"The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946)
[Tay Garnett]
"Double Indemnity" (1944) "The Dark Corner" (1946)
[Billy Wilder] [Henry Hathaway]
The typical codes and conventions associated with film noir are:
- There are primary moods of alienation, bleakness, pessimism and melancholy as well as desperation and paranoia
- Anti-heros, villains, hard-boiled detectives, cops and gangsters are reoccurring characters and are distinctive with the film noir genre. These characters are obsessive (sexual etc.) and struggling to survive and end up ultimately losing
- Storylines are complex, elliptical and convoluted. The story's narrative is frequently complex and usually involves the anti-hero brooding on his past, corrupt present and bleak future. Typically flashbacks and revelations regarding the anti-hero explain his cynical view on life. The anti-hero is often an everyday man who experiences a downfall often for being a victim to temptation
- Film noir is mostly shot in gloomy grays, blacks and whites. This is representative of showing the gloomy side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love and this emphasizes the brutality and sadistic side of human experience. This realism is related to the post-war depression and the American people's need for realism in film. This realistic film noir genre is highly contrast with the romanticism which was typical in film beforehand
- There is an abundant amount of dark lighting and is visually marked by expressionist lighting, which was influenced by the German Expressionist age of cinema. This meant that there was depth of field and of focus. Expressionist devices such as chiaroscuro lighting and skewed framing creates a high contrast image made up of dark shadows and silhouttes
- Contrasting with today's modern cinema, film noir typically has fewer cuts and less editing. However, film noir typically used cantered angles and diagonal lines in its composition
- The protagonist was presented as someone who was driven by their past or by human weakness to repeat former mistakes
- Downtown alleyways, docks and piers were the typical places for rendez-vous. These locations were dimly lit and there is generically a lot of rainfall which reflects the bleakness and desperation of society
- There is equal emphasis given to characters and lighting
- There is always a femme fatale character, who usually tempts the hero
- There are many minor characters (who are just as significant as the protagonists) who are morally ambivilant
- It is mostly set at night
- There is a theme of identity
- There is a constant tension which is marked by measured pacing, restrained anger and oppressive compositions
"Film Noir Film Making How To: Indy Mogul" video
Sources: "Notes On Film Noir" by Paul Schrader
www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J97VnLw7PM8
Double Indemnity (1944) [Billy Wilder]:www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J97VnLw7PM8
"Double Indemnity" Theatrical Trailer
Plot:
- Walter Neff is an insurance salesman who begins an affair with a client's wife, Phyllis Dietrickson
- Phyllis expresses her hatred of being married to her husband and together they hatch a plan to kill Phyllis' husband and receive a payment from his death
- Walter sells Phyllis' husband insurance for his cars, and whilst he is distracted Walter tricks him into signing for life insurance, of which he is unaware. This means that when Walter and Phyllis kill her husband they will receive a handsome payout
- Walter suggests, in order to get the most amount of money possible, to have it seem that Phyllis' husband died on a train as that will mean a double indemnity clause, which means the insurance company pay twice the amount.
- On the night of the murder, Walter makes sure the car cleaner in his building sees him that night so he has an alibi. Phyllis is taking her husband to the train station where he will go on his annual trip. Before she and her husband get into the car, Walter goes into the back seat of the car and remains concealed whilst Phyllis and her husband get into the front seats of the car.
- Whilst driving to the train station, Phyllis takes a quiet road which will mean no-one will notice the murder
- To alert Walter to kill her husband, she begins sounding the horn three times. She continues to do so to conceal her husband's screams.
- When they arrive at the train station, Walter takes Phyllis' husband's crutches and pretends to be him. He gets on the train and goes to the back of the train, where he unexpectedly meets a man named Jackson. In order to get rid of Jackson and fake 'his' death, Walter says he left his cigars in his compartment and Jackson kindly agrees to fetch them for him.
- After Jackson has left, Walter throws the crutches onto the track and jumps off the train. Phyllis is waiting for Walter with her husbands body still in the car. Walter and Phyllis carry her husband's body onto the track where it will seem he fell of the train and died.
- Phyllis and Walter then drive off and promise not to see each other for a while as it will be too suspicious
- At the insurance company, Walter's boss Keyes finds out about Phyllis' husband's death. Phyllis comes in dressed in black and acts hysterical when the insurance company point out that it is strange that days after an insurance claim was taken out her husband is dead and assume she is implicated in some form.
- Keyes does not believe that Mr. Dietrickson died of natural causes so he has Phyllis' house monitored. When Walter is in Keyes office (Keyes is not there) he listens to Keyes dictaphone. On the dictaphone Keyes states after monitoring Phyllis' house, it had been observed that Lola's (Phyllis' step-daughter) boyfriend had been around the house a lot. Walter now begins to think that Phyllis will try to kill him so that she can be with Lola's boyfriend.
- Out of guilt Walter spends time with Lola, who now has both parents dead. Lola reveals that when her mother was severely ill, shortly before she died, Phyllis was her nurse and Lola is convinced through neglectful care she killed her mother. She also reveals that the day before Mr. Dietrickson was revealed to be dead, Phyllis was gleefully trying on her black clothes as she couldn't wait to be in mourning.
- Walter goes to Phyllis' house where after Phyllis shots at Walter, but only injures his arm, Walter shots Phyllis and kills her. Shortly after Walter leaves Phyllis' house Lola's boyfriend appears looking for Phyllis. Walter gives him a nickel to go phone Lola and encourages him to revive their relationship.
- This has all been told through flashback and Walter is sitting in Keyes office speaking into the dictaphone. Keyes is standing behind Walter and had been listening for "long enough". Walter expresses his intend to cross the California border where he cannot be prosecuted for his crime but Keyes tells him he needs an ambulance. When trying to leave the building, Walter collapses shortly after.
To further research the codes and conventions of film noir I watched the film 'Double Indemnity'.
'Double Indemnity' had elements of the generic codes and conventions which I had established beforehand:
- Phyllis Dietrickson is the femme fatale - the dangerous temptress who is responsible for Walter Neff's downfall and his weakness
- Walter Neff is the anti-hero - the good Everyday man who commits a crime to possess the woman he loves
- The story is told in a flashback and Walter narrates with a voice over, which he is recording in Keyes' Dictaphone
- It often rains in the film - e.g. after Walter and Phyllis originally planned to kill Mr Dietrickson and Phyllis was leaving Walter's apartment
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) [Tay Garnett]:
"The Postman Always Rings Twice" Theatrical Trailer
Plot:- Frank Chambers is a drifter who stops at a country diner for a meal and ends up working there. The owner, Nick, lives above the diner with his young wife, Cora. Frank and Cora are instantly attracted to each other and begin to have an affair.
- Cora says she is tired of her situation: married to a man she doesn't love and working in a diner she wishes to own herself. Frank and Cora, in order to start a new life together, plot to kill Nick. The first attempt is a failure, but on the second attempt they succeed.
- The local prosecutor, Kyle Sackett, suspects what happened but he does not have enough evidence to prove so.
- In a bid to get the truth, Kyle tries to turn them against each other. Although this does work, after Cora completes a full confession her lawyer destroys the evidence.
- Cora pleads guilty to manslaughter and is allowed out on probation
- After Frank and Cora patch up their rocky relationship, they plan for the future. However, Cora dies in a car accident and Frank is accused of staging the crash, despite the fact it was a genuine accident.
- Frank is sentenced to death for killing Cora. When waiting for his execution, Frank contemplates when a person is receiving a letter the postman may not be heard the first time but he will inevitably be heard the second. With Cora dead and Frank awaiting his execution the postman has indeed rung a second time for the both of them.
- The film is in black and white
- There is chiaroscuro lighting
- Like many film noirs, there is an element of a crime of passion - similar to Double Indemnity
- As relative to the period in which it was filmed, the protagonists' received justice for the crime they initially commited
- There is a theme of alienation - Cora feels alienated in her marriage, Frank is staying in a separate part of the diner and Nick is alienated in the sense he is completely unaware of his wife's infidelity
- Frank represents the typical Film Noir anti-hero (much like Walter in Double Indemnity): he was a moral man before he met Cora. This allows Cora to be shown as both the temptress (her affair with Frank) and the typical meek female (her marriage with Nick)
Neo Noir:
"Unlike classic noirs, neo-noir films are aware of modern circumstances and technology details that were typically absent or unimportant to the plot of classic film noir" - Wikipedia
Leighton Grist said there were three types of neo-noir:
a. modern
b. modernist
c. post-modern
a. Modern = e.g. "Farewell My Lovely" (period: 60s and 70s) as part of Hollywood Renaissance
- updated setting
- colour
- more visual sexuality
- more complex morality and contemporary attitudes
- violence references
"Farewell My Lovely" (1975) [Director: Dick Richards]
Theatrical Trailer
b. Modernist = e.g. "Chinatown", "Taxi Driver"
These are films which have radically changed and most importantly challenged the generic codes and conventions associated with film noir. There is a similarity with Modern neo-noir but there are differences:
- updated setting
- colour
- explicit sexuality
- palpable 'grey area' morality and attitudes
- explicit violence
"Chinatown" (1974) [Director: Roman Polanski]
Theatrical Trailer
c. Post-modern = e.g. "Blade Runner", "Pulp Fiction"
Post-modern films are a "mash-up" or pastiche of different genres of film or pay hommage to previous film noirs. Post-modern films have this distinguishing element and also the elements of Modernist films.
"Blade Runner" (1982) [Director: Ridley Scott)
Theatrical Trailer
Taxi Driver (1976) [Martin Scorsese]:
Plot:
- Vietnam vet Travis Bickle is a loner in the mean streets of New York City, slipping slowly into isolation and violent misanthropy. In solving his insomnia by driving a yellow cab on the night shift, he grows increasingly disgusted by the low-lifes that hang out at night: "Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets."
- His touching attempts to woo Betsy, a Senator's campaign worker, turn sour when he takes her on a disasterous first date. He even fails in his attempt to persuade child prostitute Iris to desert her pimp and return to her parents and school.
- Driven to the edge by powerlessness, he buys four handguns and sets out to solve all the problems that are troubling him.
Generic Codes and Conventions:
- Themes of moral corruption and inner turmoil
- De Nero's character, Travis, provides a voice over for the entire film
- De Nero's character is a classic example of an anti-hero - he uses violent means to achieve equilibrium, he is disgusted by the corrupt world around him although he is corrupt also, he watches pornography
- There is a theme of violence - he uses extreme violence to save the child prostitute, Iris
Contrasting to the generic presence of a femme fatale, "Taxi Driver" does not have a 'clear cut' femme fatale. There are only two female characters in the film, both of whom have a sense of innocence: Travis' love interest is somewhat virginal and unvoyeuristic. Iris, the child prostitute, is in a world in which she cannot escape.
"Taxi Driver" Theatrical Trailer
Pulp Fiction (1994) [Quentin Tarantino]:
Pulp Fiction is considered a prime example of a post-modernist film due to its self-reflexivity, unconventional structure and the use of hommage and pastiche. Although some critics question whether the film is a modernist or post-modern film, it is considered neo-noir. Nicholas Christopher says Pulp Fiction is "more gangland camp than neo-noir" and Foster Hirsch suggests that the "trippy fantasy landscape" characterises it more definitively than any genre label.
I personally consider Pulp Fiction to be post-modern due to its release in the 1990s (which was a typical feature of post-modern neo-noir films) and the 'mash-up' of the noir and crime genres as well as many intertextual references, which define the film's comic tone.
Plot:
- The film is unusual in the sense it is split up into three segments, which tell three different stories that are all related, (Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife, The Gold Watch, The Bonnie Situation) and is not told in chronological order
- The film begins with Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega (two hitmen) who are out to retrieve a suitcase stolen from their employer, mob boss Marsellus Wallace.
- Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife: Vincent takes Mia (Marsellus Wallace's Wife) out for dinner as Wallace has asked Vincent to take his wife Mia out a few days later when Wallace himself will be out of town. In the restaurant is the location where the famous dance scene takes place
- The Gold Watch: Butch Coolidge, a struggling boxer, was given a gold watch that belonged to his father (who died in the war) and so it has sentimental value. Butch, later in life, plans to leave L.A. with his French girlfriend. Butch's girlfriend has left his gold watch at their old apartment, where Wallace's hitmen will be looking for him. Butch returns to his apartment, finds Vincent coming out of the bathroom and kills him. While trying to flee to his girlfriend he encounters Wallace, which leads to a slow chase scene as both characters are injured as a result of Butch crashing his car. When Wallace catches up with Butch, they end up being held underneath a shop by two men who intend to rape them. Wallace is raped first and Butch is left in another room being watched by another man. After fleeing from the basement of the shop, Butch decides to go and save Wallace. There is intertextuality when choosing his weapon. He returns to the basement with a Samurai sword and saves Wallace. Wallace and Butch "are ok" and Wallace tells Butch to leave town.
- The Bonnie Situation: After Vincent and Jules accidentally kill a man in the back of the car they go to Vincent friend's (Jimmie) house. They need to clean the backseat of the car before Jimmie's wife, Bonnie, returns home from work. They call Winston "The Wolf" Wolf to help their situation.
"Pulp Fiction" Theatrical Trailer
Generic Codes and Conventions:
- The restaurant in which Vincent and Mia dine has a 1950s theme. The 1950s was considered to be the era of the classic film noir. There are references to iconic decade e.g. a waitress dressed as Marilyn Monroe
- The title refers to pulp magazines and hard boiled crime novels, which were popular during the classic film noir period. Popular authors included James M. Cain (author of "The Postman Always Rings Twice") and Raymond Chandler (co-writer of "Double Indemnity")
- The film has explicit violence
- There is a constant urban setting
- The film is centered around gun and gangster culture as well as moral corruption
- The hitmen (Vincent and Jules) wear suits, which was the typical attire of hard boiled detectives
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_Fiction
Auteur Theory:
It is considered in auteur theory that the author's creative voice is distinct enough to shine through all kinds of studio interference and through the collective process. In some cases, film producers are considered to exert a similar "auteur" influence on films they have produced.
Origin:
The role of the author was born from the classicism movement. The classicism movement was a poetic movement which questioned meaning and engaged the meaning of texts. It was therefore established that the author was more significant than the text he produced.
Auteur theory refers to the work of a group of French critics - including Jean-Luc Goddard and Truffaut - who wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma and argued that films should reflect a director's personal vision. They watched various American films, often many by the same director, and noted the similarity of differing works by the same director. They championed filmmakers such as Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, and Jean Renoir as absolute 'auteurs' of their films. Although André Bazin, co-founder of the Cahiers, provided a forum for Auteurism to flourish, he explained his concern about its excesses in his article "On the Auteur Theory" (Cahier # 70, 1957). Another element of Auteur theory comes from Alexandre Astruc's notion of the caméra-stylo or "camera-pen," which encourages directors to wield cameras as writers use pens and to guard against the hindrances of traditional storytelling.
Truffaut and the members of the Cahiers recognized that movie-making was an industrial process. However, they proposed an ideal to strive for, encouraging the director to use the commercial apparatus as a writer uses a pen, and, through the mise en scène, imprint his or her vision on the work (minimizing the role of the screenwriter). Recognizing the difficulty of reaching this ideal, they valued the work of directors who came close.
Andrew Sarris was a theorist and was influenced by the Cahiers du Cinema: "I will give the Cahiers full credit for original formulation of the idea that reshaped my thinking of the cinema" (1962)
Concentric Circles of Auteur:
The Three premise of the auteur theory may be visualised as three concentric circles; the outer circle as technique, the middle circle a personal style and the inner circle as interior meaning. The corresponding roles of the director could be designated as those of a technician, a stylist and an auteur.
Example of Auteur - Quentin Tarantino:
- Tarantino emerged on to the scene in the 1990s and was the celebrity director
- He wrote, starred and directed Pulp Fiction, which since it's release has become a contemporary classic, quintessentially postmodern, the most extreme of neo-noir hybrids
- The most obvious element in Tarantino's films is their obsessive allusions verbally and visually, to an eclectic range of popular culture. Tarantino, whose idiom is as distinctive as Raymond Chandler's, populates his films with compulsive talkers, preoccupied with telling distinctions that mark them as pulp connoisseurs; whether it be in the form of song lyrics, television programmes, varieties of fast food or movies
- The conversations between the characters in his films show that the central experience of modern Americans is their engagement with the forms and images of popular culture, which shape memories, emotions, attitudes, a whole sense of being and identity
- His style, very noticeably, eschews chiaroscuro. Pulp Fiction was shot by Andrej Sekula on 50 ASA film stock whose lustrous image was the closest contemporary equivalent to 1950s Technicolor
- His film Reservoir Dogs updated the noir heist film - Huston's Asphalt Jungle or Kubrick's The Killing
- Pulp Fiction's debt to noir was more pronounced but also less restrictive, a reinvention of the pulp thriller that "made it challenging to myself and my audience"
- Pulp Fiction was partly inspired by Le Doulos, which Tarantino describes as "my favourite screenplay of all time. You don't have any idea of what's going on until the last 20 minutes"
- It is typical Tarantino to be mixing genuine emotion with horror, and black comedy that is funny even if all the references aren't picked up
- Like in Pulp Fiction when Mia overdoses on heroin, there is a radical shift in tone which confounds expectations and makes complex demands on the audience. Tarantino commented: "I want to take these genre characters and put them in a real-life situation"
Sources: "Film Noir" by Andrew Spicer (pages 170 - 172)
RedBlack (Mal Woolford):
RedBlack is a short film by Mal Woolford, a British director and short film producer. RedBlack presents typical codes and conventions associated with Film Noir.
Plot:
- An attractive young woman steps into a taxi and tells the driver that she will need him to wait for her for 10 minutes when she asks him to stop. All throught the short film we hear a faint police siren in the distance.
- During the journey the driver compliments the woman telling her "You should be a model" and she is clearly flattered
- When the driver stops the woman has changed from her black coat, which she wore when stepping into the taxi, and is now wearing a red hooded coat. She steps out of the taxi and walks off, leaving her bag behind.
- The driver picks up the woman's handbag and puts his hand inside the bag but does not look inside it beforehand. During the process the driver appears to be in pain. He takes out a knife with blood on it and the police siren is clearly visible on his face. Although the short film does not show the driver being arrested this is an assumption made by the viewer.
Elements of film noir present in RedBlack:
- Femme Fatale - she is fully lit at the back of the taxi but the driver is not (resembles scenes from Double Indemnity)
- The title: "Red" has connotations of: murder, danger, lust, love, warning. "Black" has connotations of: dark, mysterious, rebellion. These connotations foreshadow the ending.
- Urban setting: streetlamps, downtown city, lighting from the police siren at the end
- Flashbacks at beginning are ambiguous but become clearer to the audience at the end
- When the femme fatale is introduced the back of her head is only visible
- Femme fatale is typically beautiful so male protagonist did as she asked, so he was framed
- Elements of post-modernist: flashes of red, enigma codes
- Like Double Indemnity a seemingly ordinary man (the driver) falls prey to the femme fatale (blonde in the back of the taxi)
- Audience assumes blonde will be man's prey but the typical storyline is subverted - more archaic view of femininity
- Camera angles sexualise the woman and are phallocentric - the male gaze (Laura Mulvey)
- Intertexuality of the red hood - resembles 'Little Red Riding Hood' and 'Don't Look Now'
- Theme of violence - ambiguous metal-like sounds at beginning - audience initially assumes this is a premonition of the violence to come (with the blonde as the victim). However, after viewing RedBlack the audience may see this is the murder the femme fatale commited before, i.e. the reason for the knife with the blood in her handbag
Sources: http://malwoolford.com/
- The film begins, and takes place throughout, a man's apartment. While the man is preparing breakfast for himself, the doorbell rings
- After some casual conversation the African-Caribbean man who was at the door, and invited in, reveals he went to the school with the man who bullied him relentlessly.
- The man is shocked and attempts to apologize but it is not satisfactory for the African-Caribbean man who takes out a knife and says he intends to put a 'stripe' on the man's face as a constant reminder of his past actions like he himself has suffered through all his life
Elements of Binary Opposition (Claude Levi-Strauss):
- The two men are black and white
- There is a consistency of harsh lighting and strong contrasts of colours
- The man's apartment is entirely white and his clothing and furniture are dark colours
Hard Labour (2003) [Oliver Krimpas]:
- The plot surrounds a married couple living in London with their son and an Au Pair.
- The husband is having an affair with the Au Pair, of which the wife is unaware.
- The Au Pair discovers she is pregnant and tells the husband, who wants her to have an abortion and pays her to do so.
- The husband takes the Au Pair to the abortion clinic and we see her go inside
- The wife then reveals that she is pregnant. When the wife suffers from morning sickness, the Au Pair then vomits, making the audience think that she did not have the abortion and that she is also pregnant.
- The Au Pair tells the wife that she is pregnant but the father does not want anything to do with her or her child. She tells the wife that the father of her child is someone she met at church.
- The husband is angry with the Au Pair for not having the abortion. She then tells him that if she does not receive money from him (to support her child) she will tell his wife about the affair. So, the husband occassionally slips into the Au Pairs room and leaves a substantial amount of cash in her draws.
- The wife finds out that she is having a girl and buys designer clothes for her unborn child. She gives the Au Pair, whom we presume is having a boy, her son's old baby clothes.
- Both women are pregnant at the same time and there is tension within the household. The Au Pair begins slacking in her household tasks, which angers the wife. The wife suggests sacking the Au Pair at which the husband says its because she's pregnant and its much more difficult for her to do household chores.
- One morning, the Au Pair comes downstairs with a packed suitcase and says she needs to return home as her mother is ill. The wife tells the husband to drop her off at the train station.
- When at the train station, the husband gives the Au Pair another substantial amount of money. As the husband walks off, the Au Pair does not get on the train but heads in the same direction the husband went.
- The Au Pair then goes to a cheap hotel and begins heavy breathing, and the audience would assume that she is going into labour. However, she pulls a fake baby bump from underneath her shirt and begins to cry.
- The family are not coping well with having no Au Pair and there are no Au Pairs available to work.
- The wife goes into labour and returns home with a baby girl.
- In the morning, whilst the husband and wife are sleeping, the Au Pair returns to the house and takes the baby girl. The last scene shows the Au Pair with the baby, getting on a train.
Elements of Propp's Narrative Theory:
- The hero - Au Pair (she was on a quest to have a child after the abortion)
- The villain - Husband (made the Au Pair go against her Catholic beliefs and have an abortion)
- The donor - Husband (he provides the Au Pair with the money she needs to leave the family and start a new life)
- The princess - Baby girl (after the Au Pair goes against her religious beliefs, she is rewarded with a 'replacement')
- The helper - Wife (she gave birth to the baby girl)
- Wife (native, older) - Au Pair (foreign, younger)
- Couple (wealthy) - Au Pair (poor)
- Husband marriage (legitimate, loving) - Husband affair (illigitimate, sexual orientated)
- Abortion (death) - Pregnancy (new life)
- Broken egg (symbolic of abortion, death) - Flowers (new life, springtime)
Propp:
Propp's narrative theory focused on the typical reoccuring stereotypes that appear in stories. He based his theory on children's fables and traditional stories.
- the hero - on a quest (protagonist)
- the villain - opposes the hero (antagonist)
- the donor - helps hero by giving them a magic tool
- the dispatcher - starts the hero on his way
- the false hero - tempts the hero away from quest
- the helper - helps hero
- the princess - reward for the hero
- the father - (usually of a princess) rewards the hero for efforts
Interested in binary oppositions such as good/bad, day/night, light/dark. Noticing these opposites tend to structure texts such as stories and films
- Washing powder adverts rely on 'before and after' shots to show a contrast in order to show
- News reports tend to use the binary opposites also to present the story in a simple way
Interested in concepts of negotiated meaning between institution and audience. Barthes suggested the narrative works with five different codes which activate readers to make sense of it:
- the action/proairetic
- the enigma/hermeneutic
- the semic
- the symbolic
- the cultural/referential
Tend to introduce a 'number of signifiers of morality'. Modern neo-noir films are generally remakes of classic film noirs.
Below, I applied Todorov's theory to Taxi Driver:
Below, I applied Todorov's theory to Taxi Driver:
As suggested there are five stages to a narrative:
- equilibrium (balance)
- a disruption of this equilibrium by an event (enigma)
- a realisation that a disruption has happened (path to resolution)
- an attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
- a restoration of equilibrium
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