Film Genres

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Film Genres

• Film Noir

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What is film noir?

• Originally films made in the late 40s and early
  50s, shot in black-and-white and involving the
  issue of urban crime and order
• Film Noir (black film) was applied to these films
  by a French critic, Nino Franck in 1946

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What is film noir?

• In general film noir share two interrelated
  narrative-cinematic aspects
• Films are cinematically darker and more aesthetic
• Thematically more pessimistic and brutal in
  representing American urban life

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What is film noir?

• 1946 the year when film noir was born
• Darker in theme and visual style
• Robert Siodmaks The Killers (1946)
• Howard Hawkes, The Big Sleep (1946)

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What is film noir?

• Alfred Hitchcock, Notorious (1946)
• George Marshall, Blue Dahlia (1946)

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What is film noir?

• Tay Garnett, The Postman Always Rings Twice
  (1946)
• Robert Montgomery, Lady in the Lake

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What is film noir?

• What these 1946 films have in common
• Crime and criminal actions
• Investigation and revelation
• Illicit sexual relationship
• Intensive psychological impact on the viewer
• Dark tone in narrative and image
• Distinctive visual styles low-key lighting and
  high-contrast photography abstract and
  geometrical composition

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What is film noir?

• Robert Siodmaks The Killers plot summary
• In the small town of Brentwood, New Jersey lives
  an unassuming man known as Pete Lund, nicknamed
  the Swede. Only having lived in Brentwood for a
  year, not many in town know his background. Two
  thugs arrive in town stating openly that they are
  going to kill the Swede. Upon hearing the news,
  the Swede gives up, saying that he can no longer
  keep running.

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What is film noir?

• Following the murder of the Swede, John Reardon
  investigates on behalf of the insurance company
  in which the Swede had a small life insurance
  policy. In finding and speaking to people
  connected to the Swede's past, Reardon learns
  that he was an ex-boxer really named Ole
  Andersen. His murder seems to be connected to a
  woman by the name of Kitty Collins, who the Swede
  loved and would do anything for and who had
  criminal associates.

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What is film noir?

• When Reardon connects the Swede to an unsolved
  robbery from six years earlier which in turn is
  connected to the Swede's murder, Reardon, against
  the wishes of his superior, decides to try and
  retrieve the moneys from the robbery and in turn
  catch the killers. He has the assistance of
  Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky, an old friend of the
  Swede's. To find the money, Reardon has to find
  Kitty Collins, who seems to be the person in the
  middle of everything.

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Origins of film noir

• The conventions of Film noir are based on and
  linked to a variety of cinematic, narrative and
  ideological developments in the 1930s and 40s.
• The gangster and urban crime films set in the
  Depression era

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Origins of film noir

• Darker mood of anxiety and fear of the Depression
  era was reflected in the horror film such as
  Frankenstein (1931) informed the darker vision of
  film noir.

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Origins of film noir

• German Expressionism films highly abstract and
  painterly designs, high-contrast black-and-white
  photography, dark mood, and horror quality,
  brought to Hollywood by German filmmakers in
  exile in USA
• Determining factors of film noir in subject
  matters and visual styles
• Robert Wienes The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

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F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu A Symphony of Horror
(1922)
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Karl Heinz Martin, From Morn to Midnight
(1922)Murunau, Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Douglas
Sirk, E.A. Dupont, German emigrés brought to
Hollywood new visual idioms
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Origins of film noir

• Technological
• development in the 30s
• and 40s
• Improvement of Panchromatic film stock and camera
  lens
• More flexibility in lighting and depth of field
• Chiaro-scruo lighting only portions of the
  scree lit and the remainder in darkness.

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Origins of film noir

• Low contrast image in which harsh contrast
  between light and darkness is eliminated by
  multiple light sources lighting a scene.
• It is used in comedies and sitcoms.

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Origins of film noir

• High Key Lighting
• Multiple light sources create low-contrast and
  slightly overexposed images
• Film stock does not have to be fast and exposure
  does not have to be long sharply focused
  crisp

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Origins of film noir

• Low-key lighting
• Very bright, near white lights lighting only
  parts of a scene create high-contrast images
  brightly lit parts with black shadows
• Needs fast film stock

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Origins of film noir

• Overhead lighting
• An application of low-key lighting
• A strong single overhead light source create a
  dramatic image
• Need fast film stock

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Origins of film noir

• Hazy Back-lighting
• Another application of low-key lighting
• A strong rim light faces into the camera and
  create volumetric haze and eliminate lighting
  contrast

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Film Noir

• Crime, intrigue, and metal anxiety are depicted
  in these lighting techniques.
• Settings are dark and heavily shadowed urban
  milieu

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Film Noir

• Orson Welless A Touch of Evil (1958) one of the
  last classic film noirs
• Mexican narcotics officer investigates the murder
  of a building contractor in a car bomb explosion.
  He soon discovers that the American police
  captain in charge of the investigation is
  associated with a drug ring.

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Film Noir as a Postwar Genre

• Transformations in cultural and social attitudes
  after WWII
• Wartime experience of violence, death and
  disaster darker and more pessimistic world
  vision and dark tone of the film
• Millions of men fighting overseas and millions of
  women pressed into workforce changing views of
  sexuality and marriage
• Return to normalcy did not materialize after
  GIs homecomings

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Film Noir as a Postwar Genre

• Traditional masculine redeemer hero and
  domesticating heroine are replaced by new other
  character types - anxiety filled male hero,
  seductress, femme noire or femme fatale, who
  preys upon the hero

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Film Noir as a Cinematic Style

• Film noir is not a genre but a film style
• Because film noir was first of all a style,
  because it worked out its conflicts visually
  rather than thematically it was able to create
  artistic solutions to sociological problems.
  Paul Schrader
• Noir style has been adapted in many genres

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Film Noir as a Cinematic Style

• One of many noir SF SF with noir style
• Ridley Scott, Bladerunner (1982)
• Terry Gilliam, Brazil (1985)

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Film Noir as a Cinematic Style

• Romance film noir is twisted, shocking melodrama
  featuring femme noir or fatale and
  self-destruction
• Billy Wilders Sunset Boulevard (1950)
• Robert Altmans Thieves Like Us (1974)

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Film Noir as a Cinematic Style

• Documentary style noir
• Crime or intrigue taken place in dark urban areas
  is shown in semi-documentary style and often
  filmed on location featuring real events
• Alfred Hitchcocks The Wrong Man (1956)
• Billy Wilders Ace in the Hole (1951)

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Film Noir as a Cinematic Style

• Noir naturally branches out into Horror genre
  because of images stirring among the audience
  strong mental anxiety and fear
• Ridley Scotts Alien (1979)
• Alan Parkers Angel Heart (1987)

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Film Noir as a Cinematic Style

• Even some musicals adapt film noir cinematic
  styles
• Vincent Minellis Band Wagon (1953)
• Herbert Rosss Pennies from Heaven (1981)

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Film noir and Other Genres

• It is not only film noir style that has been
  reused in films of other genres
• Modernist samurai films are frequently associated
  with film noir crime, intrigue, violence, dark
  mood, anxiety effects, sexual seduction as well
  as noir visual effects

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Film noir and Other Genres

• Masahiro Shinodas modernist samurai film,
  Assassination (1964)
• Historical drama about a masterless samurai
  leader of a group of assassins, who changes his
  allegiances between the militias of the Tokugawa
  Shogunate and the Emperor, in the last turbulent
  years of the Tokugawa period.

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Violence and intrigue
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Dark mood and sense of anxiety
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Femme noir and seductive women