimaginable to Americans. This new image to cinema illustrated a different version of America by offering unconventional endings where no one was left “happy.” French critics called this new form of cinema film noir, or black film. The new visage of Hollywood was aptly named, as it was displayed in black and white, featured dark and raw scenes, and founded themes of betrayal, sex, money, and death. For such dark films they had their unique look. They portrayed the darker side of human nature; the world how it really was. The line between legal and illegal got fuzzy. Nightlife went underground and it made it even more seductive and dangerous. One travels into the mysterious world safely with writers like Raymond Chandler. The Big Sleep, based on the book by Raymond Chandler, is considered to be an example of film noir due to its use of darkness in a profane society when a private detective, Phillip Marlowe, struggles to put the puzzle together and solve the mystery. Although The Big Sleep has some elements of film noir, it does not function as a representative film in the genre because it lacks the essential principles that embody black films. corrupt
Despite film noir being a term to describe American crime dramas, Germany had a great influence in dark cinema. It was at the end of WWI when ...
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... of The Big Sleep is not a film noir; instead the book by Raymond Chandler embodies the genre noir. The readers are always kept thinking, unexplainable things keep occurring, but they all have darkness and murder in common. Evil gets away with their crimes and even so attraction exists between two characters their can never be such bond.
Chandler has the language for film noir. Through his detective Phillip Marlowe one travels to every point of society without every getting hurt. You can be in the darkest places in the city and still be alive. The Big Sleep’s (book) ending reveals that what one desires one can not obtain. Marlowe was able to solve the Sternwoods case, but his biggest case about love is left cold and dark. Film noir is not hard to point out. It has a unique look and connects to people emotionally. But love never prevails, evil always comes on top.
Many films, and sometimes film genres, are dismissed as being part of the cinema of escapism. This assumes that in times of particular social or economic hardship (often on a national or international level), people go to movies for the sole purpose of “getting away from it all.” While some films may follow this overall trend, it is important to note that it cannot be a generalization made for all films. During the Weimar era in Germany, the nation was in the midst of a national struggle on many fronts. As a people, Germans attempted to deal with their past (the problems during World War I as well as the consequences of their loss) and move toward the future (finding a solution for their economic struggles and defining themselves culturally and socially). This period saw a resurgence of the horror genre, this time adapted to the new medium of film. However, the way horror was portrayed via film is the interesting part: it drew specifically on the struggles of the nation to instill horror. This is an exact reversal of the idea of cinematic escapism, since many Weimar era horror films used relatable struggles in order to both entertain and terrify (in this case, existing concurrently as well as dependently on each other). One of the clearest examples of this is through the film Nosferatu, a cinematic retelling of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula directed by F.W. Murnau. The budding horror genre of the Weimar era, as exemplified by Nosferatu, succeeded because it drew parallels to the German people’s collective post-World War I mindset, including references to the terrible nature of the war itself and the fearful prospect of how to move forward.
"Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains!" is a memorable line of Humphrey Bogart's Philip Marlowe in the 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (The Big Sleep). That one quote encapsulates the presence of corruption, violence and even class distinction that is characteristic of film noir and the hard-boiled detective genre. The novel and the film both focus on Philip Marlowe, a private detective, during his investigative process. While the main plot remains the same, changes were made regarding the portrayals of characters, including Marlowe, likely in response to consideration of the audience and intent of the film. However, the setting was further developed through the
Film Noir is a genre of distinct and unique characteristics. Mostly prominent in the 40s and 50s, the genre rarely skewed from the skeletal plot to which all Film Noir pictures follow. The most famous of these films is The Big Sleep (1946) directed by Howard Hawks. This film is the go to when it comes to all the genre’s clichés. This formula for film is so well known and deeply understood that it is often a target for satire. This is what the Coen brothers did with 1998’s The Big Lebowski. This film follows to the T what Film Noir stands for.
In the classical Western and Noir films, narrative is driven by the action of a male protagonist towards a clearly defined, relatable goal. Any lack of motivation or action on the part of the protagonist problematizes the classical association between masculinity and action. Due to inherent genre expectations, this crisis of action is equivalent to a crisis of masculinity. Because these genres are structured around male action, the crises of action and masculinity impose a crisis of genre. In the absence of traditional narrative elements and character tropes, these films can only identify as members of their genres through saturation with otherwise empty genre symbols. The equivalency between the crises of genre and masculinity frames this symbol saturation as a sort of compensatory masculine posturing.
Janey Place and Lowell Peterson article “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir” establishes noir as a visual style and not a ...
Film noir (literally 'black film,' from French critics who noticed how dark and black the looks and themes were of these films) is a style of American films which evolved in the 1940s. " The Internet Movie Database LTD. Film noir typically contains melancholy, and not so moral themes. Another characteristic of film noir is just because the main character has the title hero, that does not mean that he will always be alive at the end of the book, or that the hero is always "good." Marlowe in The Big Sleep is a prime example of this concept.
The Classical Hollywood style, according to David Bordwell remains “bound by rules that set stringent limits on individual innovation; that telling a story is the basic formal concern.” Every element of the film works in the service of the narrative, which should be ideally comprehensible and unambiguous to the audience. The typical Hollywood film revolves around a protagonist, whose struggle to achieve a specific goal or resolve a conflict becomes the foundation for the story. André Bazin, in his “On the politique des auteurs,” argues that this particular system of filmmaking, despite all its limitations and constrictions, represented a productive force creating commercial art. From the Hollywood film derived transnational and transcultural works of art that evoked spectatorial identification with its characters and emotional investment into its narrative. The Philadelphia Story, directed by George Cukor in 1940, is one of the many works of mass-produced art evolving out of the studio system. The film revolves around Tracy Lord who, on the eve of her second wedding, must confront the return of her ex-husband, two newspaper reporters entering into her home, and her own hubris. The opening sequence of The Philadelphia Story represents a microcosm of the dynamic between the two protagonists Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven, played by Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Through the use of costume and music, the opening sequence operates as a means to aesthetically reveal narrative themes and character traits, while simultaneously setting up the disturbance that must be resolved.
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.
In this essay the following will be discussed; the change from the age of classical Hollywood film making to the new Hollywood era, the influence of European film making in American films from Martin Scorsese and how the film Taxi Driver shows the innovative and fresh techniques of this ‘New Hollywood Cinema’.
Films that are classified as being in the film noir genre all share some basic characteristics. There is generally a voice-over throughout the film in order to guide the audience's perceptions. These movies also involve a crime and a detective who is trying to figure out the truth in the situation. This detective usually encounters a femme fatale who seduces him. However, the most distinctive feature of the film noir genre is the abundance of darkness.
Where Schlondorff, Wenders, Herzog, Fassbinder and Kluge once investigated the extremities of the German character and the Americana that infested West German culture through the New German Cinema of the late 60s, 70s and early 80s, the Germany of today has through its cinema acknowledged past hardships but with a more positive emphasis placed on the possibilities of forgiveness, redemption and hope for what can be made of tomorrow. Bibliography A Reversal of Fortunes? Women, work and change in East Germany. Rachel Alsop.
This paper has attempted to investigate the ways in which Alfred Hitchcock blended conventions of film noir with those of a small town domestic comedy. It first looked at the opening scenes of the film in which the two conventions were introdruced. It then went on to analyse the film with the aid of Robin Wood's article Ideology, Genre, Auteur. From these two forms we can see that film noir and small town comedy were used as a means of commenting on the contradictions in American values.
While there are many different ways to classify a Neo-noir film, Roman Polanski’s, Chinatown captures many. The 1974 movie consists of many of these elements, including both thematic and stylistic devices. One of the main themes of neo-noir film that is constant throughout the film is the deceptive plot that questions the viewers’ ideas and perceptions of what is actually happening in the film. Every scene of Chinatown leads to a twist or another turn that challenges the practicability of the film’s reality. All of the never-ending surprises and revelations lead up to the significant themes the movie is trying to convey in the conclusion of the film.
Often, we hear commentary about films that reading the book before watching the movie ruins the experience or that movies are never as good as the book on which it is based. The difference between forms is not as much about already knowing how the story ends as it is about the dumbing down of the work for a broader audience. However, Chandler wrote The Big Sleep as a piece of pulp fiction that was read by a large populace.
Howard Hawks chose to film The Big Sleep in the genre of film noir; this seemed like the obvious choice for a hardboiled detective novel. Film noir is the "'dark film,' a term applied by French critics to [the] type of American film, usually in the detective of thriller genre, with low-key lighting and a somber mood" (Bordwell 479). By using this genre of filmmaking, Hawks had an effective vehicle with which to retain the tone of Chand...