The Major Characteristic of the Film Noir - Research Paper Example

The Major Characteristic of the Film Noir Film Noir means Black film or dark film. Film Noir belongs to American Cinema. But the name Film Noir was coined by French critics; by Nino Frank to be exact in 1946, in an article in Ecran Francais .The Second World War changed the mood of the American society very drastically and hence that of the American films too. Till then American films were festive in mood especially in musicals and comedies. After the World War Two, the American films released in France, especially the detective or crime films were very black and bleak in theme and treatment. France was occupied by Nazis in the early part of 1940s. The occupation prevented the entry of Hollywood films to France. It was almost after half a decade that French could see American films .Hollywood called it “ the audience slumber of half a decade .” After the World War two, and after the so called slumber when the French saw the American films, they were surprised to note the very clear change in the moods of these films. The earlier sunny optimism was gone, replaced by very gloomy and pessimistic world view. The French called these new black films, the Film Noir. Film Noir was not a genre. It was more to do with the mood and tone of the film----a particular moody content treated in a dark style This change in mood was a direct reflection of what was called “the post-war Malaise” The World War and the Cold War that followed it , lead to widespread fear and mistrust among the people in the America. Industrial disputes were widespread. Consumer durables were rationed. In places like Detroit in the Midwest there were race riots. The photographic evidence of the Holocaust was sickening. The threat of the A-bomb lingered menacingly over everyone’s head. All these lead to sudden overnight loss of innocence. It was replaced by greed. The result was widespread pessimism and anxiety. And suddenly Hollywood films became dark and the French called them the Film noir. THE PROTAGONIST AND THE GENDER ISSUES: The gender issues of the Film Noir films can be understood only with in the back ground of the particular characteristics of the Protagonist .The major characteristic of the Film Noir films was sheer fatalism. The protagonist is an anti-hero, an ordinary American male who is sure to be doomed. One small misstep like a crime which is simply petty or a minor evasion sends him into the quick sand of doom and obliteration. He tries to escape out of this. But all his attempts remain futile. This situation, in which the protagonist finds himself in, is often described as “the spider web of deceit”. The social ambience of the Noir films is the underworld. The protagonists come from lower strata of society. They are very ambitious and become criminals in their attempts to attain these ambitions. These anti-heroes are manipulative characters with hidden personal and political agendas. They are typically cynical, distinctly disillusioned and fiercely frightened. They are very insecure and lonely and thus end up as ultimate losers. Driven by the past they often repeat their mistakes. . The gender issues are also defined or dictated by the particular style of making of the Noir films. Being dark in content and treatment every effort is taken by the film maker to make a greater impact on the audience. Thus action genre techniques are used freely to create that thriller experience to the audience. The camera work is often expressionist and the lighting matched this expressionist style of camera work. There are more shadows than lighted areas. The settings are mostly interiors. The exteriors are urban night scenes with deep shadows and flashing neon lights. THE ‘FEMME FATALE’: The Second World War not only imbibed pessimism in the society but also challenged the gender roles by changing the concept of the family as an institution. The pattern of industrial production in the United States was temporarily altered during the war. For example, the auto industry, one of the strongest among the industrial bases of the United States, stopped making cars. They were concentrating on the production of armaments. This continued from 1942 t0 1946.This changed pattern of production created huge number of vacancies in man power in the industries. They were occupied by women who suddenly became the bread earners. The stereotype image of woman as a dependent and subordinate house wife with the male heading the family suddenly disappered.The men who came back from the warfront were surprised to see stronger, powerful and independent women at home. It was this new woman that led to the emergence of the concept of “femme fatale”. This concept is a product of the male fantasy about this new woman as well as his anxieties about her. She has more desire in her and is capable of expressing it to such an extend as to arouse fantasies in the male. She is able to have this ruthless desire because she is independent of any other males and has strength of her own. The female expression of sexuality suddenly became direct and often aggressive. Her desire is no more passive. Earlier it was the male who expressed such direct sexual desires aggressively. The newly empowered female became capable of doing it to get what ever she wants to get and with whom ever she desires. This new role is defined as predatory, though such a label was not there when the male played the same role earlier. This shows that the “femme fatale” is a male concept that originated out of his fantasies. It, in certain way expresses the male jealousy against the new empowered woman .In the Noir context such a woman is dangerous too. She entraps the male and leads him to his doom. Thus this gender element is as vital an element as the thematic uncertainty, and instability which are the other major essentials of the Noir films and which contributed to the thriller element of these films .If a director could achieve the thriller – gangster cinematic experience without the female fatale, he could get rid of this element, which meant that it was not a very essential element of Film Noir. But in most cases this gender archetype became a part of the fatalism of Film Noir .She fulfilled the need of the thriller to excite the viewers. Thus she is constructed as very exotic and intriguing and very often tempting too. The protagonist is helpless in resisting the lure of this vampire like sexual woman, leading to his own doom as she is the product of response to the threatened male authority. The Femme fatale represents the crumbling down of the concept of family as an institution after the World War Two. As Sylvia Harvey (1980 :22)points out: “It is the representation of the institution of the family , which in so many films serves as the mechanism whereby desire is fulfilled , or at least ideological equilibrium is established, that in film noir serves as the vehicle for the expression of frustration” . This frustrated femme fatale disturbs the stability of the nuclear family as she enters the family structure as a third element leading to a triangular conflict. She contrasts herself with the spouse of this triangle, who is old fashioned and passive. This contrast makes her more attractive to the Noir protagonist. The contrastingly active and aggressive postures of this female very easily dupes and lures the protagonist, leading to the elimination of the passive spouse. Thus the Noir films send a male oriented message down to the females who wish to stay as passive spouses. The message is that to be passive is no more attractive; to be passive is fatal too. A passive woman is sure to lose her man who will get lured away by active and strong women around. The message is gender biased towards the male. But the male is also warned about the dooms day awaiting him .But this warning for the male is balanced by the class structure of the Noir films. The protagonist of these films comes from the lower class or from the so called underworld. This class structure of these films attempts to keep the bourgeois family structure in tact. Cinema being the most popular entertainment medium must not only reflect the social values but also must keep some of the values in tact too. When the biblical concept of marriage as a procreative institution, gave way to marriage as a convenient arrangement for sexual excitement the faithful but passive female became not really suited with in the system of marital relationship.Femme fatale allows the married man to cross over to the areas of illicit desires, even though there are dangers of getting doomed. According to Janey Place (1989:35) “Film Noir is a male fantasy, as is most of our art. Thus the woman here as elsewhere is defined by her sexuality; the dark woman has access to it and the virgin does not.” BREATHLESS: An interesting European film noir is Breathless (A Bout de Souffle) by Jean-luc Godard.The film is, interesting not only for its representation of gender issues but also for the fresh and new cinematic devises used. It is a Noir film which turns out to be a parody of the Noir. It uses new cinematic devises, and is more a cinematic essay than a cinematic narrative. Godard was one of the critics writing in the famous French film magazine called Cahiers du Cinema, a militant journal for new film movement founded by the film theorist and critic Andre Bazin in 1950.And Breathless, his debut film, obviously is a writer’s film. In an oft-quoted interview in Cahiers, Godard (1972: 171) describes his works thus: “Today I still think myself as a critic and in a sense I am., more than ever before. Instead of writing criticism, I make film, but the critical dimension is subsumed. I think of myself as an essayist, producing essays in novel form or novels in essay form: only instead of writing, I film them.” Breathless is about almost forty eight hours of the life of a petty criminal called Michel ( Jean Paul Belmondo ) and his romance with an American girl named Patricia Franchini (Jean seberg).The film starts with Michel stealing a car at Marseilles and driving to Paris where he is to meet Patricia. She sells the Paris edition of New York Herald Tribune in the streets of Paris. They have met three weeks earlier, according to the back story revealed through dialogues and have slept a few nights together. On his way to Paris he is caught for over speeding and shoots at and kills the police man. This makes him an object of police man hunt. In Paris he plans to collect some money he is owed by a friend and to leave to Italy with Patricia. But Patricia is confused .She wants to be a professional writer and gets her first assignment too. She doesn’t want to skip that opportunity by going after Michel the criminal. At the same time, she sees Michel exciting. But finally she decides to quit him. She is so much career-driven that she has no patience to care for his future. It is she who informs the police about him leading to Michel’s arrest. Michel accepts his fate, but by then the cops come hunting him. They shoot him dead on the street. While dying Michel calls Patricia a scumbag. “What does that mean?” --- Staring at the camera Patricia asks, and turns away. This reaction of Patricia reminds one of what Godard said once in an interview as quoted by Robert Philip Kolker (1983:174): “….I do like Breathless very much. But now I see where it belongs – along with Alice in Wonderland. “ The gender image and the shift in the usual style of the Film Noir is evident right from the beginning of the film. The most interesting aspect of this film is that Godard has chosen a Hollywood genre, that of the gangster film or film noir to subvert its own traditional structure. And he ends up creating a parody of a gangster film! “The unseizable fluctuation between imitation and parody of the American gagster mode” as Peter Harcourt (1976:217) calls it. The change of attitude towards the film structure is evident from the very opening of the film. The film opens on the last page of the news paper- a Paris-flirt pin up -which carries an advertisement showing a woman in lingerie. This female image is important as far as the gender issues that the film represents are concerned. More over this opening shot is so different from the opening of an American gangster film, which will usually open with an establishing shot of a place or location where the investigative story is going to unfold. In the subsequent shot the news paper falls and a man smoking a cigarette is seen. He is a typical image of a gangster film tough. The hero later steals a car from the road side and drives away. But he is stopped by a police man for speeding. He shoots down the police man .The hero runs away across a field. This is the opening sequence of Breathless. Five important images are introduced in this opening sequence – The gangster, the girl, the car, the gun and the police. Of these, the image of the girl and that of the gun are what makes this film a Film Noir with gender issues. “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun”, Godard (1991) said once. And we have just that here in the opening sequence itself and we are into a Film Noir of a different type. Just after this opening sequence Michel meets the American girl called Patricia Franchini, who is the femme fatale of the film. She is so much an adventuress female that this love story is sure to be doomed as a tragic one. The lovers are a clear mismatch which is considered as a revolutionary aspect of this Godard film by many critics, because usually in Noir films the lovers are not shown as mismatched. Michel tells Patricia: “When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other”, making clear how mismatched they are. There is that famous long talk that Michel and Patricia have in Patricia's room. During this talk their voices are almost drowned out twice by the siren of a passing ambulance. Through all these hints Godard is portraying Michel and Patricia as totally mismatched, thus in a way subverting and modernizing the timeless romantic archetype. Patricia is portrayed as an enigmatic character. Michel on the other hand is more transparent. Though he tries to keep cool, while posing himself as a gangster, it is clear that he is a frightened man. He has to keep his gangster postures to keep Patricia close to him, because it is her fascination to the gangster persona that inspires her attachment to him. There are two killings in the film. Both these killings happen because Michel accidentally comes into possession of some one else’s guns. This shows how weak a gangster he really is. Patricia, though fascinated by his gangster postures, is very casual in her relationship with him. She at a point thinks that she is pregnant by Michel. But that doesn’t disturb her. She is able to collect all sorts of information about him, like that he is married; that he carries more than one name and that he is a killer. But she accepts all these in formations with startling sense of detachment. Even her betrayal of him doesn’t have much to do with him, but more with her. It was almost like a test for her to find out whether she loved him genuinely or not. Godard is actually trying to juxtaposition the opposites. His restless sexuality is contradicted by her almost lazy sense of power; He is a petty thief, she is a serious careerist. Even in murdering the policeman he is an accidental victim, where as even in betrayal she is purposefully resigned. Mindless innocence is juxtaposed against regretless guilt. On one side the romantic relationship between Patricia and Michel is as in light romantic comedies, just playful with silly routines. At the same time the love story is a sure- to be- doomed tragedy as well. In the famous long scene where Patricia returns home and Michel is there, waiting for her. They make love, but only after talking, flirting, smoking and fighting with each other. In this scene Patricia quotes Faulkner: “Between grief and nothing I will take grief.” Michel disagrees. He says that he will choose nothing and not grief. He argues that grief is a compromise and hence nothing is better. When Patricia sits in front of a Renoir poster and asks who is prettier, Michel doesn’t respond. Instead he sits in below a Picasso poster of a man with a mask. Jean-Pierre Melville, whose noir films were a major influence on New Wave movement appears in Breathless as a writer whom Patricia interviews. In that interview he talks about sex and life like this: “Two things are important in life. For men, women. For women, money!” FRENCH LEFT POLITICS: Godard politicalizes the gender issues very subtly in this film bringing in a national political position to it. Europe is a continent with deep cultural tradition. America is a place without a tradition and looks fresh and new always. Forgetting one’s own cultural traditions, Europeans go after the newness of the Americans. This clash between the tradition and the newness is represented by Patricia and Michel; or else why Patricia be made an American? The sexual enticement between this simpleton like young man and the very calculative woman echoes the cultural –political ambience of French- American relations. It is a comment on the European infatuation with the arrogant style and supremacy of the Yankees. Even on the face of the death of her lover Patricia’s reaction is typically arrogant. Even though Michel calls Patricia a scumbag while dying, Patricia responds by asking, “What does that mean?” Staring at the camera and turns away. European infatuation in spite of this arrogant and non caring attitude of the Americans leads to their doom. The gender issues thus are posed in this film as a critique of American sexual romantic and political arrogance and attitudes to which the Europeans succumb meekly. Breathless is not only a film on romance but also a political film. It is a psychosexual expression of the political position of the European left towards the global imperialism represented by America. LES DIABOLIQUES: Compared to Breathless, Henri Georges Clouzet’s Les Diaboliques (the title roughly translated means “the Devils”) is a simpler film as far as the film structure is concerned. It is an earlier film made in 1955 while Breathless is made in 1959. A special feature of the portrayal of the gender issues in this film is that there are two character who seem like femme fatale in this film, both plotting against a single anti hero. Even this anti hero is not a typical gangster like noir protagonist. He is a school head master, but a wicked man of course. The story line is simple. The setting is a boarding school in Paris. It is a location of neglect and degenerated beyond repair. Michel Delasalle, the head master of the school is the protagonist who is a real dictator and a womanizer. He is a sadist who ill-treats not only his wife Christina but also his mistress Nicole who is a member of the school staff. Michel had a childhood of poverty. Because of this past, his adulthood ambition is to keep all the wealth, which he got through his wife Christina, for himself. This forces this couple, though rich, to live in poverty, which is making the life of Christina miserable. The head master also fools around with his co-worker, Nicole, and this affair is fully known to Christina. Though this affair between Nicole and Michel is not the ordinary adulterous love affair, Nicole turns out to be the femme fatale in the narrative of the film. NOIR GENDER TRIANGLE: Thus here a typical noir triangle, but with a difference is there. As Susan Hayward (2005: 44) points out “With regard to the thriller triangle in this thriller narrative (Michel, Nicole and Christina) something very queer is going on. And it comes down to this fundamental question: who and where is the femme fatale?” This question arises as both the women are plotting against the protagonist. The wife is sympathetic with the femme fatale .More over they are friends and have a common plan against him whose tyrannical presence is a common cause of distress to both of them. The legal wife even consoles the mistress! The study of the relationship between these two characters is interesting when one examines the gender issues in the film. There is a sort of mismatch in this relationship as far as gender, sex and desire are concerned. There is no element of desire evidently shown here. But some critics see this relationship as a close and intimate one. They point out some visual evidences to prove that it is a sort of a lesbian attraction that is binding the two women together. One visual evidence pointed out by these critics is the shot of both of them together in bed after the murder of Michel. The shot is framed in such a way as to indicate the intimacy of the relationship between the two. In a later shot when both the women are in school they are framed together in a bed room window. Both of them are in their night dress. Nicole is in dark pajamas while Christina is in white dress. Nicole is standing behind Christina in protective posture. In the frame they look like a couple. . Behind them in the shot is a double bed. The bed is untidily unmade as if slept in. Some other critics reject this reading as over reading. The relationship between these women, they argue, can at best be like a mother and daughter. Christina evidently is the older of the two. In the context of common misery, Nicole is taking up the role of a protective daughter and there is nothing more in this relationship they argue. This argument reminds one, of the famous American noir film, Midred Pierce (1945).The title character of the film is a hard working, long- suffering, dedicated mother whose down fall is brought about by her loveless, spoiled, self-seeking, mean-spirited daughter. In the end Les Diaboliques too, we come to a "daughter plotted against the mother" situation, if we accept the above mentioned argument regarding the relationship between the two women. Though they share the common misery and have similar fantasies of liberty from that misery, the characters of these two women are poles apart .Christina is a woman of strong religious convictions as she is a former nun. Michel refers to her as “my little ruin”, in pun with the word nun. Because of her “nun heritage” she is against divorce which she considers as a sin. She keeps a shrine of Christ in her apartment and is deeply religious. Because of this religiosity she suffers inner conflict in becoming a part to a foul crime of murder though she was suffering so much because of Michel. But she has no other way out to get rid of him and to make her life comfortable by keeping the school and her money too. Thus it is with deep sense of guilt that she joins the plan of action to kill Michel. “we are monsters”, she regrets,” I don’t like monsters.” Nicole on the other hand is cool and knows what she is doing. She is very calculated about what both of them shall do to get rid of the Michel’s influence from their lives. While Christina is portrayed as an exotic fragile female, Nicole is a strong and modern female. Christina is a dependent woman, hence more helpless as her wealth got passed over to the hands of Michel through marriage. Nicole on the other hand is independent. She has got a job and regular income from it. In addition to this paid job, she owns properties too. She is more purposeful in her actions and is more masculine. Her way of smoking cigarette itself, is a sign of her masculinity. She pulls the cigarette butt from her lips with her thumb and forefinger as is the habit of the smoking males! As the stronger of the two plotters it is Nicole who devises the crime. She is a science teacher and she knows what sleeping pills have to be obtained to poison Michel. It is she who puts the right amount of the sleeping pills into the whiskey bottle. Then Christina pours the liquor into the drinking glass and takes it to Michel. Thus the character and the role of the two women are very clearly defined. After poisoning him, Christina and Nicole drown him in a bath tub at Nicole’s house.They dispose of “dead body” in the school swimming pool, pool of filthy water. The horror of the movie starts when the dead body of Michel Is seen missing from the swimming pool which was drained. Mystery after mystery follows at the end of which Christina dies out of shock of the mysterious happenings. She was a woman with a weak heart and couldn’t stand so much of tensions. The end of the film reveals yet another mystery. It turns out to be that the real plot was for Michel and Nicole to kill Christina using her weak heart as a means, so that they could be living together there after. Thus Nicole turns out to be the real culprit, the femme fatale, and is punished too. Compared to Breathless Henri Georges Clouzet’s Les Diaboliques cannot claim any national specificity either in its cinematic structure or in posing the gender issues politically. But the film got much acclaim and was often rated equal to an Alfred Hitchcock film. This statement doesn’t mean that Henri Georges Clouzet was a lesser film maker. French New Wave director and film critic Francois Truffaut (1978:191) calls Clouzet one of the greatest French film makers since 1946, along with Renoir, Cocteau, Gance, Astruc etc. =================== SOURCES CITED: 1) Cahiers du Cinema, December 1962, Godard on Godard, Ed. Jean Narboni and Tom Milne. Trans. Tom Milne, Viking Press, New York, 1972. 2) Truffaut Francois, The Films in My Life, Penguin Books, 625, Madison Avenue New York. 3) Godard Jean-luc, Journal entry, May 16, 1991 4) Harcourt Peter, Six European Directors, Penguin Books Ltd, Middlesex England, 1976 5) Harvey Silvia, Women’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir, Women in Film Noir, Ed.Ann Kaplan, British Film Institute, London 1980 6) Hayward Susan, Les Diaboliques (Henry George Clouzot -1955), University of Illinois Press (2005) 7) Kolker Philip Robert, The Altering Eye, Oxford University Press, 1983 8) Place Janey, Women in Film Noir, Ed. E Ann Kaplan, British Film Institute, London 1989. Read More