Global Crime Thriller Midterm
Native Son (Chenal, 1951)
- low-key lighting - expressionistic states through lighting/framing - bright neon signs break up shadows - abandoned building, broken glass, broken iron rails and rumble to show Bigger's emotional states - expressionistic boiler room
Fable (story) vs. Subject (plot); Todorov
"the story is what happened in life, the plot is the way the author presents it to us" - fable: how the story is narrated (non-diegetic) - Subject: what actually happened (diegetic)
Capitalism, individualism, and the gangster
- Al Capone runs illegal activities through American business organizations/practices - "my rackets are run along strict American lines"
In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1950)
- Bogart plays mentally unstable character who has a terrible temper - often violently outbursts on people near him - suspected of killing someone and he tries to prove his innocence but there is doubt from people around him
New Hollywood Gangster films and beyond
- Coppola and mafia epic; mafia as capitalist interest - American Dream = immigrant Dream - Scarface (De Palma, 1983) paranoia of criminality of Cuban immigrants The Auteur gangster film: epic scale and innovative film technologies
"film noir is a cinematic mode defined by its border crossings"
- Crossing the border of otherness is noir theme - characters go into othered places: Jazz clubs/Hispanic restaurants - guilt of immoralness displaced on POCs
Mexican Noir: A Different Dawn (Bracho, 1943)
- Hollywood helped Mexico's film industry to keep ideology in check, feared Argentina would produce communist films so they got no support - urban landscapes - overtones of Casablanca - Noir style through neon signs to signify modernity - smoky/dark atmosphere (cigarettes used) - heroic narratives w/ leftist overtones - lowkey lighting
Llyod Sheaerer Crime Certainly Pays on the Screen
- Hollywood trend of gut-and-gore crime stories, as well as lusty - theme of plausibly motivated murder and Freudian implication - audience wants violent escape to match violent times (post WW2)
The Master Criminal and the instability of Identity
- Lupin & Fantomas books - serial crime and fictional crime stories become a part of urban life/fabric (part of modernity) - seen as able to move from different social classes - unable to easily track down and easy to loose in a crowd/city - use the city/underground and different forms of transportation to their advantage - master criminal can elude reason - animosity of urban roles blurs social classes
Noir as critical phenomenon
- Noir has tension btwn stylization and realism (style is character's subjectivity - Noir is modernist/uniquely subversive (critical of Hollywood system/Hollywoods dark side) - idea of noir solidifies in France (term coined in 1946, Nino Frank) - Noir has eroticism and offbeat quality - pop-Freudian/psychological themes - seen as reaction to WW2 so films had darker tones and subject matter - existentialism - disillusioned detectives in a corrupt world (Hammett and Chandler)
High Profile investigations and the "noir gangster" in post war period
- PC loosens up on on-screen violence due to the war - underworld of crime had become fully integrated into legitimate practices/politics/gov't - Wilson: "the noir gangster is now an outsider, who is riddled by anxiety/paranoia in the 40s films" - noir gangster is more psychologically tortured w/ emphasis on family background
Argentinean Noir: The Bitter Stems (Ayola, 1956)
- POC characters in the lead roles that white people had in US noir films - non-white actors could appear as white in non-US noirs - films allowed to experiment more after Peron Regime falls - self-referential moments and stylistic experiments - no coherent noir mvmt in country - subjective device through editing/lighting - film slide through space, time, and memories - paranoid protagonist, paranoia due to national guilt of not getting involved in WW2 - Connection to Citizen Kane, DPs studied together
Crime as public spectacle in 19th century Paris
- Paris seen as pinnacle of modernity - Paris Morgue was a tourist attraction - fascination w/ real crimes in Paris
Tracking the criminal body: Phrenology, Photography, and finger printing
- Phrenology: study of face/features to see how brain was developing - obsession of trying to pin down individual body - fear that shape of ear/head could signal you out as a criminal
Genre Generalities (Tudor)
- Tudor believes that many academic applications of genre are a bit too broad - subject (location/tropes) vs impact (viewer feels); its problematic to assume the director is trying to make the audience feel - we cant get rid of preconceived notions of genre - Transcendent/Transhistorical notions of genre
Native Son's Transnational production
- US release version was a cut up incoherent mess - Wright (the writer) had to play the lead role - many of the voices (Argentinean non-actors) were over dubbed - exteriors shot in Chicago, interiors shot in Argentina (Transnational production leaves traces within film) - spatial segregation is core theme in NS can is represented by transnational production - Rear projection of Chicago causes estrangement in viewer
Difficulty in Adapting Native Son in America
- US studios wanted to make the lead white, which would defeat the purpose of film - wanted to strip leftist politics/black sexual desire from film - US threatened to remove aid from countries that produced it - Argentina had worker class as heart of the country - Sonos Film linked to Peron regime
Robert Warshow, "The Gangster as Tragic Hero"
- an individual may be unhappy in their private section but to make it public is a political action - compulsory happiness - the gangster is an exception against this rule so this make the gangster film a problem bc it goes against American values - sadism in watching the violence caused by gangster and gangsters dying (double satisfaction - disturb and reassure) - the gangster is what we want to be but what we fear - the gangster is individual (capitalism) but then ultimately punished due to his individualism - opposition btwn individual and community - conformity - Tallest nail gets hammered in - collective desire to fail / being a part of the crowd - death is the nail being hit (conformity to crowd)
Scarface (Hawks, 1932)
- antihero mob stereotype - realistically depicted violence - low key/high contrast lighting moodiness (possible pre-cursor to noir lighting) - everyone punished due to their criminal activity (production code) - Crime never pays theme
German Expressionism in Film Noir & M (Lang, 1931)
- assimilation of pop-Freudian/psychological ideas into crime stories - seen as reaction to WW2 so films had darker tones and subject matter - existentialism (search for meaning in one's life) - G Expressionism seen as model for Noir style - visually showing character subjectivity - rejection of realistic places/mise-en-scene - modernist strive towards abstraction - focus on lines, forms, tortured protagonist - anxious/nervous subjectivity M (Storage room scene) - dual manhunt by police and underground criminals - emphasis on human connection to technology (city is mapped out) - offscreen audio to build tension onscreen - Heavy use of shadows/flashlights - cluttered mise-en-scene/different contrasting lines Port of Shadows (Carne, 1938) - French poetic realism - heavy use of fog, shadows, softness, diffusion, horizontal shadows, - tough talking form men and women - seen as softening French Poetic Realism
Little Caesar (LeRoy, 1931)
- based on novel w/ punchy dialogue - strong male relationships which lead to his downfall (Hurt by Joe's lack of loyalty) - Rico acts as a audience surrogate for the crew - lack of score bc an orchestra would be needed on set - low key lighting (precursor to noir)
Mass incarceration as profit making venture
- beyond the chain gang: prison labor today - $2B in goods, paid .13-.52$ per hour - Prison makes money off of families trying to contact and engage w/ prisoners
Symbolic production of race
- blackness = criminality in the eyes of the criminal justice system, which reinforces stereotype - mass incarceration as political strategy - demonizing groups of minorities as a way to get poor white voters by playing into their fears in order to distract them from what they need
Story of the Crime vs. Story of the Investigation (Todorov)
- both sides make up the whodunnit - 2 stories have distinct relationship w/ time - Story of Crime is absent but investigation is real - crime stories tend to be highly conventionalized - Temporal Inversion: learning about facts out of order (non-linear relationship w/ time) - investigation justifies/naturalizes all the devices of the crime story (2nd story has to be transparent)
The Maltese Falcon (novel; 1930 - film; 1941)
- classic traits of film noir but not fully committed to style - detective doesn't fall for femme fatale - classically lit w/ slight noir tendencies - he calls police to handle criminals - no heavy use of character subjectivity
Rafter Exclusions of Crime Film
- comdies - courtroom films dealing w/ civil matters - films w/ main historical goal - horror films - westerns - science fiction - war films
Nino Frank: from the whodunnit to the hard boiled yarn
- criminal adventure / new police drama - poetic realism - emphasis on psychology (basic instinct drives come out of cynical & anti-humanist films) - detective is out of the police bubble (intermediate figure btwn police and criminal) - moral ambivalence of detective (uncertain psychology) - literature detective fiction moves from anatomy of crime to moral ambivalence
All That Heaven Allows as Transhistorical notions of genre
- deemed formulaic drama back in the day - now deemed melodramatic - melodramatic used to mainly revolve around men and used to be applied to action films, geared towards men
Master Detective vs. Police
- detective is independent of police - freedom to investigate w/out authority - a bit concerning socially if police are master detectives; paranoia - reassuring that master detectives can correct police
Insomnia (Skjolbjaerg, 1997)
- example of Fable vs Subject - the crime committed is shot aesthetically diff than the story of the investigation - camcorder style for the crime makes it more personal, dark gritty, rapid editing, eerie score - contrasts of color use bwtn crime sequence and investigation sequence - crime scene has mediation through camcorder style being used and investigation is conventional shot (seems transparent) - investigation has narrator as in the detective
Noir: Technological advancements and wartime constraints
- faster film stocks - more portable lights - both caused by wartime effort to shoot combat footage - faster film stock more sensitive to light - electricity was being rationed on the west coast - filmmakers weren't able to use many lights when shooting outside
Females in film noir
- femme fatale trope - seen as desirable and dangerous
Paul Schrader: Notes on Film Noir (1972)
- film noir is uniquely subversive - interested in style rather than theme - Brings Noir back to the US after France had coined the term (Nino Frank) - transition of heavy pulp fiction adaptations - noir divided into 3 phases - 1st phase was wartime phase: ('41-'46) private eye/lone wolf - 2nd phase: postwar phase: ('45-'49) realistic phase; crimes on the streets. political corruption and police routine
White Heat (Walsh, 1941)
- gangsters as psychopaths/mental illness - potential heist film elements - blend diff crime genres, like others from this period - headaches indicate mental turmoil/psychosis - focus on law enforcement through the use of radio
Transcendent/Transhistorical notions of genre (tudor)
- genre is a "common cultural consensus" - "genre is what we collectively believe it to be" - "interesting for the exploration of the psychological interplay bwtn audience, director, and film" - definitions change over time so we should just use sets of ideas put forward by audiences/industry - genre isn't useful as value judgement - Ex. All That Heaven Allows
"invisible punishment" as "legalized discrimination"
- housing/social stigma, not being able to vote due to imprisonment - lasts whole life and they will be discriminated against by employment, education, and public benefits - counted as a citizen in the prison for political needs but not allowed to vote
Making Afro-Argentines visible (only through spatial displacement)
- impulse to describe the nation as a white immigrant experience, that erases the people of color who resided there first - tendency to disavow afro-Argentinean origin in the country - Afro-Argentinean/Latinos cast in film but overdubbed by americans - film connected to export ambitions - film used as a way to reach out to other countries based on Wrights popularity - Argentina didn't consider it Argentinean bc of english dialogue
Lupin and the heist/Caper (both novel and 2021 show)
- impulse to map the city - structure of showing crime, then explaining how it went down (flash forward/back) - play on temporality, operational aesthetic (how-to) - parallel of criminal mastermind for director - episodes are self contained but have overarching narrative
"Torn from headlines:" Tabloid journalism and pulp fiction
- inexpensive films to make (fast, cheap, easy) - brought in audiences due to recent tabloids
Noir Style
- lighting and aesthetics blend line of realism (character subjectivity) make it modernist - advanced aesthetically/politically - film noir = Black film - black and white film; German expressionism - low key lighting/ high contrast lighting
Mexican Noir Cont'd: The Cabaretera film; Aventurera (Gout, 1950)
- melodrama meets noir - Cabaret singer/dancer is main character - association btwn singing/dancing in club w/ sex work - women leading double life - fallen woman that fights against traditional female role Aventurera - attacking dearly held beliefs and showing rottenness of society though gender norms (sex worker/traditional mother) - wild dance numbers, trendy/exotic musical rhythms that have African roots - her prostitution is linked with original sin of adultery - explosions of emotional/aesthetic excess - pervasive corruption thought gender roles = the virtuous mother is a pimp
Post Touch of Evil -> Psycho
- mixes genre (noir w/ psychological thriller) - has horror (proto-slasher) elements - break w/ CHC style - post modern approach to genre
Race in film noir
- moral and optical meanings of black and white blend together - orientalism/otherness (those excluded by social norms) are cast as dangerous in the film - crimes displaced onto people of color - places w/ foreign establishment seen as a retreat into seediness - escaping to mexcio (a place a criminal could find safety from the law in the eyes of these films) - Crossing the border of otherness is noir theme - POC's typically at the margins of the films not in starring roles
Jean-Pierre Chartier Americans Also Make Noir Films (1946)
- moral distinction btwn French poetic realism and film noir - FPR: some glimmer of resistance to dark side - love provides hope of a better world - society opens the door for hope - characters retain views sympahty - Noir: monsters, criminals, psychopaths - no redemptive qualities - these people have preordained disposition to evil within themselves
Moral Panic around crime and the rise of crime series/serials in turn-of-the-century France
- moral panic tied to obsession w/ subject - serial/mass production of cultural commodities - serials written quickly by multiple writers (seen in low regard) - suspense across multiple entries - tied to current events; read w/ newspaper (fabric of life) - transferred to radio/tv/film
Rafter's Typology of Crime Plots
- mystery/detective stories - thrillers - caper/heist - justice violated/justice restored (suspect as detective) - disguised westerns (heroic outsider) - revenge/vigilante films - chronicle of a criminal career (gangster film/much of noir)
From Panoptic surveillance to Big Data
- one nation tracked - facial recognition is accurate, if you are white (facial recognition can be biased) -predictive algorithms and facial recognition -> perpetrating criminalization - machine bias; no way to self-police
Genre, Auteur, and Audience Expectations
- opposition bwtn genre (set of conventions) and an auteur (singular voice/style) - genre needs to be understood through historical contexts bc they are based on audience expectations and help us understand audience expectations
Production Code Pressures
- outlaw replaces the racketeer - responds to new crop of criminals (Bonnie and Clyde) - shifts to making the lawman the hero - non-ethnic local bank robbers The PC eventually declines when Ratings System comes in and then we get more graphic violence Ex. Bonnie and Clyde - squibs used for shots - Pc provision was that you couldn't target diff nationalities so when it dissolved, gangsters became diff nationalities -> New Immigrants, New Anxieties
Master Criminal: Blurring identity & transgressing class boundaries
- police are not protagonist in serial films/detective fiction - impersonation - black outfits allows the characters to just be antagonists - identity doesn't always get pinned down
Racial Capitalism in Prison in 12 Landscapes
- prisons are recession proof - unconventional doc persuasion/argumentative style 1. Washington Sq. Park (chess) 2. Eastern Kentucky (coal town) 3. Detroit (quicken loans) 4. Marin County (firefighter) 5. The Bronx (packages) 6. LA (pocket parks) 7. Detroit 1967 (riot/insurrectionists) 8. St. Louis County (traffic court) 9. Baltimore (Freddie Gray Protest) 10. Whitesburg (calls from home) 11. 34th St. and 7th Ave (bus stop) 12. Upstate NY (Attica) - framing and duration - sound image relations; juxtaposes phone calls from family members of prisoners w/ bus ride to visit prisoners
Native Son: page to screen
- self-censorship of black male desire (theater scene) - black male sexuality linked to tools of oppression - confronting negative perceptions head on - black men can feel desire in cinema - Novel; the daughter is communist so she wouldn't be seen as sympathetic in the US - style represents Bigger's subjectivity
Lady in the Lake
- shot in 1st person pov - immersive experience, you as actor - Phillip Marlowe - criminal pretends to be authoritative figure - extreme subjectivity
Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler: A Image of the Times (Lang, 1922)
- shows master criminal as master of modernity - mastery of time, space, transportation, communication tech - stock market as target for criminal tied to Germany's Economic unstability - standardization of time tired to modernity (helps to control, bodies) - Mabuse is floating intelligence above the stock market - sense that someone is behind it all; there is desire to make sense of all its complexity (paranoid complexity)
Pulp Fiction novels
- some adaptations delayed due to Production Code - linked to emergence of hard hitting/criminal narratives - seen as cut above dime novel - detective centered films were more quickly adapted then criminal centered novels due to PC
The Master Detective Fiction Tropes
- stories typically have mediator to the investigator (proxy of normal intellect) - problematic reductions of autism seen intellectual and emotional intelligence - women only appear as victims - close male bonding - story falls away and analytical mindset takes focus - almost Preternatural ability to solve (intuition) - supernatural causes are excluded - systematic reasoning of everything (everything is a sign waiting to be read by the right person) - readers try to solve case alongside detective - fantasy of total knowledge (read any person in urban space) - caused by fear of so many people in an urban space so its hard to place everyone (anxiety/animosity of urban space) - the city/crowd as text - fascination w/ straying beyond safe spaces at night
Classic Pulp fiction
- story of the unreliable detective - story of the false accused and criminal as detective narratives
Typology of Detective Fiction (Todorov)
- structuralism, deep underlying narrative structures - masterpieces stand on their own but they also create a new genre while still pulling on a prior genre - rather than trying to be unique they are artful takes on a genre - "(not direct quote) the major work creates a new genre while transgressing the rules of the game" - Story of the crime vs. story of the investigation - fable vs. subject - criminal: detective = author: reader - the whodunnit/cozy mystery - thriller/suspense novel
Production Trends ("cycles" to genres, genre hybridization and evolution)
- success of new film can lead to a new genre - over time genre can evolve and share elements w/ other genres or mashups as well
Les Vampires (ep 6 - The Hypnotic Eyes)
- supreme judge is executed in Phillies stand - what does it mean for criminal justice system to be penetrated? - Irma Vep character - black suit allows for any identity to be projected, a blank canvas for which the viewers own characterization to be projected upon
From "B" genres to prestige pictures: Godfather
- takes the gangster film and shows the then turn back to blockbusters - life-of-gangster crime film - introduced Italian heritage into film - psycho-analytical approach to the gangster - gangster fails by mental/emotional deterioration not by death - Michael doesn't choose gangster lifestyle - Parallel editing
Criminalization
- tension btwn what is morally/legally right (2 diff narratives at play) - justice and law are not the same thing bc legal system isn't neutral - looking at how control/punishment invade all aspects of life/society
Crime Fiction as the literature of modernity: the master detective
- the amateur detective as interpreter of modernity: Dupin and Holmes - its all about the puzzle and what they observe that others don't - the crime is a place where their intellect can take place - the analytical mindset and deductive reasoning everyday life as decipherable text
Overlooked Film Noir Influences
- the gangter film (Little Caesar) and classic horror -> such as urban criminality and classic universal horror films - Citizen Kane and Gothic Romance (Rebecca) -> heavy use of shadows, tense spaces, subjective mise-en-scene and piecing story together through clues
Michel Foucault Discipline and Punish
- the public execution is theatrical while the prisoner time table is methodical - on focuses on the body while the other on the mind - "economy of punishment was redistributed;" penal systems move to corrective methods instead of physical punishment - "body as the major target of penal repression has disappeared" - the "spectator" nature of executions would scare off others form committing crime - "the force of the law is the force of the prince"; crime attacks him personally - growing invisibility and individuality changes penal system; "punishment will tend to become the most hidden part of the process" - "punishments has become an economy of suspended rights"
"De-naturalizing" genre
- think about how genre changes historically and see how classifying the genres to different films can be fruitful
Public Enemies (Mann, 2009)
- tied to 2008 financial crisis, disillusionment w/ financial institutions connected to 30s depression - balance of gangster/law enforcement narratives - handheld camera work - Gangster as celebrity - moral ambiguity towards criminal activity by mass media - uses digital photography to modernize story
The Irishman (Scorsese, 2019)
- ties to directors past w/ mafia/gangster films - loosely based on death of Jimmy Hoffa - Used CGI deaging & prosthetics for facial features - uses long takes/freeze frames to build out world for realism - closes the gangster cycle started in the New Hollywood
Transitive (2 definitions)
- to turn (a person) into a criminal by making their activates illegal - to turn (an activity) into a criminal offence by making it illegal - stems from activities of different social groups that are seen as desirable/undesireble
James M. Cain: Sex, Money, and Upward Mobility
- transition from detectives to couples focused on money/better life by any means necessary - post war industrial boom and focus on material wealth - includes cars as big sign of mobility - desire to move against wartime conformity - most book adaptations written during depression
Gangster film and gangster characterization
- use slang to move through social classes - slang, punchy dialogue - gangsters are fallible - white but ethnically othered (ethnic connotation of language that creates sense of belonging) - upward mobility (though material wealth) - social sphere/exclusive group of men (can't leave) - dark mirror held up to society - dark heart of american capitalism/individualism - jazz age hedonism, economic boom/bust, mistrust in institutions - rapid fire slang/gunfire important to the transition of sound, recording sound made it hard for camera mvmt
The Postman Always Rings Twice (Garnett, 1946)
- vagabond character reminiscent of depression - shadows of leaves/blinds, not in full expressionist mode yet - characters focus on upward mobility - focus on being/moving to an upper class - Dark Side of the American Dream
Paul Schrader's 3 noir phases
1) wartime phase: ('41-'46) private eye/lone wolf - The Maltese Falcon 2) postwar phase: ('45-'49) realistic phase; crimes on the streets. political corruption and police routine - The Naked City 3) ('49-'53) psychotic action/suicidal impulse. the noir hero begins to go into despair - In a Lonely Place
Fantomas (Feuillade, 1913)
1911 Book - tying modern ways of transportations w/ crime - police presence everywhere - "hosts of evil has telegraph and motorcar" - modernity doesn't eliminate crime but the criminals can use technological advancements to cause more crime 1913 Film Serial - shows different identities he can have (identities superimposed over one another) - he can disguise himself as different classes so he can work into diff class settings - he is complete cypher; confrontational audacity - can't pin his identity so it causes fear/anxiety
Racketeer
A person who obtains money illegally by fraud, bootlegging, gambling, or threats of violence
Interpreting and tracking the "criminal" body (social darwinism)
Cesare Lombroso: criminology and eugenics/scientific racism - racism: some people were seen as more civilized than others - wanted to know why people commit crimes - worries about people devolving (against different race marriages) - his racial bias was involved in his study - degeneration was seen to be found in the face (phrenology)
Racial Readings in Noir films
Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944) - Slave bracelet on Mrs. Dietrichson - she lives on spanish villa/ perfume from mexico - she sunbathes (changing her skin tone) - Using Charlie (black car attendant) as an alibi - cultural repertoire can be used to assign stereotypes (racial) to certain events - whiteness as a cultural construct exists as oppositions to racial others In a Lonely Place - literally/figuratively displaces guilt on black man - tells him to get flowers for the recently murder woman he was with - low key lighting that favors bogarts skin but not POCs' - film stock that also doesn't favor darker skin tones Chinatown - problematic ideas of Chinatown that diplace crime onto racial others - Uses racist Asian stereotypes which are used to broker the deepening of the crime
Pulp fiction: Dashiell Hammett vs. Raymond Chandler
Hammett (The Maltese Falcon) - writes short punchy dialogue Chandler (The Big Sleep) - more elaborate sentence structure - more detail - more digressions - detective describes the story as its happening - detailed physical descriptions of people/places/things - both writers feature disillusioned detectives in a corrupt world
Defining Crime Film: Rafter and Leitch
Leitch - crime films should be defined by an syntactic approach - Altman's A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre -explore the blurred lines bwtn criminal, victim, detective; basic syntax/structure of the film - Syntactic view (the structures into which they are arranged) - disrupting and affirming the social order - drawn to transgressions/taboos and want to be reassured of justice and that we wouldn't commit a crime - ritual element Rafter - more broad definition - More semantic definition (stresses the genres building blocks) - tension bwtn disrupting/affirming the social order but some films ring hollow as conservative/critique
Cornell Woolrich: ordinary protagonists gripped by paranoid delirium
Rear Window - closely associated w/ "one false move" narratives - normal people who do one thing/suffer from accusation and are now in the criminal underworld (one chance incident) suspect as detective" narratives - person trying to piece together the night of the crime in which they don't remember committing a crime - these films suggest that anyone, by chance/randomness, can be taken into the criminal underbelly The Blue Gardenia (Lang, 1953) - high emphasis on characters altered states w/ formal experiments to show altered states - man gets woman drunk and tries to take advantage of her
The Naked City (Dassin, 1948)
Schrader's 2nd phase of noir - portrait of city before crime - semi-documentary nature of noir films - situates the crime within the glowing atmosphere of urban life - alienating qualities of urban space
Prohibition (1920-1933), The Racketter, and Jazz age decadence
Underworld (Sternberg, 1927) - shows how personal relationships are at the center of the film - powerful emotional ties w/ males but try to be heteronormative - relationships are a part of their downfall (Little Caesar)
Syntax vs. Semantics
Syntax are the set of rules that govern the formation of phrases, whereas semantics govern the meaning of words. (Syntax = rules, Semantics = meaning) - Altman: "the semantic approach thus stresses the genre's building blocks, while the syntactic view privileges the structures into which they are arranged
Prehistory of Gangster films
The Musketeers of Pig Alley (Griffith, 1912) - are of moral redemption Alias Jimmy Valentine (Tourneur, 1915) - double life, safe cracker - criminal reform - alludes to Fantomas by dissolves revealing diff personalities - Top down angle of heist (precursor to heist film) which is used to show operational style and dramatic irony - low light for tension/drama
From Radio dramas to early TV
The Shadow (radio) - more atmospheric/theatrical Dragnet (radio) - more detail focused (documentary feel); routine police setting and functions - fragmented by ads - seriality/pulp fiction moves from literature to radio to TV - the all knowing vigilante falls out of favor in serial narratives Dragnet (show) - keeps routines of radio show (date, officer, precinct) Law and Order - serials goes w/ franchising CSI - a newly "cinematic" aesthetic and emphasis on physical evidence
Quality TV and crime narratives
The Wire deconstructs criminal justice system and other systems within modernity. desire to map a whole social system
Criminal = Author; Detective = Reader (Todorov)
The writer constructs the crime (commits the crime as the criminal) and the reader solves and deconstructs the crime (detective delivers the crime info to the reader)
Dark Waters
Todd Haynes - takes style from 70s paranoid thrillers - never see crime committed - visual contamination - long solo investigation time lapse trope - elements of noir, horror (whole system is rotten) - the "whistleblower" narrative
The doctrine of "personal responsibility"
despite widely varying enforcement of laws on different racial groups
Noir not a genre but a...
film cycle or trend - not enough commonalities in terms of plot to make it a genre (but has tropes such as femme fatale) - sense of attitude (cynical/hard boiled) and costuming play into style as well
Foucault Panopticism
if people feel they are being watched, they will behave (ex: prisons) - quarantine as metaphor - political utopia for surveillance/discipline - signaling out people and tracking them - mechanisms for repression created the sense of self we have today (Govt IDs - individual that can be tracked) - prisoners have to self-police themselves
Classical Gangster film cycle
is short and hurt by Production Code - cannon created by what was allowed - focused on organized crime - slang, punchy dialogue, and sound effects benefited from transition to sound - Rise and Fall narrative
The Big Sleep: from page to screen
novel written by Raymond Chandler - film dialogue lifted from novel almost word for word - banter (ping-pong) dialogue - female love interest more present in the film, which responds to demands of the star system - homosexual couple suppressed within the film but present in the book (most likely due to PC) - orientalism hints at same sex relationship - 2 sisters show split attributes of femme fatale - style is somewhat transparent (not expressionistic) - plot doesn't matter in this film, very convoluted
Systematic Racism
prejudice and discrimination in the ways a system treats individuals of different races - the US has the highest rates of incarceration per capita and worlds highest total number of people in prison (2m) - deeper way of working oppression into criminal justice system - the doctrine of personal responsibility - invisible punishment - political disenfranchisement - symbolic production of race
TV series vs. TV serials
refers to the shape of narrative design Serial - more complex developments over episodes Series - self-contained episodes
The Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)
seen as the end of noir in most scholars eyes - pushes the conventional visual tropes to their furthest extent - famous opening long take of a bomb in a car - pushes the genre almost to parody/pastiche - style is mapped out onto a border town - noir style feels mastered in a way where the film feels self-reflexive/foreshadowing neo-noir
political disenfranchisement
segregation - people taken away from communities and then putting them in rural areas which makes it harder for them to see their families
13th (Ava DuVernay)
shows slavery being perpetuated through the criminal justice system. highlights the criminal loophole in the 13th Amendment - additional editing/ camera mvmts to show oppression stylistically - slow swelling music - shows origin story for mass incarceration - dynamic documentary aesthetics to heighten theme and audience interest
Thriller vs Suspense Novel
thriller: criminal milieu is danger to protagonist. A crime novel where the focus is not on the investigation but the prime emotional response is suspense not curiosity. Focuses on story of the crime Suspense: connects more to the domestic life
Heist film
typically the whole film revolves around the heist and there is normally a very in depth operational (how-to) style to the film. typically has a group of criminals who has great skills but skills that are only good for criminal needs and not for societal gain.
