how to write an essay on film noir

• Film Theory

What is Film Noir? A Brief History with Examples from Cinema

Y ou’ve probably heard the term ‘film noir’ hundreds of times. You may associate it with detectives and femme fatales running around in black and white. But what is film noir, really? Well, it turns out it’s not so clear cut, but there are some elements of the style that are fairly obvious. Let’s get into it.

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Define Noir

What is film noir, exactly .

Is it a style or a genre ? Cine freaks and professionals alike, can’t seem to decide. But we came up with the best definition we could. And then we'll jump into a few examples from classic cinema. 

FILM NOIR DEFINITION

What is film noir.

Film noir  is a stylized genre of film marked by pessimism, fatalism, and cynicism. The term was originally used in France after WWII, to describe American thriller or detective films in the 1940s and 50s. Though, Hollywood’s film noir stretches back to the 1920s. Film noir literally translates to “black cinema” and French critics used it to describe Hollywood movies that were saturated with darkness and pessimism not seen before.

It’s hard to say if it's is a genre or style, and the elements of noir listed below do not  all have to be present for the film to be considered noir. But they are extremely common with this style. 

COMMON ELEMENTS OF FILM NOIR

• Anti-hero protagonist
• Femme fatale
• Tight, concise dialogue
• High-contrast lighting
• Post-war disillusionment

Film noir originated in a time of angst

This style of filmmaking was characterized by a painful time in history. Cynicism and pessimism from the Great Depression were ingrained in the American psyche. Then came WWII, which sent many men to the frontlines while many women took up the jobs in their absence.

After the war, there was a period uncertainty. Men returned from the battlefield with trauma, and the world lost quite a bit of innocence. Upon their return, the theory goes, men found women had shifted their role substantially. Housewives had become workers themselves so there was a perceived disruption to the gender roles that had been in place for decades.

In response to this insecurity, film noir gives us tales of men being taken advantage of by powerful and sometimes sinister women. Again, this merely the theory about how and why film noir became such a prominent style/genre in the post-war period.

The truth is that many of the iconic film noir movies that Hollywood produced in the '40s were based on novels written in the '30s. So, it can be argued that WWII had nothing to do with the source material but that it might explain the popularity of the films made later.

Examples from Cinema

Film noir examples.

What characterizes cynicism in cinema? Is it dialogue dripping with sarcasm and mordancy? Or is it simply the high contrast lighting in each scene. Notice the bleak feel of all three of these classic film noirs.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Starring Humphrey Bogart, this mystery noir made a lasting impact with its spectacular cinematography and menacing use of shadows. 

Humphrey Bogart bringing noir to the forefront

Laura (1944).

Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, and Vincent Price star in this noir classic that boasts incredible acting and a staple of the genre. 

By the mid 40's, more noir started popping up

The blue dahlia (1946).

An  Academy Award nominee for best original screenplay , this murder mystery noir features the popular pairing of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. The Blue Dahlia is a story about a sailor who comes home only to discover his wife is having an affair and his son has died due to his wife’s alcoholism. It is one of many noirs echoing the disillusionment of wartime. 

Film noir captured America’s cynicism in Blue Dahlia

Touch of evil (1958).

According to many critics, film noir ended with the 1958 release of one of  Orson Welles' best movies , Touch of Evil .  

Today, there are films that are influenced by the genre (or style)...

Mulholland Drive (2001)

It seems like almost anything David Lynch does echoes noir. Mulholland Drive's look and feel was surely influenced by film noir. 

Lynch’s mind-bending, Mulholland Drive is surely noir influenced

Noir has a touch of a madness in each scene. The stark lighting and heavy use of flashbacks all capture the headiness of the era, and the frequent murderous plots only heighten the pessimism.

There are specific lighting techniques that build these grave worlds, read our up next article.

Related Posts

• What is Chiaroscuro? →
• A History of the French New Wave →
• German Expressionism — Pre-Film Noir Darkness →

What is Chiaroscuro? 

Interested in going deeper? Maybe darker? Our next post comes just a little southeast of our French friend noir, and explains this Italian lighting technique and how its used to create the noir style. Learn about chiaroscuro below. 

Up Next: Chiaroscuro lighting →

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Embrace Noir Conventions To Improve Your Writing

• by Fred Johnson
• May 15, 2017

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Few genres have such a distinctive look and feel as noir fiction. A successor of ‘hard-boiled’ or ‘pulp’ fiction, you’ll know the conventions of noir even if you’ve never read  The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep – seedy urban underbellies, trench-coat-clad PIs, cigarettes, femme fatales, whiskey, flickering streetlights casting white pools on Chicago streets, nihilistic emptiness, loveless sex, unhappy endings. It’s a real barrel of laughs.

Today, noir stands as the slightly smug older brother of the crime genre . He’s smart, philosophical, literary, engaging, and incredibly unpleasant. He’s not much fun at parties. But he can teach you a thing or two.

Even if you like your stories cheery and your characters pleasant, noir’s methods of storytelling, its history, and its cohesive merging of thematic and formal concerns can help make you a better writer. Here’s what noir can teach you about storytelling.

Protagonists don’t have to be heroic (or even likeable)

Let’s look at one incredibly beloved fictional protagonist: Harry Potter. Harry, at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone , is immediately introduced to the reader as a sympathetic character. We learn early on that his aunt and uncle are incredibly unpleasant, that his parents are dead, and that he sleeps in a cupboard. As J.K. Rowling’s series continues, Harry develops, makes friends, becomes a wizard, and, though he has a few moments of brattishness, remains a pleasant, easy-to-root-for hero. He defeats evil, stays loyal to his friends, and does what’s right.

Now, what if instead of all that, Harry was a philandering alcoholic with a history of drug smuggling? What if the first thing he did when he arrived at Hogwarts, age eleven, was isolate himself from the other children and smash in Malfoy’s skull, just because he felt like it? What if he refused to fight Lord Voldemort because good and evil are arbitrary and idealistic judgements that have no relevance in a vast and uncaring universe? What if the story wasn’t so much about Harry overcoming evil as it was about Harry getting wound up in some vague and violent domestic mystery and ultimately spending most of his time drinking, smoking, stewing in self-loathing, and entering destructive, hate-fueled relationships with other selfish, morally bankrupt characters? What if, instead of seeing Harry develop into a proud and noble wizard, we instead witnessed his moral, psychological, and physical decline?

Well, this abandoned plan for Harry Potter and the No-Good Dame may not have made it past editing, but that’s not to say it wouldn’t have been an effective piece of writing. The great thing about noir is that you’re challenged as a writer to craft characters who are irredeemably unpleasant and yet also compelling – characters who the reader is simultaneously repelled by and drawn toward. If you can make a reader root for your troubled, violent, and cynical protagonist despite themselves, then you’ve succeeded as a noir writer.

Noir presents the logical extension of the Byronic hero template and offers a chance for writers to focus on humanizing someone who, in a non-noir story, would likely be an antagonist or a monster. It forces writers to think about the conventions of heroic storytelling in new ways and, through its various subversions, muddies lines between the standard character archetypes. If you’re thinking about this sort of stuff, noir has already helped you develop as a writer.

Endings don’t have to be happy

You’ve probably guessed this already, but my re-written Harry Potter book doesn’t look to be headed anywhere happy. Endings in noir fiction are interesting because, like Shakespeare’s plays, they don’t tie up the loose ends – major plotlines are often relegated to the shadows behind the foregrounded moral/psychological/physical states of the characters, and even characters who succeed in their goals can find they’ve actually lost out in an existential sense.

In The Maltese Falcon , for example, Sam Spade manages to solve the book’s central mystery through coercion, bullying, and seduction. It turns out his love interest is the murderer, and he hands her over knowing it could easily mean her death. Even the police are a bit taken aback, and Sam’s adoring assistant sees him as a monster. Then the story ends. Hooray?

As with the genre’s love for unpleasant characters, the real fun here comes in trying to craft a story that doesn’t build toward climactic success . When the world is acknowledged as a dark and unjust place, there’s no victory in re-establishing the status quo. Noir characters often find that achieving their goal is just another form of defeat, while those who do ‘win’ tend to find salvation in escaping – maybe they give up on the case, run off with the murderer, or kick the bucket.

Frank Miller’s Sin City series is so noir that it’s nearly pastiche, but That Yellow Bastard is a great example. Here, hero ex-cop Hartigan accepts death, and the ruination of his reputation because it’s the only way to keep his lover safe.

Obviously, this is hardly a new phenomenon – Greek mythology has been murdering its heroes for centuries – but in crime fiction (a genre known for its adherence to commercial conventions), hollow victories, shattered protagonists, and the success of the villain can reframe standard narrative structures and subvert reader expectation in startling and memorable ways.

As a writer, the knowledge that your ending doesn’t have to be happy, or even climactic, allows for a tremendous sense of freedom. Crafting a lose-lose situation as an ending allows you to double down on your book’s dominant themes without worrying about sacrificing integrity for the sake of placating readers .

Better, unhappy endings force you to think about why endings work (or don’t). Why is it that some of our most famous and celebrated works of fiction – Hamlet , The Grapes of Wrath , Anna Karenina , Jude the Obscure – end in tragedy? What is it about tragic or nihilistic endings that strikes such a resounding chord?

Form and style can reflect themes

All the best works of art unify form and theme in a cohesive manner. There’s a reason Nabokov’s Lolita works best as a book, why Pollock’s paintings don’t work on-screen, why Breaking Bad would make a lousy film, and why Dark Souls could never be anything but a game. Exploring how form and style can reflect theme is one of the best things you can do to improve as a writer.

In written fiction, noir conventions manifest in several ways: prose is often sparse, stilted, and to-the-point; narration is often first-person, allowing authors to play around with unreliable narration; sex and violence are often portrayed matter-of-factly and without adornment; descriptions are physical and neglect flowery language; metaphor and simile conjure crude or profane images; and use of dialect helps root characters in deep, urban underbellies they have little chance of ever escaping. Smart noir writers play on the genre’s preoccupation with cyclical or stagnant human movement in interesting formal ways – as in a good sitcom, characters will often end the book where they began (only sadder and more alone than ever).

Embrace the deep end

One of the great joys of noir characters is their detachment from the regular social forces that keep us in check. The isolation of your typical alcoholic noir detective or gambling-addicted prostitute allows you to let your characters grow organically – you’ve taken everything from them and backed them into a corner – now let them loose.

Andrew Pepper, in an essay in The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction , put it best:

Nobody in noir fiction has a mother, nobody has children, nobody has someone that they love and care about. They live by themselves, for themselves.

Lots of writers’ advice regarding character development focuses on ensuring your characters have believable motivations – Kurt Vonnegut famously advised, “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” – and how better to boil this down than to enlist a cast of characters who fight only for themselves?

The genre’s bleak conventions allow you to mercilessly throw your characters into the deep end to see whether they’ll sink or swim. You don’t have to carefully balance a character’s good and bad traits or ensure they have a viable means of narrative progression – let them fight for it, kill for it, betray their own mothers for it. Noir allows you to push past the cosmetic façade of your characters – their jobs, their family, their dreams, their magical adventure, that fight with Susan from the office they had – and go straight for the throat. This is a great thing to keep in mind for fiction of all types; after all, it’s only when your characters have suffered that you can really know them.

Applying the lessons of noir

Noir is, in many ways, a bit of a relic. It was parodied almost as soon as it emerged in the 1940s and has remained in the public consciousness mainly due to neo-noir film and TV (most recently in shows like True Detective and the TV adaptation of Fargo ) . That said, noir seems to inexorably attract some of the best and most accomplished writers of crime fiction – its foregrounding of setting, philosophical preoccupation, edgy nihilism, and tortured antiheroes invites a daring and intelligent approach.

Even if you have no interest in writing noir, writing a few short stories in the genre can be a great way to learn more about how plots are structured, how characters develop, and how form and style can reflect theme. You’ll find that you’re more conscious of genre conventions, narrative templates, and character archetypes, more suspicious of traditional heroes, and less sold on the idea of an unambiguously happy ending. It’s also a great genre to explore in terms of the relationship between written and visual art – it’s not often a genre appears so cohesively across film and literature, with each medium influencing the other.

For more on how unfamiliar genres could elevate your writing, check out Why Is Steampunk So Popular? and The 3 Golden Rules Of Writing A Western . Or, if you want to try your hand at noir, try How To Write A Better Murder Mystery Victim and How To Write A Damn Good Man . What’s your favorite noir fiction, and in what works or genres do you see its influence at work? Let me know in the comments!

• Action , Antagonist , Case study , Characters , Dialogue , Exercises , Fiction , Genre , Murder , Mystery , Story settings , World building , Writing tools

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Fred Johnson

4 thoughts on “embrace noir conventions to improve your writing”.

Loved this article. So where does noir start in terms of age group writing? I write YA, which I think is an ideal point as many teenagers like to imagine themselves as isolated lowlife and turn themselves into anti-heroes even if just to preserve their sanity, and teen-fatales haunted me through high school, along with permanent suspicion and a rejection of happy endings. I don’t think we’re far from Gothic here either.

Hi Pete, I’m really glad you enjoyed the post. I think you’re right to think that noir would appeal to teen readers, but I think the difficulty comes in finding the balance between the edgy, dark, teen-friendly aesthetic of noir and the genre’s overtly mature themes and sometimes complex philosophical preoccupations. Sad endings, dark themes, sex, violence, and nihilism are certain to appeal to teens (despite what their parents say), but teen protagonists also tend to have to be at least a bit “cool” (at least in my experience!). I definitely think you’re onto something!

This was great, Fred! Informative and comprehensive. I tend to write in this style a lot and never knew that it was expressly noir. While looking around for examples of noir dialogue, I ended up here. Do you have any favorites in this genre you could recommend? I just finished Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey and want more. Anyway, great post and keep it up with the great content.

Hi. Thanks for writing this. It was very informative. My history in writing is based on 30+ years of playing and running D&D games. I don’t consider myself a “DM” but a “Storyteller where my Players are Characters in the story that is writing itself.” I do have plans to write a novel based on my games, but currently that is a bit more than I can chew right now. I recently got a spark of inspiration to dabble in Noir. I have some seeds of a Noir type Horror short story rattling around in my noggin. It may also have some Lovecraftian elements, with a trip to Egypt and a Mummy and the main Character being a Sacrifice at the end. There may also be a Succubus involved. I just started typing all these ides up so there may be some elements being cut.

This is the first time I have thought about going “Full Noir” as a genre. For my D&D Games I have added in Horror Elements as I grew up watching the old Hammer Films on Saturday Afternoons.

My question is how well does Noir marry with Horror and Lovecraft in particular. When I read his stuff it seems it feels almost like Noir. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.

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Cinema as Pleasure Principle

Film Noir: A Study in Narrative Openings, Part 1

Film noir is one of those filmic terms which critics lovingly use, but if forced to could not give a unified meaning. Like other borrowed terms (mise en scène, genre, realism), when applied to film the definition becomes hazy. Film noir has been referred to as a genre, a cycle, a movement, a mood, and a style. In a more recent study James Naremore refers to film noir as belonging to a history of “ideas” tied to “commercial strategies and aesthetic ideologies,” an idea we have “projected into the past” (as a retro genre term, like horror, which is usually referred to critically prior to its use by the industry as a term, i.e. pre-1930). Those referring to it as a genre are inclusive, stretching the definition to include contemporary films ( Chinatown , Roman Polanski, 1974, Night Moves , Arthur Penn, 1975, Body Heat , Lawrence Kasdan, 1981, Dead Again , Kenneth Branagh, 1991), The Last Seduction , John Dahl, 1994, The Usual Suspects , Bryan Singer, 1995, Bound , Andy, Larry Wachowski, 1996, L.A. Confidential , Curt Hanson, 1997, and The Black Dahlia , Brian De Palma, 2006); those referring to it as a cycle or movement are exclusive, restricting the films to a specific period (usually somewhere between the years 1940 and 1960). Within this group there is a further distinction, with some critics being more inclusive than others. When defined as a mood the films are selected cross generically ( The Lost Weekend , Billy Wilder, 1945/The Problem Picture, Leave Her to Heaven , John Stahl, 1945/Melodrama, Val Lewton’s nine RKO films from 1942 to 1946/Horror, Pursued , Raoul Walsh, 1947/Western, Beat the Devil , John Huston, 1954/Comedy, Bladerunner , Ridley Scott, 1982/Science Fiction, Sin City , Tarantino/Rodriguez 2005/Science-Fiction/Animation. If one were to make a list of every film referred to as film noir by one critic or another the total would certainly exceed 300.

My predilection is to define film noir as a specific period, a movement, between the years 1940 and 1958, which gives weighted balance to social/cultural issues and industry factors (post-World War 2 malaise/uncertainty, changes in the family structure, Cold War paranioa, exodus of German/Austrian talent to the US during the rise of Nazism, etc.). There is little reason to go over this area since it has been treaded over to death. It is important, however, in my structural account of film noir openings, to discuss it in an historical context. I have decided to narrow my area of study to the years 1940 to 1950 –which could be considered as the classic period (or moment) of film noir. My reason here is that this period is more representative of the classic film noir because it remains closer to its original sources and impetus and had not yet attained the status of retro/neo-noir. (See Paul Schrader’s seminal article on the film noir for a list of the motivational factors and phases.)

Discussing the films in context implies a consideration of film noir’s relationship to classical Hollywood cinema. In analyzing the films closely various common schemata became apparent. Contextualizing them only seemed natural.

My decision to study film noir openings was not approached a priori but discovered itself when a concerted viewing of over forty film noir revealed a pattern of forceful and emphatic openings. Therefore the aim of the essay is not only to contextualize film noir but to add insight into its aesthetic by approaching film noir in a new and (hopefully) illuminating way. I will elaborate on my definition of “opening” a little later.

To define film noir as classical or anti-classical is a risky endeavor. A case in point is David Bordwell’s writings on the subject. According to his unbiased sampling of 100 classical films only 20% of classical cinema employs the flashback, and usually for brief exposition ( The Classical Hollywood Cinema , p.42). How does film noir fit in to this model? Realizing Bordwell’s shifting paradigm which allows for large variances of “bound alternatives,” both linear and non-linear narrative structures are to be considered as part of the classical style. [1]

This is understandable, since both linear and non linear narrative structure have appeared in classical cinema, but it is also apparent that the flashback structure is used more often, and elaborately, in the film noir. Hence it is a schemata more common to the film noir than, say, the comedy. Does this make film noir less classical?

Bordwell discusses film noir under the section “Bounds of Difference” and lists four ways in which film noir is seen to challenge classical cinema ( The Hollywood Classical Cinema , p.76). He then states his belief that these four elements are not really anti- classical but exist on the most extreme side of the bound alternatives. He concludes: “These films blend causal unity with a new realistic and generic motivation, and the result no more subverts the classical film than crime fiction undercuts the orthodox novel” (p.77). In his book Narration in the Fiction Film he is even clearer on this:

In sum, film noir is not outside the pale, as many of its admirers prefer to think. It is a clearly codified option within classicism, a unified set of syuzhet tactics and stylistic features no more disruptive of classical principles than the conventions of genres like the musical or the melodrama (p.198).

I agree with Bordwell in this respect. Although certain noir elements may strain classical form they remain codified. Therefore the motivation for the deviant schemata still falls under one of the four pertaining to classical cinema: compositional, realistic, intertextual, or artistic ( The Hollywood Classical Cinema , p.19). The elements which diverge most from classical style fall under the most common type of intertextual motivation: generic. Hence a typical downbeat noir ending is no more anti-classical than the song and dance which interupts the narrative in a musical or the direct camera address in the 1930s ‘Anarchistic comedy’ (according to Henry Jenkins, a form of comedy derived from the ‘Vaudeville Aesthetic’).

So why is it that film noir is seen by many as a challenge to classical style? The answer lies in an earlier comment: that most noir schemata exist on the most extreme side of the ‘bound alternative.’ Take for example film noir’s consistent and complex use of the flashback, its (at times) baffling narrative structure, its intricate and symbol laden lighting patterns, compositions, and camera movements, its ambiguous morality, and its assault on clearly defined story/character motivation. These elements remain within the bounds of classicism because they are motivated realistically and generically, but they appear anti-classical because they counter the dominant style and hence force the spectator to work harder by searching for less used or more complex schemata. Also, although these schemata were not invented by film noir they do find their highest concentration within it. To quote Bordwell:

Of course, the classical style defines certain spectatorial activities as salient, and the historical dominance of that style has so accustomed us to the activities that audiences may find other schemata more burdensome ( Classical , p.8).

Bordwell’s inclusive system may lead one to ask the question, if indeed classicism encompasses such broad stylistic variance then is it really saying anything as a classification? Defining classical cinema is not an easy task. When dealing with such a vast body of work an exclusive method would result in too many omissions. The inclusive method, while saying less about individual films, remains the only system capable of managing such a vast undertaking. I have accepted Bordwell’s system, faults and all, because of its implications. Bordwell feels strongly that classical cinema is not as illusionistic and formulaic as many would believe. Watching classical cinema involves the spectator in an active process where deductions and inferences are made based on incoming information. This is a participation necessary to the completion of the artwork. Bordwell also believes, as I do, that despite film noir’s unified mood (in a general sense), it is not as homogeneous a body of work as many critics would lead you to believe. An example is the fine essay by J.A. Place and L.S. Peterson, “Some Visual Motifs of the Film Noir which tends to homogenize the visual style of film noir (concentrating on lighting and composition), while acknowledging that they are ‘diverse films’ that can not be grouped together through “pat political or sociological explanations” (p. 325).

Bordwell’s definition of classicism ranges far enough to include the baroque/mannerist strain of any art form. Other genre critics, notably Jack Shadoian in Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster/Crime Film and Tom Schatz in Hollywood Genres have discussed the evolutional quality inherent in film cycles and genres. Each genre/cycle has various stages it undergoes, from the formative stage where conventions are realized, to the classical stage where they are honed and perfected, to a baroque stage where formal and stylistic experimentation occurs, to a final reflexive and parodic stage. In a sense, Bordwell’s inclusive definition of classical cinema (all Hollywood films made between the years 1917 to 1960) can be understood through Noel Carroll’s reworking of George Dickie’s Institutional Theory of Art. Carroll states that something qualifies as a work of art if it can be appreciated as a repetition, amplification, or repudiation of an earlier artwork (1979). With respect to Bordwell any film which repeats, amplifies, or repudiates classicism, while remaining within the said parameters, belongs within the classical style. In effect, this becomes the bound alternative.

In discussing classical narration Bordwell says: “Typically, the opening and closing of the film are the most self conscious, omniscient, and communicative passages” ( Narration in Fiction Film , p.160). Keeping in mind film noir’s tenuous relationship with classicism I aim to discuss the noir opening and how it is an amplification of the typical classical opening. All openings in classical narration are important, but in film noir they seem to take on an added importance, thereby remaining within the classical paradigm but amplifying it. The importance may rest on several levels: dramatic (quickly pulling us into the diegesis), narrational (retarding/withholding information or setting the story in motion), stylistic (setting the tone for the balance of the film), and thematic (revealing the themes and currents underlying the film). Marc Vernet describes the opening of film noirs as being marked by a disarming ‘quietude’ which seems paradoxical when compared to the violence and brutality which follows. “Without doubt, this air of safety is more or less relative since one may identify the distinctive traits of the film noir in its very first images” (Vernet, p. 3). Of course not all film noirs come shooting out of the starting gate. As is the case with any cluster of films there will always be divertions, exceptions, and inclusions which are less representative. To quote Jack Shadoian:

The gangster/crime genre is an involved system of family relationships. Specific films tend to violate, extend, adapt, and sometimes dismiss the conventions that in part color and motor them even as they are evoked and put into play. (p. x)

Returning to the earlier discussion of Bordwell’s broad definition of classicism, if you replace the words “gangster/crime genre” with “classical Hollywood cinema” this quote serves the Bordwell/Carroll parallelism of repetition, amplification, and repudiation very well.

Before beginning the analysis a definition of what I mean by “opening” is in order. In trying to come up with a working definition I attempted to keep it as simple and sensible as possible by allowing the openings to describe themselves. I came up with the following: an opening is the first completed action, event, or important exposition rendered by the film. For example, the train ambush in White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949), the murders in The Dark Mirror (Robert Siodmak, 1948), and The Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak, 1946), the hired killing in This Gun For Hire (Frank Tuttle, 1942), and the pardoning of Roy Earle in High Sierra (Raoul Walsh, 1941). Although the variances are great in terms of length (from 45 seconds to 17 minutes) and manner of assembly (one shot/several shots, one scene/several scenes) they are almost always clearly demarcated by fades, dissolves, or wipes and usually have a microcosmic Aristotlean structure (beginning, middle, and end and, yes Godard, in that order).

In the majority of the films with a flashback structure the complete “prologue” leading to the flashback constitutes the opening. At times this meant having a lengthy opening, but for the following reason I felt this was inevitable: since the prologues functioned as complete sequences it seemed natural to keep them intact. Subsequently (with the exception of Knock on Any Door , Nicholas Ray, 1949) I could not find a comfortable “out” point. What would become of the remaining portion of the prologue? The most difficult film to establish an opening for was Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945). The brief 35 second murder scene which opens the film may appear to be a cohesive scene, an opening, but the manner in which it fuses to the next scene, in tone and temporal order, suggests otherwise; and, once the subsequent scene begins it must be followed to its conclusion: the beginning of the flashback.

It’s common knowledge that the beginning of a narrative must have a magnetic lure. In discussing the insulation and “public privacy” accorded to us by the darkened theatre house V.F. Perkins suggests that film is self consciously aware of the psychological distance between the film world and the real world “…by allowing the spectator time at the beginning and end of the movie to shed and reassume his self consciousness” (Perkins, p.134). Indeed many films draw us into their world with slow, inviting camera movements, usually beginning from afar and then moving forward (sometimes in conjunction with dissolves), often literally bringing us into the diegesis through the frame of a window or door: The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935), Journey Into Fear (Norman Foster, 1943), The Big Clock (John Farrow, 1948), Conflict (Curtis Bernhardt, 1945), Nocturne (Edwin L. Marin, 1946), Body and Soul (Robert Rossen, 1947), Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955), Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). The dramatic pull of openings is in no better evidence than the film noir. Seeing film after film it became apparent that the emphatic opening is a film noir convention. (And my study did not include The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946), and Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)! Based on my findings the openings can be divided into four general types:

Group A consists of films with a flashback structure. It is subdivided into two types: the framed flashback (Group A1), where we begin in the present, go to an extended flashback and then return to the conclusion in the present (the classic A B A structure), and the interspersed flashback (Group A2), where the narrative oscillates between the present and the past. The majority of the framed flashbacks are of the A B A variety. The transitions from present to past and back are clearly demarcated by a dissolve, wipe, or fade, and from a story standpoint we never actually leave the initial location (a police station in D.O.A. , Rudolph Maté, 1949, The Dark Past , Rudolph Maté, 1948, and Murder, My Sweet , Edward Dmytryk, 1944, an armored truck in Criss Cross , Robert Siodmak, 1949, and a swimming pool in Sunset Boulevard , Billy Wilder, 1950) because the flashback has taken place inside a character’s mind. Although cued subjectively, by the lead protagonist, once the flashback begins the narration takes on an objective or omniscient point of view. As Bordwell says:

Character memory is simply a convenient immediate motivation for a shift in chronology; once the shift is accomplished, there are no constant cues to remind us that we are supposedly in someone’s mind. ( Classical , p.43)

The variances within the second type, the interspersed, depend on the number of times the narration returns to the present. The slight variances from the A B A model will be mentioned in context.

The films from Group B1 maintain a linear narrative in accordance with classical Hollywood style. All the openings are revelatory in some way. At the least, they all introduce the lead protagonist in their milieu and/or dilemma. Many of them go further by revealing important emotional and psychological character traits and a few go a step further by interweaving them with the theme(s) of the film. In classical Hollywood style (if you want a message call Western Union) this is motivated by the need to start and move the story forward (narrationally).

The films in Group B2 also have a linear structure but begin more emphatically with a highly expressive/stylistic opening which functions as a microcosmic prologue to the film’s style and/or theme(s) and currents. In these openings thematic and stylistic revelation dominate over character/story revelation.

Since space prohibits a close reading of all the openings I have selected one or two representative films from each group which I will discuss in depth in Part 1 of the essay ( The Dark Past , Sorry, Wrong Number , This Gun For Hire , White Heat , The Set-Up , The Letter ), and will then continue with a greater sampling of films treated in less detail, in the second part of this essay ( Journey Into Fear , Murder, My Sweet , The Strange Love of Martha Ivers , Body and Soul , Criss Cross , Champion , D.O.A. , Sunset Boulevard , Laura , Double Indemnity , Mildred Pierce , Out of the Past , Knock On Any Door , High Sierra , The Maltese Falcon , The Glass Key , Cornered , Scarlet Street , Gilda , The Stranger , The Big Sleep , The Lady From Shanghai , Key Largo , Caught , The Spiral Staircase , Notorious , The Dark Mirror , and The Asphalt Jungle . The thrust of my analysis will be to describe the action and formal elements of the opening and interpret them in terms of stylistic and thematic intent. Broken down, there are general questions I asked of all the openings: what can we infer from them and what is the driving motivation behind them? For the latter question I was guided by Bordwell’s system: 1) compositional: common sense elements which are required for a particular narrative to function, for example, “a story involving a theft requires a cause for the theft and an object to be stolen” (p. 19) 2) realistic: the plausability factor 3) intertextual: factors relating to the conventions operating within that type of art, with generic being the most common, and 4) artistic: when aspects of the art form call attention to itself through technical virtuosity, showmanship, or strategies that expose the ‘invisibility’ of classical style through reflexivity, parody, etc. (Classical, p.21-23). In support of and in addition to these motivational factors I employed a triad of broad semantic and syntactical parameters: narrational (when an element relates directly to the plot and its ordering), sensational (an element which is less concerned with plot than spectacle and exploitation), and reverberational (elements which are laid out for the expressed purpose of setting up (or foreshadowing) a mood, atmosphere, tone, or motif). [2] I am also indebted to the theoretical insights of E.H. Gombrich, Noel Carroll, and V.F. Perkins. Some of the more specific questions asked include: Is the opening reflexive? Does it have a symbolic or structural link to the conclusion? What is the relationship between directorial and generic style? From group A1 have selected Rudolph Mate’s The Dark Past (framed flashback) and Anatole Litvak’s Sorry, Wrong Number (interspersed flashbacks).

Case Studies. Group A1: Framed Flashback

The Dark Past (Rudolph Maté, 1948) Length of Opening : 6’30”

Description : The film begins with a series of dissolves from an overhead shot of the city, to tall buildings, to a crowd of people. The images are cued by L.J. Cobb’s (Dr. Andrew Collins) voice-over narration. The camera follows people boarding a bus. The V.O. comments on the routine daily activities we all must endure. Inside the bus the camera tracks left to right along the faces of the passengers while the V.O. interprets their thoughts. As the bus stops and passengers disembark the V.O. informs us “this is where I work.” Cut to an optical point of view [3] tracking shot toward a building. Several police officers greet Dr. Collins/camera as they walk by. Two dissolves bring us into the police station. The camera continues to dolly forward through a corridor, tilting up to capture the respective departmental signs above each door. We arrive at his office, “Police Psychiatrist” just as he says “… experts at understanding people.” The camera tilts down from the sign, the door opens and the camera enters the room. Moments later the doctor enters the frame to pick up a sheet of paper from his desk, ending, for the moment, the subjective narration. As the doctor and police officer speak Dr. Collins looks out the window at a new group of prisoners being escorted into the precinct (seen as his POV ). His V.O. begins and bridges a cut to the viewing room. As each prisoner is identified he externalizes their thoughts in V.O. The fourth prisoner, an 18 year old, catches his interest. After he analyzes the young prisoner we shift back to objective narration and he attempts to convince the arresting officer that the young prisoner be sent to the psychiatric ward. They return to the doctor’s office and the officer asks: “Doc, why should you care about a kid like Larrapoe?” To prove his point the doctor begins to relate the story of Al Walker (William Holden), an infamous criminal. The camera dollies in slightly to the seated doctor and his voice bridges the dissolve to the flashback: “Wasn’t too long ago, not more than a couple of years ….”

Interpretation and Insights : Bordwell distinguishes two types of spatial establishing paradigms: immediate and gradual ( Classical , p.63). The former begins within the locale, usually on a small detail, then pulls back to reveal the entire space. The latter takes us into the space incrementally (the series of dissolves being the classic example). The Dark Past establishes its location gradually.

This opening is important stylistically and thematically. Stylistically the subjective POV shot which brings us into the police station and into his office primes us for the film’s most important and impressive scene, Al Walker’s surrealist/subjective recollection of the childhood incident which triggered his Oedipal Complex. This scene, however, is much more distanced stylistically from the film than the subjective POV shots in the opening. The subjective strategy in the opening is similar to the opening of Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1932).

The oscillating point of view in the opening primes us for the rest of the film. The point of view in the opening shifts from subjective to objective. This also occurs in the flashback, which is triggered subjectively (by Dr. Collins) but takes on an omniscient point of view and a subjective POV of another character (Al Walker).

We can infer many of the film’s themes from the opening. Its documentary tone (partly on location photography, V.O. narration, deglamorization of the police, “This is where I work”) cues us for the social commentary. One of the film’s most blatant statements is the need to recognize the individual within the mass.

At two points in the opening the V.O. narration interprets the thoughts and feelings of various people. From this we can infer the subsequent importance that psychoanalysis will play in solving the story’s obstacle (Al Walker’s Oedipal block) and the significance placed on psychiatry as a means of correcting and preventing deviant social behavior. Dr. Collins places the burden of such control squarely on the back of society. From this vantage the motivation for the opening is narrational, slightly artistic (didactic) and also reverberational, since many of the film’s themes are established in the opening.

Comparing the opening of The Dark Past with that of Maté’s other film noir, D.O.A. , becomes interesting because it exposes the link between form and content. Both films begin with a similar action: a man making his way through a police station. In The Dark Past the camera POV is subjective. In D.O.A. it is not; instead the camera follows the man from behind his back. The reason for this strategy is to keep the man’s identity unknown, thereby emphasizing the theme of fate and coincidental tragedy. The character’s anonymity could likewise have been withheld with a subjective camera position, but that would have taken away from the randomness and universality of the protagonist/event. Therefore the camera style which opens D.O.A. indicates the film’s central theme: fate and chance happening. In The Dark Past we need a character to lead us. Dr. Collins becomes our authority figure (as he says, “It takes an expert to catch another expert”), informing us and convincing us of the importance of society’s role in the prevention and reformation of crime and criminals.

Group A2: Interspersed Flashbacks

Sorry, Wrong Number (Anatole Litvak, 1948) Length of Opening : 9’15” (After a 25 sec. intertitle prologue)

Description : The film begins with a dissolve from the prologue to a shot of the city at night. A subsequent dissolve brings us into a dark, deserted office. The camera dollies toward a door; the words “Henry J. Stevenson Vice President” become visible. Another dissolve brings us inside the room. The camera continues to dolly forward toward the desk; on it rests a telephone, with its receiver off. There is a dissolve to another location. Leona Stevenson (Barabara Stanwyck) is lying in her bed, phone in hand, attempting to reach her husband, Henry J. Stevenson (Burt Lancaster). The camera pans to her night table as she reaches for a cigarette and lighter (a marriage photo and small clock are visible). Her behavior toward the operator is forceful, demanding, and impatient. Before hanging up she accidently connects into another line. The camera dollies to a close up as she realizes that the two men are planning a murder. Before the victim’s address is given the connection is lost. Leona hangs up. Cut to a medium shot. She graps the phone again and calls the operator, insisting that the operator trace the call. She reaches for a tissue paper on her other night table; the camera pans with her but remains on the table long enough to reveal a crowd of medicine bottles. Cut back to Leona. The camera now becomes assertive. (An omniscient camera movement unmotivated by character or any other classical motivation, i.e. reframe, follow a character, a moving vehicle, etc.) It dollies to her open window, across the length of her room (dissolve) down her staircase, and to a bell high up on the downstairs wall which she uses to summon her servants. Throughout this assertive camera movement we hear her offscreen voice complaining that she has been left alone for the night and that nobody cares for her. We cut back to Leona. She receives a phone call from her father in Chicago. A painting of her father bridges a dissolve to him. The camera pans around the den while they talk. He tells her daughter that the house is like a morgue without her, meanwhile there is a party going on in the next room. After their talk we dissolve to a clock in Leona’s room and to another location.

Interpretation and Insights : This powerful opening is extremely evocative of the film’s themes and primes us, with its visual style, for the harrowing conclusion. The use of the mobile camera is its most striking feature. However, it is not used for showmanship but to enhance the character’s mental and physical claustrophobia, her isolation, to complement the dialogue, and to expose subtle visual clues. For example, one of the several clues overheard by Leona about the murder plan is that it is to take place at 11:15 PM because the 11:15 train that passes on the nearby bridge will camouflage any screams. After the disturbing phone call the camera leaves her bedside and tracks to the open window. It is dark, but visible in the distance is a lit bridge. The camera continues to dolly across her room and then down the staircase leading to the bell on the wall. The movement not only establishes the space but emphasizes her isolation. It is simply mirroring her emotional state as she complains to the operator about her loneliness.

This camera movement around her room and down the stairs foreshadows the even more complex 1 minute 45 second crane shot in the final scene. The shot opens on a clock. It pans to a close up of Leona on her bed. She is talking frantically on the phone. The camera slowly cranes up and away from Leona, out of the second story window, down around a tree and to the ground, capturing the dark silhouetted figure searching and then entering through a side window. Litvak employs the Bazinian schemata of the moving camera to maintain the “integrity” of spatial unity. However, in this case its function is not to suggest the “ambiguity” of reality but rather to stress its very reality –a killer stalking its helpless victim. Rather than crosscutting, the uninterrupted camera movement from Leona in her deathbed to the killer visualizes the exact distance between them, augmenting the suspense by showing us both the spatial and temporal contiguity of killer/victim, life/death.

Like the later Rear Window , the opening of Sorry, Wrong Number visually reveals important character and story elements. Within the first few moments we infer that she is married (the photo), bedridden and ill (the medicine bottles), alone and isolated (the slow tracking shots), and wholly dependent on the telephone.

The moving camera captures her physical isolation in her immediate spatial environment; the telephone captures her emotional as well as physical isolation from the outside world. The operator, her link to the world, the police officer, society’s symbol of protection, and her father, her own personal protector, all prove utterly useless in realizing her pleas for help. (Her father says that the conversation she overheard was probably a radio program, a reflexive allusion to Lucille Fletcher’s original radio play.) It is no coincidence that she is murdered while on the telephone with her husband.

According to Nöel Carroll, one of the reasons why movies hold such a powerful attraction for audiences is because of its “erotetic” (question/answer model) narrative (1985). Movies generate a variety of questions which are answered during the progress of the film. This question/answer model engages the audience in an inductive process whereby they must absorb incoming information and infer what may happen. Carroll distinguishes between two of many types: the micro question and the macro question. A micro question is one which is answered in the same scene or in one of the immediately succeeding scenes. A macro question remains unanswered for the majority of the film, often until the final scene. The most obvious example being Citizen Kane ’s “Rosebud.”

The opening of Sorry, Wrong Number poses one of each. The micro question –where did Henry J Stevenson go after work?– is answered in the subsequent scene (the first flashback). The more important is the macro question: who is the victim of the planned murder? Although the conclusive answer only comes toward the end, we are certainly encouraged to infer a guess. The opening provides two noteworthy clues: the visual emphasis on Leona’s isolation and helplessness, and the pointed delineation of her overbearing, domineering nature, her illness, and her wealth: plenty enough motivation for murder in the film noir world!

Group B1: Linear

This Gun For Hire (Frank Tuttle, 1942) Length of the opening : 6’00”

Description : The film begins with a fade in to a dingy hotel room, an immediate establishing of the space. A man, Raven (Alan Ladd), is lying on his bed. The camera is at a slight low angle. In the foreground hangs a coat and just below an alarm clock on a night table. The alarm clock rings. Raven awakens, shuts the alarm and sits up on his bed. Diegetic piano music is heard. He looks at his watch, removes a letter from his coat pocket and checks an address (insert shot). Cut back to a low angle medium shot of Raven. After securing that his gun is loaded he places it and the letter inside his briefcase and begins to leave. The sound of the window shutting draws his attention to a kitten. He pours the kitten some milk then leaves to wash his hands. In the meantime a young maid enters. The kitten spills a can, prodding the maid to frighten the kitten. Raven returns; angered, he slaps the maid and forces her out of the room. He pats the kitten then gets up to leave. Two dissolves later he is entering an apartment building. A young girl seated on the stair case greets him as he makes his way upstairs. He meets with a man, a blackmailer who is under the impression that Raven is there to give him money in exchange for an incriminating letter. A woman is also present. She leaves the room. After listening to the man ramble Raven removes the gun from his briefcase and shoots the man once. The woman enters the room. Raven remarks, “They said he’d be alone.” She runs back into the bedroom but Raven shoots her once through the door. He checks to make sure she is dead, confirms the letter, places it in his briefcase and leaves. In the hallway the innocent girl says, “Mister, I dropped my ball.” Two shot counter shots lengthen the moment. Raven makes a movement to go into his briefcase for his gun, stops, and decides to retrieve the ball. The scene fades out.

Interpretation and Insights : Here is an example of film noir excelling within the classical paradigm. This opening has all the earmarks of the classical Hollywood sequence: clearly demarcated scenes (in the hotel room, in the apartment, and in the hallway), transitions (fade in and fade out) and one completed action, culminating in a beginning, middle, and end. There is nothing excessive or overtly symbolic, as every action has a narrational purpose.

However, the opening remains richly evocative of noir character, environment, and visual and aural schemata. The noir visual look is established as early as the first shot of the film. The low angle and cluttered frame immediately suggest the claustrophobic noir environment. Several of the subsequent shots are again framed from a low angle, emphasizing the enclosing ceiling and walls. The room, replete with harsh shadows (they seem painted), murky walls and chipped plaster, characterizes the ‘seedy’ noir world. The deathly still aura lingering within the room foreshadows the impending murder. Not even the repetitive piano music can cut through the aura of silence.

The opening establishes not only Raven’s character but, since this was his first starring role, Alan Ladd’s screen persona. Raven, the hired killer, is awaken by an alarm clock: just another day at the office. His demeanor is quiet and gestures graceful and calculated. A loner, Raven has a stronger affinity for cats than humans. (As he says later, “they’re on their own, they don’t need anybody.”) He is the consumate professional, always turning in a “neat” performance. While the blackmailer rambles on Raven remains silent. Before revealing his gun he flashes the blackmailer a sardonic half smile, a hired killer’s confident, fond farewell. Raven’s professionalism and “neatness” is evident in his style: one bullet per victim. He is thorough, making sure that the woman is stone cold dead and that the letter is authentic before leaving. On the way out he is interrupted by the young girl. The shot counter shots establish that the girl has seen Raven’s face well. The completist, Raven contemplates killing her but decides against it. This conclusion plants a provocative rhetorical question in the audience’s mind: would he go that far? As Willard Cates (Laird Cregar) later finds out, Raven is a man you do not want to double cross. By the end of the opening Raven’s (and Ladd’s) screen persona is indelibly carved: the laconic “cold angel” with boyish good looks masking a tough, uncomprimising interior.

White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949) Length of Opening : 4’10”

Description : The film begins with a series of dissolves from macro to micro: an aerial pan of the city, to a “California Highway State Line” sign, to a long shot of a train. From the train there is a L-R swish pan capturing a car in transit. Cut to the interior of the car. Four men are seated in the car. James Cagney (Cody Jarrett) is in the front passenger side. The camera dollies in slightly to frame on Cody. He nudges the driver, motioning him to speed up. Three cuts ensue, from the car to the train and back to the car. The camera pans to follow the car screeching around a bend. Cut to a head on shot of the train as it chugs past the camera left. The scene momentarily changes to the interior of the train to observe the other half of Cody’s gang at work. The scene returns to the exterior. The men quickly exit the car and execute their respective duties. In the ensuing shots the train comes to a halt, the mail compartment is dynamited open and the heist a success except for a few casualties. Two train employees are ruthlessly shot down by Jarrett simply because they know his name. After the second man is shot he falls onto a lever, which accidentally releases hot steam into the face of one of Cody’s men. Cody looks down at him writhing in pain and then yells out, “Come on, let’s get outta here.” He runs off screen right and the other men pick up the injured man. There is a dissolve to a radio newsman reporting the hold up.

Interpretation and Insights : The motivation for this opening is narrational (animates the narrative) and compositional (logical causal factors). In the first few shots director Raoul Walsh relies heavily on audience’s mental set. Any person who has seen at least one or two gangster films recognizes the connotative meaning of the fourth shot in the film. The car, the dress code of the four men and the presence of James Cagney cue us into the crime milieu. This shot, in combination with the previous shot of the train, are all we need to infer that a hold up is in progress.

This fourth shot is the most important single shot in the opening. Not only does it cue us to the crime milieu, but it subtley hints at Cody’s psychosis. Cody is framed in medium shot. He looks at his watch. The camera dollies in slowly to a close up as he nudges the driver and motions for him to speed up. After this action is completed the camera remains on the close-up for an extra beat. Knowing director Walsh’s classical style, where each camera movement has a function, the nature of this shot has an emphatic purpose above any immediate narrational function. For example, the lingering close up may inform us that this character is the leader of this gang, but, being James Cagney in 1949, the audience undoubtedly know this already. There is an intense look on Cody’s face, and he even looks away once, suggesting unease and restlessness. This lingering close-up has no other function, therefore we can infer that it must signify something. I will submit that this is a subtle nuance but, is it too subtle for Hollywood? In the Carrollian sense this opening challenges us, at this early point, to infer Cody’s psychosis (or in the least his viciousness) from the close up and Cody’s behavior during the hold up.

If interpreted in a certain way, the opening can be seen as a reflexive commentary. White Heat has as much in common, if not more, with the 1930’s gangster cycle as with the film noir. Cody Jarrett, like Roy Earle in High Sierra , is a throwback to the prohibition era: a man behind the times; it is 1949 and the gangster collective has given away to the individualistic noir anti-hero. The train hold up is reminiscent of the era of the western, when train hold ups were common. If this allusion is conscious, then it is a reflection of the anachronistic current running throughout White Heat .

I will now move on to the two examples from Group B2 (linear/powerfully emphatic), The Set Up and The Letter .

Group B2: Linear/Powerfully Emphatic

The Set-Up (Robert Wise, 1949) Length of the Opening : 5’45”

Description : (There is a title sequence of a boxing fight. All that is visible are the boxer’s legs. One of the fighters collapses to the canvas. Fade out.) Fade in. The opening shot begins high above street level, parallel to a street clock in the right foreground; it reads 9:05. On the extreme right we see a hotel’s neon sign. On the street level in the background is another huge sign: “Paradise City” (the wrestling/boxing arena). The camera cranes forward past the clock and toward street level. Another neon sign becomes visible: “Dreamland.” On the soundtrack we hear jazz music and a loud teenager selling the evening paper complete with fight card. There is a cut to a man selling only fight cards. (From his drawl we can correctly infer that he is an ex-boxer.) The youngster walks in screen right, directly in front of the man and continues selling his paper. The camera dollies in to a two shot. The man pleads: “Hey, I gotta make a buck too.” The brash youngster replies: “Ah, go take a walk.” Cut to the dejected man. Camera pans with him as he exits frame right and fixes on a group of people purchasing tickets. The central figures are a blind man and his male companion. Camera pans with them left as they enter the arena. Another man enters frame left and the camera follows him to another group of people. A quick reframe settles on a shot of two women. The following conversation takes place:

First Woman (without hat): I don’t know why I let George talk me into coming. Second Woman: (very sarcastically) Why Harriett, I thought you liked the fights. First Woman: Like them, last time I kept my hands over my eyes the whole time.

The camera reframes right (the corner of the building) to another shot of two men standing at the fight poster discussing who to place bets on. Stoker Thompson’s (Robert Ryan) age is the butt of a joke. They exit frame left and the camera turns slightly and dollies in to the poster. The Stoker Thompson vs. Tiger Nelson fight line commands center frame. An arm enters frame left and strikes a match over Thompson’s name. Camera reframes left to follow the match to the cigarette. Another two shot, of a short, balding man and a taller, sweaty and unkept man. (The taller man is Tiny, Stoker’s manager and the other Red, his corner man.) They enter the “Ringside Cafe.” Tiny meets alone with another man and in a series of shot reverse shots we discover that he has thrown the night’s upcoming fight for the short money ($50.00). Tiny and Red leave the cafe. Tiny cheats Red on his cut by telling him that their share was only $30.00. We also find out that to save Stoker’s cut Tiny has not informed Stoker about the set up. Red remains unsettled at the idea of Stoker being kept in the dark. The camera follows them to a point then dollies in quickly to Stoker Thompson’s name on the fight poster. (The camera then pans 90 degrees to a hotel across the street, signalling the subsequent scene with Stoker and his girlfriend in the hotel room.)

Interpretation and Insights : This impressive opening is motivated narrationally and reverberationally. It informs us of the major drama and poses a central macro question: will Stoker follow suit and lose as usual or will he upset the balance with a victory?

One of the interesting features of this opening is that it introduces several minor but key characters. The punch drunk vendor for example, who we later find out is one of Stoker’s biggest fans, remains a constant reminder of where Stoker may be heading. More importantly perhaps are the host of characters who will reappear during the fight scene as key spectators. Throughout the fight scene there are reaction cuts to the spectators. Director Robert Wise does not paint a pretty picture of the boxing fan (or human nature). Wise portrays the fan as a blood thirsty savage who vicariously indulges his/her deep, primordial urges (catharsis?). For example, the blind man, who has the fight recounted to him blow by blow by his friend, remarks in a viscious tone: “Why don’t he work on that eye.’ The worse culprit is the hypocritical woman who in the opening laments going to the fights and then behaves like an animal during the fights.

Whereas most of the noir openings introduce the lead character in the flesh, in The Set Up Stoker’s presence is felt equally strong through other means: his name on the fight poster, the people who discuss him, and the punch drunk vendor.

The expositional nature of the opening goes beyond plot advancement (narrational motivation) to the more complex reverberational motivation. Most of the film’s themes are echoed within the opening: corruption, lost dreams, father time, and the cruel and hypocritical side of human nature. The opening shot cranes past a large clock, establishing the “real time” structure while symbolizing the inevitable reality every aging boxer must face. Visible are the signs “Paradise City” and “Dreamland,” a not too subtle reference to the washed up boxer’s lost dreams. The punch drunk vendor trying to eke out a living selling fight cards is overshadowed by the aggressive youngster, exposing the capitalist version of Social Darwinism. Stoker’s manager Tiny has a highly dubious moral and ethical system. Not only does he cheat Red, in all likelihood his only friend, but his fighter. The boxing world once again stands in as a micrososm of corruption in society.

The first few shots establish the space of the film: hotel, fight arena, and cafe. Outside of a few scenes with Stoker’s girlfriend Julie, the film is confined to this area. Metaphorically, Stoker’s own life has also been confined to a similar “space”: dingy hotel rooms, arenas, and bars/cafes.

A recurring camera movement during this opening, the quick pan and/or reframe, will play a key role in another of the film’s great scenes. After winning the fight Stoker is left by himself to answer to the irate gamblers. He tries to elude them but is eventually cornered in a dark alley. He struggles but is pinned to the ground by several men. The leader, Little Boy, gives the signal to commence the savage beating and the camera quickly pans to a shadowed reflection of a jazz band on a nearby wall, the frenzied music standing in for the beating. (This exact same tactic is used in The Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957) and, with variation, by Sam Fuller in Underworld USA , 1961.)

An unusual feature of the film is its strict accordance to “real time.” The film is 72 minutes. The credits last just under one minute. The clock in the opening shot reads 9:05. The final shot cranes back past the same clock, now reading 10:16, perfectly accounting for the remaining 71 minutes of screen/story time.

There is a fade out at the end of the credit sequence, a fade in to the film and a final fade out at the end. (Since the credit sequence is bridged by fades it is temporally distanced from the film and hence its action –a boxer being knocked out– serves as a metaphor for Stoker’s less than successful boxing career.) Outside of these three fades all other transitions in the film are straight cuts. At that period in the evolution of the language of film style the fade/dissolve/wipe were common transitional schemata depicting varying time lapses. The unadorned cut was used to join shots which succeeded each other in continuous temporal order. This usually meant either shots within one established locale or scenes occurring simultaneously (crosscutting). Being a former editor Robert Wise was as conscious of this as anyone. Therefore, to emphasize the temporal structure of the film (screen time=story time) Wise begins and ends on a clock and uses the ‘straight’ cut exclusively. I can not be sure, but would be willing to bet that The Set-Up is the only Hollywood film of the 1940’s not to employ a fade, dissolve, or wipe (excluding the beginning and end).

What intrigues me the most about this realistically motivated aesthetic choice is the rhetorical question of whether or not the audience at that time consciously made the connection between the exclusive use of the cut and the temporal structure of the film. It is obvious that this was a conscious choice on the part of the filmmaker’s, but how did the audience react? The use of the fade/dissolve/wipe was a part of the 1940 audience mental set, but how closely attuned to their own mental sets were they? They could perceive their presence but how about their absence? Were they conscious of the lack of a fade, dissolve, and wipe and accord that to the strategy of real time, or was it something they felt intuitively? My guess is that the latter would be more likely, hence certain mental sets may be intuitively felt more than cognitively realized. In fact I would say that, on a cognitive level, the opening and closing shots of the clock trigger the temporal strategy of the film more than the exclusive use of the cut. (That is, to an average viewer.)

On one of my viewings of The Set-Up I kept track of the cuts and counted 630. Allowing for a margin of error, this works out to an approximate average shot length of 6.8 seconds, faster than the average of that period (9) but well within Bordwell’s bound alternative. My brief research reveals the limitations of such studies. The 6.8 ASL might persuade someone who hasn’t seen the film to infer that The Set-Up does not employ much mise en scène (long takes, depth of field, mobile camera, intricate blocking) but rather that it derives more of its stylistic meaning from the editing. The cutting in The Set-Up is excellent, and used for more than just moving the story along, but the ASL does not reveal that a great percentage of the cuts, (approx. 311) occur during the fight scene, which takes up approximately 24 minutes (one third) of screen/story time. Away from the fight scene –and fight scenes are always cut quickly– the ASL is much higher. Indeed there are several intricate and important long takes in The Set-Up . Therefore the ASL is not always an accurate indication of shooting style for someone who has not seen the film in question. A better assessment of the film’s statistical measures would be a scene by scene average, which would then reveal precisely where and when the average shot length varies.

The Letter (William Wyler, 1940) Length of the Opening : 15’45”

Description : Although the opening lasts 15’45” I will only describe the most important section, the first 5’45”. The film begins with a night shot of the moon. The shot dissolve to a sign –“Rubber Co. Singapore, Plantation No. 1”– and then to a tree trunk. The camera tilts down the trunk to a bucket collecting sap. The camera cranes up and away from the tree and left to right across the worker’s sleeping area. Workers are seen lying on hammocks, sleeping, resting, playing chess, etc. The camera cranes up to a second level and continues over the straw roof; (Dissolve) the camera is still tracking L-R. A cottage is visible in the background. A gunshot is heard. A man stumbles out of the door onto the front porch; a woman is seen following behind him. A second gunshot is heard and (cut) to dogs awakening to the sound. Three shots of the workers ensue. The third gunshot is followed by a closer shot of the incident. The man, in the foreground, falls down below the frame while the woman (Bette Davis as Leslie Crosby), dressed in black, follows him down the stairs, emptying out the revolver. She slowly brings her gun hand down and drops the gun. The camera dollies in to a close-up. Her face is still, emotionless. Cut to the disturbed workers. The fourth shot is a close-up of a man looking out from behind bamboo bars. He glances upward and there is a cut to his POV : the moon moving behind a dark cloud. Cut back to the close-up. The frame is now considerably darker and growing increasingly darker. Cut to a medium shot of Leslie, also in high angle and in partial darkness. Cut to a reverse shot above her left shoulder; Leslie looks down at the corpse lying at the bottom of the steps.

During the course of the shot the light pattern and intensity alters according to the position of the moon and the clouds. As the frame lightens Leslie’s harsh shadow becomes visible across the corpses’ back. She turns quickly and glances up to the sky. Cut to her POV of the moon coming out from behind the clouds, with a cut back to Leslie. She returns her attention to the corpse. Cut to a frontal shot. The back lighting casts her in a semi-silhouette. Cut back to the reverse shot; Leslie exits frame left (up the stairs). Cut to a servant running toward the cottage and stopping at the sight of the corpse. Leslie invites the servant into the cottage. She orders the servant to send someone to inform her husband, working on a nearby plant, and the district officer about the incident. The servant remains in the living room. Leslie walks to her bedroom, opens the Venetian doors and calmly shuts them behind her. The camera remains fixed on the Venetian doors long enough to capture the nuance as Leslie turns the lights on. This brings us up to the 3’45” mark of the opening. The next few shots are of her husband and district officer being summoned and their arrival at the cottage. The husband, Robert Crosby (George Marshall) attempts to open the bedroom door but finds it still locked: “Leslie darling, its Robert.” Seconds later the door slowly opens and Leslie cautiously exits the room. My reason for ending at this point will soon become apparent.

Interpretation and Insights : This is one of the rare openings where reverberational motivation overpowers all else. The murder, which triggers the story and sets the drama in gear, is secondary to the overlaying symbolism. The symbolism centers on the timeless theme of the doppelgänger, a common motif in expressionism and film noir. It pervades the entire film and is animated in a variety of interesting ways (to varying degrees of originality and subtlety).

The moon, the image on which the film opens and closes, is used as a symbol of both oncoming death and the imminent duality of human nature. Its position in relation to the clouds establishes the light/dark, good/evil patterning which dominates the film in nearly every facet: actual shifts in lighting intensity, lighting patterns, chiaroscuro, clothing, characters, and narrative structure. In one way or another these elements are established in the opening.

The opening and closing scenes of the film mirror each other. One begins and the other ends with a shot of the moon; also, the death of Mr. Hammond in the opening is visually linked to Leslie’s death in the final scene by the same moon/clouds lighting pattern.

The shift in light intensity within a continuous shot occurs several times in the opening (close-up of the worker behind the bamboo bars, the reverse shot of Leslie, the Venetian doors) and is repeated throughout the film. Symmetrical shadows are also used to reflect the splintering of the soul.

The light/dark patterning is also reflected in the clothing. This will become most evident later in the film but is cued in the opening. During the murder Leslie is wearing a long, dark dress. The victim, Mr. Hammond, is wearing a dark top and white trousers. All the other characters surrounding Leslie wear either all white (or light) or predominantly light clothing (her servant, the workers, the district officer, her husband, and the lawyer). Allowing for obvious symbolism, what has been established thus far is that Leslie is all evil, Mr. Hammond “grey” and the others all good. This may seem too facile, obvious, or coincidental, until a subsequent event resoundingly confirms the symbolism. Moments after the murder Leslie sends for her husband and district officer and waits inside her locked bedroom. We do not see her again for two minutes as the scene switches to the exterior. In story time this intervening period is not long, perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes. Her husband arrives and she exits the bedroom. Leslie is now wearing a white blouse and a black skirt, the reversal of Mr. Hammond’s clothing pattern. I did not detect this subtle change until the fourth or fifth viewing. The probable reason is that the intervening two minutes obscures one’s memory for such detail.

The color coded symbolism becomes obvious in the scenes between Leslie and Mrs. Hammond (Gale Sondergaard): Leslie dressed in white and Mrs. Hammond in black. Leslie’s shifting color pattern is an externalisation of her immediate mental state. It is no coincidence that the final two shots of the film are of a veil hanging over a chair and of the moon.

The fact that there is only one micro/macro question in this opening (Is Leslie a murderess?) is emblematic of its motivational factor. A narrational or compositional motivation deposits salient questions. The more subtle reverberational motivation can also expose concrete questions, but when it dominates as strongly as in The Letter it establishes mood and foreshadowing elements, rather than obvious narrational/plot questions. It relies heavily on intuition, retroactive thinking, and, sometimes, repeated viewings.

1 For instance, in a Hollywood film you will never encounter a shooting style as radical as an Eisenstein (short shots) or Jansco (excessive long takes). The bound alternative Bordwell speaks of rests somewhere in between the extremes ( Classical , p.62).

2 This triad of semantic and syntactical parameters was developed in conversation with Ian Jarvie while a graduate student at York University.

3 A subjective camera shot is described by Edward Branigan as “a shot in which the camera assumes the position of a subject in order to show us what the subject sees” (p.103). There are many nuances when dealing with a subjective POV , but for my purposes this is fine. Branigan calls this an optical POV . Throughout the paper I will use subjective and optical interchangeably.

For complete bibliographic references see end of Part 2.

Donato Totaro has been the editor of the online film journal Offscreen since its inception in 1997. Totaro received his PhD in Film & Television from the University of Warwick (UK), is a part-time professor in Film Studies at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) and a longstanding member of AQCC (Association québécoise des critiques de cinéma).

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Film Noir: A Study in Narrative Openings, Part 2

Donato Totaro

Dark Tales from Hollywoodland

Catherine Benoit

A Left-Handed Form of Human Endeavour: Narrative Comparisons & Contrasts Between the Noir Heist Films The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing

Peter Wilshire

Singapore Sling : Postmodern Noir, Narrative, and Destructive Desire

David Church

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10 Writing Prompts in the Film Noir Genre

Time to turn down the lights and write something with a little darkness..

'The Man Who Wasn't There'

Film Noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations.

The hallmark of film noir is a distinctive visual style with stark lighting effects, complex plots, morally ambiguous characters, and a pessimistic stance.

Let's go over ten writing prompts inspired by the Film Noir genre together.

• The Mysterious Femme Fatale: A hard-boiled detective becomes ensnared in a web of deceit when a seductive woman with a dark past hires him to track down her missing husband, but all is not what it seems.
• The Last Goodbye: A seasoned hitman contemplating retirement takes on one last job, only to find out he's been set up by his own employer. With the police and his former allies closing in, he must unravel the conspiracy before it's too late.
• Shadows of the Past: A war veteran turned private eye is haunted by his wartime experiences. When a figure from his past reappears, he's plunged into an underworld of smuggling and espionage that could either redeem or destroy him.
• Echoes in the Rain : A series of murders rattles a rainy city, and all victims are connected to a once-famous jazz club. An intrepid reporter dives into the city's underbelly to uncover the truth, only to become the next target.
• Neon Lies : In a city where the bright neon lights cast deep shadows, a corrupt cop has to face his own demons when he is blackmailed into betraying his badge by the city's most notorious crime lord.
• Whispers in the Dark : A secret affair leads to a string of blackmail and murder in the high echelons of society. A young detective must navigate through lies and deception to find the killer, but every clue leads to more danger.
• The Illusion of Truth : A magician with a sideline as a con artist gets in over his head when he's caught between rival gangs vying for a hidden treasure. His illusions are the key to survival—if he can stay one step ahead.
• The Forgotten Witness : A witness to a crime wakes up with amnesia, holding the only piece of evidence that can convict a powerful mob boss. As fragmented memories return, so too does the threat to their life.
• Midnight at the Diner : At a lonely diner off the highway, the lives of several strangers intersect over the course of one night, leading to a chain reaction of events that brings hidden secrets to light.
• A Portrait in Smoke : A chain-smoking painter with a penchant for trouble finds himself in a deadly game of cat and mouse when his latest portrait reveals a crime scene that hasn't happened yet—but soon will.

These ten prompts are your gateway into a world where the line between right and wrong is as blurred as the smoke in a dimly lit room, and every shadow could be hiding secrets untold.

Whether you're penning a screenplay, a novel, or just a short tale, the dark allure of film noir is an invitation to explore the human condition through its most compelling contradictions.

Remember, in the world of noir, everyone has a story, and every story has its price. Until the next mysterious rendezvous, keep the intrigue alive and the typewriter clicking into the twilight.

Go get writing.

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California's AB5 Law Threatens Film and TV Workers Who Use Loan Outs

People across several unions are worried this new enforcement strategy may wreak havoc on hollywood..

As a writer, I formed a loan-out company so that when I am hired to write film and TV, companies actually hire my company. Then, I can send myself wages for those jobs as needed. The rest of the money stays in the corporation, and I can pay myself accordingly with it.

This practice has been going on in Hollywood for years, and is a great way to manage your money, have write-offs, and allow writers, directors, actors, and IATSE members to budget accordingly for the fat and lean years.

But now, the California Employment Development Department (EDD) is coming for loan-outs, and this could quite possibly destroy the way the majority of how Hollywood does business and have serious ramifications for everyone in the industry.

It may even cause Hollywood to leave Los Angeles.

The EDD is scrutinizing the tax policy for loan out corporations in the entertainment industry by changing the rules for loan out corporations. The EDD says it will determine the use of loan out corporations on a case-by-case basis.

But the WGA, IATSE, DGA, PGA, and SAG-AFTRA have not released any public statements on whether or not their members will be able to use loan-outs under these new rules.

Payroll service Cast & Crew sent an email warning people who have used them in the past that they can no longer pay loan outs, thanks to this law.

So, what are these law changes?

A change to the tax treatment of these corporations could mean that entertainment employers would have to pay creatives as employees and not as independent contractors. This would require withholding income taxes and paying employer taxes. These taxes would be much higher than what people are used to paying, so it would take income away from people trying to survive in one of the most expensive cities in Los Angeles.

This would also affect lots of people in other industries who use these kinds of companies to do business.

The annoying this is, none of this makes any sense.

Loan-out corporations already pay W-2 wages to their owners. The California Employment Development Department's decision to not recognize loan-outs for payroll purposes means studios would have to pay these corporations directly. Due to the logistical challenges this presents, studios are likely to reject using loan-outs altogether.

This could severely disrupt the entertainment industry and needs immediate resolution.

And the other giant thing is, other states will not have this law. So why would Hollywood workers stay and have businesses in Southern California if they'd be paying more taxes to live in a more expensive place? Especially if work then moves out of state as well.

The law is much more complicated, but basically, California Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) is a law that went into effect on January 1, 2020, that requires companies to reclassify independent contractors as employees.

The law applies to all workers in California, regardless of where the employer is based. Since that passed, the law has been a disaster. It needed lots of changes and exemptions, as many gig workers lost a ton of income as companies just didn't hire them or fired them to avoid paying the taxes and benefits the law required.

We'll keep you updated as this progresses.

What Are the Best Mystery Movies of All Time?

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Collections of Essays

• Cameron, Ian, ed. The Movie Book of Film Noir. London: Studio Vista, 1992. DAVIS PN1995.9.F54 M68 1992 This collection of essays by eminent British movie critics and historians examines the films, directors and themes of classic film noir from 1945 to 1955. It is illustrated with over 100 stills that capture crucial moments in the films.
• Copjec, Joan, ed. Shades of Noir: A Reader. New York: Verso, 1993. DAVIS PN1995.9.F54 S5 1993 This collection of academic essays examines films from the classic film noir era, as well as more recent pictures such as "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" that arguably contain elements of film noir.
• Kaplan, E. Ann, ed. Women in Film Noir. London: British Film Institute, 1998. DAVIS and UL PN1995.9.W6 W66 1998 This collection of academic essays looks at film noir from a feminist perspective. It includes 80 black and white photographs.
• Palmer, R. Barton, ed. Perspectives on Film Noir. New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1996. DAVIS PN1995.9.F54 P47 1996 This is a collection of critical essays on classic noir films up through more recent neo-noir.
• Server, Lee, et al., eds. The Big Book of Noir. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1998. DAVIS and UL PN 1995.9.F54 B54 1998 This collection of essays and interviews covers classic film noir, as well as related genres such as hard-boiled fiction, comic books, and cartoons.
• Silver, Alain and James Ursini, eds. Film Noir Reader. New York: Limelight Editions, 1996. DAVIS PN1995.9.F54 F57 1996 This book is an anthology of 22 seminal and contemporary essays on film noir, drawing together definitive studies on the philosophy and techniques that have gone into the creation of films from the 1940s through more recent neo-noir films. It also includes many black and white photographs.
• Silver, Alain and James Ursini, eds. Film Noir Reader 2. New York: Limelight Editions, 1999. DAVIS PN1995.9.F54 F58 1999 This follow-up to the Film Noir Reader includes more critical essays on film noir, including several articles by American authors from the 1940s that are among the first writings on film noir in English.

How to Write a Film Noir

How to write a film noir: utilising the 8 essential pillars of film noir.

This article will delve into what film noir is and its common tropes. We’ll offer pointers on how to write a film noir that both honours the traditions of the …

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Double Indemnity — Analysis Of ‘Double Indemnity’ And ‘In A Lonely Place’ As The Examples Of Film Noir

Analysis of ‘double Indemnity’ and ‘in a Lonely Place’ as The Examples of Film Noir

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• Apr. 16 essay two: film noir movie with quotes

Film noir movie assignment Chinatown (1974)

Roman Polanski’s brooding film noir exposes the darkest side of the land of sunshine, the Los Angeles of the 1930s, where power is the only currency–and the only real thing worth buying. Jack Nicholson is J.J. Gittes, a private eye in the Raymond Chandler mold, who during a routine straying-spouse investigation finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a jigsaw puzzle of clues and corruption. The glamorous Evelyn Mulwray (a dazzling Faye Dunaway) and her titanic father, Noah Cross (John Huston), are at the black-hole center of this tale of treachery, incest, and political bribery. The crackling, hard-bitten script by Robert Towne won a well-deserved Oscar, and the muted color cinematography makes the goings-on seem both bleak and impossibly vibrant. Polanski himself has a brief, memorable cameo as the thug who tangles with Nicholson’s nose. A marvelous blend of ’40s “noir” mystery and ’70s sexual tensions and one of the greatest, most completely satisfying crime films of all time. –Anne Hurley

• Assignment: 1) Write an essay explaining why Chinatown exemplifies the film noir genre. • Name at least three reasons this film is called film noir. What film noir “tropes” does it demonstrate? • What is the difference between noir and neo-noir? Please find a website on film noir conventions or “tropes.” You need five paragraphs: an intro, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Use four transitionals altogether. Use an interesting beginning, starting with a quote, an anecdote, or a question. _________________________________________________________________________ • Please include among your research quotes from at least one film review, two may be better. Start with rottentomatoes.com to find full reviews by top critics. • Also, add a quote from one article on the film noir genre. (By the way some people consider film noir a style rather than a genre, but that is not going to make a difference in your assignment.) • This essay is due by or before the first class after Spring Break May 1.

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Pulp Fiction (1994): Tarantino’s Mesmeric Thriller Essay (Movie Review)

Introduction, legacy of ‘pulp fiction’, how it has been influenced and shaped by the generic attributes of noir, representations in the film, works cited:.

Film noir is an expression used in cinematic expressions primarily to express trendy Hollywood crime dramas and in particular those that put emphasis on pessimistic approaches in addition to sexual motivations represented in the movies. The era of conventional Hollywood’s noir movies is well known as stretching over a long period of time since the beginning of the early 1940’s up until the late 50’s. Film noirs that were produced around this particular era are openly linked to modest, mostly black-and-white image pictures that bear their roots all the way back to the German Expressionist and cinematography period. Many classical tales and more of these outlooks of classic crime films draw ideas from the hard-edged pool of crime fiction that later on invaded the film industry in the farther side of the United States at some point during the Depression. After watching and conducting extensive discussions about the film ‘ Pulp Fiction ,’ it can be deduced that it bears a persuasive and distinctive nature in the Hollywood film industry. Whereas attempts have been made to view the film as complying with a conservative path of standard evolution, it is in fact precise to testify that the record of this film is composite and indeed does not conform to stringent historical development. On the contrary, noir has undergone a series of cycles and different phases.

Pulp Fiction is a felony film directed by accomplished Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino and set in the US. It was released in1994. He also helped write the film’s screenplay together with Roger Avary. Pulp Fiction ended up gaining fame because of its rich, diverse conversations, its sarcastic mix of humour and hostility, non-sequential plot and a host of filming insinuation in addition to references of pop culture (Gallafent 100). The movie was elected for a compilation of seven Oscar awards which included the honour for Best Picture (Simon National Review: Pulp Fiction).

At the end of the awards show, Avary and Tarantino won the title for the Best Original Screenplay. The silver screen was also rewarded the grace of the title of the Palme d’Or. Moreover, during the Cannes Film Celebrations held in 1994 the film received an important significant commercial accomplishment in addition to its restoration of the career of the lead star, John Travolta. Travolta later received a recommendation for the Academy Awards beside co-stars Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson.

In the film, Roth Timothy, “Pumpkin” and Amanda Plummer, “Honey Bunny” are seen having a relaxed time enjoying breakfast at a local diner. They later on make a decision to steal from it subsequent to their realizing that they could make quick riches off the clientele present at the restaurant in addition to the enterprise just like they had done in a previous heist. A short while following this decision, they commence the hitch. This scene is followed by the rolling of the title credits and then scene breaking off (Tinknell 132).

As Samuel L. Jackson (Jules) drives by, John Travolta, played by Vincent Vega gives an account about his familiarity of Europe, somewhere he had just come back from. He talks about ‘the messy bars of Amsterdam, the MacDonald in France in addition to France’s ‘Royal treatment of Cheese’ (Tinknell 132). The pair of dress-suited individuals is enroute to recover a briefcase from Brett, played by Frank Whaley. He is disobedient against the boss who is played by gangster Wallace Marsellus.

Jules uncovers to Vincent the information that Marsellus had caused the death of a man by being thrown off the fourth-floor balcony of a building because he allegedly gave a foot massage to his beautiful wife. Vincent goes ahead to mention that Marsellus had earlier on requested him to accompany his wife wherever she goes during the period he is not in town. They terminate their small talk and get back to serious business which almost immediately details the execution of Brett in a theatrical manner. This incident occurs after Jules declaims a vindictive “biblical” assertion.

The scene involving Vincent and Jules eating breakfast at a coffee store and the subsequent discussions causes Jules’s resolution to retire. In a succinct cutaway, we observe “Pumpkin” in the company of “Honey Bunny” a short while before they commence the hold-up leading to the movie’s very first scene. At the point when Vincent is still in the restroom, the hold-up begins. “Pumpkin” orders all of the consumers’ valued possession, including Jules’s strange case. Jules astonishes “Pumpkin” (whom he refers to as “Ringo”), and holds him at gunpoint. Honey Bunny hysterically, uses her weapon on Jules.

Emerging from the bathrooms, Vincent finds his gun being used to hold hostages which generates a feel of a Mexican Standoff. Revisiting his pseudo-biblical reading, Jules put across his ambivalence in relation to his life of crime. As an initial act of deliverance, he permits the two thieves to take the money they had stolen and flee contemplative of how they were let go and in return leaving the case to be taken back to Marsellus, hence finishing his final assignment for his employer as a hit man (Fraiman 1950).

This film conforms to the attributes of a noir as it is about crime drama revolving around good law abiding citizens and criminals. The circle is completed by the availability of cops who hunt down the bad guys in an effort to combat crime (Tinknell 132). In addition, there as sexual scenes that creates the theme of romance, love and also sexual inspiration for certain actions. In the film, Marsellus orders the execution of an individual who had given his wife a foot massage.

This attracted the reason for sexual intention that did not go well with Marsellus. Other sexual scenes in the film are purely motivated by seduction, emotional and sexual motivation. Quentin Tarantino’s film ‘ Pulp Fiction ’ is commonly regarded to be one out of a few successful neo-noirs. It is a movie that encompasses most if not all of the inclusions of noir and defies and reinvents each one of them in all manner of innovative and confrontational ways (Fraiman 1950). Compared to the movie ‘Chinatown,’ the film is special as it is a retro type of noir that addresses the mythology of confidential crime investigation archetype as it appears in life (Hirsch & Clarens 101).

Publications in the Los Angeles Times were one out of the small number of main news channels to distribute negative reviews about the film during its opening weekend. Writer Turan Kenneth wrote, “The director –cum writer appears to be struggling for his artistic prowess. Some themes, especially those concerning bondage, binding and homosexual rape, create the uneasy emotion of imaginative desperation, of a person who is terrified of tainting his reputation while scrambling for a probable way to go against sensibilities” (Turan, ‘The LA Times: Pulp Fiction’). Individuals who reviewed the film in the subsequent weeks took more omission to the leading critical response of the film than they did to Pulp Fiction itself.

Claiming that he had no predetermined intention of tainting the image of the movie, Stanley Kauffman, a writer with The New Republic maintained that the mode in which the film had been widely hyped up hence causing anxiousness was on the verge of being considered disgusting (Kauffman, The New Republic: ‘Shooting Up’). The director’s intention of the film Pulp Fiction was to abet and nourish cultural slumming. In response to the comparisons made between Tarantino’s show and the exertions of the newly celebrated French producer named Jean-Luc Godard, and more so, his first and most famous feature saw critics give better accreditation to Pulp Fiction. Jonathan Rosenbaum from the Chicago Reader alleged that the reality that Pulp Fiction collected better reviews than Breathless did, says plenty about the type of cultural positions that are considered more productive. He adds that this includes the ones we have by now and those that we wish to develop in future (Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: ‘Allusion Profusion; Ed Wood, Pulp Fiction’). Observations that were made on the National Review maintained that no other film had ever premiered with such advance hype. Writer John Simon was unmoved by this situation of the film since he claims that titillation has the ability to heal neither shallowness nor hollowness (Simon: National Review: Pulp Fiction).

Debates about the movie go far beyond the evaluation by different critics. Violence was more represented as a theme in the film (Fulwood 100). Britt, a writer with the Washington Post maintains that she was not amused by the movie and that she was openly avoiding talks about a particular scene in which a person is killed by a gunshot that dismembers his head hence exposing his brains inside a car (Britt, The Washington Post: ‘Let’s Lose the Gory ‘Gulp’ Fiction’). Some critics however chose to ignore the extensive use of the word ‘nigger’ in the movie. Boyd, a writer of the Chicago Tribune however argues that obvious presence of the word in the film connotes the idea of a high level of hipness that was indicated by historical white males who openly used it to refer to the masculine nature of black males. He claims that the word is not used in a vulgar nature but as a genuine tool of personification (Todd, Chicago Tribune: ‘Tarantino’s Mantra’).

Tarantino signifies the final victory of postmodernism that brings forth the emptying of the artwork from all substance. As a result this limits its capacity to do anything other than helplessly representing our grievances. It is only in this period of time that a critic as brilliant as Tarantino create works of art that are clearly oblivious of reason, neglecting any form of constructive politics, metaphysics, or any degree of moral interest.

Irrespective of the different views reviewers had about the film, it was an immense success to both the cast and viewers. Pulp Fiction managed to be a remarkable success in its conveyance of social-cultural issues that occur within society. The film was fearless enough to address problems that would otherwise be shunned by society as being too shrewd to be laid in public platform. The designed ideas were presented through the brave approach of the directors. As a result, the movie succeeded in becoming a source of entertainment to its viewers while at the same time educating them on socio-cultural matters.

Boyd, Todd. “Tarantinos Mantra?” Chicago Tribune , 1994.

Britt, Donna. “Let’s Lose the Gory ‘Gulp’ Fiction,” Washington Post , 1994.

Fraiman, Susan. Cool Men and the Second Sex. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.

Fulwood, Neil. One Hundred Violent Films that Change Cinema . London and New York: Batsford/Sterling, 2003.

Gallafent, Edward. One Quentin Tarantino. London : Pearson Longman, 2006.

Hirsch, Forester & Carlos Clarens. “Afterwards” in Crime Movies. Cambridge: Da Capo, 1997.

Kauffman, Stanley. “Shooting Up”, New Republic , 1994.

Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “Allusion Profusion; Ed Wood, Pulp Fiction “ , Chicago Reader , 1994.

Simon, John. ‘Pulp Fiction: National Review,’ 1994.

Tincknell, Estella .”The Soundtrack Movie: Nostalgia and Consumption of Film’s Musical Moments.” Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.

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Film Noir And Neo-Noir Essay Examples

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Film , Chinatown , Events , Murder , Dishonesty , Movies , Crime , Cinema

Published: 02/04/2020

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Since the film industry was established, in the late 1880s, several movie styles have come up. Although each generation has its own distinct movie style, there are some characteristics that are almost universal - especially for successive movie genres. The best example which explains this is Chinatown (by Roman Polanski) and Murder, My Sweet (by Edward Dmytryk). These two films represent different generations, but some similarities are apparent between the films. This could be due to the fact that they represent genres that are not so many years apart. While “Chinatown” represents a type of films known as neo noir, “ Murder, My Sweet”, on the other hand, represents a type of films known as film noir. Although the visual styles applied in “Chinatown" and “Murder, My Sweet” are quite different, the two films share typical noir characters, and a similar narrative technique. In both “Chinatown” and “Murder, My Sweet”, the hero is depicted as a man who is never short of witty remarks, and is always brave. For instance, in the film “murder, My Sweet”, private detective Philip Marlowe plays that role well- after he is hired by Moose Malloy to track his old girlfriend - but not before getting dragged into an intricate web of perjury, deceit and theft. While doing his investigation, Marlowe gets knocked out repeatedly and he is drugged at some point. Nonetheless, the brave Marlowe prevails in the end; he plays the strong-willed macho man. He also discovers a stolen jade necklace - a story that revolves around an old man, his daughter and his gold-digging wife. Similarly to what happens in “Murder, My Sweet”, the film “Chinatown” also stars a private detective who had retired a few years ago. J.J Gittes is hired by Ida Sessions, who pretends to be Evelyn Mulwray, to investigate if Hollis, Evelyn’s husband, was cheating on her. In his investigation, Gittes finds out that Hollis had been cheating on his wife with a young lady. He also uncovers a scheme, hatched by Hollis, to buy idle land, water it, and sell at exorbitant prices. This is a reminder of the California Water Wars, whereby a lot of money was made by drying patches of land, buying the land at throw away prices, watering the land again and selling it for millions of dollars. Everyone in the film seems to be scheming about something and the real intentions of each character remain unknown. There is so much corruption in Chinatown, and even the police appear to be up to some evil plans. Another common feature in both “Chinatown” and “Murder, My Sweet” is the presence of a femme fetale. Femme fetale is a French word used to describe a seductive woman who ensnares men with her irresistible charm and beauty, and leads them to dangerous situations. In “Murder, My Sweet”, Claire Trevor plays that role as Mrs. Grayle. As expected of a noir film, Mrs. Grayle does not fit into the conventional wife. Instead, she is as seducing as ever, and unfaithful to the core. At times, she plays the innocent girl to get what she wants, but can also be ruthless if the situation demands. In “Chinatown”, Evelyn Mulwray fits the role of a femme fetale. Evelyn is beautiful and guards her secrets jealously. During the brief encounter with Jake, she comes off as a quick thinker with a sense of humor. She keeps Jake engaged – by letting him unravel his past – all in the name of fulfilling her secret desire to be intimate with him. Despite these similarities, one thing sets “Chinatown” and “Murder, My Sweet” apart: the visual style applied. As expected of film noir, “Murder, My sweet” employs the use of black and white visual style. The use of slight shadows on the visible faces of the characters creates the impression that they have something to hide. The use of black and white visuals also helps to bring out the dark events narrated in the movie. By setting a dark tone – at the beginning of the movie and in the subsequent events – the viewers interpret and understand the movie in the same context. On the contrary, “Chinatown” employs the use colors – something which is common in neo noir films. The use of color helps to distinguish the noble events carried out in the daylight from the dark events of corruption and deceit carried out during the dark. The use of motion pictures and other visual elements in “Chinatown” also signifies the departure from film noir to neo noir. Therefore, it can be said that neo noir is an upgrade of film noir. As a movie style, film noir became popular in the 1940s, and the American films released at that time were characterized by a distinct black and white visual style. The film noir’s were also outstanding in their emphasis of the themes of violence, war and criminal activities. A perfect example of film noir is Murder, My Sweet - released in 1944 and directed by Edward Dmytryk. On the other hand, Neo noir, as a distinct film style, came years later after the introduction of visual elements, such as color, into film noir movies. Therefore, the use of color and other visual elements elevated film noir into neo noir. Nothing exemplifies this fact more than “Chinatown”.

Works Cited

Raw, Laurence and Tony Gurr. Adaptation Studies and Learning. Lanham : Scarecrow Press, 2013. Print. Telotte, J.P. Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir. Champaign, IL :

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