This time, "Half Filmmaker" we will continue to introduce "film noir". This time, we will introduce nine sets of film noir, and tell you about the difference between film noir in the 40s, 50s and 60s.
1 Scarlet Street (1944)
Director: Fritz Lang
The first was Scarlet Street, directed by Fritz Lang's 1945 work.
Fritz Lang was already well known in the silent film era, and his 1927 works Metropolis and 1931's M is a killer (M), which are quite important films in the history of cinema. He went to Hollywood since the Nazis in Germany, making a lot of Westerns and film noir in the 1940s.
Nino Frank used four films to define film noir, one of which was Fritz Lang's 1944 film The Woman in the Window.
There is a very important element in film noir - "infatuation", fans are particularly fascinated by the love and hatred in the film, so there are many "infatuation" in film noir. The logic in film noir is not complicated, usually different from reality, love at first sight is often very common in the film, and in the film, the characters often live for each other and die for each other, which is the display of "infatuation".
What is more interesting about "Blood Red Street" is that what it describes is not the crazy love of young people, but the love of middle-aged people. The male protagonist Klaus is played by Edward G. Robinson, who is a very important actor in Hollywood, his appearance is not good, he has played many roles such as gangsters, detectives, etc., and he also played a detective-like role in Double Indemnity (1944).
This time, he played an uncle with a midlife crisis in "Blood Red Street", once met the beautiful heroine Katie on the street, and saved her on the street, igniting his love for Katie. Katie's background is not very good, and she falls in love with the rogue Johnny, who knows that Klaus likes Katie and instigates her to take benefits from Klaus, such as asking for money and learning to paint.
This film is particularly about its theme of love between middle-aged men and women, which is very rare in film noir, and the film is not only physically sexually suggestive, but also more spiritual. For example, When Katie was smoking, she asked Klaus to light a cigarette for her, and the back-and-forth movements of you and me succeeded in banning a lot of verbal sexual provocation.
There's also Katie's control over Klaus: she asks Klaus to cut her nails humbly, and Katie controls Klaus's heart from time to time throughout the film. While Alfred Hitchcock is known as the Master of Suspense, Fritz Lang is known as the Master of Darkness because he portrays the film as rather dark, with the male protagonist Klaus and his wife sandwiching a third party relationship, Klaus later involved in a murder, the typical scorpion beauty seducing the male protagonist with beauty, and so on.
On-set photo of director Fritz Long and Katie's actor Joan Bennett
The emergence of film noir actually stems from the social background of the 40s, when men were conscripted into the war during World War II, so women had the opportunity to replace men's previous jobs and improve their social status. When men returned after the war, they found that their status was outlawed by women, so there was a gender struggle between men and women in society.
The emotional struggle between men and women in film noir reflects the situation in society. What is more interesting is that in this Blood Red Street heroine Katie in addition to the emotional projection of the male protagonist Klaus, she also likes the Johnny behind her, a bad man character.
Katie's affection for the bad guy is like Klaus's affection for Katie, in one word: infatuation. Katie's fascination with the bad man Johnny and her difficulty in getting out of her life make her image more vivid, as well as pathetic features besides the scorpion beauty. Therefore, this film is very diverse, and many scholars use it as a study of the social stereotyping and positioning of men and women at that time.
2 The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Director: Charles Laughton
The second film featured was 1955's The Night of the Hunter, directed by Charles Laughton, who was originally an actor, even an Oscar winner, and made the classic film The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939).
As a director, he only made one movie, "Hunter's Night", which was not very good at the box office at that time, so there was no opportunity to make other films later, but later people watched "Hunter's Night" and felt amazing.
On-set photo of director Charles Lawton (right) with Robert Mitchum
There is no typical scorpion beauty in this film noir, only the younger siblings John and Pell and their stepfather Harry (Robert Mitchum), a very evil character, and the more appropriate description is that Harry's existence is a fairytale evil. The reason he chased and killed the two children was only because the children's father had collected the money in his brothers and sisters' muppets after the robbery.
On the way to the hunt, they discuss good and evil, and finally an old woman in the wilderness saves the little brother and sister and confronts Harry.
Interestingly, the film is not a gunfight but a song confrontation, and the fairy tale atmosphere fills the whole film. The film should refer to a lot of fairy tales, there is a scene where children are thrown into a boat and exiled, and they have the feeling and atmosphere of The Lion King and three little pigs when they are on the river. The whole atmosphere of the river chase is quite freehand. This film does not have many typical elements of film noir, but the freehand is implied by a pure malice.
3《裸吻》(The Naked Kiss，1964)
Directed by Samuel Fuller
Samuel Fuller
The third was 1964's The Naked Kiss, directed by Samuel Fuller, who had made many B-movies. This film was shot in the 60s, and it is very different from the film noir in the 40s and 50s, especially the status of female characters has changed greatly.
The heroine of the film, Kelly, is a prostitute who is often looked down upon by all walks of life, but she is quite independent and will not be influenced by the world's vision. The story later develops to the point where Kelly meets Grant, a rich man with a lot of dark sides.
The whole film is very roughly made, and the heroine Kelly is entangled with the man at the beginning, and the wig is dropped, and it turns out that she is a bald head. Such a picture happens to the beautiful heroine, who is independent of Kelly and the rich man is a pervert.
The whole movie has a surreal element, in fact, many film noirs have those surreal elements for everyone to discover. In the 60s, women were independent and self-reliant, and their status was improved, without the support of men, nor did they have to pay attention to men's views, and women were no longer representatives of the derogatory term "bad water".
4 Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Directed by Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder (left) Gloria Swanson (center)
The fourth film was 1950's Sunset Boulevard, directed by Billy Wilder. The film's entry point, like other film noirs, is the use of flashbacks, and at the beginning it seems to enter the closing paragraph of the film, and the male protagonist Joe (William Holden) seems to be facing a dilemma so he confesses to the story that happened before. Joe is seen as a corpse shortly after the opening scene, and the film tells the story of what happened from the perspective of a corpse.
The actor, Joe himself, is a screenwriter who is invited by a once-famous actress, Norma Swanson, to write the script for him. Gloria Swanson herself is already a popular actress in the silent film era, and she has not made much film 20 years after the end of the silent film era, until she took over the film "Sunset Boulevard" again.
"Sunset Boulevard" is the story of the actor Norma who lived in the past. Gloria Swanson herself is similar to the heroine Norma's image and background. The whole movie depicts how Crazy Norma is, how paranoid she is, and how she develops relationships with Joe, who is a certain age younger than herself.
Especially striking is its ending, where Norma goes into a state of madness and people lie to her that she is finishing the movie before finally uncovering the mystery of Joe's death. The film is full of elements of film noir, but it also tells the harsh reality of Hollywood's film industry. Sunset Boulevard is a stark story about hollywood films, such as David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. (2001) about how Hollywood's drunken fans could change this nightmare.
5 Gun Crazy (1950)
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis
Joseph Lewis (right) with two lead actors Ruth Tamberlin (left) and Peggy Carmins (center)
The fifth film was 1950's Gun Crazy, which was directed by Joseph H. Lewis and the director of The Big Combo, which we introduced earlier. Gun Madness is a typical crime movie in which bart (Russ Tamblyn) loves guns from childhood to adulthood, and in the middle of the film he falls in love with the heroine Laurie (Peggy Cummins) because of guns, which leads him to a wrong path and becomes a thief with the heroine Laurie.
The obsession and madness of filming Bart is clearly described, and the film is very improvised in filming, and many of the venues are live-action venues. The shooting machine was placed on the car when filming them escaping from the bank, which is very different from many film projection shooting car shots, and also makes the whole film full of realism, and it is easier to produce dangerous and exciting realism and danger at low cost.
At the end, the two are already cornered in a swamp, the whole scene is full of fog, obsession and death become the main theme of the play, the whole film is very good, the fog is also quite poetic and atmospheric, this film has a great influence on future films such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967).
6 The Set-Up (1949)
Directed by: Robert Wise
Robert Wise
The sixth film was 1949's The Set-up, an early work by director Robert Wise, who went on to make several great films, including The Sound of Music (1965) and West Side Story (1961).
In his early years, he shot a lot of B-movies, and there were many "Double Feature" movies, which meant merging and releasing two films of about 70 minutes, which was the strategy of the studio. Most of the selected films of "two consecutive screenings" have relatively low costs, and the names of the actors are unknown.
The Man Who Sold Flesh is the story of a 37-year-old boxer Bill (Robert Ryan) who is about to play a match and what happens more than half an hour before the match.
It is not as thrilling as the average film noir, but the main force of the film describes the psychological reactions of Bill himself and the people around him. For example, Bill's wife, Julie (Audrey Totter), is very worried that Bill will be seriously injured if she loses another game, she has a lot of internal struggle scenes in the film, and the film also spends a lot of time filming the life of the people in the locker room of the stadium. Robert Wise spent a lot of ink on the psychological descriptions of the players before they appeared: some people had broken heads and blood, some people were worried and worried because of their first appearance, and the panic of witnessing the blood flow of others' heads.
The whole film only shoots one boxing match, that is, the male protagonist Bill and the opponent, but the movie gives him not much shot, but instead shoots the picture of the audience, and the film describes the psychological behavior of the people in detail.
The element of film noir, "conspiracy", only appears until the end, and Julie's anxiety is still impossible to escape easily. The cost of many film noirs is not too high, especially this one, but its shooting method is unique, with the depiction of the psychology of the characters as the main axis, and does not spend time and money on the stage of boxing. At the same time, this film does not shoot the background of the characters, all of which are solved by the lines, it is a real-time movie, the story is focused on the moment, and has a very concentrated inner scene.
The Man Who Sold Flesh influenced many later boxing titles, such as Raging Bull (1980) and The Man in the Iron Fist (Cinderella Man, 2005).
7《兰闺艳血》 In a Lonely Place (1950)
Directed by Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray (left) on set
The seventh film is 1950's Blood of the Blues, the sixth film directed by director Nicholas Ray, which tells the story of a male protagonist, Steele (Humphrey Bogart), a screenwriter who hasn't written a good screenplay in years. He one day finds a desirable girl, Mildred (Martha Stewart), and tricks her into coming to his home to help read texts and summaries. However, a few hours later, he found that he and the girl did not have a power to send her away, and at the same time found that the neighbor Laurel (Gloria Gloria Grahame) was more beautiful, so he immediately visited Laurel, and the two began to slowly probe, Laurel wanted to enter Hollywood and Steele was the screenwriter of Hollywood, so they began to slowly get along.
But then the girl Mildred is murdered, and the unfortunate girl's last contact is Steele, so the unimportant background of murder begins to change the relationship between Steele and Laurel. The whole film is quite focused on the relationship between the male and female protagonists, Laurel is a witness who can prove Steele's innocence, but she also discovers that Steele will have violent tendencies after drinking, which makes Laurel feel fearful.
The murder plot and the murderer are no longer very important, because Laurel also begins to feel full of fear for Steele, and they gradually fall into the emotional abyss, and the struggle, relationship, fear, and conquest of each other in the whole movie make the whole movie quite exciting.
Mildred Pierce (1945)
Directed by: Michael Curtiz
Michael Curtis
The eighth film is 1945's Mildred Pierce, directed by Michael Curtiz and adapted from James Cain's novel of the same name, which in particular depicts a large number of psychological changes in the heroine Mildred (Joan Crawford) and incorporates elements of film noir: murder.
Mildred appears at the beach and is thinking about suicide because she is involved in a murder case, but later meets a suitor, Willie (Jack Carson), and the heroine plans to marry him.
The police later discover that Mildred's husband, Monte (Zachary Scott), was killed and believe that the killer is the heroine's ex-husband, Albert (Bruce Bennett). So Mildred told the police that she had killed them, and then there was a flashback to film noir conventions, from how she knew her ex-husband to how she separated and then to her husband.
The fun of the whole story is not to guess who is the murderer, but to cut in from a rather feminine point of view halfway through, and how Mildred's image blends snake and scorpion beauty and self-reliant women is quite interesting. Film noir is usually masculine, with nine out of ten beautiful heroines targeting male audiences. But the film's female image is very appealing to female audiences.
9奇爱疑云 The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
Director: Lewis Milestone
Lewis Milestone
The last film was 1946's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. The film wasn't discussed by too many people, perhaps because it didn't win. But its cast is pretty good, with Barbara Stanwyck, Van Helfin, and Kirk Douglas, and incidentally, kirk Douglas's first film.
Martha (Barbara Steinwick), Sam (Van Heflin) and Watt (Kirk Douglas) were childhood playmates, after Sam left town and went out on a run, returning when his childhood playmates were married and Watt became prosecutors, and Martha became a factory owner, both of whom were successful.
They have a past story that they once murdered a person. It just so happened that Sam didn't see it happening, but both Martha and Watt thought Sam knew about it. So this misunderstanding reunited their old friends, and even the situation of the love triangle became a struggle involving fame and fortune.
This movie also does not need the audience to guess who is the murderer, but mainly depends on the reaction of the murderer. How exactly did Martha and Watt get along after the murder? Is there any fear? There is also a careful description of how Martha and Watt's greed, lust, and power lead to the road of no return. And Sam came back to be a good guy? Or be an innocent person? Or do you end up in a nightmare? The story involves the sins and fates of each character, and describes the relationship between the three people in fairly careful detail, which is constantly evolving. Friends, enemies, mutual assistance and mutual benefit relationships are constantly changing, and the development is quite complicated.
The whole movie spans a large time span, and the portrayal of each protagonist is perfect and the most wonderful part of the movie. How the characters should face the past is also like the story of the ordinary American dream from evil to fame and profit. Strange Love and Doubt constantly explores how people should face the sins of the past and the enmity between the characters. Some people walk the road of no return, some people take a relatively good road, and everything is just a line of difference.
At the end is a wonderful drama, three people, a gun, who kills whom? It doesn't matter if you live or die. The curtain is full of obsession, which makes fans intoxicated.