CLASS NOTES

WEEK SIX

GENRES Genres do cultural work.  They are a snapshot of a culture at a specific time and place. A collection of films Produce a particular effect (weepies) Share common elements (setting, conflicts, storylines, stars, motivating events, plot) Can overlap within a particular film  Oklahoma = musical + western Young Frankenstein = comedy + horror Are flexible and evolve over time, with changes in society Westerns (compare treatment of Native Americans, basic themes) John Wayne movies Once Upon a Time in the West (Henry Fonda) Clint Eastwood/Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns Pale Rider Dances with Wolves Genres are recognizable to the audience Share family resemblance to one another Possess recognizable features  (plot, character, theme) May display differences, variation Conventions can be expanded, rejected, homage, parodied Subgenres Romance -- triangle, boy meets girl Production industry did not classify films in this manner, but by story-type Comedy, mysterious, scenic, personality. Three types of storylines (historical, dramatic & narrative) Share codes Iconography -- recurring visual motifs, visual shorthand Western -- white hats, black hats Characters (roles and actors) Recurring situations Plots Themes Persistence of particular features FILM NOIR The flip side of the American dream A genre, a style, a time Definition French term for "black film" Coined by French beginning to see films post World War II, who began to notice common factors Time 1945-1955 Characteristics Novelists -- James Cain, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett (later Jim Thompson) prevailing atmosphere of  pessimism and doom Technical Dramatic camera angles & stark angular sets, visual angles of rain lashed streets, fog-bound runways, sharply contrasted lighting & empty, echoing, public buildings Shot in either real or simulated darkness "...dark with something more than night" (Raymond Chandler) Storylines Recurring themes Principle character generally male, isolated physically or mentally from surroundings often fore-doomed aware of ultimate fate Usually told in first person Narrated voiceover expresses bleak resignation Fatalism act or event from past, from which seeds of own ultimate destruction develop can not escape from the past Protagonist not traditional hero values frequently of a higher order than society against the law answering to a higher view of what is right or wrong end must justify the means even if the hero needs to transcend society's rules Women Femme fatale siren luring men to their doom attractive, young, worldly woman manipulative thinks and acts quickly verbally adroit sexy, dangerous, even lethal seen through misogynistic eyes, as creator are men SCREENED FILMS LADY FROM SHANGHAI All Movie Guide Internet Movie Database Director Orson Welles Stars Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth Writer  Orson Welles OUT OF THE PAST All Movie Guide Internet Movie Database Director Jacques Tourneur Stars  Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas Writer  Daniel Mainwaring DOUBLE INDEMNITY All Movie Guide Internet Movie Database Director: Billy Wilder Star  Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson Writers  Billy Wilder, James Cain (novel) LAURA All Movie Guide Internet Movie Database Director Otto Preminger Star Clifton Webb, Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Vincent Price Writers  Vera Caspary   (Notes derived from Crowther, Bruce.  Film Noir ;  Cook, David.  A History of Narrative Film; Maltby, Richard and Ian Craven.  Hollywood Cinema.; and Phillips, William H. Film:  An Introduction. )  RELATED RESOURCES Film Genres Tim Dirks http://www.filmsite.org/genres.html Film Noir Tim Dirks http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html No Place for a Woman:  The Family in Film Noir John Blaser http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/noir/index.html

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