Lecture 3: Criminology on Film/Film Noir

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Lecture 3 Criminology on Film/Film Noir

• Vito Corleone arrives an orphan in New York

Professor Aaron Baker
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In the Last Lecture

• Prohibition Volstead Act 1920-33
• Economic Depression 1929-41
• Working class/Ethnic Gangster Critique
• Censorship

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In this Lecture

• How Films show causes of crime and violence
• Film Noir

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Motives/Causes

• Film can show
• Motives (e.g. via flashbacks)
• Environments that cause crime
• Reflect/influence our ideas about why crime
  happens

A flashback in The Killers 1946
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Causes for Crime Change

• 1930s Gangster films environment, inequality
• Late 40s-early 60s psychological reasons Psycho
  (1960)

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Reasons

• 1960s return to environmental causes of 30s
  Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
• 1980s drugs major factor Scarface (1983)

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Raftner 3 General Causes for Crime in Movies

• Environment
• Desire for better life
• Bad biology/mental illness

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Normal at Start

• Many films show criminals as good people
  driven to crime by conditions of their lives

Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek in Badlands 1974
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Bad Environment

• .

• Filmmakers favorite
• Allows them to encourage our identification with
  characters

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Raftner

• The bad-environment explanation takes the blame
  off criminals, enabling scriptwriters to glorify
  them, or at least to portray them as normal men
  and women, sinned against as well as sinning.
  (p. 54)

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Clip

• In this clip Wilson (Terrence Stamp) talks about
  his poor background and experience in jail in a
  way that charms a DEA agentand us!

Clip 1
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Aspiration

• Other films attribute crime to
• Desire for a better life
• Thieves who take pride in their criminal skills

Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek in After the Sunset,
2004
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What Crime Shown

• Ideological
• Movies emphasize murder
• Michael Welsh
• 24,000 homicides
• 56,000 workers died injuries/diseases from job
• Street crime 4 billion year
• White Collar 200 billion year (Rafter, 62)
• Serial killers rare
• Overemphasis on mental illness as cause

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Biology

• Paul Muni in Scarface 32 is lustful, violent,
  apelikea throwback to earlier evolutionary stage

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Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974
Sawyer family insane killers
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Favorite Diagnosis

• Psychopathology
• Photogenic
• Intriguing, even charming
• But no conscience/insane

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German Expressionism

• Originated use of movie psychosis
• Tortured mind expressed in fictional world
• Mise-en-scene dark/distorted

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920
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Film Noir

• Adapts expressionism to American film
• Crime stories in dangerous urban locales, ruled
  by desire and violence

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Noir Elements

• A nightmarish visual style drawn from German
  Expressionism
• Femmes fatales (deadly women), who manipulate the
  male investigator
• A surreal narrative logic more about intense
  desire than rational logic

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Critic Robert Sklar

• Noir films seem contained, enclosed, shadowy
  explorations of an interior landscape of mind and
  emotion quite novel in the extroverted American
  cinema.

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Noir Films Present

• Pessimistic view human nature
• Control with sex and violence
• Crime cant be contained

Basic Instinct 1992
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Double Indemnity

• In this clip Walter Neffs (Fred MacMurray)
  desire for Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanyck)
  leads him to commit murder for her.

Clip 2
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Writer Raymond Chandler/ Director Billy Wilder

• Neffs and Phylliss crime from environment
• Passion/violence response to
• Boring conformist job and marriage
• Insurance Company money is all that matters

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Throughout Double Indemnity

• Disastrous fate in language of modern industrial
  life
• Walter and Phyllis together straight down the
  line
• Murder on train using car
• Walter the machinery had started to move and
  nothing could stop it

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Consumption

• Consumption also
• Conformist
• Meaningless

Walter and Phyllis like robots in the supermarket
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Law and Order

• Most American films present crime as
• Explainable
• Controlled by authority figures (detectives,
  police)

Dirty Harry 1971
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Rational Investigation

• Before noir, 1930s detective films had featured
  smart, upstanding detectives who solved crimes
  with elaborate verbal logic.

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But Noir and What Rafter Calls Critical Films .
. .

• Crime
• Pervasive
• Out of control, or
• Unexplained

Forget it Jake, its Chinatown Jack Nicholson
doesnt get justice in Chinatown 1974
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Movies Cause Crime?

• Boyz N the Hood (1991)
• Audience violence 2 dead
• Taxi Driver (1975)
• John Hinkley Jr. shot President Reagan in 1980

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Evidence

• Media violence does increase aggressive behavior
• Short in duration
• Not all viewers influenced

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Seung-Hui Cho murders at Virgina Tech

• Influence of violent films?
• Similarities btw photos Cho sent to NBC and
  scenes from 2003 South Korean film 'Oldboy' were
  spotted by Virginia Tech Prof. Paul Harris. There
  was no reference to the film in Cho's notes or
  messages.

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A.O. Scott/NY Times

• Like guns, it seems certain movies in the wrong
  hands can pose a threat to public safety
• Millions entertained by spectacles of murder, but
  return to peaceful, sane lives

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Raftner

• Movie violence causes pleasure more than violence
• Viewers enjoy seeing violence controlled, Justice
  reestablished
• Dont want to emulate movie violence

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Summary

• Film causes for crime
• Environment
• Biology or psychology
• Better life
• Film Noir
• Desire crime out of control
• Effect of film violence
• Encourages those inclined to violence
• Most viewers want violence controlled

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Next Lecture Explicit ViolenceEnd of the
Production Code
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End of Lecture 3
Jennifer Lopez as Federal Agent Karen Sisco in
Out of Sight 1998