Rhetorical Analysis Noir is a literary genre, similar to hardboiled genre, with a difference in that the protagonist of the story isn’t a detective but instead either a victim, a suspect, or a criminal. Usually the protagonist of the noir fiction deals with the legal, political, or other system that is corrupt, leading to a lose-lose situation for them. Hard-boiled detective fiction is a genre that shares some characters and settings with crime fiction. The protagonist is a detective, who tends to be cynical, witnesses the violence of organized crime, and deals with a legal system as corrupt as the crime itself. Noir has a particular style to it which made it different from the other genres at the time.
“Trying to FInd Chinatown” written in 1996 by David Henry Hwang, deals with racial identity. According to the dictionary, one’s identity consist of the qualities and beliefs that distinguish one person or group from another. In his play, Hwang created two characters who have different ideas of what those qualities and beliefs are. In the story Benjamin identifies himself as Asian, even though he is descent of Asian genetics.
However, when Joe is visiting another scriptwriter in the night, secretly and against Norma's wishes the style becomes much darker and much more shadowy. This again helps to back up the point of Joe being the central noir figure. An unusual noir in both style and content, much can be learned about the themes and styles of noir when viewing Sunset Boulevard in comparison to many other film noirs. One thing is for sure though, Sunset Boulevard remains just as enticing and fascinating and is truly one of the great
Sociological Analysis is where the focus is on social relationships, the examination of human interactions and personal relationships of an a group of individuals in a social setting. The concern of a sociological analysis is how groups and institutions function. Emile Durkheim is an important sociologist theorist and one of the founding fathers of French sociology. Durkheim offers an interesting insight on individuals and society. Emile Durkheim believes that everyone is “double”, meaning that we are all members of society and there society is in us.
The film noir genre as a whole is an uncommonly used term in the mainstream film industry towards younger viewers. Most neo-noir films such as Nightcrawler are not marketed as noir but instead in broader terms like “thriller” or “Action”. This all kept the use of the term within the 1940’s to 50’s and eventually dropped off everyone's vocabulary list (besides film connoisseurs). Sunset Boulevard fits perfectly into the category of “dark films” as there are readily apparent motifs within the movie such as a femme fatale, an ordinary man, a conflicting interest and entrapment. Most notably in the film, the aspect of
Femme fatales are usually destroyed in the end, either by being killed or being domesticated, as though they are being punished thinking they can compete with men. Male dominance is always restored by the end of the film. In established film noir, the new economic, social, and sexual freedom that women experienced during the war years as they joined the workplace was quite unsettling to many American men. This fear of strong, independent women and the need to show the danger of this independence was shown, whether consciously or not, in most film noir. The Maltese Falcon, like many films of its era, joins in the distrust of all things foreign.
Film noir movies often have stylistic characteristics such as exaggerated lighting and shadows. Scarlet Street contained many subjective camera shots while also using exaggerated shadows, for example during the first scene in the movie, there is an emphasis on the mans shadow as he walks into the room. Which brings me to a crucial point, Black and white filmmaking. Black and white style is considered to be an essential attribute for a film noir movie, black and white allows the director to emphasize on distorting images, for example use of the venetian blind shot. Another continuous pattern of film noir is to include main stock characters, this film contains: an anti-hero and a femme fatale, these stock characters are always seen in noir films.
He starts out somewhat disillusioned with the people around him and the justice system, but still idealistic and committed to solving the case. The genre’s first person view, combined with Gittes’ personality, allows the audience to identify with Gittes and arrive at the same conclusion he has with the world of Chinatown. Gittes was haunted by his past, but his code and idealism forced him to try once more, causing the deaths of the Mulrays, and “kidnapping” of Katherine. Chinatown gives us a lovable, flawed, and haunted detective, watch him give it all, and the it forces us to watch as the world breaks him down, teaching us that at any moment, everything we work for and hold onto could be lost, regardless of how hard we
Chinatown is a very entertaining movie, which was directed by Roman Polanski. And was released in 1974. On the other hand, the Dogtown and Z-Boys which is not less entertaining than Chinatown. And was directed by Stacy Peralta, and released in 2001. The two films under consideration develop their narratives from factual events that influenced the socioeconomic life in Los Angeles in the 20th century.
You would be hard pressed to find a Noir without a femme fatale. There is usually some spider woman in the middle weaving the men of the plot to her plan. These women challenge male masculinity in Noir and are usually tamed by the protagonists or destroyed. In Vertigo we have Judy. She strings Scottie along acting like she is his friends wife and she is possessed.
Those that believe Casablanca is not film noir usually perceive Film Noir as a genre. Noir is not a genre; Noir transcends genres and behaves more accurately as a style of cinema. As styles go, there can be variations of them as we see now with Post-Noir and Neo Noir, noir elements in a different time period of film technology which makes these films slightly different than the style of classic film noir. Themes of cynicism, impending doom, loss, jeopardy of life accompanied by visuals dominated by shadows, strong lines, and overall darkness to the image make up film noir’s style. Noir is not absolute, the beauty of this style is its vulnerability to variation, which is why Michael Curtiz’s Classic Casablanca is film noir.
However, Chinatown is neo-noir. Director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne portray Los Angeles as a gorgeous but rotten city while using historical inaccuracies to create a neo-noir film that both represents and disavows traditional film noir. Chinatown portrays Los Angeles as a gorgeous but sinful city. Throughout Chinatown we are treated to exquisite views of the city of Los Angeles. JJ Gittes travels throughout the city.
Film noir is notoriously known to contain mysterious elements that create an extremely convoluted plot and Huston made no exceptions to this notion in The Maltese Falcon. However, most screenplay writers and directors incorporate the use of internal monologue and narration to add a personal element to the story that allows the audience to connect with the characters, thus decreasing the complexity of the film. Huston approaches narrative styles very differently in his take on film noir. Instead of utilizing narrative styles that would provide the audience with a subjective point of view, Huston opts for a third person objective point of view in which everything that the audience hears comes straight from the dialogue between characters. This
In American Born Chinese, there are many plot elements used to make readers feel multiple things. Three elements I will be talking about in this essay are parallel plots, foreshadowing, and conflict. I will give some examples from the story that show how the author used the three plot elements. I will also explain whether or not I think these plot elements were successfully used.
While the films themselves have such an operatic grandeur it is hard to put them into a simply category, at the heart of all the grandeur is a pulpy crime story, the genesis of old noir films. It might not fall strictly speaking into the neo noir category, but it was certainly a tip of the hat to the old
