if one looks historically at New york and California the title Chinatown goes perfectly with the movie.Chinatown has always been a shady place, be it opium in the 60’s, crack in the late 80’s, to the underground poker games or the bootleg purses that are being sold in rooms behind the visible walls for a fourth of market price. The movie in a way was like that as well. A small investigation job turns into a giant game of battleship. never knowing where your enemy may be, searching but rarely landing a hit.

The movie came out when society was changing. it was a clash of old school vs new school, with a side serving of filth. i feel as if this movie captured a time in history. The way it portrayed the corruption and crime that was going on. The manipulation of money, and even the sexual relationships that were going on. That era was when the term “uncle daddy brother” could have applied, as portrayed by one of the films many antagonist.

just makes you think, what kind of movies are going to come out that portray our current point in history?

When it comes to blade runner, so many thoughts pop into my head. For each thought though there are twice as many questions.

Was Fords character a robot? Was the origami man there to retire the woman, or him? how did he know about the unicorn? Why did the final robot of Nexus Six allow the protagonist to live?

This movie sort of touched on the subject of “who watches the watchers?” A test was administered by blade runners to suspected robots but never took it themselves. it makes one wonder if all blade runners were just a different model of synthetic people (similar to that of Nexus Six,) The theory arises from a specific scene where Fords character shows a tell tale sign of a synthetic person, the specific hue in the eyes. was it done on purpose? if so why did they not expand on it?

this film touched many of the conventional film noir features. such as the gritty urbanized city. the amount of people, the clutter, the lack of room. someone  always watching you, similar to Orwells 1984. The evolution of the characters i felt was expressed in a great way, from the last androids cannibalistic rage. The howling showed how hurt he was, how he feared his impending doom, and moments before helping end a life he accepts his fate. the androids last deed was giving a man an opportunity he was never given. Freedom.

If one were to consider my thesis for the final paper: Love in film noir leads to the downfall of the protagonist it is evident that the argument would not be very strong if I did not include Brazil. A story of a man who drastically changes his life in the pursuit of love. Sam Lowery a man who liked his simple repetetive life, and turned down any opportunity of advancement decides to change everything so that he may find a woman. The woman he searched for was literally the woman of his dreams. He often dreamt of her as a sort of fairy, trapped in a cage. Lowery played the hero in his dreams, and angel of sorts sent from the heavens to save her, to protect her from the darkness, and an evil entity similar to a samurai. He left his job to get access to information on this woman. He learns her files are on a different floor so he takes a lift which malfunctioned but gave him the opportunity to see her. She was arguing with the door guard about a wrongful arrest. Once he finally gets to his beloved Jill, he whisks her off and they have a wild ride. This ride eventually led them on a sort of lovers crime spree. With the adrenaline in their system from their crime spree they succumb to their animalistic passion, and fornicate. The day after finding his love, bonding with her, and being with her he freefalls to his destruction, his downfall. He is arrested and put in a sanitarium. In this sanitarium he is tortured to the point of a mental breakdown. He has a dream, or a hallucination of being saved, and living happily ever after. Unfortunately though his quest for love left broken, destroyed. No longer was Sam Lowery badge DZ-015, no longer would he wake up to coffee drenched toast, or a home with a crappy electrical system. Instead he was just a vegetable.  

The Set Up

“The Set Up” is a film noir dedicated to showing the life of a boxer at the end of his career. A man who has always been “one fight away from making it big”, a losing streak that had been affecting his personal life as well as his professional life. As the movie goes on you are shown a plethora of characters whom are at different stages of their careers. The young boxer who was able to punch his opponent out in two rounds, the old man that gets beaten senselessly and has to go to the hospital, and others whom are in between. This makes the protagonist; Stoker evaluate his career; has it been long enough? Is it time to give up the gloves and leave the ring forever? Or can I win, can I continue and become champion? Stokers girlfriend has had it with his career. She wants him to stop. It hurts her to see him beaten night after night and she wants to settle down. She had been given a ticket to go to the fight, but she chooses not to. There was a significant scene where there is no sound, and the camera is looking up at her as she emotionally rips the tickets up and lets the pieces flow in the wind. So in this movie a bookie expected him to lose a fight, like he had lost every other one. Stoker wants to win, since it was unknown to him he decided to fight his heart out and miraculously won. The bookie was angry and to teach Stoker a lesson they destroyed his hand and his ability to box. Although painful this was the best thing that could have happened to everyone. With Stoker out of boxing it allows him to be attentive to his woman. She in turn is also happy because although violent, her dream came true.

It’s a sort of evolution of the character. A man unable to come to terms with his end had it forced upon him. Now the only thing left is to see what happens after the hand is healed. To figure out what path is next.

Out of the past

Out of the Past is a movie that I think exemplifies the film noir genre. It’s a story of a man who had made the mistake of falling in love with a wrong woman. A clients wife, and running away with her. They lived a happy life for a brief period of time until she murdered someone that was after them, which caused them to separate indefinitely. Years later after the protagonist had made a life for himself he is approached by an enforcer of his previous client. They had found him by chance, a stroke of luck on their part. As it turns out the femme fatale post murder had returned to her husband.  He is given a job to do that unfortunately leads to his demise. The relationships he had formed in his new life were destroyed, and he left behind a protégé without any guidance. This movie can be considered the best warning out there against femme fatales. How they can lead to your eventual death if you do not tread properly, it also shows you how devious and conniving that they can be. It also teaches a very important lesson. Your past will always come to haunt you, no matter how long it takes.

Asphalt Jungle

The movie Asphalt Jungle decided to take a different approach to the film noir genre. As opposed to the other film noirs that we have seen, there were multiple protagonists throughout the movie. The movie concentrated on a single event; a heist. The object of desire within this movie was a stash of diamonds. The protagonists were able to lift the diamonds without any issues until it was time to enact the escape. During the escape one of their crew had been shot which starts the beginning of all their troubles. Shortly after the heist, they were double crossed by the fence and they get the police on their tail. They want to know who is in charge, and where one of the protagonists is. In the end, all of the protagonists had a negative outcome. Between facing life in jail, or dying right before making their dream come true. I enjoyed this movie because of the ending, not because it was dark but because you would have never expected the outcome considering how well the beginning went. I think the most significant scene for me was in the end, where the main protagonist was running to the farm. A dream almost realized, almost completed only to be stopped by a bullet in his abdomen.

Murder my sweet

Murder My Sweet is a Noir film which concentrated a lot on the evolution of the protagonist: Philip Marlowe. He starts off with a simple body guard job which evolves into a case of the missing jade necklace, similar to the story of the Maltese falcon. Both the significance of the items, (the Maltese falcon VS the jade necklace) and the characters attitudes had many similarities. They both had a charm to them that allowed them to gain access and information that was beneficial to their ultimate mission. Like Spade, Marlow had a particularly difficult femme fatale. A killer and a liar, that took him into the darkest parts of his mind. When exploring his inner dark thoughts he kept making a reference to a “black pool” which was a state of mind of him being knocked out, or drugged up that allowed him to reflect and think. In a film where the protagonist had been knocked out, drugged up, and immobilized for a period of time, the end result was positive. He for a lack of a better term “got the girl” there was a positive outcome in this film noir as compared to the other films which we have seen. Sure, the protagonist may have been temporarily blinded in the end, but it made the ending that much sweeter. A blind man surprised by the woman he loved, and thought he had lost made up for the terrible experience he had gone through.

Write a blog post on Double Indemnity(film), discussing it in light of our class discussions. You can also compare it toThe Maltese Falcon

Double Indemnity, a story about love, betrayal, and a scheme that the main characters could not get away with. This film was way better than the Maltese Falcon in my personal opinion it gave us more twists and turns as well as a hope, that maybe, just maybe the protagonist could have lived happily ever after with the femme fatale up until the point that she shot him that is.

Break Down of characters;

Protagonist: An insurance salesman, tired of his job, always wanting more. He was very charming, and went after what he wanted, very smart from the first meeting knew what the femme fatale was after and his moral code allowed him to turn it down, at least until she successfully seduced him, and made him believe he was killing for love. His mind does not work well around beautiful woman, although he was a killer he had a conscious as he did not want anything to happen to the daughter of the man he killed.

Femme Fatale: A very sneaky woman, her intentions are very clear from the start although she did try to deviate from the main point. She seduces the protagonist, has a plan all set up to see him privately, changing the date of the meeting to a day where they would be on their own yet acts as if the maid is still around. Once the protagonist is hooked she said “i loathe going back to him” solidifying his commitment.

Barton Keys (supporting) This man was a my favorite character, he never took crap from any of his clients, was able to spot a liar a mile away, a no nonsense type of person, well educated and both strong and strict yet as stated in the movie had “a heart as big as a house”

The combination of these three characters made a great movie and i was glad to have the chance to see it. Its amazing how these old movies are better than the majority of movies that are out right now, im not sure about everyone else but i feel as if there should be a resurgence of the Noir film genre.

The Maltese falcon was what i would consider a traditional american mystery movie. It was the kind of movie you saw being seen in other movies where characters liked to see what they considered to be “the classics” or old movies in general. One thing that I noticed was that they used a lot of shadow play. From beginning to end there was always this ominous feeling that there could be something lurking behind the shadows, that the killer could have been around detective Spade the whole time the whole, and he just didn’t know it.

I noticed that there were many things in this movie that are still prevalent in movies today ( the conventions). it starts out in the very beginning when Detective Spade is questioning what he considered to be the damsel in distress. Its typical in many movies that the damsel becomes the protagonists love interest and then is actually just playing the character throughout the whole movie to get what she needs. (such is the case in this movie since shes the one that killed Archer.) Another convention that you see is the killers arm with the gun only being show, this type of convention is often used in beginning of movies just to make you wonder throughout the whole movie as well as make you suspect everyone around the protagonists. The terrifying shriek upon the discovery of a dead body can also be called a convention as its used in at least 90% of modern horror movies. Lastly i will mention a convention that you don’t see often but when you do, you gain a certain respect for a character, Joe Cairo he starts off as some weaselly little man with buggy eyes the type of person you would not give a second glance to, then within seconds of meeting him and getting that impression it changes and all of a sudden there’s a gun being pulled and that little man that you perceived to be nonthreatening just became the biggest threat in the movie.

When it comes to Detective Spade he is a complicated man, we can call him a womanizer, an alpha, mistrusting to those around him (although in the end we see if was for good reason.) he did not like police men, they seemed to just be in his way stopping him like barriers at every turn. With criminals, the man despised them all they did was set him back even more than the police did (drugging him and having him sleep for most of the day) but at the end of the day he was a man of morals, and did what needed to be done, he could have just let the femme fatale walk away, give her a chance at freedom but chose not to, instead he stuck to his morals and did the right thing,

This movie changed my perception of all old movies. I never liked black and white movies, it took me 8 years to watch the wizard of OZ because i didn’t believe that there was color in it till i was forcibly sat down and made to watch it. I tend to like graphics and explosions and most of all color, but thanks to this movie ive gained a new found fondness for the movies of the older generation and will be more open to seeing them more often.