Factfile: Gce As Level Moving Image Arts Film Noir
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FACTFILE: GCE AS LEVEL MOVING IMAGE ARTS FILM NOIR Film Noir Learning outcomes • understand the influence of hard-boiled crime fiction on Film Noir, including: Students should be able to: – dark urban stories depicting a corrupt world • Identify and explain the term Film Noir…; obsessed by greed, violence and power; • explain the origins of Film Noir and the influence of – character types such as the cynical private German Expressionism on Hollywood film-makers; investigator anti-hero and the duplicitous • discuss the following elements of Film Noir and femme fatale; explain their purpose: – iconography of the private eye and setting of – iconography; the dark spaces of the city; – setting; – first-person narratives portraying crime – narrative; subjectively from the point of view of the – style; criminal; and – characters; – themes such as the psychology of crime, how – themes; and doomed protagonists become drawn to crime through an inner flaw; and • explain the unique collaboration between the director and the cinematographer in Film Noir and American Expressionism. Course content The term “Film Noir” was first coined by French Expressionism. The term is also associated, as film film critics in August 1946 to describe a daring and historian James Naremore writes, “with certain visual stylish new type of Hollywood crime thriller which and narrative traits, including low-key photography, included films such as The Maltese Falcon (John images of wet city streets and romantic fascination Huston, 1941) Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944), with femme fatales.” (Naremore,1998) Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944) and Murder, My Sweet (Edward Drmytryk). Most commentators locate the period of Film Noir as beginning in 1941 with The Maltese Falcon and Standard histories describe Film Noir as a synthesis culminating in 1958 with Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil. of hard-boiled crime fiction and German Some commentators believe that noir began much earlier and that it has never gone away. 1 FACTFILE: GCE AS LEVEL MOVING IMAGE ARTS / FILM NOIR Film Noir and German Film Noir grew out of this combination of influences Expressionism and therefore has a number of characteristics in common with German Expressionism, for example: Many film professionals and artists fled Germany • Film Noir attempts to present the inner and Austria under Nazi rule during the 1930’s psychological and emotional dimension of its and took up residence in the United States. This characters by creating mood and atmosphere brought talent and skills that had developed within through its use of visual style; and the German film industry to Hollywood. This had a • Film Noir, like German Expressionist films, makes profound impact on the evolution of techniques and inventive use of lighting, canted angles and conventions employed in Hollywood filmmaking. unusual shot composition. Characteristics of Film Noir Narrative lighting schemes and unconventional camera angles convey a sense of entrapment as the hero Many film noirs werecrime novel adaptations. makes his way through an often labyrinthine plot. The hard-boiled crime stories of authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Cornell Woolrich provided the narrative Visual Style and Iconography source for many classic film noirs. John Huston began the trend of crime novel adaptations with It is the visual style of Film Noir, rather than his 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon, based on story or character type that is seen as its defining the novel by Dashiell Hammett. This was quickly characteristic. The noir look was created by followed by Double Indemnity (directed by German cinematographers, costume designers, art directors émigré, Billy Wilder, 1944), Mildred Pierce (Michael and production designers. Its enduring influence Curtiz, 1945) and The Postman Always Rings Twice on all genres of Hollywood filmmaking can be (Tay Garnett, 1946) all from novels by James M. seen today in films as diverse as Blade Runner Cain and the Raymond Chandler adaptations, (Ridley Scott, 1982), Se7en (David Fincher, 1995), The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946) and Murder, Barton Fink (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 1991) and Sin My Sweet (1944) featuring the private eye Philip City (Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez, 2005) The Marlowe. Other classic film noirs that feature an visual style of film noir, James Naremore writes, “is investigative narrative structure include The Killers characterised by unbalanced and disturbing frame (Robert Siodmak, 1946), Out of the Past (Jacques compositions, strong contrasts of light and dark, Tourneur, 1947), The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953), the prevalence of shadows and areas of darkness Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955), and The Big within the frame, the visual tension created by Combo (Joseph H. Lewis, 1955). curious camera angles... Moreover, in Film Noir, these strained compositions and angles are not merely Many film noirs translate theconfessional narrative embellishments or rhetorical flourishes, but form the of crime literature into a first person voice-over very substance of the film.” (Naremore, 1998) from the doomed protagonist. Noir films often begin at the end of the narrative and tell their story In her seminal essay Women in Film Noir, film in flash-back. A famous example is Billy Wilder’s scholar Janey Place identifies some of the key visual 1950 noir, Sunset Boulevard, which begins with the motifs of the femme fatale: the iconography of long discovery of a body in a swimming pool. The body is hair, glamorous costumes, make-up, jewellery and that of the lead character Joe Gillis who narrates the cigarette smoking conjures up a powerful image of story in flashback from beyond the grave. sexual assertiveness and romantic allure. The Noir world is corrupt, threatening and In Film Noir, Expressionism found a worthy subject violent. French film critics saw the typical noir in the archetypal American anti-hero as Place narrative as an existential nightmare from which explains: “The visual style of film noir conveys the the protagonist can never awaken. He is a doomed dominant mood (male psychological instability and figure journeying through anunderworld of crime moral uncertainty, paranoia, claustrophobia, a sense and deception until a final betrayal by the femme of doom and hopelessness, etc.) through expressive fatale he has fallen in love with. Expressionist use of darkness: both real, in predominantly under- 2 FACTFILE: GCE AS LEVEL MOVING IMAGE ARTS / FILM NOIR lit and night-time scenes, and psychologically novels in the screenplay. The setting of the film is through shadows and claustrophobic compositions the city of Los Angeles. According to film historian which overwhelm the character in exterior as well as Richard Schickel, “the movie has a very firm sense of interior settings.“ (Place, 1980) place – no movie offers a better sense of how the Los Angeles of its moment looked – but at the same time She goes on to explain how the dark and shadowy it energises that reality with a subtle air of menace.” world of silhouettes, shadows, mirrors and (Schickel, 1992) reflections gives both the characters within the films, and also the audience watching them, very Double Indemnity employs a non-linear narrative little opportunity to orientate themselves. structure with the male protagonist Walter Neff confessing his role in a murder plot and insurance Directors and cinematographers worked in scam in the first five minutes of screen time. The close collaboration in Film Noir sharing a radical story is told in flashback through Neff’s first person approach to lighting and composition. John Alton voice-over. is considered by many to be the greatest of all Noir cinematographers. Alton perfected many of the The key figure driving the plot is Phyllis Dietrichson stylised camera and lighting techniques of Film who secretly purchases accident insurance for her Noir, including radical camera angles, wide-angle wealthy husband from insurance salesman Walter lenses, deep focus compositions, the baroque use Neff. As played by glamorous actress Barbara of low-level cameras and a sharp depth of field. His Stanwyck, Phyllis is the archetypal femme fatale groundbreaking work with director Anthony Mann who seduces Neff into murdering her husband. on films such T-Men (1947) Raw Deal (1948) and He From her first appearance, dressed only in a bath Walked by Night (1948) is considered a benchmark towel, Phyllis confidently asserts her sexuality, the in the noir cycle. John Alton also gained fame as camera framing her ankle bracelet in close-up. Her the author of the seminal work on cinematography actions throughout the film reveal her as a ruthless ‘Painting with Light‘, which is still in print. In the and cold-hearted character who eventually shoots book, Alton discusses the importance of “Jimmy Neff, declaring; “No I never loved you Walter. Not Valentine lighting” or the positioning of a key light you or anyone else. I’m rotten to the heart.” directly below the faces of villains, so that they take on a grotesque look. In a famous sequence from Wilder has acknowledged that the visual style T-Men (34:32 - 35:00), directed by Anthony Mann, of Double Indemnity is indebted to films which two men hold a conversation over a lampshade, emerged out of the German Expressionist movement. and Alton photographs them from below the lamp, Low-key lighting and looming shadows feature in aiming straight upward at their chins and using many of its pivotal scenes. When Phyllis makes an extreme wide-angle lens that makes them look her first visit to Walter Neff’s apartment, he stands grotesquely elongated. Another unique Alton visual waiting in the dark, the only illumination coming trait is eerie, off-centre compositions in which an from the street lights. Similarly, the murder scene isolated figure is briefly glimpsed at the extreme takes place in darkness, the car interior lit up by lower corner of a frame. passing traffic. As Jurgen Muller comments in Film Noir:100 All-time Favourites, “John Seitz’s cinematography manoeuvres us through the Case Study: Double Indemnity (1944) characteristic film noir lighting design, heightening Double Indemnity’s sense of doom.