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December 6, 2010
Nolan’s Noirs
In the 1940’s until the 1970’s, film noir was a huge part of Hollywood drama. Some films released under this genre during that time period include, The Maltese Falcon, Out of the Past, Kiss Me Deadly, Touch of Evil, Cape Fear, and Chinatown. In the 1980’s the genre largely died off or fell into a territory where it was parodied. Famous examples of this would be Robert Zemeckis’, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, or the Coen brothers’, The Big Lebowski. In present day, one of Hollywood’s biggest directors is Christopher Nolan. Audiences pour into the theaters to see his movies and bring their friends with them. He makes people not just enjoy themselves, but think and talk about the stories for days afterwards. Some audience members may not even notice, but Christopher Nolan has revived the film noir genre in modern times.
The website WiseGeek has a great description of film noir as, “the flip side of life. Doomed heroes, manipulative people and hidden personal and political agendas around every corner.” Sometimes though, critics act as if film noir always has to fit these stereotypes of a 1940’s or 50’s detective story told in black in white with corrupt characters and a protagonist set up to fail. They couldn’t be more wrong. These types of stories can be told in all sorts of eras and mediums outside of the detective framework. Nolan has been doing just that in the majority of his films, even since his first feature.
The Term Paper on Film Noir Genre Films One
Film noir is one of the most beloved and popular "period" film genres of the late twentieth century, although at the time that the movies comprising the genre were made, the term film noir was unknown. Essentially, it mean "black film" - a variation on the nineteenth-century French critical term roman noir, or "black novel" - referring to any number of doom-laden, deeply psychological crime dramas ...
Nolan’s childhood was likely a large influence on why his signature style lies in noirs. He was born on July 30, 1970 and grew up in both London and Chicago. Life in the city, especially gang ridden Chicago, was often a theme in Hollywood film noirs. At an early age Nolan was shooting movies with his action figures on a Super-8 camera. As he got older he began filming movies with real actors and began studies at Cambridge University. There, Nolan joined the film society and began playing around with the 16mm format. Nolan produced some shorts, but in 1998, his first feature, Following, was released.
The story of Following consists of a young man named Cobb who will just follow random people around London to learn about them. He follows some of the wrong people and gets pulled in with criminals as a result, eventually getting mixed up with charges against him for a crime he did not commit. This film of Nolan’s stood very true to the original noir image. Black and white film, a hero who was doomed to fall, and even the character who is in practically all film noirs, the “femme fatale.” Tim Dirks, writer and editor of the AMC Film Site, described femme fatale’s as, “mysterious, duplicitous, subversive, double-crossing, gorgeous, unloving, predatory, tough-sweet, unreliable, irresponsible, manipulative and desperate women” (Dirks).
Usually the male protagonist would have to make a choice as to which path to take. Something that would clear his past problems or one that involved the girl. Almost always, the choice would be overly ambitious and would only lead the man to rack and ruin.
Following saw a glimpse of minor success which allowed for funds to be secured for the next project. This one was pitched to Christopher Nolan by his brother Jonathan Nolan (the two often work together on films) during a road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles. It was based on a short story by Jonathan Nolan himself. When completed in 2000, it was released under the title, Memento.
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Memento, which was premiered at the Venice Film Festival, brought Nolan’s name to the forefront of the film industry. It’s structure is quite different than most noir films but the story stands within that realm. Viewers are presented with a hero whose wife has been murdered and he seeks revenge. From the start though, Leonard Shelby is doomed. He has suffered memory loss and can not remember any details about the murder of his wife. Later in the movie a female character takes advantage of his memory loss to help her out with her own problems. Themes such as paranoia, loneliness, and guilt that are very typical in other noirs can be found all throughout Memento. Nolan also gets across a very Noir like feel through the lighting of each scene. All the outdoor daytime scenes are very washed out. Anything in doors had very expressionistic lighting, often times using rather ominous shadows.
As a result of this films box office success and academy award nominations, Nolan gained notoriety all over the globe. He went on to direct Insomnia, his only film that he did not write or co-write. Ironically, this story takes place in Alaska during the solstice months when the sun never sets. This departs from the usual darker tone of noirs but as the story is told and audiences see disillusion, Nolan uses these bright lighting themes to match the noir style. Until then though, Insomnia sticks true to the classic noir image in the sense of being a detective film. Audiences meet Will Dormer (played by Al Pacino), a famous detective who comes to Alaska to solve the unsolvable case. They get a lead and believe they have found their suspect when by a freak accident, Will Dormer shoots and kills his partner. Being the only witness, he pretends the murder suspect killed his partner as well. Throughout the film he battles with whether it was really an accident. He starts to debate whether he did it on purpose or not, becoming disillusioned by his lack of sleep and the mind games of the suspect. Thomas Hibbs of FirstThings.com writes, “Pacino’s character is forced to reckon with questions about what differentiates him from the criminal” (Hibbs).
As this sense of disillusion grows, Dormer seems to grow more sensitive to the never setting sun. Lighting becomes washed out, just as in Memento. Once again, a hero falls.
The Term Paper on La Confidential And Film Noir
LA Confidential and Film Noir One of the most influential film movements in the 1940's was a genre that is known today as film noir. Film noir was a recognizable style of filmmaking, which was created in response to the rising cost of typical Hollywood movies (Buss 67). Film noir movies were often low budget films; they used on location shoots, small casts, and black and white film. The use of ...
All of these film led up to Nolan being offered the chance to work on large scale franchises such as the Batman films. This was a perfect series for Nolan to tackle. Batman, a comic book character created in 1938, was a hero, but he only got to that point because of the deaths of both of his parents. He became a protector of the mob filled streets of Gotham City (based on 30’s-50’s New York and Chicago).
“Batman’s quest to restore justice in Gotham is often hard to distinguish from the pursuit of raw vengeance. Thus, Batman himself is always in danger of becoming what he fights against” (Hibbs).
Even his assistant Alfred reminds him at one point of the first film, “Don’t get lost inside the monster.” Really, the noir elements were already in place in this series for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. All Nolan had to do was modernize the story.
In between the two Batman films, Nolan focused in on a project titled, The Prestige. This movie is interesting in how it really has two protagonists. Angier and Borden, both magicians, compete against each other, sometimes stooping to low tactics of revenge. The film is filled with the noir themes of obsession (in this case with magic acts), betrayal (seen through Scarlett Johansson’s femme fatale character), and the aforementioned use of revenge. “As Borden says in voice-over early on: ‘We were two young men at the start of a great career. Two young men devoted to an illusion. Two young men who never intended to hurt anyone.’ What ensues is a tale of obsession and revenge that shows, how despite nave beginnings and good intentions, careers and lives often take their own unexpected paths–to some detrimental effects” (Levy).
In 2010, Nolan released his largest scale movie to date. The story was completely written by him over a fourteen year period and is a stunning presentation of a film noir in modern times. This film is titled Inception. In the story, audiences are presented with the main character, Cobb, who is a detective of the human mind. It is a world filled with corporate espionage where people are payed to go into dreams and steal peoples ideas. After just a few minutes though we find his weakness. Cobb has been blocked access to the United States, where his kids are. He is given a business proposition to plant an idea in a mind rather than steal one. This is unheard of in their industry and Cobb even seems to debate if it is ethical, but the reward if he does it is that he is would be able to see his kids again. He accepts. They go into the dream world, however whenever inside, memories of his own dead wife (the femme fatale) come out to interfere. The journey has all the aspects of a modern day Hollywood blockbuster and a film noir classics. The themes of obsession, hidden personal and political agendas, a femme fatale who is a mysterious, manipulative, and desperate woman. Even lighting elements. Mixed together with the intense action and science fiction story. It’s all right there. It really is a stunning feat.
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Critics have said the younger generation can’t enjoy old style hollywood but in reality it comes to the fact that films have been dumbed down too much. If more directors trusted the audiences and took risks with complex stories, like Nolan, there would be more love towards these styles seen in classic cinema. Many have said the noir is dead but overall the themes, characters, and more in every single one of Nolan’s films point to the noir genre. There is revenge, loneliness, disillusionment, corruption of higher ranked people, obsessions, betrayal and of course the falling hero and femme fatale characters. All together this evidence proves that if done correctly, the film noir genre is still profitable, alive, and well.
Works Cited
Dirks, Tim. “Greatest Film Noir Femmes Fatales .” Greatest Films – The Best Movies in Cinematic History. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. .
Hibbs, Thomas. “Christopher Nolan’s Achievement: The Dark Knight | First Things.” Home | First Things. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. .
Levy, Emmanuel. “Welcome to Emanuel Levy.” Welcome to Emanuel Levy. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. .
Nolan, Christopher. Inception: The Shooting Script. Insight Editions, 2010. Print.
“Nolan, Christopher – Biography.” Current Biography International Yearbook (2005).
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Dames, Coppers, and Crooks: A Look At Film Noir Film noir is a style of black and white American films that first evolved in the 1940 s, 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 ...
The H.W. Wilson Company.
The Internet Movie Database. 8 October 2010. Internet Movie Database Ltd. .
“What is Film Noir?.” wiseGEEK. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. .
