For today’s journal, we are going
to discuss about the term Film Noir. Film noir is a term coined by French
critics in 1946 for a type of American film that “invaded” French cinemas after
World War II, along with American thriller and detective films. Instead of
genres, film noir is actually a type of cinematographic film, marked by a mood
of pessimism, fatalism, and menace. Same as French Impressionism, film noir
also contains elements that differentiate itself from the other styles of
filming. In this journal’s goal, we are going to focus on the semantic and
syntactic approaches of film noir by using the movie Maltese Falcon as an example.
:::FILM NOIR:::
As what
I had stated in previous paragraph, film noir is a type of film, which only
defined by more subtle qualities of tone and mood. Film noir is a specific
period of film history, comprising of films made during the forties n fifties
that possessed particular themes and cinematic styles. Moreover, it features a
world of criminals, of darkness and violence with characters’ central motives
are usually greed , lust and ambition, drench in fear. Film noir is also
evolutionary, which the genres constantly changing by being conservative and
innovative at the same time.
There
are two approaches that have to be used complementary, which are semantic
approach and syntactic approach. For semantic approaches that symbolize the
visual of film noir, the film is always dark with shadows, in terms of high
contrast lighting. The scenes are usually lit for night. It also shows German
Expressionism – oblique vertical and horizontal lines. For the settings, it is
city-bound, comprising of rain-washed roads and dimly-lit interiors. It also
occupies with locations such as alleyways and cramped doors. As for the
syntactic approaches that symbolize the theme of film noir, it is cynical,
pessimistic and dark. The film will always filled with corrupted characters,
fatalistic themes, hopeless tones, blurred morals and intellect. The voices in
film noir is always hard-boiled antihero and femme fatale. Last but not least,
it is full of tales of criminal motives, and it is usually features a
narration. After the briefing of film noir, I would like to brief about one of
the famous film noir, Maltese Falcon.
Maltese Falcon is a 1941 film noir which is written and directed by John
Huston, and based on Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel with the same name.
:::SYNOPSIS:::
In the
film Maltese Falcon, there was a detective
named Spade from San Francisco detective agency, along with his partner Miles
Archer. They met a prospective client Ruth Wonderly who claimed to find her
long lost sister, who is involved with a man named Floyd Thursby. By that
night, Miles was killed, and also the man Thursby. It was all a sudden happened
to Spade after he met Miss Wonderly. Later that morning, Spade met Wonderly, in
which she has changed her name to Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Despite being convinced
by the explanation of hers, Spade still agreed to investigate the murder cases.
In the end, Spade found out O’Shaughnessy is the one who killed Archer along
with her confession about the murder, but he choose not to turn her over to the
police.
:::ANALYSIS:::
To
analyze the whole film with the term Film Noir, I would like to brief more
about the syntactic approaches, which are so called the themes that we can see
in Maltese Falcon. Refer to what we
discussed earlier, the themes of film noir is always consist of cynical, dark
and pessimistic themes. The word “cynical” basically defined as distrustful of
human sincerity or integrity, which is also a believing that people are
motivated by self-interest. Through the movie film, the scene where show the
cynical theme will be the scene when the detectives kept on interrogating
Spade, as they gave no trusts to Spade.
Besides of cynical theme, “Dark” is
also portrayed visually. The theme “Dark” is familiar, as it is also applied in
German Expressionism. To show how “Dark” should be through framework, the
framework is usually occupied with shadows, vertical and horizontal lines, and
sets and costumes that are able to portray the theme. As for the lighting, it
is usually high contrast, so that it can show the shadows. Another than
portraying dark through framework, it also can be narrated with the shady
characters in the film, like in Maltese
Falcon. Spade is a character that was emerged into darkness. Shady
characters can be specified into greedy, corrupted liars, killers, betrayers,
criminals, and even characters that have motive behind their actions.
Moreover, pessimistic is also shown
as one of the themes that appear in Maltese
Falcon, or any film noir. The word “pessimistic” is usually defined as
tending to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will
happen. Through the characters in Maltese
Falcon, we can figure out several voices in film noir, such as femme fatale
and hardboiled anti-hero. Femme fatale is a character of a mysterious and
seductive woman who is strong and sexually expressive, ambitious and
manipulative, in terms of doing anything to get what she wants. For the example
of femme fatale character in this movie will be Miss Wonderly as known as O’Shaughnessy.
Anti-hero is a central character who lacks the conventional heroic attributes.
Sam Spade is the character that portray this voice, in which he was cunning,
tough, smart, first ready to fight, greedy and also a liar.
:::CONCLUSION:::
As a conclusion of this journal, Maltese Falcon has been become the top
list of film noir as it consist of the elements of film noir in an almost
perfect way. Through the movie, visually and thematically, we can know more
about what is supposed to be in a film noir. Overall, although it will be
boring for newbie viewers, but as they investigate more of the film, it is an
interesting film noir that portrays the dark, pessimistic and cynical side of
film noir, in terms of the content and cast played.
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