L.a Confidential Film Noir Essay

     ChinaTown, directed by Roman Polanski, is a non-traditional hard-nosed detective film made in the 70's. The typical elements of character type are there; J.J. Gittes (a private detective in LA) played by Jack Nicholson is the central character, sharing the spotlight is Fay Dunaway playing the femme fatale Evelyn Mulwray. This film breaks all types of norms when compared to the hard-nosed detective films it is modeled after. The film is filled with allusions to the Big Sleep, especially taken from scenes of Marlowe and Vivian. Chinatown has formal elements indicative that it is going to be in the style of traditional Film Noir hardboiled detective, until you examine the characters' personalities

The genre of the movie is crime, drama and thriller. This can be seen because there are two FBI agents trying to solve a crime; the murder of the civil rights workers. There are a lot of spooky scenes, where the viewer can get scared and be offended.

The dialogue puts comedy in the mouths of killers and other moral degenerates. The dialogue was also somewhat misleading because it never really revealed the narrative of the movie. For example when the two hitmen drive to their first assignment, they casually talk about McDonalds, they never really mentioned who they are killing and why they are killing them. We see that in so many scenes which makes the movie even more fascinating because it draws your attention to figure out the reasons of why things go that way but we never really get answers.

The characteristics of crime films are illegal activities, violence, and conflict or drama between two or more characters.

Throughout the film ‘The Departed’ directed by Martin Scorsese, conventions are often used to portray ideas about identity, through Links to Family History, Trust and Betrayal, Character Reversals and Stereotypical Representations. The film shows the story of two ‘rats’, Colin Sullivan who works for the SIU but is working undercover for Frank Costello who is an organized crime boss, while Billy Costigan is a complete character reversal, by working with Frank Costello as an undercover investigator, for the SIU. Scorsese uses conventions of crime drama as

Film Noir is a fairly self-explanatory name. French for “Dark” or “Black Film”, this style (not genre) of film is pretty much summed up in those two words. These films started being made in a 1940’s, Post WWII paranoia, with the threat of nuclear missiles looming over the heads of all United States citizens, Hollywood included. This paranoia led to disillusioned attitudes and existential feelings, which in turn were reflected in Film Noirs through things such as characters, with the two most prominent types being hardened male protagonists and femme fatales. Also, the “Darkness” of Film Noirs was not just a metaphor for the content of the film, but also a fairly literal description of the visual style was like. Taking influence from

This essay will identify the importance of the elements of Film Noir between the movies Maltese Falcon, Chinatown, and L.A. Confidential. This will also discuss if Chinatown and L.A. Confidential remain true to the classical form or if they are in the baroque level of genre. This essay will also identify these discussions using examples for each film.

The movie traces the life of an aspiring gangster, Henry. At the beginning, he is an ambitious adolescent willing to work for the local mafia. He succeeds, gradually rises through the ranks, and wins respect from the boss, Paul Cicero. This protagonist also makes friends with his “colleagues” James (Henry’s personal role model) and Tommy (who is amiable yet almost sociopathic when offended).

This is a film following the life of Nino Brown. He has become an “American success story with a twist'; (Rosenbush “menace';). Brown is the main character who is young, smart, handsome, rich, successful, and prominent in his community. But, Brown is a big time drug lord and head of a gang and two cops are out to put an end to him. This late ‘90’s drama was directed by Mario Van Peebles set in New York City. This film also had all of the conventions of “New jack cinemas/black social dramas';.

Film noir is a style of crime drama movies from Hollywood that are often focused on sex, crime, and corruption by using techniques like: compromised heroes and contrasting characters; camera shots with objects that have physical properties of reflectivity, transparency and translucency; a femme fatale; and specific setting. Film noir movies were during the period of early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir means ‘black film.’ Other films that integrated film noir techniques but were not during films noir era were known as Neo-noir, meaning ‘new black.’ Neo-noir incorporates elements of film noir, but with updated themes, content and modern media of motion pictures.

L.A. private eye Phillip Marlowe takes on a blackmail case and follows a trail peopled with murders, pornographers, nightclub rouges and the indulged rich. Humphrey Bogart plays Raymond Chandlers' legendary gumshoe and director Howard Hawks serves up quick paced character encounters mainly evolving Lauren Bacall, all

Most of the actors are wearing darker clothing as well which makes their faces stand out even more. This lighting style also adds to the tension and the mystery of the scene. It makes the audience on edge. The contrast filled lighting of film noir is also effective at bringing out the extremes of emotions and thought. The darkness of the genre makes anything that goes wrong seem less taboo, because the lighting of the genre sets up the norms for the world that the film lives in—and in that world, bad things happen. The lighting of the film helps the audience understand the world that the characters are in.

     Film noir is a style of black and white American films that first evolved in the 1940s, became prominent in the post-war era, and lasted in a classic “Golden Age” period until about 1960. Frank Nino, a French film critic, first coined the label film noir, which literally means black film or cinema, in 1946. Nino noticed the trend of how “dark” and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France following World War II. In fact, only French critics used the term film noir in their work until the era of noir was over. The French label did not become widely known until the 1970s. The term film noir is now a more

The film is about a group of 5 people fighting to find and keep the

I would like to start my writing with short definition about film noir genre. Film noir genre first was used to describe Hollywood crime dramas. It’s correct if we see the big visual influence of German expressionist movement which was started in 1910s and 1920s on film noir genre. And during that time a lot of artists in Europe were attracted to this movement to show inner feelings and psychological tensions; As even surrealism movement which it’s a kind of movement focusing on dreams and fantasies and it tries to discover the relationship