Looking at Fritz Lang's film Metropolis (1927), we as an audience can start to see some of the earliest forms of Film Noir conventions coming in to play.
For Example;
- High Contrast lighting (Show the harshness of the 'world')
- Tilted/Canted camera angles (Show disjointed worlds)
- Deep Focus (To show the subjectivity)
- A mobile camera style (To show subjectivity and to lose the sense of the stationary world)
- Atmospheric locations such as shadowy mazes (To show the journeys the character goes through, and the trips in to the unknown)
- Use of disjointed set blocking (The use of loads of angles and diagonal lines within the set design, used to further the effect of the disjointed world and characters)
- Using a 'highlighting' technique (Used to draw attention or focus to an object being depicted using visuals and not dialogue)
You could argue that these are the base framework for Film Noir to create upon but furthering this was work done by Alfred Hitchcock when he 'Americanized' Film Noir. The main body of work being 'Psycho' (1960).
Psycho built upon this framework, but furthered it via it's use of characterization and the dialogue that these characters use.
This was done by using character archetypes. He used the femme fatale archetype within this film, which would soon become a 'trope' for the Americanized Film Noir. This archetype is described as the attractive woman that effectively leads the male character to self-destruction.
In this film the femme fatale is Marion Crane played by Janet Leigh, whose attractiveness leads to the character of Norman Bates, portrayed by Anthony Perkins, to go against his rules for murder and leads to him being found out further in the plot.
The character of Norman Bates, is the other archetype Hitchcock employed, that became another trope in Americanized Film Noir. This is the archetype of the damaged, quiet psychopath.
Traditionally, psychopaths were portrayed as camp villains in other more straightforward films in the 60's, so to see a portrayal of a psychopath, who in theorem could just fit in to regular society and then have the knowledge to cover their tracks was terrifying to audiences at the time, and still sticks around today in various formats, for example look to recent TV series such as; FX's 'Dexter' and NBC's 'Hannibal'. They both employ this edited psychopath Archetype.
Now moving forward to more recent additions to Film Noir, specifically American Neo Noir.
For this we will be looking at the Sin City series by Frank Miller and Directed by Robert Rodriguez.
Now with this film, we have to remember because it would be classed as what i see as 'Neo Noir' it is not a direct correlation with many of Film Noir's laid down framework. You could say it has molded it's own Neo Noir framework upon them.
This being said it still pays homage with it's nearly completely black and white depiction, it also shows a world under duress and struggling to hold itself together at the seams. Furthermore it also employs the edited psychopath archetype seen in Hitchcock's Psycho but instead of one character having this, multiple characters have this archetype within Sin City's narrative.
This is a furthering in to Neo Noir. The addition of multiple characters and multiple intertwining story arcs, is something that has been seen before in American cinema, just look towards Tarantino's body of work through the early 90's specifically 'Pulp Fiction' being his 'piece de resistance' if you will. Coincidentally he guest directs a scene within Sin City, with a talking corpse as it's focal point.
Moving forward on this scene. This displays another key point in Neo Noir. This is where we as an audience are given a deeper look in to the psyche of our characters via surreal situations. For example in this scene we see Dwight talking to the dead corpse of Jackie Boy, giving an insight in to Dwight's broken mind, and the internal struggle of fight or flight when faced with the situation he has landed in.
So to break this down Neo Noir, builds upon the base framework of Film Noir, but adapts and adds to it by using;
- Multiple characters and archetypes
- Multiple intertwining stories and character arcs
- Deeper evaluation of characters psyche
Bibliography
-http://www.filmeducation.org/metropolis/pdf/Metropolis_Further_study.pdf
-http://www.classic-monsters.com/fritz-lang-creator-film-noir/
-http://www.filmnoirstudies.com/glossary/index.asp
-https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RsBHnZoyO4kC&pg=PA72&dq=film+noir+techniques&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiz17rCv_zKAhXBWRQKHXDwAuwQ6AEIKjAC#v=onepage&q=film%20noir%20techniques&f=false
-http://bernardschopen.tripod.com/psycho.html
-http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Psycho
-http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/film-noir-for-dummies-sin-city-a-dame-to-kill-for-rev-1625485550
-https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RsBHnZoyO4kC&pg=PA380&lpg=PA380&dq=Film+Noir+Robert+Rodriguez+Sin+City&source=bl&ots=BNOqYx7Avz&sig=YuljeFHXN0KoeDEYKiav3JgCRr0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi5qIPtx_zKAhVLWRQKHSCXCRgQ6AEIQzAG#v=onepage&q=Film%20Noir%20Robert%20Rodriguez%20Sin%20City&f=false
-http://noirwhale.com/2011/09/29/film-noir-sin-city-2005/
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