[threefourths_columns ]The exhibition in the Deutsches Filmuseum presents film noir as an independent and filmhistoric important style. It is film that is the centrepiece of the show: large-scale projections become the exhibition’s most important exhibit. They introduce film noir’s aesthetic and its filmic language. The audience can move freely between the projections and experience the visual and narrative characteristics of film noir. By presenting clips assembling similar characteristics of style, the audience’s gaze is attracted to the specific use of these characteristics as applied in film noir.
The screens are divided by topics, such as complex storylines with flashbacks and voice-over, typical characters, stark contrasts of light and shadow, extreme camera angles, extraordinary image composition and characteristical settings. Monitors illustrate film noir’s historical position, its stylistic influences and effects.
In addition to the film compilations, the exhibition presents advertisement material, such as posters, and production documents, among those original scripts.
The exhibits show how clearly directed the expressive filmic images were used as inspiration for advertisement.
The exhibition’s design takes typical noir-settings on and renders an atmospheric journey right into noir’s imagery possible. FILM NOIR! presents the basics of filmic style and functions as a style analysis in moving images.
Six film compilations, each of which introduces one attribute, show the most important characteristics of film noir.
[reveal title=“Narrative Form“ ]
The stories of film noir often seem convoluted, sometimes seeming to follow a dramaturgy that is positively labyrinthine; plot logic is subordinated to strongly atmospheric images. Among the most common narrative devices are flashbacks and the voice-over commentary of a narrator. Chronological structures are broken up; the plot is presented either retrospectively or in countless jumps between present and past.
The compilation focuses on the narrative means of flashback and voice-over commentary. This is an expression of the subjectivity that overwhelmingly distinguishes film noir’s narrative form.
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Narrator and detective Phillip Marlowe (Robert Montgomery) enters the picture himself and leads the audience into the story, that is subsequently told in flashback. THE LADY IN THE LAKE (Robert Montgomery, USA 1947)
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Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) confesses his involvement with an insurance fraud to an audiotape to be sent to his boss. This recording, completed within one night, presents the events to the audience. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (Billy Wilder, USA 1944)
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[reveal title=“Lighting“ ]
Light and shadow play an essential role in film noir. In a distinct departure from the even lighting of the classical Hollywood cinema, film noir creates visual tension with sharp contrasts between gleaming light and deepest gloom, by deliberately keeping spaces and actors in darkness.
Most figures are only partially lit, from the side or from below, and cast long shadows; against the light they appear as silhouettes. Many scenes take place at night and are only selectively illuminated. Lamps or headlights are thus a part of the plot: flashlights directed at faces make light a threat to characters. Shady interiors are dimly lit and create a menacing, ominous atmosphere.
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Lit from one side: STRANGER (Orson Welles, USA 1946) and PHANTOM LADY (Robert Siodmak, USA 1944)
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Figures become silhouettes: GILDA (Charles Vidor, USA 1946) and THE BIG COMBO (Joseph H. Lewis, USA 1955)
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Light is switched on and off: MURDER, MY SWEET (Edward Dmytryk, USA 1944) and THE BIG SLEEP (Howard Hawks, USA 1946)
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Poster THE THIRD MAN (Carol Reed, GB 1949), Poster for the first German release, 1950. Poster design: Stengel, Deutsches Filminstitut – DIF e.V./Poster archive.
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[reveal title=“Camera work“ ]
Film noir camera work is characterised by unusual angles: Perspective and proportions are shifted by views from extremes of height or depth, characters seem either lost in a space or dominate it. Relationships seem even more distorted when the camera is no longer horizontal, but tilted. These images illustrate how disjointed the world has been made. Sometimes, the camera predominantly takes the place of one of the characters, giving the audience a feeling of seeing events through that character’s eyes. All those characteristics support subjectivity and the absence of distance, moulding noir’s storytelling.
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Bird’s eye-perspective: DARK PASSAGE (Delmer Daves, USA 1947), THE STRANGER (Orson Welles, USA 1946)
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Tilted camera: PHANTOM LADY (Robert Siodmak, USA 1944), KISS ME DEADLY (Robert Aldrich, USA 1955)
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Directly subjective camera: DARK PASSAGE (Delmer Daves, USA 1947), THE LADY IN THE LAKE (Robert Montgomery, USA 1947)
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Orson Welles as THE THIRD MAN (Carol Reed, UK 1949): the tilted camera shows that this film’s world is distorted. German lobby card, 1950. Deutsches Filminstitut DIF e.V. / Photo archive.
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[reveal title=“Image Composition“ ]
The images of film noir are positively criss-crossed with slanting and vertical lines. Unlike, for example, the Western, in which distance and open spaces are suggested by horizontal lines, here the pictorial composition underpins an atmosphere of oppressive narrowness and hopelessness. Interior framing – created by doors or windows – and gridlines optically and symbolically lock characters and plot into confined spaces. This is how the hermetic closedness and constructedness of the film noir world express themselves visually.
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Bannisters: THE MALTESE FALCON (John Huston, USA 1941), MURDER, MY SWEET (Edward Dmytryk, USA 1944)
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[reveal title=“Characters“ ]
The characters of film noir are not depicted as shining heroes and happy couples. Hard-boiled private detectives, equipped with the almost mandatory hat and trenchcoat, often function on the fringes of legality. To them must be added a roster of male characters always cut from the same cloth: villains, blackmailers, corrupt policemen with shady pasts.
Strong women exploit the male players for their own purposes: cool, calculating and erotically orchestrated, they strive for financial and emotional independence. Well-intentioned female characters and girlfriends with a maternal bent pale beside the femme fatale. She smokes, drinks and shoots, thus distinguishing women as seen in film noir.
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Seductive and drawing the gun: DOUBLE INDEMNITY (Billy Wilder, USA 1944), MILDRED PIERCE (Michael Curtiz, USA 1945)
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Brute force and romanticism: THE BIG HEAT (Fritz Lang, USA 1953), THE BIG SLEEP (Howard Hawks, USA 1946)
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[reveal title=“Settings“ ]
The nocturnal metropolis plays an important role in film noir, many films introduce it already in their titles: CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS (John H. Auer, USA 1953), THE NAKED CITY (Jules Dassin, USA 1948), NIGHT AND THE CITY (Jules Dassin, USA 1950). More than scenery, the city is a metaphor for the characters’ inner state. It often rains. Fateful assignations and existential crisis are set in public places and events. The detective’s bureau is robbed its privacy by unannounced visits from clients, gangsters and suspicious cops. In film noir there is no safe havens.
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Bureaus as setting for investigation and crime: MILDRED PIERCE (Michael Curtiz, USA 1945), DOUBLE INDEMNITY (Billy Wilder, USA 1944)
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Casino & bar: GILDA (Charles Vidor, USA 1946), THE BLUE DAHLIA (George Marshall, USA 1946)
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[reveal title=“Influences & Effects“ ]
In addition, the exhibition FILM NOIR! is dealing with film noir’s historical position, its stylistic influences and effects. Filmclips shown on monitors illustrate film noir’s sources, and its broad effects on filmproduction all over the world until today. The European cinema in the 20s and 30s is counted a particularly strong influence: expressionist inspired German films from Weimar Republic, for example DAS CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene, D 1920), representatives of French Poetic Realism such as Marcel Carné’s LE QUAI DES BRUMES (Port of Shadows, F, 1938), Hitchcock’s early crime thrillers and, of course, American gangster-movies. They are sorted by countries of origin.
Moreover, several monitors present films taking borrowings from Noir-style from the 60s until today. Sorted by years, the Noir-influences in TAXI DRIVER (Martin Scorsese, USA 1976), I HIRED A CONTRACT KILLER (Aki Kaurismäki, FIN/GB/D/S/F 1990) and SHUTTER ISLAND (Martin Scorsese, USA 2010) can be traced.
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