Title: FILM NOIR:
1 2 Article by John Belton Presentation
by Evan Mays
3Outline
- beginning
- noir genre, series, mode
- noir red guts
- noir stylistics
- the Code!
- lit. origins
- women in film noir
- a critique
- revival
-
4Film Noir (1941-1958) Black film.
- Uniquely American term coined by 2 French film
critics. Noirs roots are pulp fiction the
wartime postwar despair n alienation
that arose as America adjusted
to a new social
political reality. - Unsettled audiences by violation
of traditional narrative stylistic
practices which orient stabilize
spectators. Dominated by crime,
corruption, cruelty a
seemingly unhealthy
interest in the erotic.
5Film Noir as Genre
- Genre (from the French) kind, type or category
of phenomenon or particular thing in cinema used
to designate various categories of motion picture
production. - A of recent scholars approach noir thus,
discussing it in terms of iconography, fixed
character types predictable narrative patterns.
6Film Noir as Series
- Certain characters, narrative situations,
thematic concerns appear repeatedly in noir, but
these elements play against audience
expectations also, noir crosses over traditional
genre boundaries. Because of this some critics
see film noir as a series or cycle, like an
aesthetic movement.
7Film Noir as Series
- Producers, directors
screenwriters of 40s
50s noirs, unlike
genre filmmakers, do
not deliberately set out
to make noir as
no body of set
convention exists
to follow. - The audiences who see films noirs do not view
them as they do conventional genre pictures. That
is, they do not look at them in relation to a
fixed system of prior expectations.
8Film Noir as Series
- Noirs rely upon identifiable
character types
conventionalized narrative
patterns. But that which is
generic in film noir is
that which is not noir. - A schizophrenic nature
noir is not a genre, yet
every film noir is also a
genre film. What makes these films noir
is the similar, transgeneric attitude they take
towards any particular genre.
9Film Noir as Mode
- Noir as specific emotional reaction produced by
certain films noir as affective
phenomena. Noir for a moment is film
noir. - Noir as a description of tone,
attitude, moodnot so much a genre as a
modea particular way in which genre
information is conveyed. - However, traditional modes do not
have temporal boundaries.
10Film Noir as All?
- Both a style a bundle of thematic concerns,
film noir initially seems to be a phenomenon that
could appear at any moment in time. But, as an
aesthetic movement, it is necessarily grounded in
a particular historical periodthat of wartime
postwar America. - Noir is part genre, part series, part mode.
- P.S. Its all about disturbance in the end
11Red Guts of Film Noir
- Aesthetically, noir relies on
- shadowy, low-key lighting
- deep-focus cinematography
- distorting, wide-angle lenses
- sequence shots
- disorienting mise-en-scene
- tension-inducing, oblique vertical
compositional lines
12 - jarring juxtapositions between shots involving
extreme changes in camera angle/screen size - claustrophobic framing
- romantic, voice-over narration
- a complex narrative structure, characterized
by flashbacks and/or a convoluted temporal
sequencing of events
13- Thematically, noir grapples w/existential issues
of - the futility of individual action
- the alienation, loneliness isolation of the
individual w/in industrialized, mass society - the problematic choice between
being nothingness - the absurdity, meaninglessness
purposelessness of life - the arbitrariness of social justice, which
results in individual despair, leads to
chaos, violence paranoia.
14Red Guts of Film Noir
- Noir heroes do not need to be detectives. Often,
they are merely antisocial loners. But even the
gainfully employed are subject to a certain
deadpan, existential angst, especially given
their relatively faceless anonymity w/in a
larger, dehumanizing work environment. - Why do you think some scholars consider the most
existential of all film noir heroes to be the
amnesiac?
15Noir Stylistics Shadow of the 30s
- Narrative linearity of C. H. C. gives way to
narrative disjunction, fragmentation,
disorientation. - Soft, evenly distributed high-key lighting
yields to harsh, low-key lighting obscures the
action, deglamorizes the star, reduces actors
to shadowy formal elements embedded within
overall design of the noirs composition.
16Noir Stylistics Shadow of the 30s
- Carefully constructed sense of space disappears
replaced by wide-angle cinematography distorts
space, disorients viewer.
Conventional eye- level camera
positions give way to extreme
low-/high-level perspective assaults the
viewers complacency. - Every violation of norm marks an
intrusive intervention between
spectator, exposition foregrounds
narrative form making it visible.
17Noir Stylistics Shadow of the 30s
- When the staple of the industry the film most
frequently identified with everyday motion
picture entertainment, the genre film, developed
psychotic tendencies, audiences of the time new
something was wrong more so, they felt it.
18Noir and the Production Code
- American films of mid- to late 30s rarely dealt
with taboo subjects. Noir frequently does,
resulting in amazing displays of narrative
contortions in order to allude to prohibited
material w/out directly violating the Code! - Violence takes place off screen its intensity
amplified by disjunctive edits /or sound
effects. - Homosexuality prominent plot motive for a of
novels turned noirs onscreen, motive displaced,
desexualizedlays bare deep cultural fears of it.
19Noir and the Production Code
- Relaxation of Code in late 1950s advent of
ratings system in late 1960s paves way for a new
era of explicitness in 1970s. - Subject matter sensational, presentation
neither disturbed nor disturbing as classically
direct as any of Hollywoods 1930s films. - Ease w/which once taboo material dealt w/in
liberated climate of 70s distinguishes
authentic film noirs of the 40s 50s from
pseudo-noirs of the 1970s onwards.
20Noir and the Production Code
- Remember !!! The Production Code played a crucial
role in creating noir. Subsequent changes in this
Code result in the production of films that are
decidedly less noir.
21Literary origins of Film Noir
- In postwar era mistaken belief arises that
simple world of prewar America could be
recreated. Realization that this was a delusion
influences world-weary cynicism of film noir,
the sense of frustration experience of
disempowerment at its center. - Americas innocence was lost. Noir suggests it
was lost long before war, that it was more than
, jobs that were lost during Great Depression.
22Noirs Literary Origins
- Unlike English detective fiction, features
proletarian tough guy living on fringe of
criminal world. Relies only upon animal
cunning, dogged perseverance, physical stamina
brute force to solve his cases. - Noir heroes, detective or not, are weak
intellects. They attempt to make up for
this failing with verbal wit. The writer of
detective fiction the detective hero both
control their worlds by controlling language.
23Literary origins of Film Noir
- Content style of American hard-boiled novels
introduced new tradition of realism to genre of
detective novel. Characterized by shift in
detectives class technique, milieu, language. - Contemporary America an urban, industrialized
landscape of those bound to naturalistic drives. - Boys in the back room, as Edmund Wilson called
Black Mask school of writers of pulp detective
fiction, inspired by Émile Zola, other 19th
Century naturalists matter-of-fact depiction of
decadence corruption.
24Women in Film Noir
- All weakness is associated with the feminine.
25 26Women in Film Noir
- Women the feminine a threat on two
frontssocioeconomic psychoanalytic. - Socioeconomic (1) changing status of American
women during war/postwar period challenges
patriarchy entry into workforce takeover of
trad. male roles further violates fundamental
order of sexual relations.
27Women in Film Noir
- Changes threaten traditional values
centered in the institution of family. - Noir registers this anti-feminist
backlash by providing pictures of a
postwar America where there is no
family or where
family exists chiefly as a
(-) phenomenon characterized as a claustrophobic,
emasculating trap or a bankrupt system of
perfunctory relationships, featuring murderous
wives corrupt children.
28Women in Film Noir
- Leaving the private sphere (home family) to
enter the public sphere of work, women, it is
assumed, have abandoned the domestic needs of
sweethearts, husbands, children. - Noir dramatizes the consequences of this neglect,
transforming women into willful creatures intent
on destroying both their mates the sacred
institutions of the family.
29Women in Film Noir
- C. H. C. was at great pains to shield the
family from the world of crime. Traditional
genre films routinely oppose the sacred
space of the family to that
of the world outside. - In noir, the world of crime
that of the family overlap.
Crimes moved from outside
the family to within, the
impetus for crime
comes as often from
women as men.
30- Psychoanalytic (2) the image of women on-screen
functions to recall, for the male spectator, the
castration anxiety he experiences on first
perceiving sexual difference as a child (Mulvey).
31Women in Film Noir
- C. H. C. supports male dominance its attempts
to alleviate castration anxiety by
disavowal the females castrated
status is denied. - This disavowal achieved by fetishization
and/or devaluation of female a way to erase her
threat.
32Women in Film Noir
- Fetishization image of
women is overvalued
thru use of techniques
that transform her into
spectacle lack which
she signifies is in this
way filled in,
replaced by her
objectification. - Devaluation women seen as guilty objecther
castration is a symbol of her punishment.
33A Critique of Populism
- Destabilization of sex. relationships in
noir symptom of larger social disorder. - Prior to WW II, American society held together by
various myths that structured a national identity
rested upon principles of Jeffersonian
democracy. - Democratic promise of cheap or free land
motivation for western settlement, which became a
realization of Americas manifest destiny.
34A Critique of Populism
- Closing frontier, exhaustion of free land,
rapid industrialization of America in latter 19th
Century begins slow process of social change. - By 1920, for first time in American history, more
people in urban than rural areas. Millions of
laborers white-collar workers live new reality
but subscribe to old, preindustrial-era myths. - Only after Depression do myths begin to waiver.
35A Critique of Populism
- Film noir reflects transitional stage in American
ideology as American identity shifts from 19th
Century, preindustrial, agrarian prototypes to
20th Century models, which acknowledge the
nations transformation to a mass, consumer
society the industrialized corporate state. - As a movement, noir reflects a chaotic period
where old myths begin to crumble no new myths
exist to take their placethe period in which
national identity is in a crisis.
36A Critique of Capra
37A Critique of Populism
- Example of old myths in Capra films epitomize
classicism, order of pre-noir wood cinema,
celebrate 19th Century agrarianism. Stalwart
protagonists fight the 20th Century evils that
threaten populist spirit of small-town America. - Nightmare inversion of Capras ideal American
community in Its a Wonderful Life illustrates
noirs subversive
relationship to C. H. C. which attempts to
repress the very forces to which noir gives
voice. However, turns out It was just a dream. .
.
38Film Noir the Undercurrent ends
- Noir does not dismantle American myth or identity
in the 40s proves only one current in flood of
films reaffirming traditional values. By the late
50s, advent of TV virtually destroys low-budget,
B-film industry (provided bulk of noirs). New
mood reflects postwar prosperity at decades end
Americans turn from depressed thoughts of
technological blight to utopian visions of
machine-age paradises, filled w/labor-saving
devices. - Film noirs cease to speak to the needs some feel
for films that address their existential malaise.
39 Vietnam, etc. Noirs Revisited
- Trauma of Depression shell-shock of war
years has been treated, cured. Supposedly. - However, in the 70s Americans rediscover
noir of the 40s 50s becomes the source
material that prompts new understanding
of postwar American reality. - In rediscovering it Americans locate a more
modern body of myths thru which they might come
to terms with contemporary American experience.
40End (remember)
- Film noir emerges as a cycle or series of films.
It consists of a finite group of motion pictures
made during a specific historical period which
share certain aesthetic traits thematic
concerns.
41