Film Noir-3 (Neo-Noirs)

Modern Film Noirs: Neo-Noirs (or Post-Noirs)

Film noirs have recently been released in the modern era and have been refashioned for present-day sensibilities. A number of them in the 70s were hard-boiled policeman-hero films that contained film noirish characteristics. Most neo-noirs attempted to re-establish the moods and themes of classic noirs. Some examples follow:

• maverick Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973), a revisionistic update of Raymond Chandler's novel, with Elliott Gould as worn-out private eye Philip Marlowe in 1970s Los Angeles
• Roman Polanski's noirish detective thriller Chinatown (1974) starring Jack Nicholson as an ex-LA cop turned PI; followed by the sequel The Two Jakes (1990)
• Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975) with Gene Hackman as a doomed private eye in Florida
  the twisted, sexy noirish Body Heat (1981) with a marked resemblance to Double Indemnity (1944) - the directorial debut film of Lawrence Kasdan about a lawyer (William Hurt) enticed to murder a sultry femme fatale's (Kathleen Turner) husband (Richard Crenna)
• the feverish, low-budget debut film of the Coen Brothers', Blood Simple (1984) about a murder plot gone awry; with M. Emmett Walsh as an amoral PI hired to kill a honky-tonk bar owner's (Dan Hedaya) unfaithful wife (Frances McDormand) and her bartender lover (John Getz)
• David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) about the seedy under-side of suburban Americana
  Bob Rafelson's Black Widow (1987) with a murderous and charming gold-digger femme fatale Theresa Russell
• Alan Parker's stylistic post-noir Angel Heart (1987), based on William Hjortsberg's novel Fallen Angel - a religious-themed film noir/supernatural horror mixture set in the world of New Orleans voodoo, starring Mickey Rourke as a seedy, Mickey Spillane-type of 1950's Brooklyn private eye who is hired by a Satanic client Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro); more remembered for its notorious sex scene between Rourke and Lisa Bonet (in her film debut) than the plot
• Stephen Frears' The Grifters (1990) featuring three lowlife con artists (John Cusack, his estranged mother Anjelica Huston, and his girlfriend Annette Bening)
• David Mamet's-penned Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), a dark modern film noir about corrupt real-estate salesmen
• Howard Franklin's The Public Eye (1992), set in a 40s NYC, is a modern film noir character study and crime thriller told from the perspective of Joe Pesci's character - Leon "The Great Bernzini" Bernstein
• John Dahl's Red Rock West (1993) with Nicolas Cage caught in a twisting plot and Dahl's dark, erotic follow-up feminist noir thriller The Last Seduction (1993) starring Linda Florentino as an amoral, evil femme fatale
• the contemporary, twisting neo-noir China Moon (1994) with Ed Harris as a straight Florida cop, femme fatale Madeleine Stowe as his unhappily-married, irresistible love interest, and Benicio del Toro as a rookie cop
• Steven Soderbergh's The Underneath (1995), a loose derivative of the film noir thriller Criss Cross (1949), starring Peter Gallagher
• Bryan Singer's convoluted thriller The Usual Suspects (1995), a cleverly-written tale (with an Oscar-winning screenplay) and with a Best Supporting Actor Oscar-winning performance by Kevin Spacey as a club-footed con man Roger "Verbal" Kint - and the unseen mobster Keyser Soze ("And like that, he's gone.")
• Curtis Hanson's recreated early-50s Hollywood, Technicolor, retro-noir crime drama of scandalous sex and corruption, L.A. Confidential (1997), with an Oscar-winning screenplay, featuring three antagonistic police detectives (Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, and Kevin Spacey) in a corrupt LAPD investigating a mass slaying at a diner, and Kim Basinger in a Best Supporting Actress Oscar-winning role as a Veronica-Lake look-alike femme fatale/prostitute; a screen adaptation from several of James Ellroy's crime novels
  writer/director Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000), a confounding, mind-bending tale told in backward-jumping reverse, featuring a hero (Guy Pearce) without short-term memory, and Carrie Ann Moss as a potential femme fatale
• The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), the Coen Brothers' semi-parody of film noir with impressive b/w cinematography from Roger Deakins, starring Billy Bob Thornton as a deadpanning, unassuming cuckolded barber Ed Crane, and his scheming wife Francis McDormand
• David Lynch's complex and unconventional Mulholland Dr. (2001) with two femme fatales, each with two personas: the light Betty/Diane (Naomi Watts) and dark Rita/Camilla (Laura Elena Harring), both caught in a nightmarish, Los Angeles web of corruption after opening Pandora's Box

Tech-Noirs:

Tech-noirs are modern-day noirs set in futuristic settings. Ridley Scott's sci-fi thriller Blade Runner (1982) set its film noirish story in a decaying, tech-noir LA society of the future, with Harrison Ford as a 'blade-running' detective intent on killing androids. Steve de Jarnatt's chilling apocalyptic film noir Miracle Mile (1989) told about a musician (Anthony Edwards) who intercepted a phone booth call from a panicked missile silo operator and accidentally learned that a nuclear war had just been initiated. Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days (1995), a Millenium-New Year's Eve story, featured a hustler (Ralph Fiennes) who sold sexy and violent digital content fed directly into the brain. And Alex Proyas' labyrinthine tech-noir Dark City (1998), a combination of science fiction (inspired by Metropolis (1927)) and crime melodrama with the motif of a whirlpool, was also set in a futuristic, post-modern, and dark urban locale with a story about a malevolent alien race.

Documentary-Style Noirs

Film Noir-2 (Documentary Style)

There are numerous, pseudo documentary-style film noirs, often set in dark, rain-swept, crime-ridden urban areas, which were made in a realistic, semi-documentary fashion:

• Henry Hathaway's The House on 92nd Street (1945) about Nazi spies scheming to learn the atom bomb formula
• Call Northside 777 (1948) with James Stewart as a Chicago reporter who uncovered a police cover up that sent a wrongly-convicted, innocent slum boy to jail for killing a cop eleven years earlier
• director Jules Dassin's great crime drama The Naked City (1948) with Barry Fitzgerald as a New York City cop investigating a murder over six days, and climaxing with a suspenseful chase and shootout on the Williamsburg Bridge
• Crane Wilbur's crime drama Canon City (1948) - a re-enactment of a 1947 prison escape in Colorado
• The little-seen Abandoned (1949), from director Joseph Newman, about a late 1940s LA newspaper reporter (Dennis O'Keefe) pursuing a missing girl, along with her sister (Gale Storm known for the TV series My Little Margie), into the sordid black-market baby adoption racket, while encountering a corrupt private investigator (Raymond Burr)
• Also, Joseph Newman's moralistic urban crime drama 711 Ocean Drive (1950), about the rise and fall of an organized crime kingpin (Edmond O'Brien as a telephone company repairman turned bad); the film capitalized on various book-making scandals at the time sensationalized and exposed in the newspapers; with on-location settings of L.A., Palm Springs and Nevada, particularly at Hoover Dam
• Alfred Hitchcock's true-life story The Wrong Man (1956) with Henry Fonda as a musician framed and wrongly-accused of committing armed robbery - and undergoing a nightmarish ordeal

Primary Characteristics and Conventions of Film Noir

The primary moods of classic film noir were melancholy, alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt, desperation and paranoia. Heroes (or anti-heroes), corrupt characters and villains included down-and-out, conflicted hard-boiled detectives or private eyes, cops, gangsters, government agents, socio-paths, crooks, war veterans, petty criminals, and murderers. These protagonists were often morally-ambiguous low-lifes from the dark and gloomy underworld of violent crime and corruption. Distinctively, they were cynical, tarnished, obsessive (sexual or otherwise), brooding, menacing, sinister, sardonic, disillusioned, frightened and insecure loners (usually men), struggling to survive - and in the end, ultimately losing.

The females in film noir were either of two types - dutiful, reliable, trustworthy and loving women; or femme fatales - mysterious, duplicitous, double-crossing, gorgeous, unloving, predatory, tough-sweet, unreliable, irresponsible, manipulative and desperate women. Usually, the male protagonist in film noir wished to elude his mysterious past, and had to choose what path to take (or have the fateful choice made for him). Invariably, the choice would be an overly ambitious one. Often, it would be to follow the goadings of a traitorous femme fatale who destructively would lead the struggling hero into committing murder or some other crime of passion. When the major character was a detective or private eye, he would become embroiled and trapped in an increasingly-complex, convoluted case that would lead to fatalistic, suffocating evidences of corruption and death.

Film noir films (mostly shot in gloomy grays, blacks and whites) showed the dark and inhumane side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love, and they emphasized the brutal, unhealthy, seamy, shadowy, dark and sadistic sides of the human experience. An oppressive atmosphere of menace, pessimism, anxiety, suspicion that anything can go wrong, dingy realism, futility, fatalism, defeat and entrapment were stylized characteristics of film noir. The protagonists in film noir were normally driven by their past or by human weakness to repeat former mistakes.

Film noir was marked by expressionistic lighting, deep-focus camera work, disorienting visual schemes, jarring editing or juxtaposition of elements, skewed camera angles (usually vertical or diagonal rather than horizontal), circling cigarette smoke, existential sensibilities, and unbalanced compositions. Settings were often interiors with low-key lighting, Venetian-blinded windows and rooms, and dark, claustrophobic, gloomy appearances. Exteriors were often urban night scenes with deep shadows, wet asphalt, dark alleyways, rain-slicked or mean streets, flashing neon lights, and low key lighting. Story locations were often in murky and dark streets, dimly-lit apartments and hotel rooms of big cities, or abandoned warehouses. [Often-times, war-time scarcities were the reason for the reduced budgets and shadowy, stark sets of B-pictures and film noirs.]

Narratives were frequently complex, maze-like and convoluted, and typically told with foreboding background music, flashbacks (or a series of flashbacks), witty, razor-sharp and acerbic dialogue, and/or reflective and confessional, first-person voice-over narration. Amnesia suffered by the protagonist was a common plot device, as was the downfall of an innocent Everyman who fell victim to temptation or was framed. Revelations regarding the hero were made to explain/justify the hero's own cynical perspective on life. Some of the most prominent directors of film noir included Orson Welles, John Huston, Billy Wilder, Edgar Ulmer, Robert Siodmak, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, and Howard Hawks. Titles of many film noirs often reflect the nature or tone of the style and content itself: Dark Passage (1947), The Naked City (1948), Fear in the Night (1947), Out of the Past (1947), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), etc.

Derivatives of Film Noir, and Post-Noirs

Oftentimes, noir could also branch out into thrillers (i.e., Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street (1953)), horror, westerns (i.e. The Gunfighter (1950)), science-fiction (i.e., Kiss Me Deadly (1955)) and even film-noir tribute-parodies or comedies (i.e., Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)). It has been noted that a sub-category of film gris (or 'gray film') exists, according to writer Jon Tuska, meaning film noirs that have happy denouements.

So-called post-noirs (modern tech-noirs, neo-noirs, or cyberpunk) appeared after the classic period with a revival of the themes of classic noir, although they portrayed contemporary times and often were filmed in colour. (Three well-recognized neo-noirs include Chinatown (1974), Body Heat (1981), and L.A. Confidential (1997).) Tech-noir (also known as 'cyberpunk') refers to a hybrid of high-tech sci-fi and film noirs portraying a decayed, grungy, unpromising, dark and dystopic future. 'Cyberpunk' was first popularized by William Gibson's book Neuromancer, and best exemplified in the late 70s-90s with the following films: Alien (1979), Outland (1981), Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) with Harrison Ford as a futuristic LA replicant-killer, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), The Terminator (1984), Robocop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days (1995) set on Millenium New Years Eve, New Zealand screenwriter Andrew Niccol's directorial debut film Gattaca (1997) about futuristic genetic engineering, Alex Proyas' visually stylistic sci-fi Dark City (1998), and David Cronenberg's twisting eXistenZ (1999).

Film Noir

Film Noir (literally 'black film or cinema') was coined by French film critics (first by Frank Nino in 1946) who noticed the trend of how 'dark' and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France following the war. It was a style of black and white American films that first evolved in the 1940s, became prominent in the post-war era, and lasted in a classic "Golden Age" period until about 1960 (marked by Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958)). Strictly speaking, however, film noir is not a genre, but rather the mood, style, point-of-view, or tone of a film.

Roots of Classic Film Noir: Film noir is a distinct branch, sub-genre or offshoot of the crime/gangster and detective/mystery sagas from the 1930s (i.e., Little Caesar (1930), Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1932)), but very different in tone and characterization. The themes of noir, derived from sources in Europe, were imported to Hollywood by émigré filmmakers. (Noirs were rooted in German Expressionism of the 1920s and 1930s, such as in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) or Fritz Lang's M (1931), and in the French sound films of the 30s. These films, from German directors such as F. W. Murnau, G. W. Pabst, and Robert Wiene, were noted for their stark camera angles and movements, chiaroscuro lighting and shadowy, high-contrast images - all elements of later film noir.)

Classic film noir developed during and after World War II, taking advantage of the post-war ambience of anxiety, pessimism, and suspicion. These films counter-balanced the optimism of Hollywood's musicals and comedies during this same time period. Fear, mistrust, bleakness and paranoia are readily evident in noir, reflecting the 'chilly' Cold War period when the threat of nuclear annihilation was ever-present. The criminal, violent, misogynistic or greedy perspectives of anti-heroes in film noir were a metaphoric symptom of society's evils, with a strong undercurrent of moral conflict.

The earliest film noirs were detective thrillers, with plots and themes often taken from adaptations of literary works - preferably from best-selling, hard-boiled, pulp novels and crime fiction by Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, or Cornell Woolrich. Very often, a film noir story was developed around a cynical, hard-hearted, disillusioned male character [e.g., Robert Mitchum, Fred MacMurray, or Humphrey Bogart] who encountered a beautiful but promiscuous, amoral, double-dealing and seductive femme fatale [e.g., Mary Astor, Veronica Lake, Jane Greer, Barbara Stanwyck, or Lana Turner] who used her feminine wiles and come-hither sexuality to manipulate him into becoming the fall guy - often following a murder. After a betrayal or double-cross, she was frequently destroyed as well, often at the cost of the hero's life.

Genre Categories

They are broad enough to accommodate practically any film ever made, although film categories can never be precise. By isolating the various elements in a film and categorizing them in genres, it is possible to easily evaluate a film within its genre and allow for meaningful comparisons and some judgments on greatness. Films were not really subjected to genre analysis by film historians until the 1970s. All films have at least one major genre, although there are a number of films that are considered crossbreeds or hybrids with three or four overlapping genre (or sub-genre) types that identify them. The auteur system can be contrasted to the genre system, in which films are rated on the basis of the expression of one person, usually the director, because his/her indelible style, authoring vision or 'signature' dictates the personality, look, and feel of the film. Certain directors (and actors) are known for certain types of films, for example, Woody Allen and comedy, the Arthur Freed unit with musicals, Alfred Hitchcock for suspense and thrillers, John Ford and John Wayne with westerns, or Errol Flynn for classic swashbuckler adventure films.

Main Film Genres

Main Film Genres: Iconic symbols represent the different genres of films.

Action Films

Action films usually include high energy, big-budget physical stunts and chases, possibly with rescues, battles, fights, escapes, destructive crises (floods, explosions, natural disasters, fires, etc.), non-stop motion, spectacular rhythm and pacing, and adventurous, often two-dimensional 'good-guy' heroes (or recently, heroines) battling 'bad guys' - all designed for pure audience escapism. Includes the James Bond 'fantasy' spy/espionage series, martial arts films, and so-called 'blaxploitation' films. A major sub-genre is the disaster film. See also Greatest Disaster and Crowd Film Scenes and Greatest Classic Chase Scenes in Films.

Adventure Films

Adventure films are usually exciting stories, with new experiences or exotic locales, very similar to or often paired with the action film genre. They can include traditional swashbucklers, serialized films, and historical spectacles (similar to the epics film genre), searches or expeditions for lost continents, "jungle" and "desert" epics, treasure hunts, disaster films, or searches for the unknown.

Comedy Films

Comedies are light-hearted plots consistently and deliberately designed to amuse and provoke laughter (with one-liners, jokes, etc.) by exaggerating the situation, the language, action, relationships and characters. This section describes various forms of comedy through cinematic history, including slapstick, screwball, spoofs and parodies, romantic comedies, black comedy (dark satirical comedy), and more.

Crime & Gangster Films

Crime (gangster) films are developed around the sinister actions of criminals or mobsters, particularly bank robbers, underworld figures, or ruthless hoodlums who operate outside the law, stealing and murdering their way through life. Criminal and gangster films are often categorized as film noir or detective-mystery films - because of underlying similarities between these cinematic forms. This category includes a description of various 'serial killer' films.

Drama Films

Dramas are serious, plot-driven presentations, portraying realistic characters, settings, life situations, and stories involving intense character development and interaction. Usually, they are not focused on special-effects, comedy, or action, Dramatic films are probably the largest film genre, with many subsets. See also the melodramas, epics (historical dramas), or romantic genres. Dramatic biographical films (or "biopics") are a major sub-genre, as are 'adult' films (with mature subject content).

Epics/Historical Films

Epics include costume dramas, historical dramas, war films, medieval romps, or 'period pictures' that often cover a large expanse of time set against a vast, panoramic backdrop. Epics often share elements of the elaborate adventure films genre. Epics take an historical or imagined event, mythic, legendary, or heroic figure, and add an extravagant setting and lavish costumes, accompanied by grandeur and spectacle, dramatic scope, high production values, and a sweeping musical score. Epics are often a more spectacular, lavish version of a biopic film. Some 'sword and sandal' films (Biblical epics or films occuring during antiquity) qualify as a sub-genre.

Horror Films

Horror films are designed to frighten and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience. Horror films feature a wide range of styles, from the earliest silent Nosferatu classic, to today's CGI monsters and deranged humans. They are often combined with science fiction when the menace or monster is related to a corruption of technology, or when Earth is threatened by aliens. The fantasy and supernatural film genres are not usually synonymous with the horror genre. There are many sub-genres of horror: slasher, teen terror, serial killers, satanic, Dracula, Frankenstein, etc.

Musicals (Dance) Films

Musical/dance films are cinematic forms that emphasize full-scale scores or song and dance routines in a significant way (usually with a musical or dance performance integrated as part of the film narrative), or they are films that are centered on combinations of music, dance, song or choreography. Major subgenres include the musical comedy or the concert film.

Science Fiction Films

Sci-fi films are often quasi-scientific, visionary and imaginative - complete with heroes, aliens, distant planets, impossible quests, improbable settings, fantastic places, great dark and shadowy villains, futuristic technology, unknown and unknowable forces, and extraordinary monsters ('things or creatures from space'), either created by mad scientists or by nuclear havoc. They are sometimes an offshoot of fantasy films, or they share some similarities with action/adventure films. Science fiction often expresses the potential of technology to destroy humankind and easily overlaps with horror films, particularly when technology or alien life forms become malevolent, as in the "Atomic Age" of sci-fi films in the 1950s.

War (Anti-War) Films

War films acknowledge the horror and heartbreak of war, letting the actual combat fighting (against nations or humankind) on land, sea, or in the air provide the primary plot or background for the action of the film. War films are often paired with other genres, such as action, adventure, drama, romance, comedy (black), suspense, and even epics and westerns, and they often take a denunciatory approach toward warfare. They may include POW tales, stories of military operations, and training.

Westerns

Westerns are the major defining genre of the American film industry - a eulogy to the early days of the expansive American frontier. They are one of the oldest, most enduring genres with very recognizable plots, elements, and characters (six-guns, horses, dusty towns and trails, cowboys, Indians, etc.). Over time, westerns have been re-defined, re-invented and expanded, dismissed, re-discovered, and spoofed.

Understanding Film Genre

What are Film Genres?

Film genres are various forms or identifiable types, categories, classifications or groups of films that are recurring and have similar, familiar or instantly-recognizable patterns, syntax, filmic techniques or conventions - that include one or more of the following: settings (and props), content and subject matter, themes, period, plot, central narrative events, motifs, styles, structures, situations, recurring icons (e.g., six-guns and ten-gallon hats in Westerns), stock characters (or characterizations), and stars. Many films straddle several film genres.

Contrasting Types of Films

The Main Film Genres

These are some of the most common and identifiable film genre categories: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Crime/Gangster, Drama, Epics/Historical, Horror, Musicals, Science Fiction, War, & Westerns.

By the end of the silent era, many of the main genres were established: the melodrama, the western, the horror film, comedies, and action-adventure films (from swashbucklers to war movies). Musicals were inaugurated with the era of the Talkies, and the genre of science-fiction films wasn't generally popularized until the 1950s. One problem with genre films is that they can become stale, cliché-ridden, and over-imitated. A traditional genre that has been reinterpreted, challenged, or subjected to scrutiny may be termed revisionist. There are obvious Genre Biases in the Selection of Best Picture Oscar Winners by AMPAS (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences).

Ajman 01

After pitting my wits with dwindling marine life in UAE, I have finally managed to land three fishes...

I have an Abu Garcia’s Enticer Beach 400 with casting power up to 90 grams, and two Berkley’s two piece Cherrywood Graphite - casting power not more than 35 grams. Only story that I had to tell was that my 5 year old had almost landed a barracuda… on my part I nearly netted 18 inches long Garfield (that to which had somehow managed to get hooked to a retrieving line!).

After over a million unanswered fervent prayers at Al Khalid lagoon, Mamzar (Sharjah side), and Al Khan beach, morning of February 24th found us exploring Ajman waters. It was just like any other outing – some bites but mostly irretrievable tackle and generous feed for fishes… as usual I found my self pottering around the rocks to make up for some lost lead… when my rod started to rigorously tap. Soon I landed a golden brown, around 14 inches long, fish called sheri in local language. The second was about 12 inches looked like sheri but was silver coloured. The third catch was around 30 inches long and some how looked like a catfish – at least it had barbels. It gave a fair fight and resisted my all attempts to cox it to the nets.

My luck is changing, Amen!

Dubai 004

Seeking solace, I have traveled through many a gateways of time. I once spotted a lonely man, a temporal figure trudging the vast ruins of human psyche...

I wonder where was it that he had headed! Was it to the portal of education seeking a brighter morrow... or was it that he had merely drifted from one realm of Baudelaire into yet another abyss of Faustian Dilemma.

Was it the arch of knowledge or a mere mirage of amorphous light that it passed under..... Was it, I wonder, the one that humans call portal of education.