Film noir

Answer this question : What is the purpose of genre?

key things to include;

• Where did genres come from?
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• How did the 'Golden Age of Hollywood' re-inforce genres?
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• Which genres became popular in Hollywood?
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• Why do audiences like genre films?

Film noir is an interesting genre to study as it has a number of common codes and conventions that make a film clearly fit into this genre. For that reason we are going to study film noir and you are going to identify the codes and conventions. Here is a scene from Sin City.

A good way to understand the codes and conventions is to see how Steve Martin parodies the genre by subverting the codes and conventions.

Research the history of Film Noir

• Define the genre
• Name 10 of the most famous films of this genre in the Golden Age of Hollywood

Maltese Falcon (1941)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Mildred Pierce (1945)
The Big Sleep (1946)
The Killers(1946)
The Third Man (1949)
The Asphalt Jungle(1950)
The Big Heat(1953)
Kiss me Deadly(1955)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Neo-noir

The French Connection (1971)
Chinatown (1974)
Miller's Crossing (1990)
Barton Fink (1991)
LA Confidential (1997)

Origins

Watch this clip about the history of film noir

• In American pulp fiction Raymond Chandler, James M Cain, Dashiell Hamnett and now Elmore Leonard
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• German Expressionism stark camera angles, chiaro-scuro lighting, high contrast shadowy,
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• Warner Bothers in 1920's - cheaper sets and studios so dry ice and close angles.

Identify the codes and conventions

Moods

•  melancholy
•  alienation
•  bleakness
•  disillusionment
•  moral corruption
•  pessimism
•  guilt
•  paranoia

Male Characters

• Hero/ anti-hero
• hard boiled detective
• private eye
• cops
• gangsters
• socio-paths/ killers
• war veterans
• politicians
• shady, underworld figures 

Female characters 

Femme fatale - mysterious, duplicitous, double crossing, gorgeous, manipulative, desperate

or

dutiful reliable, trustworthy, loving

Sound

Voice-over by the world weary detective

Foreboding dramatic music

Lighting 

Expressionistic, low-key, smoke, dry ice

Narrative 

entrapment, hard bitten detective has his pessimistic world view re-inforced by a manipulative femme fatale, detective is drawn in by the femme fatale and seduced - recognises just in time
The Spider and the Fly

Iconography

Guns
Cigarettes
Blinds
Trilbys
Gloves


Use of the Camera

Expressionistic
Stark camera angles
Close shots to avoid background
Shadows and dry ice
Smoke

Locations

Office
Alleyway
The big house