Lecture 5: The Many Forms of Noir

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Lecture 5The Many Forms of Noir
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Directed by Curtis Hanson

• Professor Michael Green

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This Lesson

• Towards a definition of Film Noir, History and
  Influences
• Examples of Film Noir
• L.A. Confidential, Noir and the LAPD

Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946) Directed
by Howard Hawks
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Towards a Definition of Film Noir
The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Directed by Charles
Laughton

• Lesson 5 Part I

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What is Film Noir?

• Film Noir is hard to define but relatively easy
  to recognize.
• It encompasses a wide range of film genres from
  gothic horror to science fiction, detective,
  thriller and comic book movies.
• Naremore There is no completely satisfactory way
  to organize noir despite scores of books and
  essays on it, nobody is sure whether the films
  constitute a period, a genre, a cycle, a style or
  a phenomenon.

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The Film Noir and the French

• Film Noir as an idea evolved in Post WWII France
  when French critics grouped together a handful of
  Hollywood movies, including The Maltese Falcon,
  Double Indemnity, Laura and Murder, My Sweet.
• The French had a sophisticated film culture and
  they treated movies like art rather than
  commercial entertainment.
• They also saw the reflection of shadowy French
  melodramas from the 1930s.

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The Film Noir Paradox

• Film Noir as a genre/category was named by
  critics not filmmakers, who didnt speak of film
  noir until well after it was established as a
  feature of academic writing.
• Naremore argues that Film Noir belongs as much to
  the history of ideas, as to the history of
  cinema.
• The paradox of Film Noir as he sees it is that it
  is both an important cinematic legacy and an idea
  we have projected onto the past.

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Standard History

• The standard histories say that Noir originated
  in America out of the synthesis of hard-boiled
  fiction and German Expressionism.
• The term is also associated with certain visual
  and narrative traits, including low-key
  photography, images of wet city streets,
  pop-Freudian characterizations, and romantic
  fascination with femme fatales.

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Hard-boiled Fiction

• A tough, unsentimental style of American crime
  writing that brought a new tone of realism or
  naturalism to detective fiction.
• Hard-boiled fiction used graphic sex and
  violence, vivid but often sordid urban
  backgrounds, and fast-paced, slangy dialogue.
  Credit for the invention of the genre belongs to
  Dashiell Hammett, who wrote The Maltese Falcon
  and the Thin Man.
• Raymond Chandler, who wrote The Big Sleep, was
  another famous practitioner.

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German Expressionism

• A term for a mode of literary or visual art
  which, in extreme reaction against realism or
  naturalism, presents a world violently distorted
  under the pressure of intense personal moods,
  ideas, and emotions image and language express
  feeling and imagination rather than represent
  external reality. Although not an organized
  movement, it influenced the painting, drama,
  poetry, and cinema of German-speaking Europe
  between 1910 and 1924. Literary Dictionary

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Example
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Directed by Robert Wiene
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Narrative Aspects of Film Noir

• Often manifested as a crime story detective,
  mystery or thriller.
• Features anti-heroes and femme fatales
• Characters motivated by (sexual) desire
• Stories usually hinge on something tragic or
  shameful from a characters past
• Cynical, anti-establishment, anti-social
• Convoluted structure, flashbacks
• Moral ambiguity, Existential attitude
• (Weary) voice-over narration

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Other Formal Aspects

• Low key, chiaroscuro lighting interplay between
  light and shadow
• Darkness
• Gritty urban mise-en-scene
• Melancholy, sensual scores, often jazz-based
• Dutch angles, low-angle shots and wide-angle
  shots emphasize Surreal nature

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Representation of Race and Ethnicity in Noir

• The heroes of film noirs especially in its
  heyday, but even more recently are almost
  exclusively white men. Though flawed, these
  white, male anti-heroes are often presented as
  being basically good men who have been corrupted
  or lost their way.
• When non-white characters and minorities are
  represented in noir films, they are usually seen
  as minor characters, villains, or supporters of
  the white protagonists.

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Representation of Gender and Sexuality in Noir

• Gender conventions are very traditional in noir,
  with men represented as active protagonists and
  women falling into two basic categories
• Helpless and in need of saving
• Sexually independent and therefore dangerous
• Noir, like most genre cinema, also represents
  heterosexuality as the norm. Gays and lesbians
  are rarely represented, and when they are, they
  are often seen as deviant.

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Examples of Film Noir
The Dark Knight (2008)
Directed by Christopher Nolan

• Lesson 5 Part II

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1940s

• The Maltese Falcon (1941) John Huston
• Shadow of a Doubt (1943) Alfred Hitchcock
• Laura (1944) Otto Preminger
• Double Indemnity (1944) Billy Wilder
• The Big Sleep (1946) Howard Hawks
• Notorious (1946) Alfred Hitchcock
• Out of the Past (1947) Jacques Tourneur
• Pause the lecture and watch the clip from Double
  Indemnity.

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1950s

• The Asphalt Jungle (1950) John Huston
• Gun Crazy (1950) Joseph H. Lewis
• Sunset Boulevard (1950) Billy Wilder
• In a Lonely Place (1950) Nicholas Ray
• Kiss me Deadly (1955) Robert Aldrich
• The Night of the Hunter (1955) Charles Laughton
• Touch of Evil (1958)
• Pause the lecture and watch the clip from Touch
  of Evil

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1960s and 1970s

• Cape Fear (1962) J. Lee Thompson
• The Manchurian Candidate (1962) John
  Frankenheimer
• Point Blank (1967) John Boorman
• The Long Goodbye (1973) Robert Altman
• Chinatown (1974) Roman Polanski
• Farewell, My Lovely (1975) Dick Richards
• The Drowning Pool (1975) Stuart Rosenberg
• Taxi Driver (1976) Martin Scorsese

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1980s and 1990s

• Body Heat (1981) Lawrence Kasdan
• Blood Simple (1984) The Coen Brothers
• Batman (1989) Tim Burton
• Basic Instinct (1992) Paul Verhoeven
• Reservoir Dogs (1992) Quentin Tarantino
• The Last Seduction (1993) John Dahl
• Heat (1995) Michael Mann
• Out of Sight (1998) Steven Soderberg
• Pause the lecture and watch the clip from Batman

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2000s

• Memento (2000), Insomnia (2002), Batman Begins
  (2005) Christopher Nolan
• Minority Report (2002) Steven Spielberg
• Road to Perdition (2002) Sam Mendes
• Collateral (2004), Miami Vice (2006) Michael
  Mann
• Sin City (2005) Robert Rodriquez
• Brick (2005) Rian Johnson
• Pause the lecture and watch the clip from
  Minority Report

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L.A. Confidential, Noir and the LAPD
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Directed by Curtis Hanson
Lesson 5 Part III
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Noir and the LAPD

• Los Angeles policemen have been at the center of
  many film noirs and Los Angles crime stories.
• Though cops are sometimes the heroes, the LAPD is
  often presented at extremes as either corrupt or
  as ineffectually bureaucratic.
• LA Confidential represents both these extremes in
  the characters of White, Exley and Captain
  Dudley.

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Bloody Christmas

• The riot at the beginning of the film, in which
  the LAPD officers beat down defenseless Mexican
  prisoners, was on based on a real incident that
  forced the LAPD to make some changes in how it
  did business.
• However, problems between the LAPD and the public
  and particularly between the LAPD and African
  Americans and Mexican Americans, continued (and
  continue).
• The film was made only several years after Rodney
  King and the early 90s L.A. riots.

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Noir and L.A. Confidential

• Crime/Detective/Cop film
• Features anti-heroes and femme fatales
• Characters motivated by (sexual) desire
• Stories usually hinge on something tragic or
  shameful from a characters past
• Cynical, anti-establishment, anti-social
• Convoluted structure, flashbacks
• Moral ambiguity, Existential attitude
• (Weary) voice-over narration

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Noir and L.A. Confidential

• Low key, chiaroscuro lighting interplay between
  light and shadow
• Darkness
• Gritty urban mise-en-scene
• Melancholy, sensual scores, often jazz-based
• Dutch angles, low-angle shots and wide-angle
  shots emphasize Surreal nature
• 1990s style of action, violence, language and
  sexuality.

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Race and Ethnicity in the Movie

• Though the movie is critical of the LAPD tactics
  in handling minorities and features whites as
  criminals, it is far more complex in its
  portrayal of white men then it is of any other
  race, ethnicity or gender.
• Even though the treatment of Mexican Americans
  and African Americans in the movie is condemned
  as brutal and racist, the movie still portrays
  all its non-white characters as low class and
  criminal.

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Race and Ethnicity in the Movie (Continued)

• Even the primary villain has an Irish brogue
  while the three heroes Exley, White and
  Vincennes are white male Anglo Saxons. Though
  they are presented as flawed and corrupt in
  certain ways, each is given a character arc that
  allows them to change morally and to make
  honorable choices.
• Typical for noir, no minority character gets this
  arc.

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Representation of Gender

• All the women in the film are represented in
  typical ways for noir
• as either helpless and in need of saving (Whites
  character is a self-styled woman savior),
• or as sexually independent and thus threatening
  to men.
• Lynn (Kim Basingers character) is seen as both.
• In the movie, women are only valued for their
  beauty and sexuality.

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End of Lecture 5