...In 1946 French film critics analysed the films produced in the United States during the war, and drew attention to a new mood of cynicism and dark pessimism that has penetrated into the American cinema. As Paul Schrader noted: ‘french cinephiles soon realized that it was only the beginning: with the first post-war years lighting in Hollywood films was getting darker, characters – more vicious, intonation - more hopeless, and the plots were getting increasingly fatalistic overtones’ (1972: 53). Never before have filmmakers dared to express such a harsh and unflattering view of the American life. The name ‘film noir’ was introduced by Nino Frank in his article for L’Ecran français on 28 August, 1946. He particularly emphasises The Maltese Falcon...
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...During the Great Depression and shortly prior to the outbreak of World War II, many of the films produced were “propaganda” type films. Each one designed to cheer the American people’s dismal outlook during the 30s and 40s. However, with World War II and post-war attitudes, these films did little to help the cynicism of the American people. They were more interested in films that were genuine, depicting the harsh view of society from the perspective of everyday people. Nino Frank explains what they were looking for, “a third dimension: a touch of substance, a touch of depth, the logic of cinema definitively replaced by the logic of truth.”1 Films in this time period were usually adapted from hard-boiled fictions of the 1930s. These films dealt with the uniquely American experiences of despair and alienation as they adjusted to new social and political realities. Films in the early 1940s and late 1950s were, at the time, considered crime melodramas but are now known as “Film Noir,” or “black cinema.” Directors were not intentionally trying to create films that fit into a specific category, but instead were creating films that reflected much of the sentiment of the time. In most literature, there are many debates about what constitutes film noir. I hope to define the genre through historical background, cinematic conventions, and characteristics that categorize a film noir; as well as a progression of the genre into today’s movies. Although Technicolor began in the...
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...Intro to Film 10/25/11 Film Noir Film Noir is a term first used by some French critics to describe a group of American films made during and after World War II. The term Film Noir means black or dark cinema. Film noir is the classic period saying to have occurred between 1941 and 1958, beginning with John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon and ending with Orson Welle’s Touch of Evil. Film Noir is identified by its constant opposition of light and shadow, oblique camera angles, and the ways characters are placed in unconventional or awkward positions with particular shots. (Conrad, 2006, pp1-8) Themes that characterize Film Noir include inversions of traditional values, the feeling of alienation, paranoia, presence of crime and violence, and the feelings of despair, fear, mistrust and loss of innocence. (Conrad, 2006, pp1-8) Many argue on whether or not film noir is a genre. Foster Hirsch says that a film genre is “determined by conventions or narrative structure, characterization, theme, and visual design.” According to this definition, Hirsch felt film noir was in fact a genre because of the consistent tone and the story telling and visual conventions running through the films of the classic noir period. Andrew Spicer denied film noir can be defined as a genre since the expression of film noir is “a discursive critical construction that has evolved over time.” (Conrad, 2006, pp10) Nonetheless, as a crucial film movement, film noir consisted of films tending to have...
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...About ten years before the birth of noir cinema, guidelines for cinematic content in America began being enforced. The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association or MPPDA adopted a code which set forth a list of specific do’s and don’ts of the film industry (Medoff). The code was known for being exhaustingly repressive, forbidding almost anything that was deemed “bad” or anything subject to give audiences the wrong idea (Cook). The birth of noir during this era is fascinating because everything we know about noir is contradictory to this code’s repression of humanity’s darkness. This led to many arguments between producers and noir directors. Often, this dispute led to directors submitting to the producers and inserting what would...
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...Weiner 1 Jacob Weiner Daniel McClure California Culture October 1, 2014 California Sunshine and Noir California, the Golden State, where the sun is always shining, the waves are always crashing, and dreams are coming true. Right? Well, not exactly. It hasn’t always been sunshine and smiles for the great state of California. The state has gone through a variety of stages both economically, and politically. Throughout these phases, there have been a fair amount of themes that have helped build the foundation of California culture. Of course, there is the notion that anyone can move to California and strike it rich. This dream that is still very alive today has contributed in the past and present with massive booms in immigration into California. This popular conception is warm and welcoming, but it does not tell the entire story of California. When looking into the past and understanding how this state came to be, there is a dark and iniquitous aura that suggests that California isn’t really that enchanting, glamorous place that it is made out to be. The California Dream all started in 1848 when discovery of gold sparked a rapid movement known as the California Gold Rush. Word quickly spread when John Marshall first made his discovery in the American River. As Albert L. Hurtado explains in his paper, “Sex, Gender, Culture, and a Great Event: The California Gold Rush, ‘It is impossible to give more than rough estimates for the number of hopeful people who poured into California...
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...during the 1980s and the 1990s. The introspective nature of Hartley’s films provided a sense of stoic humor, spatial orientation of dialogue, and a gateway for interpreting the mysteries of life. This form of self-authoring style of filmmaking that crosses many differing genres. Hartley’s films tend to include the crime genre, thriller/suspense genre, comedy, and other important aspects of filmmaking that are not confined to any specific stylistic. In this independent type of filmmaking, Hartley is also known to writing scripts, directing, and scoring the music. This dynamic multi-genre...
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...Film Noir and Romance: It’s No Fairy Tale Baby Film Noir may not seem like a very romantic subject considering how many of the couples in the films are eventually lead into their death or a prison term. There are some romantic aspects to these type of cinema. Even if a couple does have a tragic end, there is always some sort of romance in the middle. It could be lust or love, but it is usually there. While all Film Noir never ends as fairy tale, an audience can look at most of the films and see how love, or lust, can drive people to do despicable acts of crime. Before describing how romance and the many varying types of love appear in Film Noir, it is important to understand the different gender roles each character plays. The male protagonist paired with a femme fatale is the usual leading roles in a Film Noir, but that isn’t a hard set rule. Men can play the male victim, damaged men, a private eye, a psychopath, or a homme fatal, (Spicer 85). Women can also play a variety of roles such as the nurturer, the good-bad girl, the female victim, or a femme fatale, (Spicer 90). Male victims can be a protagonist who just gets trapped in the web of lies weaved by a beautiful woman, a femme fatale. The damaged man is usually a veteran who has a hard time adjusting to society after war or a police officer who loses control. After seeing so much violence it is hard for some men to see the world as a happy place. These men are usually paired with a nurturing female character. A private...
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...Intro to Film Study Film Analysis of Pulp Fiction Pulp Fiction is a movie that seems to have multiple stories being told almost simultaneously. Some will say it is about two hit men or a boxer, but the truth is there is no story behind the film. The whole purpose of the film is to parody every type of film movement created. This film leaves no movement out. The director, Quentin Tarantino, uses the film’s formal properties to express larger themes. First of all, Quentin Tarantino somewhat sticks to the classic Hollywood System for editing. Tarantino does not seem to cross the axis of action. However, there are times when the director breaks with the classic Hollywood System for editing and one way he does this is by having a discontinuous editing system. One example is the end of the movie. Under the rule of continuity editing, it should have been following the beginning of the film. The director, however, did not seem to use crosscutting, which could have worked in his film and makes him adhere to the continuity editing system. Among all the other styles present in the film, film noir and surrealism seem to be the most obvious. Throughout the movie, Tarantino parodies these films styles along with many others. Film noir is one of the most noticeable styles in the movie. First of all, one important aspect of film noir is the fact that each character has no clear moral base. This is very true in Pulp Fiction, especially with Samuel L. Jackson’s character, Jules. In the beginning...
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...FLST 3160 02 F2 2015 Topics in Film Studies Film Noir Colin Taylor Out of the Past Out of the Past is a 1947 film noir directed by French director Jacques Tourneur from the source novel, “Build My Gallows High” by Daniel Mainwaring and using a script by the author but with hefty additions from the author of The Maltese Falcon, James M Cain as well Frank Fenton, a B-movie writer who rumour has it was responsible for many of the films great one liners. As the AMC film site has it, “The downbeat screenplay was based on Geoffrey Homes' (a pseudonym - his real name was Daniel Mainwaring) 1946 novel Build My Gallows High, a book that consciously imitated Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (1941). (An uncredited James M. Cain wrote some of the script.)” Tourneur was an established director whose oeuvre was predominantly what we should call B Movies but all of which had a striking visual style. His three most famous movies before Out of the Past, Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man are all about transformation, the night, perversion, the corrosive effects of evil, and the powerful link between violence and sex. Both he and Mainwaring were unapologetic left wingers (Mainwaring had to operate under a pseudonym during the McCarthy witch hunts) who saw evil in greed. Mainwaring’s most famous film script was the “reds under the bed” masterpiece The Invasion of the Body snatchers, another film about changes in people. Out of the Past is such a rich visual and...
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...An artistic movement whose influence on film has been as profound and enduring as that of surrealism or cubism on painting, the French New Wave (or Le Nouvelle Vague) made its first splashes as a movement shot through with youthful exuberance and a brisk reinvigoration of the filmmaking process. Most agree that the French New Wave was at its peak between 1958 and 1964, but it continued to ripple on afterwards, with many of the tendencies and styles introduced by the movement still in practice today… French New Wave The New Wave (French: La Nouvelle Vague) was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm. "New Wave" is an example of European art cinema. Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm. Using portable equipment and requiring little or no set up time, the New Wave way of filmmaking presented a documentary type style. The films exhibited direct sounds on film stock that required less light. Filming techniques included fragmented, discontinuous editing, and long takes. The combination of objective realism...
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...the Impact of Images 187 Early Technology and the Evolution of Movies 192 The Rise of the Hollywood Studio System 195 The Studio System’s Golden Age 205 The Transformation of the Studio System 209 The Economics of the Movie Business 215 Popular Movies and Democracy In every generation, a film is made that changes the movie industry. In 1941, that film was Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. Welles produced, directed, wrote, and starred in the movie at age twenty-five, playing a newspaper magnate from a young man to old age. While the movie was not a commercial success initially (powerful newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, whose life was the inspiration for the movie, tried to suppress it), it was critically praised for its acting, story, and directing. Citizen Kane’s dramatic camera angles, striking film noir–style lighting, nonlinear storytelling, montages, and long deep-focus shots were considered technically innovative for the era. Over time, Citizen Kane became revered as a masterpiece, and in 1997 the American Film Institute named it the Greatest American Movie of All Time. “Citizen Kane is more than a great movie; it is a gathering of all the lessons of the emerging era of sound,” film critic Roger Ebert wrote.1 CHAPTER 6 ○ MOVIES 185 (c) Bedford/St. Martin's bedfordstmartins.com 1-457-62096-0 / 978-1-457-62096-6 MOVIES A generation later, the space epic Star Wars (1977) changed the culture of the movie industry. Star Wars, produced, written, and directed...
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...LACAN AND CONTEMPORARY FILM EDITED BY TODD McGOWAN and SHEILA KUNKLE OTHER Other Press New York Copyright © 2004 Todd McGowan and Sheila Kunkle Production Editor: Robert D. Hack This book was set in 11 pt. Berkeley by Alpha Graphics, Pittsfield, N.H. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Allrightsreserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. For information write to Other Press LLC, 307 Seventh Avenue, Suite 1807, New York, NY 10001. Or visit our website: www.otherpress.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McGowan, Todd. Lacan and contemporary film / by Todd McGowan & Sheila Kunkle. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-59051-084-4 (pbk : alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures-Psychological aspects. 2. Psychoanalysis and motion pictures. 3. Lacan, Jacques, 1901- I. Kunkle, Sheila. II. Title. PN1995 .M379 2004 791.43'01 '9-dc22 2003020952 Contributors Paul Eisenstein teaches literature and film in the English department at Otterbein College, Columbus, Ohio, and is the author of Traumatic Encounters: Holocaust Representation and the Hegelian Subject (SUNY Press, 2003). Anna Kornbluh...
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... CHAPTER 4 Chapter Objectives After reading this chapter, students should: • Have a working knowledge of the cinematographer’s job • Understand the difference between cinematography and mise en scène and recognize the importance of each • Understand the importance of color and lighting and how they affect the tone and feel of a film • Be familiar with different methods of photographing a film, and with terms such as panning, tilting, tracking shots, deep focus, and aspect ratios • Understand how different focal length lenses affect the look of a shot • Recognize what special effects can do for a movie—and what they can’t do 4.1 The “Look” of a Scene W hen we are first introduced to Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, played by Marlon Brando, the Mafia boss is sitting in the study of his home. Along with his consigliore, or adviser, Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), Corleone is listening to a line of people requesting favors on the day of his daughter’s wedding. Corleone is immensely powerful, as we learn by the scope of the favors he is asked to grant, which in one case includes the desire of a singer to be cast in a film to revive his musical career, and Corleone’s ability to grant them. However, it is not just what Corleone says in the scene, which introduces us to all that will follow, that makes us aware of his power. It is also how the scene looks, how it is shot, and how color and light are combined that give The Godfather such an immediately distinctive...
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... | |Breaking Dawn | |Author |Stephenie Meyer | |Country |United States | |Language |English | |Genre |Romance, fantasy, young-adult fiction | |Publisher |Little, Brown and Company | |Published |2005–2008 | |Media type |Print | Twilight is a series of four vampire-themed fantasy romance novels by American author Stephenie Meyer. It charts a period in the life of Isabella "Bella" Swan, a teenage girl who moves to Forks, Washington, and falls in love with a 104-year-old vampire named Edward Cullen. The series is told primarily from Bella's point of view, with the epilogue of Eclipse and Part II of Breaking Dawn being told from the viewpoint of character Jacob Black, a werewolf. The unpublished Midnight Sun is a retelling of the first book, Twilight, from Edward Cullen's point of view. The...
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...The Hunger Games: Action-film feminism is catching fire Lisa Schwarzbaum Burning up Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen is both strong and vulnerable – a new kind of action heroine who has powered The Hunger Games: Catching fire to a $158m US debut. (Lionsgate) Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen is a new type of female action film icon, and moviegoers should be very excited about that, writes Lisa Schwarzbaum. As Catching Fire ignites on movie screens around the world, this is what we know about the 21st Century heroine called Katniss Everdeen: she is strong but also soft. She is brave but she has doubts. She is a phenomenal fictional creation, yet is real enough that moviegoers can draw inspiration from her values, her resourcefulness, and her very human inner conflicts. And she is played by Jennifer Lawrence, who appears not only to be handling her current duties as Hollywood’s finest model of well-adjusted millennial female stardom but doing so with charm. Everdeen and Lawrence: golden girls both. Personified in Lawrence’s lithe movements and cool, focused gaze, Katniss is a brave, resourceful and independent-minded fighter; but she is also a troubled and vulnerably guilt-ridden human being. Nina Jacobson, the producer of the Hunger Games film franchise, puts it this way: “She is a singular heroine in that the burden of survival weighs on her. She has a ton of survivor’s guilt. And she keeps surviving.” Girl on fire It is strange that behaving like a well-adjusted...
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