film noir – Page 11 – FilmsNoir.Net

Existential Terror: The Essence of Film Noir?

Film critic Jonathon Rosenbaum in this quote is speaking of cinema generally and referring to a particular a movie that is not a film noir, but to me Rosenbaum refines the essence of noir…

Film critic Jonathon Rosenbaum in this quote is speaking of cinema generally and referring to a particular a movie that is not a film noir, but to me Rosenbaum has refined the essence of noir from an image redolent of film noir streetscapes [my emphasis]:

In the final scene of ECLIPSE (1962)my favorite Antonioni feature, and the one that concludes the loose trilogy started by L’AVVENTURA and LA NOTTE a lingering over an urban street corner while night begins to fall, effected through montage rather than an extended take, becomes one of the most terrifying poems in modern cinema simply through its complex poetry of absence. The lead couple in this film, played by Alain Delon and Monica Vitti, have previously planned to meet at this corner, in front of a building site. (Another building site figures in the opening sequence of L’AVVENTURA.) The unexplained fact that neither character shows up is perturbing, but because their affair has been more frivolous that serious, it hardly accounts for the overall feeling of desolation and even terror in this sequence.

It’s almost as if Antonioni has extracted the essence of the everyday street life that serves as background throughout the picture, and once we’re presented with this essence in its undiluted form, it suddenly threatens and oppresses us. The implication here (and in every Antonioni narrative) is that behind every story there’s a place and an absence, a mystery and a profound uncertainty, waiting like a vampire at every moment to emerge and take over, to stop the story dead in its tracks. And if we combine this place and absence, this mystery and uncertainty into a single, irreducible entity, what we have is the modern world itself the place where all of us live, and which most stories are designed to protect us from.

Jonathon Rosenbaum – Chicago Reader, 9 April 1993

Film Noir Influences: The Replicant is D.O.A

The iconic Bradbury Building in Los Angeles is the scene of the climax in Rudolph Maté’s 1950 noir D.O.A and Ridley Scott’s cult sci-fi thriller Blade Runner (1983)…

The iconic Bradbury Building in Los Angeles is the scene of the climax in Rudolph Maté’s 1950 noir D.O.A and in Ridley Scott’s cult sci-fi thriller Blade Runner (1983). Doomed Frank Bigelow in D.O.A is metaphorically as committed in vengefully hunting down his cosmic creator as the replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner.

All I want for Christmas

a noir car

Film Noir and the Classic Hollywood Narrative

American films noir from the classic cycle have essentially the same narrative structure as other Hollywood movies, and that the entertainment value of a movie lies in the delicate balancing of pleasure and anxiety.

Yesterday I started reading Frank Krutnik’s ‘In a Lonely Street: Film noir, genre, masculinity’ (2001), a book which explores the film noir narrative structure as a defining element with a focus on movies of the 1940s. Early on Krutnik argues that American films noir from the classic cycle have essentially the same narrative structure as other Hollywood movies, and that the entertainment value of a Hollywood movie lies in the delicate balancing of pleasure and anxiety. Krutnik says that “In submitting to an engagement with the fictional process, the spectator offers in exchange not just money (at the box-office) but also a psychical/emotional investment.” (p 5)

For me anxiety and the more prevalent downbeat resolution of the narrative in film noir are the defining aspects.

Krutnik outlines the classic Hollywood narrative in these terms: a crisis or destabilizing event occurs that is resolved by an heterosexual male to impress and win a passive female. (Any over-simplification is to my account.) Where noir diverges is that the male is typically an anti-hero, the female not passive and many times the protagonist. The latest movie I have watched nicely illustrates this.

A Dangerous Profession an RKO b from 1949 is an undistinguished crime movie competently made and well-acted. A former cop turned bail bondsman is asked to bail out a guy charged with a heist and the killing of a cop, and who is the husband of a former lover, and he lets his infatuation take-over. The woman is attractive and we are not sure she can be trusted, but she does little anyway. The protagonist has to sort things out after the husband jumps bail and is murdered. He solves the mystery, apprehends the crooks, and gets the girl. Order is re-established. Some have classified this movie as noir, which it clearly isn’t. A film noir would probe the psychology of the protagonists and perhaps uses expressionist stylistics to represent mood and character. There would certainly be a degree of ambiguity as to the morality of the players and their motivations, and there would more than likely be a downbeat ending or a resolution that came at a significant cost. A good example is The Big Sleep (1946) .

The Window (1949): The City as a Prison

Filmed on the streets of New York and in deep focus, The Window challenges Jule’s Dassin’s The Naked City (1948) as the first documentary noir…

The Window, an RKO b-noir that was a big box office hit in 1949, features an Oscar-winning performance from child-actor Bobby Driscoll as a kid who has told too many tall stories to be believed when he actually witnesses a murder. Based on a story by Cornell Woolrich, the movie is a tight thriller of entrapment, where the tenements of working-class New York are a prison few escape. Filmed on the streets and in deep focus, The Window challenges Jule’s Dassin’s The Naked City (1948) as the first documentary-style noir – it was actually completed two months before The Naked City in January 1948. Director Ted Tatzlaff and DPs Robert De Grass and William Steiner fashion a cityscape and built spaces that express a deeply oppressive ambience.

The Window (RKO 1949) 73min
Directed by Ted Tetzlaff
Writing credits: Cornell Woolrich (story) and Mel Dinelli (screenplay)
Cast:
Barbara Hale – Mrs. Mary Woodry
Arthur Kennedy – Mr. Ed Woodry
Paul Stewart – Joe Kellerson
Ruth Roman – Mrs. Jean Kellerson
Bobby Driscoll – Tommy Woodry
Original Music by Roy Webb
Cinematography by Robert De Grasse William Steiner

Noir Digest: Conflict and a Rogue Cop

The two films noir covered in this edition of the digest are less than gripping. But they do raise interesting issues… Conflict (1945) and Rogue Cop (1954)

The two films noir covered in this edition of the digest are less than gripping. But they do raise interesting issues.

Conflict (1945) has Humphrey Bogart as an engineer in a loveless marriage who bumps off his wife so that he can make a play for her younger sister. The script is good and an enticing mystery twisted into psychological entrapment should have been gripping, but sadly Curtis Bernhardt directs a rather somnambulant cast. Although Bogie tries hard, both Alexis Smith as the younger sister and Sidney Greenstreet as a shrink on a diet are flat. This said, the sleepiness has a fascinating counterpoint. Early on after a car accident Bogart falls into a coma – a swirling whirlpool tells us that – and he wakes up in a hospital bed with murder on his mind. From this point Bernhardt and his DP Merritt Gerstad deftly craft a dream-like atmosphere that is really intriguing. While some mysterious events and Bogart’s spiral into paranoia had me thinking of a ‘Woman-in-the-Window’ resolution, a nice though strangely anti-climactic twist proves otherwise. Interesting also is a degree of rare ambiguity. We never know Smith’s true feelings for Bogart, and he actually makes a selfless if not quite noble call at the height of his paranoia.

Rogue Cop (1954) on paper ticks most of the right noir boxes: a screenplay by Sydney Boehm based on a novel by William P. McGivern; an a-list cast including Robert Taylor, Janet Leigh, and George Raft; lensing by John Seitz; and journeyman director Roy Rowland. Taylor plays a crooked cop in league with mobster Raft, who has to face the music when his younger honest cop brother is pressured to turn bad. The whole affair falls flat with Taylor at his wooden worst, and while Leigh and Raft try harder, they cannot enliven proceedings against the mud tide of Rowland’s leaden direction. DP Seitz is largely wasted, with the only interesting visuals under the opening credits. Boehm’s script lacks subtlety, and would have disappointed McGivern who was not a writer content with simple verities or homilies. Imagine what Fritz Lang could have done and weep: a lesson in how not to make a film noir.

Femme Noir: “In her own mad mind she’s in love with you”

From poster for Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you

She’s a witch of trouble in electric blue
In her own mad mind she’s in love with you, with you
Now what you gonna do?
Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you

She’s some kind of demon messing in the glue
If you don’t watch out it’ll stick to you, to you
What kind of fool are you?
Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you

On a boat in the middle of a raging sea
She would make a scene for it all to be ignored
And wouldn’t you be bored?
Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you

Strange brew, strange brew
Strange brew, strange brew
Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you

Strange Brew – Cream (1967)