"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.