Women in Film Noir VII – Is Film Noir’s Visual Style Subversive?

Film noir constructs two archetypes based on a dichotomy between those who display legitimate desires and those who display illegitimate or excessive desire. Janey Place asserts that the most important element in the film noir genre is the style in which they are represented. Place asserts ‘Visually, film noir is fluid, sensual, extraordinarily expressive, making the sexually expressive women, which is its dominant image of woman, extremely powerful’.[1]  A vivid example of the destroyer’s power being represented visually can be found in Out of the Past. In one scene, during the male protagonist’s (Jeff Bailey) recollection of how he met the destroyer Kathie Moffat, the use of chiaroscuro lighting communicates Kathie’s exciting but dangerous sexuality.  When Kathie walks out of the sun, into the restaurant Jeff is sitting, the contours of shadow projected on her white dress and face obscures complete recognition. This obscurity communicates that there is a sense of dangerous “otherness” about Kathie. The lighting in this scene also forces the viewer to replicate Jeff’s gaze by locating her in the centre ground. Therefore in this scene the interplay between shadow and light communicates Kathie, wearing a white dress signifying innocence (a continued motif in Out of the Past), is dangerous. In Double Indemnity the final confrontation between Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson is another example of the visually expressive way film noir communicates evil. In this climatic scene Phyllis sits in a darkened room smoking. The light filters through Venetian blinds cutting horizontally across Walter. The lighting in this scene communicates that Walter is fractured (broken) by gazing at the dangerous sexuality of Phyllis. The destroyer figure, represented as exhibiting excessive sexuality or ambition, is therefore, to Place, ‘expressed in the visual style by their dominance in composition, angle, camera movement and lighting’.[2] To Place this dominance in composition brings into question the validity of the film’s repressive resolutions. Place continues:

It is not [the destroyer’s] inevitable demise we remember but rather their strong, dangerous, and above all, exciting sexuality… The style of these films thus overwhelm their conventional narrative content or interacts with it to produce a remarkably potent image of woman.[3]

Therefore Place’s assertion that film noir’s visual style exceeds the repressive conclusions is grounded in the belief that the powerful image of the destroyer cannot be contained by any return to the traditional moral status quo.

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[1]     Place, p. 36.

[2]     Place, p. 45.

[3]     Place, p. 36.

Basic Film Techniques: Extreme Long Shot

The extreme long shot is a shot wherein the object, in the western genre typically the “lonerider”, occupies a small ratio of the screen space in relation to the setting or their surroundings. In the extreme long shot the screen space is filled primarily with the surroundings: in the western genre this is a panoramic view of a desolate plain, mountain or valley.

A central reason a director may choose to use an extreme long shot is that it can foreground an environment a central character is borne from or finds themselves in. This may facilitate the reading that a certain protagonist is isolated and far from civilizations’ help. It could also illustrate the barren, harsh environment an antagonist is borne from; thereby explaining his psychological state. In The Searchers (1956) the extreme long shots are used to locate Ethan, the dark protagonist, as comfortable and at one with the harsh environment of the West. An extreme long shot may also be implemented to indicate how lost, insignificant or ignored one may be in a large city such as London or New York. In The Bourne Identity (2002), and in fact all of the “Bourne” films, the extreme long shot is used to represent the idea that Bourne is “lost” or at least indistinguishable from the “law abiding” masses; agents of the CIA and other security forces are as indistinguishable and ignored as everyone else. The Bourne Identity uses the extreme long shot at an angle to produce the feeling that we are viewing the action from CCTV cameras. The feeling we are viewing Bourne’s movement from surveillance cameras adds to the sense that the CIA and governmental forces’ are potentially watching everything and everyone. The extreme long shot is an important film technique because it foregrounds an object or characters’ surroundings.