In the heist itself, time overlaps, and actions that have already been shown are repeated from another character's point-of-view. The audience is left to pout the pieces together so that we see a character do something and then se how it helps the next action lead to the desired conclusion. At the racetrack, with the announcement of the start of the fifth race, the film cuts to Johnny, in the words of the voice-over narrator "beginning what might be the last day of his life." Such a voice on the soundtrack emphasizes again the uncertainty of the course of action being taken by these criminals, contributes to the suspense, but also keeps a sense of doom in the film, as if the ending were already known by Fate. From this point until the end of the robbery, the pace of the film speeds up as the camera cuts from one completed action to the next, playing out the well-thought-through plan. And shifting the point-of-view among the main characters until they are all in place for the robbery itself. The film finally focuses on Johnny, who is the only person to actually carry out the robbery and gather up the money. There is no conversation during this sequence aside from a few barked orders from Johnny and commentary by the voice-over narrator, a seemingly objective outside voice suggesting that some greater power is watching over all that takes place and that there will be an accounting at some point. Of course, the audience knows more than the conspirators know because the viewers are aware of the other gang and its plan to take the money away, summoned to this task by the disloyal wife of one of the conspirators....
Film Noir Among the various styles of producing films, it has been observed the noir style is one that has come to be recognized for its uniqueness in characterization, camera work and striking dialogue. Film Noir of the 1940s and 50s were quite well-known for their feminine characters that were the protagonists, the femme fatale. This was most common with the French, later accepted in the United States. There might have
Take the movie the Maltese Falcon, for example. The character played by Humphrey Bogart is not driven by an idealistic approach, but by the financial motivations that different characters will offer him throughout the movie. At the same time, the main female character is usually the femme fatale type, dangerous, yet attractive, with whom the main male character tends to bond. This is not, however, the usual Hollywood type love
Film Noir The 1945 film "Mildred Pierce" is the epitome of film noir, complete with the femme fatale, theme of betrayal and hopelessness and use of flashbacks. While the 1954 "On the Waterfront" also uses the theme of betrayal and hopelessness, it breaks from the film noir genre, and rather than using flashbacks, it is told in present time and the use of the femme fatale is replaced by an unscrupulous
The fact that she flirts with gender roles and norms is equally as dangerous. For Corky, the danger is manifest in the potential betrayal and also in the eventual show down between the women and their male captors. Jessica is portrayed as a more passive figure, as a more classic pre-feminist femme fatale; whereas Violet is a more active figure, a true "postfeminist good-bad girl hybrid." Things happen to Jessica,
Film Noir / Cinema Architecture Perhaps one of the most fruitful ways in which to trace the evolution of Film Noir as a genre is to examine, from the genre's heyday to the present moment, the metamorphoses of one of film noir's most reliable tropes: the femme fatale. The notion of a woman who is fundamentally untrustworthy -- and possibly murderous -- is a constant within the genre, perhaps as a
Paranoia, Entrapment, And the Corruption of the American Dream in Double Indemnity and Detour Film noir can be described as "murder with a psychological twist" (Spicer 1). As a genre that flourished during the 1940s, film noir came to reflect the anxiety, pessimism, and paranoia that pervaded post-war America (20). In Anatomy of Film, Bernard Dick writes, "The world of film noir is one of paranoia and entrapment, of forces bearing down
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