Film Noir Analysis #4 - M (1931) - The Influences Of Noir

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Film Noir Analysis #4 M (1931) The Influences of Noir Joe Pettit

Transcript of Film Noir Analysis #4 - M (1931) - The Influences Of Noir

Film Noir Analysis #4 M (1931) The Influences

of Noir

Joe Pettit

With noir films being big in the 40s and 50s, I thought it would be suitable to look at an influence of film noir- German expressionist films. The conventions of this film with its chiaroscuro lighting and dark colours are a clear influence of noir films. The reason Hollywood stole these conventions in the 40s and 50s portrays the dark times America was going through during and after the war.

M, made in 1931, is a Fritz Lang German expressionist film that was ground-breaking in many aspects, and shaped future films made in America, known as noir films. The film follows a child murderer and is known as one of the best films ever made. The director aims to create a direct reaction towards realism in this noir-influential film, creating an ideology that the world is dark, expressed and shown through his film language.

Extract 1

The first extract begins with children singing a song about a man that takes children away. The children’s mother hears and tells them off for singing it. A little girl throws a bouncy ball to herself down the street to be approached by a man in a hat. Shortly after, the mother calls for her child, though her child cannot be seen. The shot of the girl bouncing the ball is a very

long edit, lasting twenty seconds. This extremely long edit makes viewer think something is out of the ordinary, reflected through the long edit. When she begins to bounce a ball against a lamppost, we see the shadow of a man in the hat step out, and instantly we know this is our killer. The effect of this shadow has been made by chiaroscuro lighting, which creates distinct shadows. The shadow of the

man is done by effect by Fritz Lang, as it scares the audience because we don’t know what he looks like yet- our murderer is just a shadow. The director’s aim to create a direct reaction towards realism in the film is shown here- one of the first film makers to challenge darkness doing it brilliantly here through the dark mise-en-scene. The dark shadow also reflects the serial killer, Hans Beckert’s dark personality as he feels compelled to murder.

After the mother calls for her child at the end of the opening scene, there are several long shots of empty places that follow each other. This is to show that the woman’s child is

nowhere to be seen, but also connotes the emptiness that the mother is about to feel as she realises her child is missing. There is one shot of an empty seat with a table set in front of it, presumably where the child would be sitting at dinner, though is missing. This shot is longer than the normal edit length, allowing the viewer to focus on the emptiness and lack of life. This is also reflected in the director’s choice to have no non-diegetic sound at all in this scene, just the diegetic shout of the missing girl’s mother. This reflects the emptiness. The settings shown, in which the child is absent, are also all very dark, shown here. These dark shots reflect in

to Fritz Lang’s ideology of a dark world, and the low key lighting represents Lang’s attempt to make film a direct reaction towards realism, which he succeeds in- as many films took aspects of Lang’s influential German Expressionism in the 40s and 50s- creating the noir era, in which the dark mise-en-scene mirrors the realism of the time- the world war.

Extract 2

In this extract, our killer Hans Beckert is on the prowl, as he watches a child outside a shop. As he watches her, a non-diegetic whistle plays. The sound could be seen in two ways. It could be seen as parallel to what we see, the whistle emphasising that Hans, our killer, is up to no good, though it could also be seen as contrapuntal, as the whistle does sound sweet and innocent, which doesn’t match the sick plan going through Hans Beckert’s mind. Interestingly, the whistle composed for this film is also used in the children’s film Toy Story 2, in a scene in which a toy is being cleaned. This shows that the sound has had different interpretations, creating moral ambiguity on our serial killer. This moral ambiguity created through the strange, non-diegetic whistle, sets the viewer up for the end of the film when Hans reveals to the court that killing isn’t a choice- a scene in which we are made to feel sorry for Hans. Although this whistle creates moral ambiguity, there is one reason it is definitely used, and that’s that it is done by the film’s composer to create a creepy atmosphere.