The fascination with film noir and its influence on American history remains elusive. Bordering on the obsessive and fanatical these films left political and moral indelible marks on societies around the globe, specifically, in America. Film Noir began to emerge in the years before the United States entered into World War II, with movies such as Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), and The Maltese Falcon (1941). During and after the war, it slowly developed into a style of film that expressed the tales of American hardship, romance and social discontent. Only through the analysis of cinema spectatorship and historical experience can begin to understand film noirs impact on American history. Previous research and critical writing regarding Film Noir have been in the context of literature, gender studies and the like. This paper will attempt to take a historical focus and perspective regarding this unique period of American Film history and its influence on a society searching for a means to escape the daily routine and tribulations of war, crime and a changing way of life. Pre-industrialized America was mostly an agrarian society based on myth, and ideologies of property ownership and expansion of the west. The coming of the twentieth century ushered in a mass consumer society with no new myths to entertain fantasies and a national identity in crisis. Film noir is a complicated genus, although complicated and shrouded in controversy its impact on American society and culture is extraordinary. As it echoed the mood and evolution of a country in transition from a disjointed society to one with a common goal of a nation. Understanding how Film Noir reflected the political, social and cultural changes in America is accomp... ... middle of paper ... ...'s Big Screen: How Modern Audiences Experience Yesterday's Classics." Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, 2008: 203-212. Mintz, S., & McNeil, S. "U.S. Senate Subcommittee Hearings on Motion Picture and Radio Propaganda, 1941." Digital History. 2013. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu (accessed December 7, 2013). Naremore, James. "American Film Noir: the History of an Idea." Film Quarterly, 1995-1996: 12-28. Touch of Evil. Directed by Orson Welles. Performed by Charlton Heston Orson Welles. 1958. Gilda. Directed by Charles Vidor. Performed by Glenn Ford Rita Hayworth. 1946. Schrader, Paul. "Notes on Film Noir." i.mtime. September 3, 2008. http://www.i.mtime.com (accessed December 8, 2013). Smyth, Edmund. "Noir Cityscapes: An Introduction." Romance Studies, 2007. Sunset Boulevard. Directed by Billy Wilder. Performed by Gloria Swanson William Holden. 1950.
The overall appeal of the cinema to the masses was particularly evident during the interwar era. Audiences worldwide wanted to watch the variety of films, particularly American produced films, and they always went back. The visibly attractive and glamorous Hollywood movies often depicted the success of the underdog over unjust authority. Values of cash over culture were often a theme in the early American films and societies with restricted social mobility, such as those in Europe, could dream of such a triumph. The working class and unemployed could fantasise about wealth, fame and freedom which America as a country was portrayed as offering.
The period of American cinema between 1965 and 1975 produced many films that almost completely restructured classical Hollywood’s accepted genre conventions. A fine example of this would be Robert Altman's iconoclastic take on Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye (1973), a detective film based on the final book in Chandler’s Philip Marlowe series. Altman, who is known for turning around traditional genre conventions, revises and reinvents the film-noir style made popular by Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet (1944), Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946), and Robert Montgomery in Lady in the Lake (1947). The actors and the films in the 1940’s film-noir period conformed to genre conventions, and it wasn’t until Robert Altman directed Elliot Gould’s Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye that the detective genre had changed.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
When one thinks of a gangster they may think of speakeasies and classy cars or maybe drive-bys, but they will always imagine a man who is not afraid to get his hands dirty to grasp for a higher place on the social ladder. They will think of a man portrayed in a genre of cinema more American than any other, the gangster film. This genre began in the early thirties and has been re-adapted each decade to fit a new time. Although gangster films may mold themselves to fit into a certain cultural era, they still stay deeply tied to the foundations of the genre and its historical relevance to the american dream. This is apparent when comparing the differences and similarities between The Public Enemy and American Gangster. To better understand this comparison one needs to understand the origination of some of the classic conventions of the gangster film genre.
Janey Place and Lowell Peterson article “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir” establishes noir as a visual style and not a ...
In this paper I will offer a structural analysis of the films of Simpson and Bruckheimer. In addition to their spectacle and typically well-crafted action sequences, Simpson/Bruckheimer pictures seem to possess an unconscious understanding of the zeitgeist and other cultural trends. It is this almost innate ability to select scripts that tap into some traditional American values (patriotism, individualism, and the obsession with the “new”) that helps to make their movies blockbusters.
This paper has attempted to investigate the ways in which Alfred Hitchcock blended conventions of film noir with those of a small town domestic comedy. It first looked at the opening scenes of the film in which the two conventions were introdruced. It then went on to analyse the film with the aid of Robin Wood's article Ideology, Genre, Auteur. From these two forms we can see that film noir and small town comedy were used as a means of commenting on the contradictions in American values.
Film Noir was extremely trendy during the 1940’s. People were captivated by the way it expresses a mood of disillusionment and indistinctness between good and evil. Film Noir have key elements; crime, mystery, an anti-hero, femme fatale, and chiaroscuro lighting and camera angles. The Maltese Falcon is an example of film noir because of the usage of camera angles, lighting and ominous settings, as well as sinister characters as Samuel Spade, the anti-hero on a quest for meaning, who encounters the death of his partner but does not show any signs of remorse but instead for his greed for riches.
Sklar, Robert. Movie-made America: A Social History of American Movies. New York: Random House, 1975. Print.
Fyne, Robert. The Hollywood propaganda of World War II. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1994. Print.
Lewis, J. (2008). American Film: A History. New York, NY. W.W. Norton and Co. Inc. (p. 405,406,502).
In the article “The Thematic Paradigm” exerted from his book, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, Robert Ray provides a description of the two types of heroes depicted in American film: the outlaw hero and the official hero. Although the outlaw hero is more risky and lonely, he cherishes liberty and sovereignty. The official hero on the other hand, generally poses the role of an average ordinary person, claiming an image of a “civilized person.” While the outlaw hero creates an image of a rough-cut person likely to commit a crime, the official hero has a legend perception. In this essay, I will reflect on Ray’s work, along with demonstrating where I observe ideologies and themes.
Barsam, Richard. Looking at Movies An Introduction to Film, Second Edition (Set with DVD). New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.
The noir style is showcased in Sunset Boulevard with its use of visually dark and uncomfortable settings and camera work, as well as its use of the traditional film noir characters. In addition, the overall tone and themes expressed in it tightly correspond to what many film noirs addressed. What made this film unique was its harsh criticism of the film industry itself, which some of Wilder’s peers saw as biting the hand that fed him. There is frequent commentary on the superficial state of Hollywood and its indifference to suffering, which is still a topic avoided by many in the film business today. However, Sunset Blvd. set a precedent for future film noirs, and is an inspiration for those who do not quite believe what they are being shown by Hollywood.
In this essay the following will be discussed; the change from the age of classical Hollywood film making to the new Hollywood era, the influence of European film making in American films from Martin Scorsese and how the film Taxi Driver shows the innovative and fresh techniques of this ‘New Hollywood Cinema’.