Film Studies 1022 Lecture Notes - Lecture 34: Paul Schrader, Nuclear Arms Race, Antihero
14 Mar 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
For no reason at all : doomed noir heroes. Film noir applies specifically to films in the 1940s and 1950s, although the genre can still be applied today. Populated by irredeemably bad villains and doomed, morally ambiguous heroes. These films are visually dark with low key lighting and heavy shadows. Darkness was the fatalism inherent in the films" thematic concerns. Often located in big cities at night. Funhouse mirrors in the lady from shanghai (1947) You must implicate someone else if you don"t want to be the victim. Do not directly deal with war but are haunted by past trauma. Often reliving an earlier episode in which a similar thing happened. The cabinet of dr. caligari (robert wiene, 1920) Visuals such as hard shadows and geometric shapes. Often filmed in studios with elaborately painted sets. Themes such as loneliness, psychosis, guilt, obsession, murderous impulses.
