8.5 Midterm Paper
Midterm Paper assignment:
Professor Denah Johnson
Cine 23B - Focus on Film Noir
31 March 2022
Film Noir, as seen
through the films: Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)
and Seconds (John Frankenheimer,
1966)
In 1946 post-war, a selection of
American films was screened in France, they showed a different side of America
from the pre-war classical Hollywood paradigm films with happy endings to a new
post-war film marked with a different style (Durgnat 37). That style showed a
“new mood of cynicism, pessimism and darkness” (Schrader 8). Thus, two French
critics in 1946 gave these films the name noir (dark, black) (Naremore 2009 10).
That ‘new mood’ came from American post-war disillusionment and was different
in that “film noir was first of all, a style, that worked it’s conflicts out
visually” (Schrader 13). This noir style was created in the Hollywood thirties
and forties with the expertise of German filmmaker expatriates who had come to
flee from the war. These filmmakers had worked in German expressionist film and
were experts in chiaroscuro technique. The films Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer,
1945) and Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966) are good examples of the
themes of post-war disillusionment and a particular visual style.
The disillusionment shown in film noir,
“hit its zenith in the late ‘40s, a time when veterans were returning home in
droves after having witnessed unimaginable horrors. Under the weight of war
trauma, men felt the brittle veneer of traditional masculinity – strong, stoic
and dominant — crack and crumble. Film Noir tapped into this anxiety. It’s no
accident that film scholars have called Film Noir the male weepy” (Crowe).
Shrader states that film noir can
be subdivided in three broad phases (Schrader 11). Detour belongs to the
first-time phase of film noir films that Schrader describes as: “the first war time
period, 1941-'46 approximately, the phase of the private eye and the lone wolf
… in general, more talk than action” (Schrader 11). Al Roberts of Detour
is a lone wolf character in this film. The violence is very Hays Code, subtle
or offscreen.
In Detour’s anti-hero Al
Roberts, we see a man who is a classically trained pianist, yet he could only
get a job beneath him in a dinner club called “Break O’ Dawn Club.” He plays in
the background while people ignore him and eat their meals. He has no money to
travel across country except by thumbing rides and has planned not to eat until
he gets to his destination. He meets Vera a woman also thumbing across the
country from town to town to get a better job or someone to swindle. They are
the mood of film noir of pessimism and darkness. This was something that the audiences could
relate to as they were having tough economic times themselves and post-war
discontent.
In Seconds we meet the
anti-hero, Arthur Hamilton. The film fits the definition, not the dates, of
Schrader’s third time phase of film noir films. “The third and final phase of
film noir, from 1949- '53, was the period of psychotic action and suicidal
impulse. The noir hero, seemingly under the weight of ten years of despair,
started to go bananas” (Schrader 12).
The film starts with Arthur, a man who
is beaten down by the American dream and carries years of despair and unhappiness
in his unfulfilling yet prosperous life. He receives a call that can change his
life into something wonderful from an old friend Charlie, his homme-noir in the
film.
He obeys Charlie and proceeds to
The Corporation where he believes his life can change for the better. He is met
by a corporate salesman Mr. Ruby, whose opening line is, “I’ve been assigned to
go over the circumstances of your death with you.” Arthur doesn’t run out of the room; he
continues the conversation. Mr. Ruby tells him how well his death could be
staged, perhaps in a hotel room fire? Arthur replies, no, I mean I can’t be
sure. They are describing a kind of ‘psychotic situation’ and Arthur has a
‘suicidal impulse’ to go ahead with it.
The closer salesman, the unnamed “Old
Man” owner, asks him, “but what does it all mean? It can’t mean anything now,
anymore. There’s nothing anymore, is there? Anything at all?” And by the end of
the conversation, he convinces him. Arthur says he believes him and signs the
papers of his death.
I’ve considered that film is a
mental illusion, and that we are in Arthur’s head. Arthur is not narrating but we are following
him in the story. Are we following a reliable or the subjective thoughts of a
character? I believe he has been debating in his mind during late nights in his
suburban home on his discontent and feeling suicidal.
During his ponderings over death,
he envisions what it would be like to be switched out with another person and
start over. He envisions the great things that could happen if he was someone
else. Then he decides that his life would end up just the same way in
unhappiness, controlled by higher forces that would tell him what to want or
not want. I believe he found that he was destined to ill-fate. I believe he
does commit suicide in a hotel room fire. Perhaps even after an unsuccessful
affair with a Nora look-alike.
In the other film, Detour,
there is another beaten down anti-hero, Al Roberts, and there is also a body
swap. Al, due to the circumstances of
his hitch-hike driver dying, puts on his clothes, takes his wallet and car and
assumes his identity as Charles Haskell Jr.
Here we do have an unreliable first-person narrator, a feature of film
noir. The narration is done in voice-over, flashback narration. Did he kill
Haskell to be able to assume his identity? We don’t know for sure.
He can now drive to the destiny he
wants with $300 in his wallet, a new ID card and a nice car. In keeping with
the theme of fatalism, he picks up that one in a million-chance person that
knows the man he is impersonating. His dreams of starting over with a body swap
have also turned out to be a nightmare. He was a man fated to lose in keeping
with the theme of fatalism in noir storytelling.
How was “new mood of cynicism,
pessimism and darkness” expressed? As mentioned earlier, “film noir was first
of all, a style, that worked it’s conflicts out visually” (Schrader 13).
Edgar G Ulmer, director of the film Detour, is one of
the European expatriates that Schrader mentions: “in the Twenties and Thirties,
and these filmmakers and technicians had, for the most part, integrated
themselves into the American film establishment” (Schrader 10).
Ulmer had worked with and learned
from F.W. Murnau (Krohn) who made the landmark German Expressionist film, Nosferatu
(F.W. Murnau,1922). “This movement, of which Murnau's classic is clearly a
member, externalizes emotions and relies upon a heavily theatrical acting style
to achieve that aim. Expressionism has many components, including a strong
visual approach and a visceral appeal, but subtlety is not among them”
(Beradinelli). Nosferatu was not like a traditionally frightening horror film,
“but the result of Muranu's artistic approach is a pervasive sense of eeriness
and unease” (Beradinelli).
German Expressionist visual style
made its way into film noir through these expatriates. German Expressionism
“established the concept of using light and shadows to reflect character
psychology—a notion that would continue in German cinema and spill over into
film noir, a genre largely influenced by expressionist cinema in tone and
narrative (Saporito).
We see this visual style of using
lighting to reflect character’s psychology in Detour. When Al Roberts,
the anti-hero, begins his first-person flashback narrative of his experience of
the last few months, his face and the background is darkened. His eyes are highlighted
with dim light as the rest of him is almost blacked out. This reflects the mood
also of the tale he will tell.
“In film noir, the central character is likely to be
standing in the shadow. When the environment is given an equal or greater
weight than the actor, it, of course, creates a fatalistic, hopeless mood.
There is nothing the protagonist can do; the city will outlast and negate even
his best efforts” (Schrader 11).
Shrader states, “the actors and
setting are often given equal lighting emphasis. An actor is often hidden in
the realistic tableau of the city at night, and, more obviously, his face is
often blacked out by shadow as he speaks” (Schrader 11).
Naremore in chapter four of the
Film Noir reader reviews other specific visuals used in Detour. Ulmer
“represents New York with a single street lamp on a foggy studio set, and he
renders Los Angeles with a used car lot and the drive-in restaurant. He makes
expressive use of old-fashioned optical devices such as wipes and irises, and
he's the only Hollywood director beside Welles to deliberately exploit the
artificiality of Back projection see the enlarged fence posts or guardrails
that stream by the windows of Haskell's car as he and Al Drive by night (Naremore
2019 70)
The film Seconds visually
exploits feelings of fear, paranoia and extreme disorientation. The collaboration
between director, John Frankenheimer and cinematographer, James Wong Howe
showed a European touch. “By pushing conventional
technique aside and working with a visual grammar of exaggeration and extreme
graphic amplification, Howe and Frankenheimer revealed the mind of a man
struggling to break free of his emotional bonds” (LoBrutto).
The film allowed “Howe to experiment with optics and camera movement
to heighten the tale's terror” (LoBrutto).
In the hotel scene, “the room’s heavily
textured walls raked at extreme angles to create a false sense of perspective,
while the floor undulated beneath black-and-white checkerboard tiles.
Exemplified by this scene, the physical and optical distortion achieved by
Haworth's sets and Howe's cinematography combined throughout Seconds to
create a disturbing, stomach-churning effect of a Kafkaesque universe” (LoBrutto, Vincent).
This brings memories of the German
Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920) where
the sets are distorted and the walkway where Cesare escapes is an undulated
surface that is extremely distorted.
The film Seconds has a
strong theme of angst and fighting against authority and conformity. “German
Expressionism often explores stories of people fighting against authority and
conformity, this will translate as a main thematic concern in the American
Gangster film and Film Noir” (Johnson, module 3.1).
“The themes of authority and
conformity in The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari are both a reflection of post-World
War One Germany. The disturbing foreshadowing of what was to come” (No Film School).
Arthur is a character that is unfulfilled spiritually by
the American dream. Arthur says to his homme-noir, Charlie, after the
unsuccessful attempt at being ‘reborn’ into Tony Wilson and changing his life,
“I had to find out where I went wrong. The years I’ve spent trying to get all
the things I was told were important. That I was supposed to want. Things, not
people or meaning.”
In the gruesome ending of Seconds,
the anti-hero is still fighting for control of his life from The Corporation as
they decide that he will move to phase two of their plan for him.
The Old Man, the company creator, sits on his bed and says
calmy, “The doctors are waiting.” Arthur/Tony replies, “But there's things we
have to talk about. I mean, my identity... The thing about doing it on my own.”
The Old Man answers that they would
talk about it later, “Just relax, son. Everything's going to be just fine.” As
Arthur/Tony keeps asserting that “You see, it's so important...choice. You've
got to change; we have to talk about it.” The Old Man responds, “we will son,
relax everything is going to be fine. I’ll look into it personally.”
Then Arthur/Tony, is put on a
mobile operating table and wheeled to his death as The Corporation no longer
has any need for his life, just his cadaver. The horror of this scene is
expressed visually by Howe.
“The
enclosed set led Howe to experiment with optics and camera
movement to heighten the tale's terror, best evident the end of the picture
as Tony Wilson is strapped to a gurney and wheeled into the operating room
thrashing and struggling as he realizes the end is near. The camera, often mounted to the
gurney and fitted with either the 9.7mm or an 18mm lens, is an unflinching
witness to Wilson's desperate yet vain efforts to free himself; the optics bend the set walls inward, adding to the
claustrophobic horror of the sequence” (LoBrutto).
This story is told visually without
any more narration from the protagonist. Schrader states that “compositional
tension is preferred to physical action. A typical film noir would rather move
the scene cinematographically around the actor than have the actor control the
scene by physical action” (LoBrutto). Arthur is struggling in this scene, yet
it is the cinematography around him that is creating the compositional tension.
The elements of post-war
disillusionment and the particular visual style of film noir have been shown to
be used in Detour and Seconds. The human angst is visualized by having
an ill-fated life that is not the optimistic one promised by years of study and
doing what one was told. Whether it is growing up to be a classically trained
pianist or going to Harvard and becoming an executive at a bank. This
unsatisfaction that viewers of their eras felt by their promises also not being
fulfilled is shown in these noir films. This film style is not offering the
Hollywood happy endings of pre-war of Classical Hollywood Style, these films
are painted black.
Works Cited
Berardinelli, James.
“Nosferatu.” Reelviews Movie Reviews, 31 Dec. 1969,
https://www.reelviews.net/reelviews/nosferatu.
Crow, Jonathan. “The 5 Essential Rules of Film Noir.” Open Culture, 5
June 2014,
https://www.openculture.com/2014/06/the-5-rules-of-film-noir.html.
Durgnat, Raymond.
" Paint it Black: The Family Tree of the Film Noir." Film Noir:
Reader,
New York Limelight Ed, 1996. Print, pp. 37-51
Frankenheimer,
John, director. Seconds. Paramount Pictures/Joel Productions/Gibraltar,
1966.
Johnson, Denah.
“German Expressionism.” Cine 23B - Focus on Film Noir; Module 3.1, 2022,
https://ccsf.instructure.com/courses/46481/pages/3-dot-1-german-expressionism?module_item_id=2679107.
Krohn, Bill. “Edgar G. Ulmer.” Film Comment, 30 Aug. 2017, https://www.filmcomment.com/article/edgar-g-ulmer/.
LoBrutto,
Vincent. “The Surreal Images of Seconds.” The American Society of Cinematography,
31 Jan. 2018.
Naremore, James.
Film Noir: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Print.
No Film School. “German Expressionism, Explained.” YouTube, No Film School by Press Play Productions,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecuQdkBx1ic&t=3s.
Saporito, Jeff. “Why Is ‘the
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ Considered the Definitive German Expressionist Film?:
Read: The Take.” Why Is "The Cabinet
of Dr. Caligari" Considered the Definitive German Expressionist Film? |
Read | The Take, 27 May 2020,
https://the-take.com/read/why-is-the-cabinet-of-dr-caligari-considered-the-definitive-german-expressionist-film.
Schrader, Paul. “Notes on Film
Noir.” Film Comment, 1972, pp. 8–13.
Silver, Alain, et al. “Paint It Black:
The Family Tree of Film Noir.” Film Noir
Reader, Limelight Editions, 1996. Print.
Ulmer, Edgar G.,
director. Detour. PRC Pictures Production Company, 1945.
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