Narrative and E,C,M,S of film noirs


The main storyline of a film noir is about a male character (normally a good working class citizen) who meets a female character (normally a sexy powerful women- femme fetale) who would manipulate the fall guy, often following a murder. At the start the mans life would a peaceful happy one and then his life just goes from bad to worse as seen in ‘Detour’
Heroes, Villains, cops, gangsters, lone-wolf, killers, crooks, war veterans, politicians, murderers. These are mainly the type of characters that appear in film noirs.

Mis-en-scene is used in film noirs such as the lighting e.g. there are a lot of shadows in film noirs also there is not much light it tends to be pretty dark also sometimes blinds are used because it makes it hard to see a characters face if the blinds are there because the characters have black stripes across their face coming off the blinds, this is a clever idea if trying to hide the identity of a character it also makes the audience more curious, because they really want to see the face.

Types of sounds you would hear in film noirs are probably screams, also there will be a lot of tense/ dark music which makes the audience feel uncomfortable, police sirens, door creaking, also film noirs use a lot of voiceovers when the character is thinking in the past of how they get in to the bad situation in the film.

Cinematography that is used in film noirs is from the camera shots. Film noirs usually consist of dutch tilts to make the feel audience feel on edge kind of like the feeling that something’s not right. low angle shots are used to make the audience look up at the screen which makes them feel vulnerable this type of shot is mostly used on the femme fetale to show that she has power over the male character. Close-ups are used in film noirs is well mainly focused in the main character (hero).

Film noirs sometimes start at the end of the film and then through the use of flashbacks they tend to explain how they ended up in the situation they are in. Editing is used to cut shots and to attach the flashbacks on to the action. An editing transition that is used is a fade when they want to fade out from a flashback to the present.