Description
The main point of this first essay is to get you screening and thinking about American film noir auteurs missing from the syllabus.
Pick one of the directors below and screen any two of their films noirs (auteurs and their noirs are listed below). Based on the two films you screen, how do you characterize their noir? How does your filmmaker (and his/her films) adapt and articulate the film noir vernacular? What do you think makes these films stand out as noir — whether in style, theme, narrative structure, score, mood, dialogue, and characterizations — even as they may not always live up to common stereotypes of noir?
No research or citations necessary.
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Stanley Kubrick: KILLER’S KISS (boxer, 1955) and THE KILLING (race track heist, 1956)
Fritz Lang: WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (psych prof who falls for a young woman, 1944), MINISTRY OF FEAR (man let out of asylum gets involved in spy ring, 1944), SCARLET STREET (man in midlife crisis falls for younger woman) 1945), THE BIG HEAT (police/underworld, 1953), THE BLUE GARDENIA (thriller, 1953), and HUMAN DESIRE (Korean war vet returns and problems ensue, 1954)
Joseph Lewis: GUN CRAZY (lovers on the lam turn to crime, 1950) and THE BIG COMBO (cop in pursuit of crime boss, 1955)
Ida Lupino: OUTRAGE (very rare post-code look at rape and its consequences, 1950), ON DANGEROUS GROUND (cop/detective, 1951, co-directed with Ray), and THE HITCH-HIKER (two fishermen pick up a psychotic hitchhiker, 1953)
Nicholas Ray: THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (prototype of lovers-on-the-lam noir, 1948), IN A LONELY PLACE (troubled screenwriter suspected of murder, 1950), and ON DANGEROUS GROUND (cop/detective, 1951, co-directed with Lupino)
Orson Welles: THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (Irish sailor gets caught in ring of crime, 1947) and TOUCH OF EVIL (murder and mayhem in a Mexican border town, 1958)
Billy Wilder: DOUBLE INDEMNITY (insurance salesman and housewife dream big, 1944), THE LOST WEEKEND (alcoholism, 1945), SUNSET BLVD. (Hollywood romance gone wrong, 1950), and ACE IN THE HOLE (scathing critique of American news culture, 1951)