Film Genres: Film Noir
Billy Wilder, Double Indemnity

Steven Shaviro
November 16, 2011

Film Genres

• A film genre is a particular type of film.
• A genre is a set of conventions and formulas.
• There is no one rigorous way to classify films among genres.
• "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."
• Various ways of classifying genres
• Subject matter or theme (e.g. Western)
• Formal elements (e.g. Musical)
• Emotional tone (e.g. Melodrama)
• Plot structure (e.g. Detective Film)
• Style and period made (e.g. Film Noir)

Genre Conventions

• Plot elements (e.g. revenge in the Western)
• Themes (e.g. loyalty in HK martial arts films)
• Techniques (e.g. somber lighting in horror)
• Iconography (e.g. rugged desert landscapes -- like Monument Valley in Stagecoach -- in the Western)
• Familiarity and innovation
• The genre film needs to maintain certain recognizable elements...
• ...but also to offer some novelty, by twisting, varying, or even violating those elements in some way.

Genre: Some Complications

• Hybrid genres: fusing elements of different genres (e.g. Blade Runner = science fiction + film noir)
• Subgenres (e.g. film noir as subset of crime film)
• Historical patterns (the rise and fall of various genres)
• Cycles: a hit inspires multiple imitations
• Nightmare on Elm Street in early 1980s
• Scream in late 1990s
• Hostel, Saw, in mid-2000s
• Blue Velvet in late 1980s/early 1990s
• Pulp Fiction in late 1990s
• Genre parodies (e.g. Scream films)
• Self-conscious genre recycling (e.g. Quentin Tarantino)

Major Hollywood Genres (1)

• Comedy
• Humor trumps plausibility or realism
• Characters defined by noteworthy physical features
• Individual episodes trump overall plot
• Acting involves physical interaction with surroundings
• Slapstick; screwball comedy; romantic comedy
• Melodrama
• Characters involved in desperate struggles
• Exaggerated emotional highs and lows
• Narratives build towards emotional climaxes
• Visual style emphasizes interiors and close-ups

Major Hollywood Genres (2)

• Musical
• Characters express their feelings in song & dance
• Plots interrupted by musical production numbers
• Frequent theme of "putting on a show"
• Spectacular sets and settings
• Horror
• Characters with physical or psychological deformities
• Narratives built on suspense, surprise, and shock
• Monstrosity interrupting everyday life
• The fear of what you don't see, and the horror of what you do see

Major Hollywood Genres (3): The Western

• Characters whose physical and mental toughness separates them from the everyday world
• Stories of quest in rugged natural surroundings
• Open, natural spaces and settings
• Theme of the American frontier
• Subgenres
• Epic Westerns (1940s and after)
• Existential Westerns (1950s and after)
• Political Westerns (1960s-70s and after)
• Revisionism in the Western

Major Hollywood Genres (4): The Crime Film

• Characters: gangsters and detectives
• Plots involve mystery, ambiguity, moral transgression
• Urban, often dark and shadowy, settings
• Subgenres
• Gangster films (rise and fall of a gangster)
• Detective films (focus on the detective or police officer)
• Police procedural
• Hard-boiled detective (private eye)
• Mysteries vs. films in which we already know whodunit
• Film Noir
• Revisionist crime films

The Crime Film: Cycles

• Some notable silents (von Sternberg, Underworld, 1927)
• Violent gangster films in early sound era (1930-1932)
• Panic over violence & glamorization of crime (1930s)
• 1940s: Hard-boiled detectives, taken from crime fiction
• Film Noir (1940s and 1950s)
• Revisionism (1960s and 1970s)
• Warren Beatty & Faye Dunaway, Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
• Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry (1971)
• Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972)

Film Noir

• Early 1940s (Double Indemnity) to late 1950s (Touch of Evil)
• Only identified as a distinctive (sub)genre after the fact
• Generally shot in black and white, on low budgets
• Moods: anxiety, alienation, cynicism, paranoia
• Themes: corruption, moral ambiguity
• Focus on individuals, but also suggestion of social ills
• Prominent character types
• Amoral tough guy, a loner apart from both cops and crooks
• Femme Fatale: sexually alluring but dangerous female character

Stylistics of Film Noir

• A look and feel derived from German Expressionism
• Nocturnal urban settings: dark and murky streets in the rain, dimly-lit apartments and hotel rooms
• Swirling cigarette smoke; light through Venetian blinds; flashing neon lights
• Oblique camera angles; low-key, chiaroscuro lighting; prominent play of light and shadow
• Revival of film noir stylistics in later, color films (cf. Blade Runner)

Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)

• Based on a hard-boiled crime novel by James M. Cain
• Screenplay written by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler (also a famous hard-boiled crime writer)
• Career of Billy Wilder (1906-2002)
• Brilliant, counterintuitive casting
• Barbara Stanwyck (Phyllis Dietrichson) was best known at the time for comedic and melodramatic roles
• Fred MacMurray (Walter Neff) was mostly known (both before and after) for comedy
• Edward G. Robinson (Burton Keyes) made his name mostly in gangster roles

Double Indemnity: Fatality and Suspense

• Film told in flashback: everything has already happened
• Everything is narrated by Walter Neff
• Character and motivation (cynicism? sexual drive?)
• Villain or dupe? Coincidence or fate?
• Figure of the salesman
• Tough guy?
• Ambiguous actions at the end
• Why does Walter help Zachetti?
• Why does Walter confess on the dictaphone tape?

Double Indemnity: Neff and Keyes

• Barton Keyes
• Tough guy with sweet interior
• His "little man"
• Father-and-son relationship with Walter
• "I love you too")
• Importance of gestures
• Walter always providing the match for Keyes' cigar
• Reversal at the end, when Keyes lights Walter's cigarette

Double Indemnity: Sex and Death

• Phyllis Dietrichson as femme fatale
• First meeting of Phyllis and Walter (staircase, anklet)
• Double-entendre dialogue between them
• The chemistry between them (given the restrictions of the censorship code)
• Phyllis' motivations and background
• "The scent of honeysuckle": seduction and murder
• Multiple betrayals
• The final confrontation between Walter and Phyllis
• The relationship between Walter and Lola (Jean Heather)

Double Indemnity: Visual Style (1)

• A series of contrasts
• Indoors vs. Outdoors
• Day vs. Night
• Sun vs. Rain and Sun vs. Shadow
• Importance of locations
• The insurance office
• Walter's apartment
• Outside of Dietrichson house
• Inside of Dietrichson house: stairway, living room
• Cars and train

Double Indemnity: Visual Style (2): Lighting

• Chiaroscuro ("clear-obscure": interplay of light & dark)
• Sunlight through slanted blinds
• The city at night
• Moonglow through the blinds, with the lights out

Double Indemnity as Film Noir

• One of the first noirs; established many of the typical features of the genre
• The look and the lighting
• Themes of guilt, corruption, and betrayal
• Themes of twisted desire and dangerous sexuality
• The femme fatale
• Man corrupted & entrapped by dangerous woman
• In contrast, the naively innocent woman (Lola)
• Negative view of suburban family life (Dietrichson home)
• Paranoia (fear of getting caught)
• Cynicism (Phyllis is just using Walter)