"Dontcha worry Baby"

I must say that film noir is surely in my top five genre favorites. The femme fatale, hard-boiled detective, and the "big guy" behind it all...I can't get enough of it.


The first film considered film noir I remember watching as a kid was the Maltese Falcon, which...I guess you might find kind of random for a kid... but my parents were huge movie
watchers and they introduced me to a lot of the old black and whites...and because of them my slight obsession of film grew and grew. Something about film noir really did the job at grabbing my attention, especially the old black and whites, when a film is shot in black and white it just makes it that much more eerie and intense..and the use of dramatic shadows really adds to the thrill and disturbance you may feel during film noir.


Perfect example:




Another one of my favorite films...Bladerunner ! I think this is one of the most successful films (that I have seen so far) that really does a phenomenal job with the use of shadows for being a color film. There's something about this film that gets under your skin with lighting, shadows, costume, dialogue, landscape. Not to mention Bladerunner has an aweeeesome femme fatale, Sean Young..who played Rachael.

Here is a clip from Bladerunner...whooot !

We've even got some Cape Fear !! The orginal and the newer one, with Robert De Niro check them out. And lets not forget another really great one..Blue Velvet



Moving on...I had never seen Double Indemnity I had heard of the film but never watched it. I liked it, the sound/quality of the film was soooo much better and interesting then what we were watching in class...and way better at the whole attention grabbing.



Yeahhhh Barbara Stanwyck ! I'm not gonna lie...I think she did a pretty descent job at the whole Femme Fatale role. Beautiful, seductive, confined, destructive, exciting, and by all means, controlling. I couldn't get over Walter, waltzing into her house in the beginning with all of his sweet talk and baby this, baby that. I never really felt bad for him one bit throughout the film. I mean..really..come ooooon, he toootally did it to himself...although she really did do a good job sucking him in...coming to the balcony in her towel, and then coming downstairs still buttoning her dress, looking in the mirror working on her final touches allowing him to follow her every move.

One thing that I found myself being really curious about were the blinds shadows that were constantly shown throughout the rooms. Then after the reading up on some of the symbols, they represented jail bars. I've never taken a film class and so I've never had the opportunity to really analyze what really goes on in films. But after seeing little things like this and now recognizing what they symbolize I've been able to see and notice so much more when I sit down to watch a movie. The use of shadow was done really well too, the tension between the husband and Phyllis...and even the flashback and the way Walter told his story. I really like that and I felt the transitions were real smooth.

Something else I noticed was the tension or closeness with the characters...especially when they were in a room together, in the beginning again...Phyllis and Walter sitting on that snug small little couch, then when the husband was there speaking with Walter and the space that was between everyone in the living room....and even the office, no space to themselves, cramped in all together.

"I see...I see...I see death..."

For being recognized as the first zombie movie done in the early 1930's, I think it does a pretty good job, that is for not having some really awesome crazy flesh eating zombies running around. Personally if I had watched this film for my own pleasure I would not have dug deep enough to recognize the idea of U.S. imperialism throughout. It's interesting to see this film portray women as a very sensitive, helpless creature and a white man(Legendre) living in a grand castle controlling everyone, dead or alive.

Something from the reading that really struck me was the Haitian history. It talks about how Haitians experienced several problems, one being of color and class. Haitians ended up being divided into two main groups, the "well-educated" mulattos and the "impoverished blacks." This is still going on. It just reminded of me of when I was in Haiti I met a girl whose family was considered to be upper class/mulatto or, bourgeoisie, her younger brother was kidnapped by a group of lower class Haitians, they didn't hurt him or anything, they just held him for ransom and yes, got him back in the end. It's just crazy to think about how much that sort of thing really happened, and still to this day happens there. The idea of "Black zombie slavery" in the film probably wouldn't have caught my attention to the idea of the forced labor system the U.S. forced on the Haitian people.

The cinematography was sometimes hilarious. Fading in and out in strange cartoon-ish ways. The EYES of Legendre fading in and out randomly was kind of goofy especially during the part where Madeline looks in her glass at dinner. Overall the film did a pretty good job at making you feel you were in a nightmare of some twisted kind...sure, we weren't shaking in our boots but because we've watched numerous horror films that deal with much worse than this we're not affected by it. I thought it was neat to see the film based in Haiti. Some of the silly strange noises reminded me of when I was there. Haiti at night is sort of like a strange dream/nightmare, sometimes in the day time too. There's is no electricity there unless you steal it or have a generator, and so out in the middle of nowhere it really feels eerie, stray dogs following you around howling at everything, pigs rummaging around, chickens, you even get people following you around so it kinda adds to the whole nightmare thing.




Here are some pictures I took of parts of an old mango plantation that is interesting to walk through because its not everyday that people up here get to walk through old over grown plantations and it kinda goes along with the sense of a dream or a nightmare seeing strange building with overgrowth...Going back to the film I feel that lighting was portrayed very well throughout the film again, going along with the nightmare idea. Would the film be more successful if it had been done in color? I don't know...something that also kinda sat in the back of my mind...what if this movie was done into a remake?? I guess I will leave that question open to anyone... After thinking about it I think the most disturbing part of the film was the idea that Beaumont wants Madeline in the worst way, that he'll even take her when she's a lifeless zombie. Kind of disturbing...I really enjoyed this film..that damn vulture was wayyy unecessary but I guess it kind of added to the whole low budget 1930/horror thing.

"Godfrey loves me, he put me in the shower!"

HAH ! What a goofy movie ! I've never heard of the term, Screwball comedy, but it really is the perfect name for this genre and this movie. I was really confused and in awe at the whole "scavenger hunt" in the beginning. I couldn't believe that something like that was really happening. A "forgotten man" aka homeless man was really on their list. The first impression of Godfrey really threw me off guard, I wasn't expecting Godfrey to be so intelligent with his words and the way he first presented himself, even if he did push Cornelia in the ash pit. All Godfrey needed to help out the family with the scavenger hunt was to be treated respectfully and that is what Irene did.
We see the rich as being portrayed as silly individuals out of the minds which I find to be interesting because I have known people who truly fit that role. The women especially are shown as being the craziest. During our discussion in class on Wednesday someone at pointed out the idea of how the women are being shown as these unbreakable creatures who can go around causing chaos and still get away with it. I thought it was funny how Cornelia is shown as this proper yet incredibly bitchy character but yet she was involved with breaking windows. I guess I wasn't expecting such a thing from her character. I am a little disappointed that they didn't show that scene.
The whole time I couldn't help but think throughout the film, "my gosh...the men are the only sane ones in this film," even Carlo, he was more sane then the women.
Something else that I found to be interesting was the idea of how rich the Bollock's were, yet we were never given any real information on how they became to rich or what the father did for a living, it was just...they were were rich, the end.

I think the biggest disappointment with the film was in the end, Irene and Godfrey ended up together. I was really hoping for some craaaaazy drama and have Godfrey and Cornelia hook up. I really wanted that to happen. But thinking about it, at the end when Irene barged in Godfreys place she had groceries and ideas to decorate which kind of almost gives me the idea/hope that maaaaybe, just maybe she is starting to get it together, that is, if she was the one who indeed did the grocery shopping.