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Dates• Film noir is a genre• Noir films flourished between 1941-58• Many film scholars believe the 1941 film The Maltese

Falcon is the 1st film noir, though it is not as “dark” as later noir films

• Others include: Double Indemnity and The Big Sleep

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maltese_Falcon_(1941_film) http://www.screensite.org/courses/Jbutler/T112/MinistryOfFear.jpg

Focuses on• Urban crime and corruption, and a sudden upwelling of

violence in a culture whose fabric seemed to be unraveling.• The film noir seems fundamentally about violations:

* vices* corruption* unrestrained desire* and most fundamentally, an abolishment of

the American Dream’s most basic promises--of hope, prosperity, and safety from persecution.

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Lighting Film noir has frequent scenes with dark shadows (high

contrast) lighting, often including shots with shadows made by open venetian blinds and many night scenes (low key).

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The Antihero• Motivated by selfishness, greed, cruelty, and ambition. • Is willing to lie, frame, double cross, and kill. • Acts of nobility and high mindedness are luxuries he cannot

afford.

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The Hero’s Journey• The film noir (anti) hero takes a mythical journey. • He descends into the underworld on a downward spiral or

into the labyrinth's innermost cell to face “the monster.” (This is an exploration of the psyche.)

• The object of his quest is elusive, often an illusion (as in the falcon or Shell Beach).

• The “hero” is often destroyed by the monster; other times an Ariadne (Theseus) or Medea (Jason) helps the hero out of the labyrinth, only to be betrayed or destroyed by him.

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Other recurring film noir characters• seedy nightclub singers• hard-boiled detectives who wear trench

coats and wide-rimmed hats• And the femme fatale…

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Femme Fatale• invariably an attractive, young, worldly

woman who thinks and acts quickly and who is manipulative, evasive, sexy, dangerous, and perhaps lethal, especially to men who succumb to her wiles and charms (a Circe).

• the concept of the femme fatale probably comes from WWII when women were urged to take over factory jobs traditionally held by men. This self-sufficiency seemed to threaten the notion of the American housewife/nuclear family, further debunking American values/ideals.

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Traits• some film noirs are fatalistic, and the main character is

doomed to fail (fate)• tend to exhibit embittered or cynical moods, and to be

compressed and convoluted (lots of flashbacks tend to confuse)

• characters who go astray are usually punished• cigarette smokers• some film noirs are narrated by corpses. The

story/journey, then, is toward the hero’s death. (American Beauty)

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Setting• often reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s paintings

(full of black windows, looming shadows, rich pools of light pouring in from recessed doorways and steep stairwells.)

• urban settings are precarious and dangerous (rooftops, walkways, railroad tracks, high windows, ledges, towering public monuments (also a Hitchcock favorite), unlit alleys, and industrial zones, not to mention moving trains and cars.)

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Setting (cont.)• this setting creates the

abovementioned labyrinth, a tortuous, entangled maze in which the hero is trapped both physically and metaphorically (i.e. the hero’s inner workings compares to the outer maze in which he wanders.)

• the film noir city is that of the shadowland of a lost paradise (i.e. a fallen state)

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Neo Noir• Instead of being shot in black and white, neo noirs are filmed

in stark, tough colors. Orange is common- -suggests sickness and corruption (The Godfather). Cool colors- -green.

• Some neo noirs: Blade Runner, Pulp Fiction, Fargo, Dark City, Batman, Minority Report, American Beauty, and The Usual Suspects.

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Gotham City

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