Jeff is an ex private eye who is hiding out in a small town gas station. One day this big henchmen heads into town and says he wants to see Jeff. Jeff begins to tell his current girlfriend about a story about how he is hired by this man to find his girlfriend who has shot him and ran away with a large amount of his money. He says he doesn’t want the money back as much as he wants the girl and thinks he has tracked her back to mexico. So jeff heads to mexico, and finds this girl, and ends up falling in love with her. The femme fatale in this film does not come off as a standard femme fatale, she starts of playing a “girl next door” type of role. This is until she kills Jeff’s partner who discovers them and wants in on the money. She leaves Jeff with the mess and runs away. By the time he is finished telling the story they arrive to his home, where he sees Cathy. This film is non stop action, with many underlying stories throughout and hidden tensions.

In this film a insurance worker lets himself be talked into a murder insurance fraud scheme. Double indemnity was able to take sex and make it a suggestion instead of actually showing it, using innuendoes, and implying acts rather than telling them. Philis Detricson in this film was a perfect definition of a femme fatale. Out of all the film noirs watched this year, I think double indemnity was the greatest movie of the film noir genre. This film depicts everything a film noir is, you have the perfect femme fatale, story telling shadow play, and amazing camera angles. This film has detectives, crime, grittiness, love, and hate.

This film came out in 1974, this is a crime, thriller, murder mystery, drama type of movie. In this film the protagonist is hired by a woman to investigate her husbands affair, but he later finds out that the woman who hired him is not in-fact the husbands wife. Gitties gets involved with the real wife now and the father comes into the story. The film gets very complex dealing with water, dames, and death. The protagonist is brilliant in this film, and throughout the film there is something in his eyes that throws the viewer off constantly. THe wife is not a classic femme fatale, she is more of a distressed, damaged woman. You can sense something is off with her character but you don’t know what, she is very mysterious and you constantly want to know more about her which keeps you very interested. The father in this film plays a straight up menace, he’s character is not someone you would want to play with being that he is a rich billionaire and own all this water, all though he is pure evil he is constantly calm yet still intimates you. This film has this subtle noir vibe, every angle of this film is so well framed. The film also allows you to think for yourself but it also helps you. The film doesn’t tell you everything, yet shows you everything.

This book takes place in 2021, and there has been a big war going on thats completely devastated  the planet, so most of the surviving population has immigrated to mars. The protagonist, Rick, is a bounty hunter and apparently the androids come to earth illegally sort of seeking salvation. So Rick has to “retire” them, which basically means kill them. Throughout the book Rick has to find 6 androids that have left mars illegally and retire them. There is also a man named J.R in this book who works for an “animal hospital” but he really repairs mechanical animals and calls himself a vet.   The mechanical animals are looked at as a commodity but they are looked down upon, sort of like an, “Im better than you because I have a real horse but you have a mechanical one.” so it  causes this weird hierarchy, almost like a popularity contest. So he really envies his neighbor who has a real horse because he has this electric sheep because his real sheep died. This as a fantastic science fiction book in the sense that it creates this fake world and throws you into the center of it.

Blade Runner is a futuristic noir film that takes place in Los Angeles. This film is centered about a dystopia, pollution, and futuristic elements such an flying cars, human replicant androids. Deckerd is a retired police officer/ bounty hunter. Humanity produces these human replicas that are identical in every sense, except they are unable to feel emotions, and they have super human strength. The main controversy in this film is since they are human made and are exactly like humans, why do they lack natural human rights? This film suggests multiple times that Deckard himself might be a replicant, which would force him to reevaluate his hate for them. THis leads to the question of who is real, and who is fake.  Although this movie is suppose to seem very “ahead of time” it seemed sort of like a complex video game in the way the clips were pieces together, and the vivid lighting seen throughout this film. I appreciated the sci-fi feeling this movie emitted with its scenery and gadgets.

The movie Brazil was a film inspired by George Orwell’s 1984. Its a film full of tall bland buildings where everything is controlled by the “Ministry of Information”. This ministry is obsessed with possessing information about everyone. Its a very difficult to grasp the concept of this film as it appears as weird scenes, odd technology, and piles of paper work. The main character in this film is Sam Lowry who is a man who works in Records, the lowest department in the ministry. He seems content with his job throughout the film and doesn’t seem to have any drive in improving his carer. He also disgregards the ways of his glamorous, over the top, wealthy, self consumed mother. Sam often escapes into his dreams where he is an angel or some type of super hero flying through the clouds and battling monsters to save a caged damsel in distress. Three events occur throughout this movie that disturb Sam’s lifestyle, 1)Seeing the woman of his dreams multiple times and chasing after her, 2) Returning a refund check to a Mr. Buttle who was wrongly captured by the ministry after a typo, and 3) the heating system in his home shuts down. The inconvenience of these three events cause Sam to be promoted to Information Retrieval, where he ultimately abuses his position to find the woman of his dreams and keep her safe.

1984 is a book written by George Orwell centered around a totalitarian government, which is a government were the state holds power over everything and everyone. Every minute of their time, who they associate with, how they spend their alone time, even what they’re aloud to say . The government in this book even tries to control what people say and what they believe. This book takes place in London, it is depressing place where there is never enough food to eat, not enough clothes or shoes to go around, the London in this book is very run down. Except for these huge building that tower over the city. Bombs frequently explode in the streets and blow people to bits.

The worst part is that the government is always watching what people are doing, there are posters of big brother that say, “Big Brother is watching you” and there is microphones and cameras literally everywhere so the government can watch you, even in your home through your tv screen and you’re not allowed to turn your tv off, ever. There is many things you cannot do in this society, and if you do them the police can throw you into forced labor camps, no close friends. no love, no dating, and no sexual relations with anyone. You’re expected to save all your energy for, “The Party” which is the government.

The main character of 1984, is Winston Smith. He is a middle aged man who works for the government who lives a sad depressing life. He has no friends or anyone. In the beginning of the book he starts writing a diary, even though owning a diary is illegal and he could be killed for having one if you’re caught. But his diary is his form of escape. In his diary he imagines a different life. Only two people matter to Winston, and he doesn’t even know them. One of them is Julia, Julia is a attractive female who works in the same building as him. Winston hates her because she’s pretty and he cant have her, but is also paranoid because he thinks she is the type to turn him into the thought police. The other person that matters to him is a man named Obrien, Obrien is in a higher position than Winston but Winston believes he is intelligent and thinks he would make a good friend. He thinks obrien would understand how he feels about life.

Conflicts in the book begin when Julia slips Winston a note that says, “I love you.”  the conflict is that Winston is very excited and obviously interested in Julia but it is difficult for them to even say two words to each other with cameras every where. They manage to get into the country and start a passionate love affair where they both get to express their love but its extremely dangerous because they can both be killed, or sent to labor camps if they were caught.

“The Set Up” is a film noir centered around boxing, the intense movies protagonist goes by the name, “Stoker” who is a aging boxers nearing the end of his fighting career and thinks he’s only a fight away from breaking his streak of bad luck. The film opens and closes with the same shot, across the street from a dark Paradise City and a clock. The dressing room where all the boxers rested before and after the fights was filled with emotions. You could clearly see who was nervous, who was excited, and who was worried. Each person in the room is specifically portrayed to be a certain way, from a overly confident fighter, to a young new fighter who’s nerves are rattling. This movie was half persistence and half romance. The fighting scenes were lengthy and as real as possible, they were almost like watching a real fight. However even though Stoker is standing strong punch after punch he cant seem to get over the fact his wife did not come to support his show which is the first time during their marriage that she has done this. Throughout the fight Stoker peeks back towards the seat he saved her in the fourth row anxiously, but she never shows up.

In Murder My Sweet, Philip Marlow, was hired by an ex-con to track down his former girlfriend. He soon finds himself in a complex position after falling in love with this femme fatale. I found the film enjoyable and all the actors were perfect characters, the camera angles created pools of light throughout the film and moody silhouettes. These shadows and angles are one of the themes I’ve picked up watching film noir and are essential to these mysterious films. Even the first shot of this movie hits you with a glaring light in a dark room while Marlow is being questioned by the police. It was truly a beautiful piece of entertainment.

The film “The Maltese Falcon” was very captivating to say the least. The story takes place at Spade and Archer, which is the name of Sam Spade and Miles Archer’s detective agency. When a stunning women named Miss Wanderly who seems to be constantly surrounded by dangerous men comes in seeking help. Sam soon becomes the only means of protection for young Miss Wanderly. This movie is a film noir because of its heavy use to shadowing and angels. A Film Noir usually have plots which deal with death, and mystery there is usually a murder involve on it.