Film Noir

1
Film Noir

• Conventions

2
Plot

• Crime viewed from within criminals POV
• Violence, plot twists create anxiety
• Narrator cant be trusted
• Lack of clear resolution to plot
• Shifting alliances among characters lead to
  instability
• Often no clear moral structure moral ambiguity

3
Characters

• Often feel caught in a net entrapped by fate or
  their own desires

4
Protagonist

• Usually male to some degree alienated or
  obsessed
• Absorbs a lot of punishment with little gain
  often destroyed
• Often a private investigator or war veteran
• Sometimes an amnesiac

5
Femme Fatale

• Beautiful and dangerous, both predator and prey
• Strong, smart, and sexual
• Driven, independent, selfish
• gets the protagonist into bed and then into
  trouble
• Though strong, limited by being defined by male
  expectations
• Often fetishized camera lingers on her ankle,
  lips, etc.

6
Other Characters

• Criminals often sympathetic, subject to fate and
  circumstance
• Victims often not innocent themselves
• Police, judges often corrupt or at least morally
  ambiguous

7
Some Noir Themes

• No good deed goes unpunished
• A detached, ironic view is the only refuge
• Crime doesnt pay, but normal life is a
  soul-numbing straitjacket
• Character determines fate
• Though love might seem to be the only redeeming
  aspect of human existence, its not.

8
More Noir Themes

• Alienation rules
• Heroism is pointless
• Everyone and every social institution is corrupt
• Kicks count for something (the momentary
  exhilaration of revenge or violence is worth the
  inevitable price that must be paid)

9
Noir Style (Visual Motifs)

• Opposition of light and shadow shows
  instability, claustrophobia
• Low key lighting
• Highlights to accent objects or features
• Shadows of Venetian blinds, bars, grates,
  suggesting entrapment
• Mirrors, shadows, portraits (especially of women)
  suggest duplicity, duality, deception

10
More Visual Motifs and Style

• Use of greater depth of field (foreground and
  background equally focused)
• Wide angle lenses to accentuate grotesqueness of
  figures and faces
• Cuts between different angles, includeing ECU,
  low, high, all add to imbalance
• Camera movement slightsmall movements designed
  to upset balance of scene
• Voice-over narration

11
Settings and Visual Iconography

• Alleyways
• Rain-soaked streets (often of big cities)
• Nightclubs
• Police station
• Apartment (usually bleak)
• Nightmares or traumas in the heros mind
• Flashing neon signs
• Water imagery
• Images and repetition of telephones, newspapers,
  recorders attempts to connect with people,
  emphasizing alienation