Melodrama and Film Noir

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Melodrama and Film Noir

• 25.4.2008
• Niskanen

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Melodrama

• the word melodrama or melodramatic has been
  used in a derivative meaning
• suffering and virtuous heroine from the 19th c.
  novel and stage

• giving voice to womens feelings and
  frustrations?
• multiple readings by the audience possible gt
  feminist readings

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Conventions from 19th c. theater

• good vs. evil - dramatic conflict
• good triumphs in the end
• characters hero, heroine, villain
• over-abundance and pictorialism in esthetic, type
  characters, emotion
• episodic, action-packed plot, fate and
  co-incidence play a big part in the narrative
• These point to filmic melodrama, but not so much
  to all films labeled as womens films also they
  are characteristics of many action and crime
  films

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Lea Jacobs article

• looks not only the 1940s or 50s films mostly
  discussed in film theory, but the birth of the
  concept of melodramatic
• stage play situation, a striking impasse or
  confrontation, precede or follow reversal in plot
  - linear progression of the narrative is locked
• arbitrariness of the plot, co-incidence, fatality
• pictorial effects mark situations
• favors extreme situations
• moral extremes or opposites (Peter Brooks)
• wide range for motivation and resolution
• subordinates character to situation, passive
  protagonist (this relates to a lot of womens
  films)
• An Unseen Enemy, D.W. Griffith, 1912

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Film industry and melodrama

• early cinema serials
• early notion of melodrama covered many genres
  (crime, etc.)
• gradual refinement, many A film productions,
  higher production values
• New Woman vs. The Cult of True Womanhood
• 1930 on Production Code demands no direct
  depiction of illicit sex, prostitution, scenes of
  passion
• 1930s 40s womans film has these
  contradictions
• 1950s Douglas Sirk, Vincente Minnelli, Otto
  Preminger, Max Ophuls

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Academic study of melodrama

• influenced by Thomas Elsaessers article Tales
  of Sound and Fury, Observations on the Family
  Melodrama, 1972 Sirks films, Rebel without a
  Cause and other 50s melodramas used form, style,
  color, mise-en-scene to bring out (1) themes and
  issues of the films story, and (2) to address
  social and ideological issues
• Elsaesser draws on 19th c. literature, theater
  etc.
• in 1970s UK a renewed interest in Douglas Sirk,
  new marxist-psychonalysis-based film theopry,
  Bertolt Brechts ideas on distanciation
• melos, music, musical accompaniment of emotional
  turnpoints

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Academics 2

• women, domestic scenes and femininity as points
  of interest
• but also masculinity in crisis in melodramas
• womans film vs. melodrama? The concept weomans
  film often included genres like screwball
  comedy, musicals etc.

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Academics 3

• Ben Singer studies early silent cinema, such as
  serial queen films The Exploits of Elaine
  (1914-15), Ruth of the Rockies (1920), The Perils
  of Pauline etc., im age of New Woman modernity,
  activity, independence as opposed to the
  Victorian values of D.W. Griffith films - but
  both called melodramas
• according to Singer melodrama is a cluster
  concept covering many genres

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Academics 4

• Daniel Gerould characters as tools of the plot,
  not deep the idea is to draw intense feelings
  out of the audience
• pathos, sentiment, love, maternal feelings, envy,
  vengeance

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Now, Voyager, dir. Irving Rapper1942, w/ Bette
Davis

• Charlotte Vale is a spinster dominated by her
  mother
• is liberated by a psychiatrist who sends her on a
  boat cruisearound the world

• has been interpreted as representing womens
  fantasies

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Douglas Sirk

• Written on the Wind, 1956
• Imitation of Life, 1959
• All That Heaven Allows, 1955 (hugely influenced
  Far From Heaven, Todd Haynes, 2002)

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Feminist/psychoanalytic study

• Laura Mulvey article Visual Pleasure and
  Narrative Cinema". Screen 16(3) 6-18.
• Christine Gledhill
• Lea Jacobs
• Pam Cook
• Barbara Creed
• Mary Ann Doane
• Molly Haskell
• E. Ann Kaplan writes also about women in film
  noir
• Barbara Klinger
• Linda Williams

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Film Noir

• the term invented by French post-war critics
• refers to 1940s and 50s crime/thriller films
• neo-noir (newer noirish films)
• plot a doomed relationships in a corrupt and
  criminal world, tragic ending
• characters male lead (cop, private eye, war
  veteran, government operator...) 2 women, one
  responsible, the other a femme fatale
• fear, paranoia, sexual desire, claustrophobia,
  paranoia
• city, night, dark, neon lights often L.A.
• style low key high-contrast lighting (no filler
  light used), night-for-night shooting, deep
  shadows, odd camera angles, framing the
  characters visually

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Narrative structure

• first-person voice-over common
• flashbacks
• multiple view-points

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Sources, influences

• U.S. hard-boiled crime fiction Dashiell Hammett,
  Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Cornell
  Woolrich, David Goodis, W.R. Burnett - pulp
  fiction, paperback books and special magazines
  (for ex. Black Mask)
• these writers developed the wise-cracking, tough
  vernacular language, used in film noir dialogue
• psychoanalysis and Freudian ideas, for ex. dream
  sequences, v-o narration
• existentialism
• war, post-war return of veterans, cold war
• E. Ann Kaplan and other feminist scholars
  post-war return to patriarchal values, where film
  noir becomes the terrain of fight investigation
  of women -plots

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Film Noir and the film industry

• often labeled as a B genre
• The Production Code influenced depiction of crime
  and sexuality, but stimulated visual style and
  writing of dialogue
• close contact with the gangster genre, a modern
  society and themes
• style influenced by German Expressionism and the
  move of German filmmakers to Hollywood, Universal
  studios horror films, and certain 30s poetic
  French films (Renoir, Duvivier, Carne)
• started with Stranger on the Third Floor, dir.
  Boris Ingster, 1940 RKO B-movie and The Maltese
  Falcon, dir. John Huston, 1941 (Hitchcocks
  Rebecca, 1940?)

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Film industry 2

• Poverty Row studio noirs, Edgar G. Ulmers
  Detour, 1945
• Paul Kerr claims that film noir style was born
  from the lower budget of B films (night-for-night
  shooting, use of stock footage, need to separate
  B from A in theater double screenings)
• docu-noirs gt TV cop shows, radio noir (Dragnet)
• many film noir makers were harassed by the HUAC
  hearings

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Double Indemnity, 1944, dir. Billy Wilderbased
on a James M. Cain novel, screenplay by Raymond
Chandler, w/ Barbara Stanwyck

• Walter Neff, insurance salesman
• Phyllis Dedrickson
• Mr. Dedrickson
• Lola, Mr. Dedrichson's daughter
• Zaquetti, Lolas boyfriend
• Keyes, Neff's colleague and friend

• Phyllis and Walter make Dedrickson sign on a life
  insurance policy and then murder him making it
  look like an accident

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Style or genre?

• Paul Schrader and Raymond Durgnat suggest that
  Film Noir is rather a film movement, like Italian
  Neo-realism, than a definite genre
• Schrader (1) style, rainy streets, doom-laden
  narration, compositional tension instead of
  action, oblique lines, fractured light (2) film
  noir films are structured around a stop in social
  upward movement of the 30s - frontierism turned
  into paranoia and claustrophobia
• James Damico f.n is a style, with the style as
  iconography
• series, cycle, sub-genre claims also made

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Later noir, Neo-noir

• Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich, 1955
• Samuel Fuller, 1960s B noir
• Klute, dir. Alan J. Pakula, 1971
• The French Connection, William Friedkin, 1971
• The Long Goodbye, Robert Altman, 1973
• Chinatown, Roman Polanski, 1974
• Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese, 1976
• Blade Runner, Ridley Scott, 1982
• American Gigolo, Paul Schrader, 1980
• Body Heat, Lawrence Kasdan, 1981
• Curtis Hanson, L.A. Confidential, 1997
• Also Brian De Palma, David Lynch, David Mamet,
  Coen brothers, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Mann,
  David Cronenberg...

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Noir influences on cinema

• Citizen Kane, dir. Orson Welles, 1947
• Touch of Evil, 1958, Orson Welles
• Alfred Hitchcock Vertigo, 1958
• French Nouvelle vague of 1960s, French policier
  films

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Films as melodrama/noir

• Laura, dir. Otto Preminger, 1944
• Mildred Pierce, Michael Curtiz, 1945
• sacrificing mother, hides a crime (noir),
  independent job
• The Reckless Moment, Max Ophuls, 1949