Blog Entry #7

Option Two:

Both The Method by Janet Fitch and Morocco Junction 90210 by Patt Morrison, in my opinion, encompasses elements of neo-noir.  In classic noir, a male protagonist normally narrates the stories and we view the story through his point of view.  Neo-noir, as we learned last week, contains elements of noir and gives it a twist to express the anxieties of a modern condition.  In both of the stories, the role of the protagonist is reversed, as it is now recounted through a female’s perspective.

            In The Method, we are introduced to a female protagonist named Holly, who is working as a waitress in an Italian restaurant hoping to make it “big” in the film industry.  There, she meets Richard, who in a way plays a role as the “male” femme fatale.  As the story continues, both characters begin a relationship and Richard takes advantage of this and convinces Holly into participating in deceiving a former well-known famous actress named Mariah, misleading her from within.  The scheme turns from a simple dog snatch and return into an ultimate plot for murder.  As the story goes on, Holly discovers that Richard has been manipulating her into committing his crime to even the score with Mariah, in which he formerly had a relationship with.  Holly, on the other hand, realizes Richard’s true nature through Mariah and, in the end, turns on Richard and murders him.  The Method embodies features that define neo-noir.  We have the protagonist, though this time is a female, who narrates the story and is seemingly manipulated by a male femme fatale into committing a crime.  However, Richard can in a way be seen as the “male” femme fatale, but as we learned about neo-noir last week, the neo-noir femme fatale is now viewed through her own point of view and isn’t always punished.  Holly’s character falls within neo-noir’s femme fatale, as the story is told in her point of view and in the end, she gets away with murder.  She, in a way, seemed to be manipulated by Richard, but it was her who used him to get closer to Mariah to gain some sort of status.  “Not bad, for in a mansion in Los Feliz.  Wouldn’t that look good on my portfolio” (111).

            In Morocco Junction 90210, we are presented with another female protagonist named Minerva.  She plays the detective character, a distinctive character to noir.  The story is also told through her point of view as she tries to disentangle the recent crimes of burglaries that are occurring in the city of Beverly Hills.  As the story goes on, she is committed to solving the death of her close family friend, Eloise Davis, who at first is thought to have been murdered due to the recent home robberies.  Minerva, through all her investigation comes to the conclusion that it was not murder that succumbed her friend’s life, but of suicide.  Minerva unravels the motive of Eloise’s suicide as it was generated from the effects of the death of her son that she had left for adoption.  Minerva portrays the prototypical detective in noir, as described in Raymond Borde and Entienne Chaumeton’s Toward a Definition of Film Noir, “The private detective is fulfilling the requirements of his own code and of the genre as well.”  Though she is female, she is still regarded as the story’s detective and protagonist.  She fulfills her own code by protecting her friend’s persona and by withholding the truth of her suicide.  

Blog Entry #6

Based on the article titled The Dark Past Keeps Returning: Gender Themes in Neo-Noir by Heather Fireman, I was able distinguish the differences with classic film noir and neo-noir.  To begin with, let us start with what we, by now, have learned about film noir.  The concept of classic film noir can be traced back to a period that lasted around 1940 to the 1960s, a time when America was recovering from World War II.  Films during this time period almost had the same plots or themes with unique visual effects.  Its mood and themes, which were based on the results of the war and the society’s state of hysteria, were typically psychological thrillers and crime dramas that addressed the human condition through a state of complete disorder. These black-and-white types of films were filmed and shot in an urban-type environments and the visual elements incorporated the use of more light and shadow and low lighting.  The characters in film noir had a protagonist, who was often depicted as anti-heroes who had to face difficult situations, and the femme fatale, who were attractive and seductive women who brought disaster upon themselves and to the men who became involved with her.  The story is often told in a flashback approach, which implied a sense of fatalism through the protagonist’s point of view.  This approach made the audience develop both a relationship and a feeling of sympathy towards the story’s protagonist. 

            In contrast, both film noir and neo-noir have many differences. Unlike film noir, neo-noir films made use of modern technology as these new types of films are now viewed in color.  They are also more explicit, and the films are different in artistic vision.  As the author, Heather Fireman stated in her article, The Dark Past Keeps Returning: Gender Themes in Neo-Noir,  “While some neo-noirs simply imitate classic noir, the most compelling use of noir in modern times is to express the anxieties of a modern condition.  Everything noir about neo-noir is rooted in a set of cultural factors of a particular moment - not of the 1940s but of something else.”  The themes of neo-noir films are now based on modern circumstances, or as Fireman describes it as postmodernism.  Unlike film noir, neo-noir has no linearity, in which everything does not happen in sequence, but goes on its own timeline.  Also, unlike the femme fatale character in classic film noir, in which both her character was viewed through the eyes of the protagonist and her fate was ill destined at the end, the neo-noir femme fatale is now viewed through her own point of view and isn’t always punished.  She gets off scot-free as if she were receiving a “get of jail” free card; there is no justice for what she has done.

Similarities between classic film noir and neo-noir are also clear, such as the principle of their story and the types of characters.  Both film noir and neo-noir tend to be fatalistically dark in nature and the presence of an anti-hero and femme fatale are symbolic.  As Fireman quoted Robson in her article, “Neo noir takes the formula of classic noir and integrates new ideas and influence from contemporary film styles to provide a new spin…”  Neo-noir is almost like film noir, but with a twist.

Blog Entry #5

In Roger Ebert’s film review titled “Double Indemnity (1944),” he describes “Double Indemnity as having one of the most familiar noir themes.”  Ebert did a nice job in his analysis and evaluation of the film by asking questions about certain characteristics of the film and then and responding to it with his ideas as well.   At first, he offers a short background to the film, noting it based on the writings of James M. Cain.  He explains the film had eliminated Cain’s ending and added a deepened relationship between Neff and Keyes.  He also clarifies that the film was originally set to end with Walter in a gas chamber, but that scene was cut.  He then goes onto describing the story, and calling the crime, “Perfect and clever.”  He describes the relationship between the two characters of Walter and Phyllis as, “the enigma that keeps it new, is what these two people really think of one another.”  Ebert describes Walter as, “aloof, cold, hard, terse,” and Phyllis as, “Cold, too.”  Ebert goes beyond what he sees in the film and examines it to his understanding.  His view on the relationship between Walter and Phyllis is, “not engaged in romance or theft, but in behavior.”  He describes their character as, “pulp with little psychological depth,” in which they had “played a bad joke on themselves.”  His reasoning is that the director Billy Wilder wanted that to be the case as it was with mostly in his best films, which are sardonic comedies.  Ebert notions that more genuine emotion was centered elsewhere between Walter and Keyes, which involved Walter’s fear of discovery, and his feeling for Keyes.  Ebert describes Keyes as a “father figure, or more.”  Because of this relationship, Ebert labels the end of the film as, “curious.”  He goes onto explaining why the gas chamber scene would have been, “superfluous,” and that this ending, “turned out to be the perfect way to close the film.”  In his conclusion, Ebert portrays the hero as, “a weak man rather than a criminal who is tempted and succumbs.”   He labels the story as, “’double’ in which the woman and man tempt one another, neither would have acted alone.  Both are attracted not so much by the crime and the thrill of it with the other person.  Love and money are pretenses.  The husband’s death turns out to be their one-night stand.”

            This article focused mostly on the movie itself directing its theme generally on the relationships between the characters.  In my opinion, the critic, Roger Ebert did a great job analyzing the film by asking questions and giving his own insights to the film.  His review provided me with new insights to the film; such as the sexual overtones between Walter and Keyes’ relationship is that of another leg to a love triangle.  It is as if there relationship is viewed to be like a father-son or brotherly bond.  

Blog Entry #4

Question #1

In the past few weeks, we were given the opportunity to both read James M. Cain’s 1936 novel titled, Double Indemnity and to watch Billy Wilder’s 1944 classic noir film with the same title.  The plot to both the novel and film are similar, but it is their endings that make them both different.  In the novel, Walter uncovers Phyllis’ murderous past and decides to kill her off, but before he gets to her, he is double-crossed by Phyllis and shot.  He later chooses to confess to committing the crime because of his loving affection to Lola and to protect her from being falsely accused.  This confession leads Keyes to construct a plan in which Walter and Phyllis end up leaving the country on board the same freighter that is bound to go nowhere.  Due to their murderous pasts, they both contemplate on the idea of committing suicide by jumping off the boat into shark-infested waters.   This ending, in my opinion was appropriate to the novel but not film noir.  The novel left me feeling unsatisfied in how it ended so abruptly and how the characters were not brought to justice in a usual film noir sort of way.  The abrupt ending leaves you with a sense of being left in limbo.  Film noir, in a way, is usually straightforward but the novel just leaves you asking questions.  Walter and Phyllis were also given a twisted sense of justice in which it felt like the author left the ending open for the reader’s imagination.  In contrast to the novel, the film spares both Walter and Phyllis from committing suicide.  The film’s version portrays Walter as more of a father figure type to Lola rather than him being in love with her as it was in the novel.  Walter also uncovers Phyllis’ murderous past and decides to kill her.  The film shows Walter going to her home with the intention of killing her, but she too has her own plans of killing him.  Phyllis shoots Walter once in the shoulder, wounding him.  He then walks up to her and turns her own gun on her, killing her.   After narrating his story in Keyes’ office, Walter confesses everything to Keyes and then succumbs to his wound.  The film’s version compared to the novel, is much improved and falls more to the category of film noir.  The film included a type of continuous tension in the storytelling that continued all the way to the end.  The sense of justice was also well defined; it had more death and darkness to it.  We saw that both Walter and Phyllis determine their own fates, not by taking the easy way out, but turning on each other.

Question #3

           

The film version of Double Indemnity is told in a confessional first person narration flashback, a principle of film noir.  This type of narration helps to draw the audience into Walter’s world, pushing the viewer to experience the events through his eyes and to identify with his character who is going through the process of becoming morally corrupted. The audience becomes morally involved, almost to the point where we are rooting for him.  But with this type of narration, we can sense the death and downfall of Walter even before we get to the conclusion.