Monday, September 26, 2011

Modern Film Noir??


Unlike last week the articles for this week were much easier to comprehend and analyze. I figure many other will post on the exact content of the article so I would like to touch on whether or not any films that have been produced in the past five years can be classified under Schrader's definition of Film Noir. As he points out it Noir is not specfically a genre but more of a period of history. Within this set period Schrader says that films portrayed te "dark, slick city streets, crime and corruption" (54). But as he points out it is an extremely unwieldy period. A lot of the elements that were pointed out in Peterson and Place's article could be pointed towards modern films. I feel drawn to the idea that are films such as Inception and Shutter Island the closest thing we have today to Film Noir? Looking at the screen shot below captured from Inception, one cannot help but notice a lot of similarities as to what Peterson and Place point out. "The archetypal noir shot is probably the extreme high angle long shot, an oppressive and fatalistic angle that looks down on its helpless victim to make it look like a rat in a maze." Also this shot is looking down, while at the same time claustrophobic, and it includes the "Freudian attachment to water" (57) that Schrader references. It is possible I may be off base--or looking for connection where this is none but can anyone else think of any other modern films that could potentially be classified at least in terms of shots/lighting as Film Noir?

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