Colour in 'Drive'

In one of the more gruesome scenes in Drive (2011), Driver (Ryan Gosling) stands in a motel room with blood aggressively streaked across his face. Throughout the early parts of the film, he’s predominantly painted in cool tints (subdued greens, blues and shades of grey). Here, though, his own actions have caused a grim and literal recolouring. He becomes emphatically warm and the visual change reveals shifting circumstances: at this point, he is so captivated by Irene (Carey Mulligan) that he is willing to engage more fully with the world of crime. Nicolas Winding Refn, the director, and Newton Thomas Sigel, the cinematographer, control colour expertly, using a fairly limited palette to enact in light the tensions that exist between characters and social worlds.

Despite the extensive use of red, white and blue, Refn is not concerned with American nationalism or issues of the flag. Instead, there’s a use of colour that enunciates personal emotions by playing with the split between warm and cool. In the beginning, as mentioned above, Driver’s face is washed almost exclusively with the latter. Gosling’s understated performance, which combines subtle gestures and few words, achieves a characterisation that is paralleled in light.

In contrast, Irene, coloured in warm reds, oranges and yellows, radiates care and maternal love.

Refn carefully arranges the frame during Driver’s and Irene’s early meetings so that tints of different temperatures remain quite firmly attached to each character.

But, as the attraction becomes greater, the breakdown of social barriers is paralleled in a blending of hues. The pair are first cast together in a warm glow in Driver’s car, though the effect quickly enters Irene’s domestic space.

Refn’s and Sigel’s use of colour is subtler, though, than simply revealing a movement from separation to unity. Throughout the picture, there’s a tension between gradation and delineation. A scene near the end brings this design into focus. Irene walks back to her apartment, having received no answer to her knock on Driver’s door. The walls are a rich brown and her face is a warm wooden orange. She passes a framed picture of the sea which is composed of blues and greens. The particular perspective of the painting echoes the framing of the ocean in an earlier scene in which Driver commits his ultimate act of violence (which, by the by, we’re not shown). So, then, this image that brings him to mind only reinforces that he has gone. The situation is summarised by the relationship between warm and cool tints (easily kept separate by a frame): the bloody mess that has stained Driver’s face and has escalated beyond control ultimately renders the pair like oil and water, rather than two drops in an ocean.

Edited from: atowninblackandwhite.com

A Guide to Film Noir Genre

'Double Indemnity' (1944)

Roger Ebert / January 30, 1995

Film noir is . . .

1. A French term meaning "black film," or film of the night, inspired by the Series Noir, a line of cheap paperbacks that translated hard-boiled American crime authors and found a popular audience in France.

2. A movie which at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending.

3. Locations that reek of the night, of shadows, of alleys, of the back doors of fancy places, of apartment buildings with a high turnover rate, of taxi drivers and bartenders who have seen it all.

4. Cigarettes. Everybody in film noir is always smoking, as if to say, "On top of everything else, I've been assigned to get through three packs today." The best smoking movie of all time is "Out of the Past," in which Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas smoke furiously at each other. At one point, Mitchum enters a room, Douglas extends a pack and says, "Cigarette?" and Mitchum, holding up his hand, says, "Smoking."

5. Women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa.

6. For women: low necklines, floppy hats, mascara, lipstick, dressing rooms, boudoirs, calling the doorman by his first name, high heels, red dresses, elbowlength gloves, mixing drinks, having gangsters as boyfriends, having soft spots for alcoholic private eyes, wanting a lot of someone else's women, sprawling dead on the floor with every limb meticulously arranged and every hair in place.

7. For men: fedoras, suits and ties, shabby residential hotels with a neon sign blinking through the window, buying yourself a drink out of the office bottle, cars with running boards, all-night diners, protecting kids who shouldn't be playing with the big guys, being on first-name terms with homicide cops, knowing a lot of people whose descriptions end in "ies," such as bookies, newsies, junkies, alkys, jockeys and cabbies.

8. Movies either shot in black and white, or feeling like they were.

9. Relationships in which love is only the final flop card in the poker game of death.

10. The most American film genre, because no society could have created a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic.

WHAT IS NOIR? w/ Peter Labuza from The Critical Press on Vimeo.

Genre Conventions: Basic Guide

Horror/Noir: Student Work - G Group

Horror/Noir: Student Work - A Group

Film Noir: Documentary

"All movies express social values, or the erosion of these values, through the ways in which they depict both institutions and relations between people. Certain institutions are more revealing of social values and beliefs than others, and the family is perhaps one of the most significant of these institutions. For it is through the particular representations of the family in various movies that we are able to study the process whereby existing social relations are rendered acceptable and valid." – John Blaser

Double Indemnity is the quintessential movie of its time. With the end of WWII, Double Indemnity used cinematic tricks and an authentic and strong story to control the audience. For the first time in films, Billy Wilder created a climate where the audience became sympathetic to the killer. Could these characters and plots be representative of American culture? How does the end of the War effect filmmaking? What were War torn viewers looking for in a movie? 

The classic noir film Double Indemnity (and others in the genre), explores the historical and social impact of the social climate of the 1940’s and 1950’s and has helped shape modern day cinema and its representations ever since.

New indie film noir: 'Trouble is My Business'

Here is a new indie film noir, Trouble is My Business, that harkens back to the 1940s, with a thriller-mystery scenario about a gumshoe on the skids who gets mixed up with two seductively dangerous sisters. The film’s 8 minute trailer certainly gets you interested, and the production values are impressive. Nice noir visuals and characterisations with a flavor of the irony reminiscent of that great 1948 film noir I Love Trouble starring Franchot Tone, promise a fascinating ride.

Check out the Vimeo trailer below.

Read more: http://filmsnoir.net/film_noir/trouble-is-my-business-new-film-noir.html#ixzz2jnZK64p9

Film Noir: Video Essay

'Only God Forgives' (2013): Clip

Film Noir Lighting

The Basics of Lighting for Film Noir from FilmmakerIQ.com on Vimeo.

Film Noir Conventions

'The Postman Always Knocks Twice' (1946)

A dark city street bathed in shadows.
A seedy office with “Investigations” stenciled on the door.
A winding road along the ocean cliffs.
An isolated house on the outskirts of town.

The scenes of film noir are all disturbingly familiar, as are the archetypal characters:
the hard-boiled detective,
the dangerously alluring femme fatale,
and the well-heeled villain surrounded by gun-toting thugs.

But even so, it is the visual style – canted camera angles, deep-focus shots, high-contrast lighting – and ultimately subversive message that are the hallmarks of classic film noir.

Learn more about the genre here.

A Guide to Film Noir

'Double Indemnity' (1944)

Roger Ebert / January 30, 1995

Film noir is . . .

1. A French term meaning "black film," or film of the night, inspired by the Series Noir, a line of cheap paperbacks that translated hard-boiled American crime authors and found a popular audience in France.

2. A movie which at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending.

3. Locations that reek of the night, of shadows, of alleys, of the back doors of fancy places, of apartment buildings with a high turnover rate, of taxi drivers and bartenders who have seen it all.

4. Cigarettes. Everybody in film noir is always smoking, as if to say, "On top of everything else, I've been assigned to get through three packs today." The best smoking movie of all time is "Out of the Past," in which Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas smoke furiously at each other. At one point, Mitchum enters a room, Douglas extends a pack and says, "Cigarette?" and Mitchum, holding up his hand, says, "Smoking."

5. Women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa.

6. For women: low necklines, floppy hats, mascara, lipstick, dressing rooms, boudoirs, calling the doorman by his first name, high heels, red dresses, elbowlength gloves, mixing drinks, having gangsters as boyfriends, having soft spots for alcoholic private eyes, wanting a lot of someone else's women, sprawling dead on the floor with every limb meticulously arranged and every hair in place.

7. For men: fedoras, suits and ties, shabby residential hotels with a neon sign blinking through the window, buying yourself a drink out of the office bottle, cars with running boards, all-night diners, protecting kids who shouldn't be playing with the big guys, being on first-name terms with homicide cops, knowing a lot of people whose descriptions end in "ies," such as bookies, newsies, junkies, alkys, jockeys and cabbies.

8. Movies either shot in black and white, or feeling like they were.

9. Relationships in which love is only the final flop card in the poker game of death.

10. The most American film genre, because no society could have created a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic.

Film Noir: Video Essay

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography. Many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.

The term film noir, French for "black film", first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, was unknown to most American film industry professionals of the classic era. Cinema historians and critics defined the noir canon in retrospect. Before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic film noirs were referred to as melodramas. The question of whether film noir qualifies as a distinct genre is a matter of ongoing debate among scholars.

Film noir encompasses a range of plots—the central figure may be a private eye (The Big Sleep), a plainclothes policeman (The Big Heat), an aging boxer (The Set-Up), a hapless grifter (Night and the City), a law-abiding citizen lured into a life of crime (Gun Crazy), or simply a victim of circumstance (D.O.A.). Though the noir mode was originally identified with American productions, films now customarily described as noir have been made around the world. Many pictures released from the 1960s onward share attributes with film noirs of the classic period, often treating noir conventions in a self-referential manner. Such latter-day works in a noir mode are often referred to as neo-noirs. The tropes of film noir have inspired parody since the mid-1940s.

The Endless Night: A Valentine to Film Noir from Serena Bramble on Vimeo.

On-line Books Page

There is now a page below the blog heading with links to many useful Film Studies on-line books. 

You will find it beneficial to browse through the publications to gain a better understanding of the key concepts for:  

• Research

• Analysis

• Exam Prep

• Production  

The Taxonomy of Film Posters

This blog has distilled movie poster design into 13 categories. Despite the lighthearted approach and overwhelming generalisations of the critique, the visual analysis is spot-on. Composition, colour, perspective and typefaces are all considered.

Film Noir Studies

A video essay on how Fritz Lang's M is viewed as the prototype for the film noir genre.