Film Noir

Film Noir Discussion Notes

• Originaly in French - expresses dark vision in US film
• Frank and Chartier in 1946
• The term not applied in Hollywood until 1970
• French taught Americans to respect and study film as art
• Melodramas - moral ambiguity

First Four (Borde and Chumeton 1955)

1. The Maltese Falcon
2. Double Indemnity
3. Laura
4. Murder, My Sweet

Response to WWII and Gender

• Females in the workplace and male worry and anxiety
• They show a mirror to society
• Fears and trama to antianti-communists, terror and bombs

Conventions Assosiated with Noir (usually)

• Loner detective or ex-cop
• Femme Fetale (the deadly female)
• Crime
• Murder
• Moral Ambiguity
• Flashback
• Pessimism/Hopelessness
• Motif of fate or predestination
• Roots in detective fiction - but not all are noir
• Low key lighting
• Common - often has protagonist look back to the past

Influences

• Pulp fiction
• German espressionism

Historical

• Time period 1941 (Maltese Falcon) - 1958 (Touch of Evil)
• A "Hugeness of style"

Shifts

• Technological
• Social
• Economical
• Color came into play
• More TV watching at home
• Shift from urban living to suburban living

Neo-Noir Examples

• 1973 The Long Goodbye
• 1974 Chinatown
• 1994 The Glass Shield
• 1995 Strange Days
• 2011 Drive
• 2016 Nocturnal Animals (Watch with caution!)

Class Objectives

• Focus on how film noir is defined, how it changes and morphes
• Parallels of Classic and Neo Noir
• Role of race - Strange Days and The Glass Shield
• Dystopic Films