Analytical Review-The Maltese Falcon, Touch of Evil, Chinatown, and BRICK

The Maltese Falcon, Touch of Evil, and Chinatown were all black and white films. They all have many similarities within the Film Noir “genre.” All relatively old, there are always murders and a major twist in the story. The movie Brick is a new kind of Film Noir movie because it’s more recently made and it’s in color. All four of these films have a femme fatal and/or a damsel in distress. Watching these four movies had all the stylistics in Paul Schrader's Notes on Film Noir on page 235. "Like all film movements, film noir drew upon a reservoir of film techniques, and given the time one could correlate its techniques, themes, and casual elements into a stylistic schema." All these films were mostly set in the night time because it makes it more mysterious. Touch of Evil (1958) and the Maltese Falcon (1941) was made around the time of WWII which were dark crime thrillers for people to watch to get their minds off the war and what was happening in reality. People wanted to think about other problems rather than their own to get their mind off the times they were going through.
The lighting was dark for the most part in all four of these film noirs. Brick (2005) was different because it was mostly set during the day because many scenes were filmed at a high school. The main character Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a high school student trying to solve a murder mystery of his ex-girlfriend. Like all film noir main characters, the point of view is with a hero and intelligent investigator trying to figure things out alone with no police or government involved. These aspects of Brendan are similar to the character JJ Gittes (Jack Nicholson) in Chinatown (1974). They both also fell for the ‘femme fatal’ character. Brendan fell for the suspicious Laura (Nora Zehetner) and Gittes has a strange relationship with Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway). However, the style of the femme fatal character changes throughout the movie in Chinatown because I think Mulwray became the damsel in distress in the end. There’s always an important female character in every film noir that is always beautiful and up to something.
The theme of film noir has a lot to do with moral ambiguity. One character always must decide what to do whether if it’s ethical or not, right from wrong; keeping important information to yourself and figuring things out on your own. They always take it upon themselves to get the job done. Corruption is common in film noirs. There’s always someone you can’t trust. There’s always someone being dangerous and destructive. It normally is the case with each character having an aspect of danger. In Touch of Evil, the lead detective, the obese Captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) becomes the bad guy in the film. There is always betrayal involved in a film noir.
In Paul Schrader’s notes on film noir he discusses the compositional tension that is preferred to physical action in Film Noir. The cinematography is more aware and the actor’s area of surroundings stands out more than the physical action that the actor is making. The scene is controlling the action. As dramatic as the action would be the composition is more artistic rather than gory and brutal to watch. Normally there isn’t an extreme close up of the action, just a general long shot or medium shot of the action taking place because the background is usually important in the style of film noir.
I think that film noir is a bunch of genres all mixed in one and it originated in the 1940s and 1950s. Just because it’s history starts in that generation doesn’t mean all film noirs have to be in black & white and have mostly dark lighting. I think Brick is a new form of film noir that involves the more recent generation of film. It’s based off of what was defined as a film noir back in the 40s and 50s but it is more modern-day crime and mystery. There doesn’t always have to be trench coats and fedoras in a film noir, but there sure always is cigarettes! Props in these kinds of movies stood out a lot more to me while watching this area of film.