A Filmmaker's Guide to: Film Noir II

In this chapter of ‘the filmmaker’s guide’ we’re actually going to be learning about literature and film together. I understand that many of you are sitting in university during difficult times and finding it increasingly hard to study and I understand that many of you who are not at university or not planning on it are possibly stuck of what to do, need a break or even need to catch up on learning film before you get to the next level. This guide will be brief but will also contain: new vocabulary, concepts and theories, films to watch and we will be exploring something taboo until now in the ‘filmmaker’s guide’ - academia (abyss opens). Each article will explore a different concept of film, philosophy, literature or bibliography/filmography etc. in order to give you something new to learn each time we see each other. You can use some of the words amongst family and friends to sound clever or you can get back to me (email in bio) and tell me how you’re doing. So, strap in and prepare for the filmmaker’s guide to film studies because it is going to be one wild ride.

Film Noir II

Film Noir is one of the most fascinating genres of cinema in history. A mixture between romance, thriller, mystery and often even horror, this genre is a perfect blend which balances all things about the mysterious and gothic genres perfectly to create the new era detective film. Filled with leads and clues, secrecies and deception, these films often either start off or have within them some shady death that continues to haunt the main character as they make their way through the story meeting different characters and enhancing the plot as others deceive them with multi-faceted personalities.

When we watch film noir, the first thing we notice is that we are not given much background but instead, we are thrust into the middle of something. Maybe that something is an argument, or people looking for each other, maybe it is a deal gone wrong, a robbery or even a stolen identity. We are always put into the middle of something smaller than the climax so that there is already tension there that can be carried over across the film and through to the end. This means that the creation of key tension is not necessary and that the film can keep the audience's attention for the entirety of the movie.

When talking about film noir we mention a number of key films, one of those is one of my personal favourite films of all time: "The Third Man" (1949). Starting with the apparent murder of a man called Harry Lime, Lime's friend comes looking for him unaware of his death. Here we have a key component of film noir, the strange happenings at the beginning to create tension. As we move through the story, we not only realise that the entire beginning was something set up but that there is something entirely different that the story and its characters are concealing. We are left knowing as much as the main character and as we find out more and more things, like a puzzle, we get to piece it together for ourselves.

This brings us to another way in which film noir keeps our attention. It feeds the story to us like a puzzle so that, whilst we are watching the film, it becomes a game to figure out what is going to happens next and we are made to feel like detectives unravelling the mystery across the course of the events of the movie.

Ultimately, film noir has been one of the most influential genres of the classic era, influencing the films of not only Sir Alfred Hitchcock, but filmmakers much later such as: Brian de Palma, Francis Ford Coppola and even Guy Ritchie. I think that when we watch film noir the main thing we must concentrate on is the duplicitous personalities of the characters involved because once we know which ones we can and cannot believe, it makes it far easier to translate what could have and what could not have gone on. But the main thing we are always looking for is how we can tell someone is lying.