What Makes a Good Crime Film - Essay Example

Name: xxxxxxxxxxx Tutor: xxxxxxxxxxx Title: What Makes a Good Crime Film Institution: xxxxxxxxx Date due: xxxxxxxxx What makes a good crime film? Introduction Basically, crime films focus on the lives of criminals. The stylistic approach to a crime film differs from pragmatic depictions of real-life criminal figures, to the far-fetched approach wicked activities of imaginary arch-villains. Criminal activities are glorified within crime films. There are several diverse crime films and remarkable crime films have been ongoing for over eighty years of filming. A lot of action, play, dynamic characters, in addition to glamour can make up the best crime films. Basically, the audience needs to sympathize with one or two characters within a crime film. The main character within a good crime films tend to play anti-heroes irrespective of if they are bad characters or good characters. A sense of heroism as well as sympathy is present in a good crime film, even though they are the most dreadful character. For a crime film to be fascinating, it should have an anti-hero. Watching a good crime movie should offer the audience with some sort of interest, or fascination with the key characters of the story. Good crime films are technically more character driven as compared to other films. At times the characters within crime films are tragic ones and result into dreadful endings (Valverde 2006). This paper will be using mise-en-scene and Neo noir concepts to analyze the films Basic Instinct, Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990) and serial murder, American Psycho film. Crime films are developed around the ominous activities of criminals, more so bank robbers, criminal world figures, or coldblooded hoodlums who function outside the law, stealing and ferociously murdering their way through life. Crime films are frequently classified as post-war film noir or mystery films due to their fundamental resemblance between these cinematic forms. Crime stories within these films emphasize of the life of a crime figure or a crime’s victims. Furthermore, they praise the rise and fall of a certain criminal gangs, bank robbers, murderers or lawbreakers within individual power struggles or inconsistency with law as well as order figure. Headline-grabbing circumstance, real criminals or even crime reports are used within crime films. Crime films are normally set within big, crowded towns and this is aimed at providing an outlook of the secret world of the criminal. Interesting settings for crimes often add an aspect of adventure and wealth as well within the crime films. Writers dreamed up suitable gangland terminology for the tales, like “tommy guns (Stevens 2010). The organization of the film industry exemplifies the postmodern features. Therefore, the films have undergone a transition from “Fordist mass production to mass production forms for example crime films a characteristic of postmodern economies. The production of crime films has been exemplifying a “postmodern” blurring of restrictions between industrial practices, technologies as well as cultural forms. Again, films in different forms have been amplifying postmodern themes and hence provide reflections of postmodern society. Therefore, the dystopian aspect of the current crime films may be allied to a ‘postmodern’ loss of faith in the notion of progress or changing film representations of people with a collapse of confidence within the ostentatious narratives surrounding masculinity and patriarchal authority. Additionally, films have been perceived to exhibit the aesthetic aspects, for example eclecticism as well as the breakdown of traditional hierarchies that characterize postmodernist cultural practice. Nevertheless, the identification and evaluation of such aesthetic aspects has come up with numerous intricacies. This to some extent involves the diversity of films to which the label has been associated with, for instance the diversity involving different forms of films, including crime films (Scott 2010). The influence of ideologies was short-lived and the political turmoil that occurred in France in 1968 was the catalyst for a complete change of direction in film studies. Bazin’s style of criticism based around the notion of the auteur and the aesthetic function of cinema soon became outdated as film studies became indisputably political: there was no place outside or above politics; all texts, whatsoever their claims to neutrality, had their ideological slant. Film makers and film critics alike were forced to consider the relationship between ideology and power and the position of cinema within that dualism. In addition to scientific methodology, they also highlight the political nature of their aims which are profoundly influenced by Marxism. According to David 2009, they see film as a product that becomes transformed into a commodity which ‘is also an ideological product of the system. Acknowledging their own imprisonment within capitalist ideology, post-revolution film studies envisaged that theory would provide the key to unlock their chains. It was through theory that operations of ideological control in cinema could be recognized, and through theory that resistance could be emphasized (Tyler 2006). Crime films are normally materialistic, street-smart, decadent and self-destructive. Rivalry with other criminal gangs is regularly an important plot aspect within crime films. Crime plots also consist of question like how the criminal will be arrested by police and other legal authorities, or mysteries like the person who stole the prized entity. They get power with a dangerous brutal veneer whereas illustrating a ruthless desire for success and acknowledgment but underneath they may express compassion as well as tenderness (Spicer 2002). Crime films play an important role in constructing a “criminological common sense” that is bound-up with existing institutional practices as well as political relations; these are referred to as ‘popular imaginaries of crime”. Film noir describes Hollywood crime drama, more so those stressing on skeptical attitudes and also sexual motivations. The low-key lighting schemes of several classic film noirs are related with bleak light/dark distinctions as well as shadow pattering. The glooms of Venetian shades are an iconic illustration within noir. The faces of the characters can be to some extent or entirely obscured by darkness (Jack 2003). Film noir also makes use of low-angle, broad-angle and also skewed angle shots. Other strategies of bewilderment comparatively common within film noir consist of shots of individuals demonstrated within one or more mirrors, shots through frosted glass and also special impacts successions of at times peculiar nature. Film noirs have abnormally convoluted story line, often entailing flashbacks in addition to other editing techniques that interrupt and at times obscure the storyline succession (Mason 2002). Furthermore, framing the complete key narrative as a flashback is also typical device. Voice recounts sometimes used as a configuring device is perceived as a noir characteristic whereas classic noir is usually allied to the first-person narration. Film noir is regularly portrayed as fundamentally pessimistic. The noir stories are perceived as most attribute tale of individuals trapped within unwanted circumstances, striving against haphazard, insensible fate, and often ruined. The films depict the world as intrinsically corrupt (Charles 2005). Basic Instinct is a god example a crime film. It is an erotically charged thriller regarding the hunt for murderer within San Francisco attracts attention by its sleek style, attractive story which is as weirdly far-fetched as it is powerfully intuitive. Fiction begins when, at the climax of mutual sexual excitement, a blonde that cannot be identified ties up the hands of her loves and does him in. the detectives go on streets to question the girlfriend of the dead man who is extremely rich and sexy and has published a novel where an the same murder is demonstrated. The incredibly rough and icy woman fast starts alluring Douglas, who has lately gone cold fiasco off cigarettes, alcohol, drugs as well as sex. The woman bends the detective so out of shape that within the initial burning sex scene, he brutally beats up his former girlfriend and also police department shrink. However, she remains the key suspect and this comprises four more murder events. The expansively disheveled sexual histories of the detective, the woman and Tripplehorn, brings in distrust all over the place. The detective who is Douglas scores with a game and gamey depiction of an iconoclastic detective not scared of going over the line proficiently or individually. After a decade of scoring time within schlockers, the detective has a career-making role here as a striking, astute manipulator who is at all times quite a few steps ahead of everybody else (Scott 2010). In these films, such as Basic Instinct Film, murder is normally the main aspect. Additionally, the most criminal motivating elements include greed, distrust and envy. The crime is investigated by a private eye or a police detective who happens to be the most ubiquitous although not dominant within the essential plot. This is illustrated in Basic Instinct Film where Douglas the detective is the most prevalent character within the film. Just like in this film, the crime films have protagonists who are involved within heists or within murderous plans regularly engaging adulterous love affairs. Specific typical characters emerge within numerous film noirs, for example; cynical police detectives, femme fatales, corrupt police, green-eyed partners, fearless claims adjusters and also down-and-out writers. In these characters, smoking of cigarettes is widespread. By and large, the private eye and the femme fatale have been taken on as the archetypal film noir figures (Rabinowitz 2002). What’s more, in most cases, film noir is characterized by moral indistinctness. This means that in crime films the vices without any ignominy or emancipation are rewarded unlike the other films where the virtues are rewarded while the vices are harshly punished. Commonly, the tone of film noir is considered as downbeat where it is portrayed as darker still and tremendously black. According to Gregg 2003 tone defines film noir; a tone perceived as hopeless and dispiriting. Furthermore, the tone of these films is also characterized by sexual insinuation as well as self-reflexive humor (Neil 2001). Bret Easton Ellis’ twisted satire about serial murder, American Psycho is a film that was released in 1999 and effectively captures the predicament of mediated criminal violence. In spite the film being received in a contentious manner, the film eventually turned out to be a cult classic as a video rental and is still aired frequently on cable TV (Stanley 2002). Strangely, this represented graphic violence as a serial killer who turned out to be the mainstream implying true to “risk society” that destruction and hazards can emerge from anywhere. Generally, most crime films are about certain crimes and criminals, nonetheless, not attention is given to the real criminal and their victim or to the efforts of the policemen trying to catch the criminals. The main focus of these films is on the crimes the bad characters commit. All of these blood-and-bone people have turned out to be subsidiary to physical clues and technical gadgets (Robert 2006).   The depictions of “good” and “evil” within the crime films basically misrepresent the images of criminals, victims, criminal justice including criminal punishment. For instance, in criminal harm, the representations are chiefly people and not organizations. Even if criminal victimization might be situated at home, it is normally represented within the street, and on the odd occasion perceived from the executive suite (Michael 2003). In the process, myths and stereotypes in relation to different forms of violent “offenders” and “non-offenders” are schemed onto large and small screens in a similar way. In regard to fictional accounts of gender and violence, Hollywood films give a false impression of reality, irrespective of how fantastic the story line is, they are the main source of mythology regarding family violence. The women are represented as operating in accordance with the age old allegories like, batterers are extraordinary men, women provoke men to abuse them, beating do not leave an indelible mark, women can run away from their batterers and many more mythologies (Fran 2002). In mediums of crime films, criminal violence is put into practice by changing mythic and ideological essentials, within the service of establishing audience understanding and a worldview compassionate to extreme eccentricity and free enterprise. These themes are a result of reflexivity, reification and also replica, grounded within an assimilating political economy and also an animatedly developing collective cataleptic. Within the current era of postmodern review of crime and films past greediness as well as psychoanalysis frequently share a discursive theoretical favor (Karen 2001). The main focus of these crucial evaluations is on both dominance and valorization of bloodletting in presented signs, codes alongside emblematic practices. In the view of that, postmodern analysis has emerged with two fundamental themes. The first one is that in a developing violence within the crime films, a destruction of influence has taken place in the presentation as well as acceptance of violent imagery. The second theme is that the contextualizations of the violent images within these films are closely allied to the legacies of patriarchy, harsh selfishness, and neoliberal capitalism. For instance Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990) provides a distinct economy strategy when analyzing this film. The main question is what regarding the narrative within serial killers that renders them extremely seductive when seductiveness is so effortlessly and swiftly criticized. The answer is that the body count of this film genre is a scathing censure to an atomized society of utilization within which cravings are established in a manner that they can never be satisfied (Hare 2003). Most of crime films are associated with social landscape of some eras. For example, with a sense of elevated angst and hostility that ensued after the Second World War, a quite number of crime movies emerged. As Mayer 2007 suggests, it is as if the war and the social eruptions within its after effects, let loose demons that had been bottled up within the national consciousness. The films contain explicit sexuality and graphic illustration of violence and the main characters within the crime films include a vile murder, a bright murderer and a cop who cannot resist the menace. However, there have been question regarding if there are unavoidable legal drawbacks involved in turning a factual crime story into a crime film and that there is no way filmmakers can sympathize with victims’ survivors without losing the intuitive effect of the storyline. Conclusion In conclusion, crime films are regularly allied to city settings. Fundamentally, the city is portrayed within noir as a “muddle”. Bars, lounges, nightclubs, as well as gambling hideouts are commonly the scene of action in these films. The culminations of a considerable number of film noirs occur within visually intricate, habitually industrialized settings, for example refineries, industries, train yards, power plants; most notably the fiery ending of White Heat, set at a chemical plant. In most cases, even in imagination, within noir, it is always at night and all the time raining. Evidently, crime films are full of tales of deception, sexual seduction, and corruption taking advantage of bright, sun-baked setting to an intense upshot. Evidently, most of the crime films have a disastrous or bleak ending. In a nutshell, crime films have accounts of death and torture with reasonably chaotic visuals of dead people, have incidents of sex and nudity, portrays different forms of violence which includes shooting using the guns or knife stabbing, there is constant use of foul language and in most cases leaves the viewers excited (George 2007). Bibliography David, A., 2009, Moral Panic: From Sociological Concept to Public Discourse, Crime, Media, Culture, An International Journal, Vol. 5/1. Gregg, B., 2003, Violence and Nonviolence: Pathways to Understanding, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Fran, M., 2002, American Gangster Cinema: From Little Caesar to Pulp Fiction, Palgrave, Houndmills. Mayer, G., 2007, Encyclopedia of Film Noir, Greenwood, Westport, Conn. Charles, P., 2005, It's a Bitter Little World: The Smartest, Toughest, Nastiest Quotes from Film Noir, Writer's Digest Books, Iola. Rabinowitz, P., 2002, Black & White & Noir: America's Pulp Modernism, Columbia University Press, New York. Jack, S., 2003, Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster Film, Oxford University Press Oxford. Karen, B., 2001, Femme Noir: Bad Girls of Film, McFarland, Jefferson. Hare, W., 2003, Early Film Noir: Greed, Lust, and Murder Hollywood Style, McFarland, Jefferson. Michael, F., 2003, Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940–1959, McFarland, Jefferson. George, A., 2007, Contemporary American Cinema, Scarecrow, Lanham, Md. Mason, F., 2002, American Gangster Cinema: From Little Caesar to Pulp Fiction, Palgrave, Houndmills, UK. McDonnell, B., 2007, Encyclopedia of Film Noir, Greenwood, Westport, Conn. Neil, M., 2001, Sexually Violent Media, Thought Patterns, and Antisocial Behavior, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 45/86. Ray, S., 2007, Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice: Images, Realities, and Policies, Thomson Wadsworth, Belmont, CA. Robert, W., 2006, Demystifying Crime and Criminal Justice, Roxbury, Los Angeles.   Scott, B., 2010, Mass Deception: Moral Panic and the U.S. War on Iraq, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ. Stevens, D., 2010, Media and Criminal Justice: The CSI Effect, Jones and Bartlett, Boston.   Stanley, C., 2002, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and the Rockers, Mac Gibbon and Lee, London.   Tyler, T., 2006, Viewing CSI and the Threshold of Guilt: Managing Truth and Justice in Reality and Fiction, Yale Law Journal, Vol.115: 1050-1063.   Valverde, M., 2006, Law and Order: Images, Meanings, Myths, Routledge, London.   Read More

Again, films in different forms have been amplifying postmodern themes and hence provide reflections of postmodern society. Therefore, the dystopian aspect of the current crime films may be allied to a ‘postmodern’ loss of faith in the notion of progress or changing film representations of people with a collapse of confidence within the ostentatious narratives surrounding masculinity and patriarchal authority. Additionally, films have been perceived to exhibit the aesthetic aspects, for example eclecticism as well as the breakdown of traditional hierarchies that characterize postmodernist cultural practice.

Nevertheless, the identification and evaluation of such aesthetic aspects has come up with numerous intricacies. This to some extent involves the diversity of films to which the label has been associated with, for instance the diversity involving different forms of films, including crime films (Scott 2010). The influence of ideologies was short-lived and the political turmoil that occurred in France in 1968 was the catalyst for a complete change of direction in film studies. Bazin’s style of criticism based around the notion of the auteur and the aesthetic function of cinema soon became outdated as film studies became indisputably political: there was no place outside or above politics; all texts, whatsoever their claims to neutrality, had their ideological slant.

Film makers and film critics alike were forced to consider the relationship between ideology and power and the position of cinema within that dualism. In addition to scientific methodology, they also highlight the political nature of their aims which are profoundly influenced by Marxism. According to David 2009, they see film as a product that becomes transformed into a commodity which ‘is also an ideological product of the system. Acknowledging their own imprisonment within capitalist ideology, post-revolution film studies envisaged that theory would provide the key to unlock their chains.

It was through theory that operations of ideological control in cinema could be recognized, and through theory that resistance could be emphasized (Tyler 2006). Crime films are normally materialistic, street-smart, decadent and self-destructive. Rivalry with other criminal gangs is regularly an important plot aspect within crime films. Crime plots also consist of question like how the criminal will be arrested by police and other legal authorities, or mysteries like the person who stole the prized entity.

They get power with a dangerous brutal veneer whereas illustrating a ruthless desire for success and acknowledgment but underneath they may express compassion as well as tenderness (Spicer 2002). Crime films play an important role in constructing a “criminological common sense” that is bound-up with existing institutional practices as well as political relations; these are referred to as ‘popular imaginaries of crime”. Film noir describes Hollywood crime drama, more so those stressing on skeptical attitudes and also sexual motivations.

The low-key lighting schemes of several classic film noirs are related with bleak light/dark distinctions as well as shadow pattering. The glooms of Venetian shades are an iconic illustration within noir. The faces of the characters can be to some extent or entirely obscured by darkness (Jack 2003). Film noir also makes use of low-angle, broad-angle and also skewed angle shots. Other strategies of bewilderment comparatively common within film noir consist of shots of individuals demonstrated within one or more mirrors, shots through frosted glass and also special impacts successions of at times peculiar nature.

Film noirs have abnormally convoluted story line, often entailing flashbacks in addition to other editing techniques that interrupt and at times obscure the storyline succession (Mason 2002). Furthermore, framing the complete key narrative as a flashback is also typical device. Voice recounts sometimes used as a configuring device is perceived as a noir characteristic whereas classic noir is usually allied to the first-person narration.

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