Film Noir

Chinatown. Out of the Past. Detour. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. After hearing these titles, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Why, they are all film noirs! BEEP!!! WRONG! FILM NOIR is in these movies. What irritates me often times is the applicability of genre in any setting, whether it be books, comics, plays, or other forms of expression. When sitting down to think up a great story, do the writers first conjure up the genre, the boundaries of their narrative first? Genre is not what defines a film – the films define the genre, so to say that a such-and-such film is of a such-and-such genre is to diminish the quality and power of that movie. As we discussed in class, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is often discussed as a neo-film noir with its many aspects that reach back to the classical styles of the detective and gangster narrative. However, after watching the film, it was obvious to all of us that it would be impossible to put it anywhere on the shelf (does it go under comedy, action, romance, or what?), except perhaps, as someone cleverly stated, in the New Releases section. Genre is merely a tool that came after the fact. By creating the film genre, we are able to simplify the multitudes of films floating around, to help sort the masses by defining various aspects of movies to allow viewers to “taste” different varieties of film (a little bit of Western, a slice of Sci-Fi, and a healthy portion of raw Action). But more than that, genre limits the scope and applicability of a film and it becomes a danger that we face today.

But I’ll end my pointless tirade there and discuss what is left of the film genre that we know and look back nostalgically (or by changing the channel and avoiding it) at film noir. Rick Altman in his writing, A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre, claims the importance of looking at two aspects of film genres – semantics and syntactic, an inclusive and exclusive boundaries that define genre. Old studies used to only rely on one of these approaches, thereby making the movies in a genre become defined by an inclusionary or exclusionary measure. So looking at a film like Chinatown, what makes it a film noir, and what makes it not part of any other category? There’s the profuse use of shading throughout the story, a lone detective, a sly femme-fatale character, and the always present tragic ending. Unlike other genres, it does not use vibrant colors to brighten the mood nor does it provide the audience with a sense of satisfaction at the end of the film – why do the bad guys win? Well, that’s what film noirs do, they end tragically. But then if that is the case, is there a possibility of having a film noir that ends happily?

Let’s take a look at Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a dark humor comedy film dripping with neo-film noir techniques. Mystery – check. Use of shadows – check. Independent detective – half a check. Femme Fatale – uh… I guess you could call her that. Depressing, unsatisfactory close – not quite. Rather than ending on an ambiguous note, this film clears up all the missing details so that the audience can leave with a sense of completion and moral victory. But film noirs, as implied by their names, are supposed to be black, or sad. This means there is more to defining films than merely looking for aspects that define the genre. Robert Warshow’s definition of the film noir claims, “Our response to a gangster film is most consistently and most universally a response to sadism; we gain the double satisfaction of participating vicariously in the gangster’s sadism and then seeing it turned against the gangster himself.” But that is not what we saw in this film. Instead, the film revolved around a pitiful man try to make his way through a pitiful existence, and then finally finding himself in a place of satisfaction by persevering past pitiful circumstances.

Unfortunately, I really cannot see how the film genre operates, especially after reading the papers and watching the films. I am not claiming that it is impossible to define movies in genre – it definitely is possible, but what confuses me is the lack of agreement across the board of how to define genre, as Altman had indicated in his writings. What about film genre makes it so complicated and mysterious to define clearly? His inclusion/exclusion approach seems to work, but then again, who defines those boundaries? I guess that’s something we’ll have to keep striving for…

High School Musical 3 - A Review

The teens across the nation braced themselves for a monumental occasion – the hit, direct-to-TV movie series was finally hitting the silver screen - High School Musical 3: Senior Year, directed by Kenny Ortega. With a blunt, simple title like that, who would purposefully pay ten dollars to see a movie about an over-dramatized look at their own lives? Well, apparently 20 million viewers did not mind at all. After suffering through a trial of torment from my peers (real men do not watch high school musical movies), I braced myself for the worst, expectations low, and drowsiness already beginning to settle. However, I must admit that this film was a pleasant surprise and not half-bad (of course, not to say that it was half-good either). For those of you who have not seen the first two installments, do not be afraid to taste the newest of the franchise – I felt that the movie did an adequate job of welcoming newcomers.

                The story is… well, there really is no story line, but what little there is consists of a few, key high school seniors attempting to create a final masterpiece (a school musical, oh how creative) and decide the paths for their future. Troy Bolton (Zach Efron), the male protagonist, attempts to break free from the chains set by his family and friends, who have already planned a career path for him. After receiving a mysterious letter from Julliard’s Music School for a scholarship (for, unknown to him, his teacher had submitted an application), Troy decides to rethink his basketball calling at the University of Arizona (U of A). His girlfriend Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens), on the other hand, finds difficulty choosing between her love for Troy (and essentially East High School) and Stanford’s prestigious Honors Program. While these two conflicts are being resolved, we are introduced to the twins, Ryan (Lucas Gabreel) and Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) Evans, who are also competing for the Julliard’s scholarship. Sharpay, the ditzy yet strangely relatable drama queen, especially aggravates Troy and Gabriella’s relationship by usurping Gabriella’s role in the play. Troy’s right hand man, Chad Danforth (Corbin Bleu), acts as the weight upon the protagonist’s mind – choosing anywhere besides the U of A would be a betrayal of friendship, since he and Chad had already agreed on joining the sports team together.

                As the title suggests, the film is cluttered with various musical scores, ranging from a rooftop waltz to the cafeteria jazz showdown. The movie opens with an ambitious act that involves playing basketball and singing at the same time (doing either alone is difficult enough for me). The quick camera movements sweeping across player to player, then the succession of quick cuts between the athletes, cheerleaders, and the screaming fans trigger the excitement for both the game and the movie for the audience. As the lead characters Troy and Chad go on to victory, holding their glorious trophy, the movie cuts to the boys riding a broken-down pick-up truck, revealing to the audience the students’ abilities for success and humility at the same time, a transition that I found useful in understanding their personalities. As the entire school has gathered at the Bolton’s residence to celebrate their basketball triumph, Troy and Gabriella share an intimate moment alone on a tree house. To accentuate their isolation from the rest of the world, the camera points upwards from the ground to the couple (thereby blocking out all other characters) and silence the background clutter. While erasing the noise is unrealistic (since there IS an obnoxious party going on below), the audience is able to relate to the stillness by the manner in which the camera operates. As the two sing and spin around the tree house, the camera pans along with them, following along and catching every movement.

                Many of the scene changes were well-thought. My favorite is when Sharpay Evans gloats about how she will steal Gabriella’s musical part in the school play, the scene changes into Troy and Chad entering an automobile dumpster, since Sharpay’s trashy attitude matches well with the landfill. There are many other cut-on-actions, such as when a group of students exit their classroom, the film suddenly switches to another throng of teenagers rushing on stage to begin singing, or when Ryan Evans and Kelsi Neilson (Olesya Rulin) start writing a song to the main musical number in the play which smoothly transforms into Troy and Gabriella practicing on stage. Of all the musical scenes in the movie, the one that I found the most captivating was “Scream” (or the “EMO” song as it is known colloquially). Despite the negative reports to this number, the way Kenny Ortega portrayed not only Troy Bolton’s confusion and despair about his future but also the way his mind was spinning is ingenious. As the male protagonist yell/sings through the empty classrooms, there are signs that the entire act may be psychological. Troy sings while walking around a hallway that spins vertically, so that he is stomping across the walls and ceilings. There is also a large banner of him in the cafeteria playing basketball that was never there at any other points in the movie and he forcefully tears it down. As he goes through the school, a banner of “Julliard’s” can be seen, acting as a constant reminder in our eyes and in Troy’s mind of an alternate future.

                Despite the various excellent scenes, this Disney product is no match for the Hollywood classical, Grease. Both revolve around high school seniors dealing with the coming of graduation. However, the focus of each differs greatly, thereby making both experiences singular. Grease deals more with “getting the girl” and having sexual intercourse whereas High School Musical 3 takes on a more “family friendly” approach by discussing the worries of applying and going to college. That is not to say that the more innocuous film is the better. The former film is able to better utilize the off-screen, especially since Danny Zuko (John Travolta) and his lover Sandy Olsson (Olivia Newton-John) rarely share screen time, thereby creating a stronger bond of romance as they stare at each other off-screen. Grease also introduces more individualized secondary characters who do not act merely as “stage-props” to help the story progress (with the exception of the T-Birds and Pink Ladies, who act as comic reliefs). The musical pieces also deal with more personal experiences for each character, helping the audience to become sympathetic to their plight rather than merely being relatable, as High School Musical 3 does.

                High School Musical 3 is an entertaining film, no doubt about that, with the fast paced action and dance sequences, lovey-dovey romance scenes, and a sound theme of being independent and deciding one’s own future (despite it being rather clichéd by now). But as a film of cinematic value, it fails on multiple levels. If you are searching for a form of escape or merely to kill time, this movie is an excellent choice. But anything above that, stick with the classic Grease, despite it being thirty years old.

Drives and Impulses in Cinema

“In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.”

-Budd Boetticher

 

“It is said that analyzing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it.”

-Laura Mulvey

 

            The world in classical cinema has been revolving around the patriarchal system, utilizing the male protagonist as a source of masculine ego and the woman as nothing more than eye-candy. Using various camera techniques, cinematographers appeal to the sexual nature of voyeurism and fetishism. Spawning from the ideals of Freud and Lacon, cinema attempts to feed the audience pleasure by appealing to sexual instincts and drives. While I disagree with the psychoanalytical foundations of both Metz and Mulvey, I will summarize their argument before voicing my own opinions.

            Beginning with Christian Metz’ claim in his work The Imaginary Signifier, he first indicates the reason for popularity of the movies is from the identification process. His claim is founded on the research and work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Metz focuses on Lacan’s mirror argument, a claim that is summed up as the following - a baby looking into the mirror for the first time finally realizes that the separate entities of its body are all actually part of a whole, and this realization creates misrecognition of its own potential. The toddler sees the reflection and thus attains pleasure and happiness. Similarly we, as the audience, see ourselves in the “mirror” that is the movie screen to find ourselves in “reality.” One critical difference between the application of the mirror analogy in psychology and cinematography is the quality of the reflection. The movie screen returns not a perfect imitation of what is put into it, but a twisted, “illusive” picture that only shows shades of truth. But despite this fuzzy imitation, we regardless are enraptured by the beauty of what is presented.

            Metz then goes along bringing up the ideas of voyeurism and ego libido, which are the sexual desires and instincts that bring (guilty) pleasure to the audience. His argument is very interesting as it connects with camera angles and views. The voyeurism is induced by our connection with the camera. “I am the projector, receiving [film], I am the screen; in both these figures together, I am the camera, which points and yet which records” Metz claims. Throughout scenes in movies, many characters look off-screen and thereby strengthen our bond as spectators looking into their lives. The senses of distance (sight, as opposed to touch) help to create a balance between the pleasure that the viewer wishes to obtain and the sexual impulses that could corrupt him. Metz states, “To fill in this distance [from the screen] would threaten to overwhelm the subject, to lead him to consume the object, to bring him to orgasm and the pleasure of his own body, hence to the exercise of other drives.”

            The idea of fetish is a bit more convoluted. According to the idea of penis envy or castration dilemma, young boys are kept in fear of the absent one, the penis, on their female counterparts. The lack of the sexual implement creates a retreat or fear in the children. The idea of fetish in the cinemas is “to restore the latter, threatened in its “goodness” by the terrifying discovery of the lack. Thanks to the fetish, which covers the wound and itself becomes erotogenic, the object as a whole can become desirable again without excess fear.” The love for the equipment and technical aspects of cinema thereby become the fetish of the cinema. “The fetish is the cinema in its physical state.”

            To discuss Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, I will relate to a film I recently watched, Grease. A story of a group of sexually hyperactive teens, this movie stresses the female as a guilty pleasure to be viewed upon. While initially Sandy (the female protagonist) is a model young woman with exemplary values and morals, she loses herself to the fetish of her lover. Because he is unable to return his love to her because of her own lack of sexual charm, she gives into the demands of men. Mulvey tells us, “traditionally the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium.” Sandy at first only had a pretty face, as she always dressed modestly and covered her body. But in the finale, she loses to the stereotypical “Hollywood gal” and appears scantily clad, to the surprise of all the male characters. They all look off-screen as she approaches, and the camera slowly crawls from her legs, to her bust, then to her altered face. The slow movement allows the male characters (and therefore the audience, since we are supposed to be envisioning the characters to be looking and not ourselves) to gorge on the beauty of woman.

            Unfortunately, there is no scene in which the woman gains power over the opposite sex. When a spectator sees the male, he “projects his look on to that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence.” This ending in Grease is perfectly summed by Mulvey, “but as the narrative progresses she falls in love with the main male protagonist and becomes his property, losing her outward glamorous characteristics, her generalized sexuality, her show-girl connotations; her eroticism is subjected to the male star alone.”

            Despite Grease’s connection with these two literatures, to claim that they are necessarily true would be incorrect. The idea of castration anxiety is too incongruous. Freud, Lacan, Mulvey, and Metz are over analyzing the role of sexuality in film. The drive for sexuality is nothing more than the drive for sexuality. It is not the fear we gain from the lack of penis nor is it from the empowerment gained from recognizing our potential in the mirror. Humans are driven by impulses that are not necessarily psychologically driven. While the arguments driven by Laura Mulvey and Christian Metz seem to fit well with cinema ideology, their arguments are post hoc and are created from that which already happened, and therefore not necessarily fitting.

As a Response to Shayna's Comment:

Definitely there are more aspects to the captureing of female marvel than merely close-ups. As you mentioned, lighting is a critical part of the whole "experience," so to say. As one of the readings states (sorry, I can't remeber off the top of my head), the unseen is part of what the male audience finds sexually appealing. By angling it in the right position and hiding prominent body parts of the female subject, it creates a craving in the male's mind to discover that unknown that is hidden from him. I can't say that there is an example in Grease, but in the movie We Own the Night, there is a scene in which Eva Mendes travels down a dark hallway filled with smoke. The darkness that envelopes her face and her chest actually accentuates her curves, thereby acting as an almost "reverse-psychology" style, in that while the cinematographer is HIDING more of her, it in essence makes her MORE visible. Also, a popular style of shot to present the female is in individual shots, where the camera is placed far away and all we see in the entire landscape is the setting and the female, so that all the focus and attention is projected onto her. By doing so, the male can see her independently of the fictitious characters on screen, therefore not actually having to identify with the male protagonist who is often the primary identification for the audience.

The "Magic" in Sleepless in Seattle

The common conception of romance involves a man and a woman who spend time together as their love bonds draw them closer until vented emotions and passions are released. In Nora Efron’s Sleepless in Seattle, you’ve got the beautiful girl (quite a shocker to realize that Annie was Meg Ryan) and the handsome young man (well, Tom Hanks isn’t THAT dashing) that concludes in the way all clichéd romance movies do. But there is a fundamental difference that transcends this film from the ordinary and that is the screen time in which the couple spends together, a whopping 2 seconds before the grand finale. Yes, that is right, Annie Reed and Sam Baldwin fall in love without actually meeting each other. But hey, that’s the magic of love and cinema, right?

My Introduction to Film Class had a screening of the classic love story Sleepless in Seattle, which, oddly enough, is based upon ANOTHER classical romance called An Affair to Remember. To summarize the story in its crudest form, Hank’s wife dies, son becomes depressed, advertizes his dad’s bachelor status, dissatisfied woman from across the nation hears his story, randomly falls in love, she gives up everything, and they coincidentally meet at the top of the Empire State Building. Is that ambitious enough of a plot? Well, I would like to believe so, because this entire film is just plain ridiculous. The absence of realism is horribly plain and the plausibility of the couple’s scenario is too bizarre for a person to fathom. Unfortunately, rather than exploring the characters and the plot of the story, director Nora Efron decides to write off any incontinuities by claiming them all as “magic.” Several times throughout the film, the characters repeat, “Oh, it’s so magical!” or “It’s a sign!” and “Our marriage was magic!”

It is impossible to not be annoyed by the constant reminder that magic can solve all the problems of our daily lives, especially our romantic aspect. Especially the treatment of the secondary characters, Walter and Hyena (I apologize for not remembering her name – from this point on, she’ll be known as Hyena), is just plain despicable. They each carry an exaggerated flaw, one seems to be allergic to everything from pollen to sarcasm and the other cackles like a drunken hyena (hence her eponymous nickname) that end up being their downfall in the romantic relationship. While not necessarily the only factor, the director uses these failures to help make Sam and Annie’s already ludicrously miraculous relationship possible. Unless this happened to be Sleepless in Hogwarts, magic cannot be the key to everything. This romanticized story does nothing more than show how impossible long distance relationships could be (those of you with love partners on the other side of the US, don’t be disillusioned by this film).

My ranting aside, there were many cinematic elements that made this romance story as poignant as it is today. For one, as mentioned in the beginning, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan don’t spend much time together in the same shot, but there are a couple moments when they share the screen. Interestingly enough, the famous movie poster showing the two of them on opposite sides of the world, with Seattle and New York seamlessly transform into the other, perfectly depicts their relationship that would ensue in the movie (there is an alternate poster of the couple together, but that destroys what the movie is attempting to portray). Both sets of eyes stare into the deep skies with a look of hope, wondering if there is another out there with the same sense of loneliness and longing.

The movie is assembled in a way that, despite vastly different settings, feels as though Sam and Annie were sharing their time together. The constant shift between one person to the other creates an almost unbreakable bond. The actual “magic” of the movie is in the photography, as this fluid connection inspires a feeling of close relationship that cannot be fathomed in reality. The moment in which Annie and Sam share the statement, “Oh sure you do,” shows the connection of thoughts and emotions despite the actual distance. My favorite aspect of this film is the opposite relationship of distance. There is an inverse relationship between love and distance. As mentioned before, Hyena and Walter are close in proximity with the main actors, yet are unable to find true love despite their efforts. Annie and Sam, on the other hand, never make any direct attempts to associate their consummate love but still find their relationship growing stronger.

Another thing I noticed was the silences. When Sam and Hyena or Annie and Walter share a moment of silence, there is an air of awkwardness. The clumsy movements of the characters or the stumbling dialogues kill the atmosphere. On the other hand, when Hanks and Ryan share a moment, the screen becomes clouded by the power of emotions that engulf the two. The shots of Hanks on the edge of the port and Ryan sitting at the end of the dock coincide so that their eyes match.

All in all, while I was disappointed with the elementary plot line, which was neither stimulating nor original, its cinematic techniques were something to behold. The quick succession of scenes between the two unknown-to-each-other lovers helped to close the wide physical gap between them. Especially with the eye angles and eye sights, Nora Efron manages to pull off a romance that does not involve the main players interacting with one another. All in all, I think that the real “magic” of the film is not the implausible romance plot, but the cinematic expertise in weaving the frames together.