IdaZFilmNoirClassNotes

 Summary: Module 12 RECAP In this module To demonstrate your learning, you completed the following activities and assessments:  Read module material and Naremore's Film Noir A Very Short Introduction , Chapter 5; "The Long Goodbye and Chinatown:" Debunking the Private Eye Tradition" (1975);  "The Long Goodbye from Chinatown"  Download from Chinatown"(1974-75) Watch The Long Goodbye and clips RESOURCES 1)Elliot Gould :The Long Goodbye Interview, New Beverly Cinema ( Links to an external site. ) "The Long Goodbye: Robert Altman and Leigh Brackett's Unique and Fascinating Take on Chandler and Film Noir" Cinephilia and Beyond" ( Links to an external site. ) "Creative Post-Flashing Technique for The Long Goodbye," American Cinematographer Link Here YOUTUBE CLIP  PHILIP MARLOWE in TV & Film - Link Here The Big Sleep watch farewell my lovely with Robert Mitchum in 70's Robert Mitchum the Big Sleep Philip Marlowe, Private e...

Everything Old Is New Again Poster for  The Long Goodbye READ THIS PAGE AFTER WATCHING THE LONG GOODBYE (SUMMARY OF FILM NOIR IN ONE PARAGRAPH) Film noir is a slippery term. It doesn’t really represent a consciously produced genre, like the Western or the musical. It is a mood and a style and a preoccupation with dark themes that can be found in some, but certainly not a large percentage, of Hollywood films of the Forties and Fifties. It might be historically contingent on the flood of German émigrés—trained in the expressionist style—that came to Hollywood in Hitler’s wake. It can be contextualized by the loss of innocence experienced by GIs who witnessed the horrors of the war, or insecurities at home based on the expanding presence of women and minorities in the workforce and American public life, or the expansion of American cities and the housing crunch caused when veterans returned home. The explanation might be as mundane as the invention of cheaply produced metal venetian ...

 Screening: The Long Goodbye The Long Goodbye The real appeal of The Long Goodbye (is) the way it transformed the noir narrative for a more cynical, more ruthlessly capitalistic era . “At the center of it is the way noir means something fundamentally different in the 1970s because of our collective consciousness about how the economy has shifted,” he said. “The film is at once neo-noir and an elegy for the golden age of noir.” Working from a screenplay by Leigh Brackett that ruthlessly distilled Chandler’s novel , Altman rendered the streamlined story — Marlowe gives a friend a ride to Tijuana, the friend is accused of killing his wife and then turns up dead himself, Marlowe sets out to prove the friend’s innocence — as a series of mostly comic set pieces . He simultaneously satirized the post-hippie self-absorption of Southern California, registered the narrow-minded brutality of the cops and gangsters, and signaled his fondness for an old Hollywood that was already history in...

 New Hollywood, Neo-Noir Gittes and Evelyn in  Chinatown  (1974) Neo-noir is classified as an early 60s shift on classical film noir standards using modern technology and social values. This new movement focuses on exercising an appreciation for classical film noir using nostalgic elements commonly found in such films. It is genuinely a modernization of the film noir movement by recognizing the choices made and shifting it to entertain and inform the post-modern audience. Neo-noir characteristics include cynical heroes, the deeply flawed protagonist, femme fatale, and light vs. dark elements, whether textually or subtextually. Some of the neo-noir traits come off similarly to those in classical film noir, s o the difference relies on the execution of said characteristics. (LYNCH) The most apparent difference between classical film noir and neo-noir would be the use of black and white turned to color with a post-modern touch. Chinatown and You Were Never Really He...

 Philip Marlowe in the 1970s Robert Altman borrowed the title of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye for both his 1973 film, but it could just have easily been called Hooray For Hollywood (the Doris Day song is ironically played over the end credits); the Los Angeles suburb drawing much of the directors focus and itself as much a character as Elliott Gould’s Philip Marlowe. A lot had changed in Hollywood since the book’s release in 1953 and the beginning of Altman’s involvement in the early 1970s. Marlowe, a man of morals and integrity seemed at odds with contemporary society, though rather than becoming a stumbling block this conflict became the film’s thematic driving force. Gould’s interpretation bears little resemblance to the usual Marlowe’s archetype, defined by the Bogart era, he shuffles and shambles, unkempt and wearing his suit like pajamas rather than as a statement of intent. But the PI’s moral code remains intact, the burden of conscience casting him adrift in a soci...

 Robert Altman Altman’s Hollywood career can be divided into three phases . 1)Between 1968 and 1975 he was part of the “Hollywood Renaissance" of directors like Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols, Sam Peckinpah, Stanley Kubrick, Peter Bogdanovich, and Francis Ford Coppola.” (2) ( Links to an external site. )  MASH , Brewster McCloud (1970), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973), California Split (1974) and especially Nashville were major contributions to the reformulation of Hollywood formulas of story and style.  2)By the end of the 1970s, however, with the successful advent of “post-classical” films like Jaws (1975), Rocky (1976), Star Wars (1977), and Superman (1978) by young directors like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, t he high concept blockbuster film ended the days of experimental art-cinema films . After the box-office failures of Quintet (1979), A Perfect Couple (1979), Health (1979) and Popeye (1980), production money disappeared, an...

 Neo-Noir in New Hollywood                                              Philip Marlowe takes a drink and a smoke in a bar It was inevitable that New Hollywood would take a turn with Noir, the manifestations that came in the 1970s stand as a contemporary reworking of the Classical molds that were solidified in the 30s-50s. The Long Goodbye ( 1973) and Chinatown ( 1974 ) are two early entries into what would become known as neo-noir ; each taking a slightly different approach, while still tethered to Classical issues ( Chandler's Philip Marlowe and period accuracy of L.A. setting in Chinatown ). LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this module, you will be able to: 1.Describe stylistic and thematic elements of noir in the first wave of neo-noir in Hollywood 2.Identify and assess Robert Altman's unique contributions in regards to noir elements of ...

Module 11 Summary  The ultimate crooked cop, Detective Quinlan is realized by Orson Welles in a fat suit and extensive prosthetic makeup to add jowls RECAP Based on Whit Masterson’s mystery novel “Badge of Evil,” Touch of Evil was a late-cycle entry in the traditional noir canon , but it deploys many of the genre’s familiar devices , like a swinging light getting smacked to convey associative violence, or the way cinematographer Russell Metty adds to the chiaroscuro hysteria with wide-angle views that are enhanced but also abnormal. In this module To demonstrate your learning, you completed the following activities and assessments:  Read module material and "The Borderlands of Touch of Evil"  Download "The Borderlands of Touch of Evil"from Noir Anxiety by Kelly Oliver and Benigno Trigo Watch Touch of Evil and clips RESOURCES Suggested Further Viewing:  The Lady from Shanghai (1947) Full movie Link to film here  Free on YouTube Rita Hayworth as Elsa Bannister Or...

 Fragmentation and Decay 1952-8 Attractions abound in the bordertown in  Touch of Evil READ THIS PAGE AFTER WATCHING TOUCH OF EVIL  . . . this chapter must end with an analysis of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958), which, although atypical of the 1950s, exemplifies the high point of the expressionist style that Welles himself inaugurated with Citizen Kane . Touch of Evil's exteriors were shot on location in Venice, southern California, with its ersatz (artificial) veneer of European sophistication, decaying oil wells and sense of general decline. Venice becomes Los Robles, a border town, a liminal (transitional or threshold or boundary) space between Mexico and the United States, filled with detritus of all kinds, where right and wrong is ambiguous, and the boundaries between dream and waking, sanity and madness are constantly blurred. This ambivalence encompasses the principal characters. The American police captain, Hank Quinlan (Welles), who proceeds through hunch an...

SCREENING: Touch of Evil        Susan (Janet Leigh) screams for help from a cheap hotel balcony, people only stop and stare According to Welles himself, he had the time of his life directing the movie that would later get the title of Touch of Evil : minimal studio interference, a hugely talented and respected cast eager to work with him and honored to be included in his inspiring creative process, a distinguished cinematographer ahead of his time and peers… Everything seemed perfect, and Welles honestly believed he was back in the game and there to stay.   However, when Touch of Evil premiered ( Links to an external site .) as the bottom half of a double bill (alongside The Female Animal with Hedy Lamarr) after extensive studio re-editing without Welles’ authorization or creative input, he was appalled, bitter, disappointed and disillusioned both with the quality of the final product and with his future chances of establishing himself as a triumphant director ...