Out of the Past: A look into a genre

This week, Duke University’s writer-in-residence, Howard Norton, visited my creative writing class. When asked about habits as a writer, he revealed that he often draws inspiration from the performances and one-liners found in film noir movies shown on the Turner Classic Movie channel late at night.

And his certainly work reflects this: in the paragraph he read to us, the narrator announces he has murdered someone within the first few sentences.

This is the essence of film noir: the celebration of crime, love, death—the extremes and dark “noir” sides of human nature. All of these are wildly present in Jacques Tourneur’s Out of The Past (1947), a film traditionally thought to be exemplary of all the genre has come to represent.

But it is not only plot or thematic elements that have contributed to this film’s being classified as a classic of the “film noir” genre. There are also cinematic factors that cause it to be associated with the genre, like the usage of shadow imagery and low lighting.

Thomas Schatz, by applying Ferdinand de Sassaure’s canonical linguistic explanation of communication to the art of film, makes the claim that these are the “words” of the “language” spoken by a genre.

He proposes that film genres speak in particular languages, using various techniques and conventions that have become identifiable to anyone with a fair amount of movie-watching under his or her belt. “To discuss the Western genre is to address neither a single Western film nor even all Westerns, but rather a system of conventions which identifies Westerns films as such.” So certain elements convey the intent of certain films to belong in certain genres the same way certain words belong to the vocabularies of different languages. If you see a man on a horse in front of a desert scene you know you are watching a Western just as when you hear a person say “bonjour” it is safe to presume he or she is will be speaking French.

He raises this point to assert that, oftentimes many viewers come to see all genre films as the same--at the mention of a genre, they picture a montage of images from many films that fall into that category. However, he reminds us of the individuality of each film as its own separate entity. “We should be careful though, to maintain a distinction between the film genre and the genre film.” That is to say, even if many films speak in the same singular language of a particular genre, each has something unique to say.

In the case of Out of the Past, it may seem slightly difficult to see past the multiple love triangles, betrayal, murder, bribery and nighttime visuals that constitute the film’s oh- so “noir” soul. However, I think there is something very interesting to be drawn out of the character of Jimmy's deaf handyman.

The way his disability is portrayed struck me as very dark, as if there was something eerie or supernatural about it. He never smiled, he constantly wore a cryptic expression, he slipped in an out of secret spaces. He seemed to be an omnipresent, omniscient observer--a silent recorder of information. In this way, it seemed to me that his character fulfilled the same roll as the camera, constantly capturing the sinfulness of human nature.

While the customs of film genres provide building blocks for films to effortlessly convey bits of information to viewers, the success of each individual genre film depends on its ability to create its own meaning beyond these internalized conventions.

Film: Artifice in Truth's Clothing?

“Photography is truth.
Cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.”
-Jean-Luc Godard

“Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.”
-Jean-Luc Godard


Cinema is complicated--so complex, in fact, that just talking about it can make a hypocrite of even one of its most revered contributors, as was the case with the apparently fork-tongued Godard.

However, his contradictory remarks actually pinpoint a duplicity that is inherent to film: although it is accepted as our most accurate means of generating a true representation of the physical world, its usage is often manipulative. In what was likely a response to Godard’s oft-quoted maxim (once-quote above), director Michael Haneke made this declaration: “A feature film is twenty-four lies per second.”

A comparison of Heneke’s Cache (2005) and Nora Ephron’s romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle (1993)--two films driven by very different motives and methods—illustrates the very different ways in which cinematographic choices are used to fulfill entirely divergent aims.

Traditionally, creating a convincing visual scenario is one of the major hurtles a director needs to clear in order to engage viewers. From this necessity has emerged a myriad of cinematographic tricks devised to cover the camera’s tracks and create a picture that is seemingly self-generated--what he French call have termed “suture”—literally, sewing viewers into the scene, and what film students call “continuity editing.”

As Mark Garrett Cooper explains in his essay “Narrative Spaces,” certain camera angles are typically used to convey information about the relationships between onscreen characters and the worlds around. By successfully creating a fictitious space that seems rationally sound, the film establishes a relationship between the narrative and the universe as a whole, luring the audience into the mentality that if the action makes visual sense, it can be taken as an extension of reality.

According to Wynn Hunter, this is what leads us to wholeheartedly believe the slightly contrived plotline of Sleepless in Seattle. In his blog entry entitled, “Why is Sleepless in Seattle so Effective?” : HYPERLINK "http://1wynnhunter.blogspot.com/" http://1wynnhunter.blogspot.com/ , Hunter posits that the answer to his question is rooted in Ephron’s careful creation of a specific narrative space.

The main characters’ exchange of yearning-filled cross-country “looks” seem to render the inconveniently unlikely storyline--that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan’s characters have fallen in love over airwaves from different coasts of the country--mere grounds for even more swooning. Because the characters continue to meet each others’ eyes frame-by-frame onscreen, and because the directions of these glances are designed to place them in the context of opposite coasts, we are sucked into a visual representation of space that leaves us convinced that this is plausible. We viewers eat those eyeline matches out of the palm of Ephron’s hand.

It is this respect for spatial information, this implied delineation of off-screen terrain that is markedly absent in Henake’s Cache. Shots are largely static, and we are never really given a vantage point that might make us sympathetic to a certain character.

While Ephron’s work demonstrates a conventional example of suture, Haneke’s work seems to be intentionally void of it—an experiment in the exposure of film as an artifice. Technically he never actually breaks the fourth wall, but rather provides us constant reminder that it is there.

The film’s very plot lends itself to a cognizance of the production process: we greet the protagonist when a cassette tape containing surveillance footage of his life is anonymously left on his doorstep. As we watch him watching his life on tape, we cannot help but become hyper aware of the parallel trajectories of our behavior. Further self-reference to the film follows. We watch him record a television show and then edit it. We see him watch the evening news. One visual motif throughout the film is what looks like walls and wall of floor to ceiling shelves filled with what appear to be books or dvds, but are easily associated with surveillance tapes. And over and over we watch him as he screens, rewinds and pauses countless minutes of film footage of his own life.

We are constantly made aware of the camera’s capabilities, and with no cinematographic evidence to the contrary, we cannot be connected to what we are watching on anything but the “filmic level.”

Sleepless in Seattle, however, creates a sense of intimacy that allows us to relate to the fictitious aspects of the film. Hunter also notes the way that Sleepless in Seattle, “utilizes narrative space to create suspense.” He describes how the film’s allure is in large part the deference of a particular visual goal. In this case, viewers are yearning for the would-be lovers to share a frame. “The suspense of Sleepless derives from the insistence on separating Annie and Sam until the last possible moment… This brilliant use of physical and spatial barriers which obstruct their ‘looks’ effectively juxtapose their discrete spaces and produce the feeling of separation which serves as an effective source of suspense for the audience.” Of course, the couple does get together in the end and viewers are satisfied by the two-shot they have been craving all along.

In Cache, however, we are given no such relief. The title of this film, translated from the french as “hidden,” might suggest that viewers will spend the duration of the film sniffing out what has been hidden. We are made eerily aware that there is a videographer occupying the off-screen space. However, this voyeur is never given a face. Furthermore, we are led to believe that this stalker has always been filming the protagonist and always will. I would venture to say that what is so ultimately unsettling about this film is the fact that after long a exercise in suspense, we are never granted that Sam-Annie two-shot.

Both of these films provide evidence of the pliability of film as a form. However, the fact that one camera technique as opposed to another can enhance both a warm and fuzzy crowd pleaser and an isolating thriller is a testament to the fact that truth in film lies in the eye of the cameraholder.

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"Life Isn't Like in the Movies"

I am of the opinion that all film’s well that ends well. True, films are not fairy tales and their characters do not always live happily ever after, but I might venture to say it is imperative, or at least de rigueur, that a film resolve itself triumphantly and conclusively.

David Bordwell might agree. In his exploration of the traditions established by “Classical Hollywood Cinema,” Bordwell defines a movie ending as, “a decisive victory or defeat, a resolution of the problem and a clear achievement or nonachievement of goals." It can be argued that the film Cinema Paradiso adheres to this paradigm, but in an unexpected way that perhaps undercuts the “Classical Hollywood Movie” structure as we know it.

Centered around the goings-on of an Italian movie house, Cinema Paradiso seems at first to be a tribute to both the art of film and the culture that surrounds it. But, as the film progresses it takes on another raison d’etre: warning viewers of the dangers of being indoctrinated into the mentality championed by the Hollywood myth. Through and ending that is an example of markedly anticlimactic “nonachievement,” this film reveals itself as, not an homage to the idealized Hollywood trajectory, but rather a blatant dismantling of it.

Film is shown to be a literally dangerous medium early on, when Toto’s mentor and fellow cinema-phile Alfredo is rendered blind by a fire caused by an enflamed reel. And even after the development of an anti-flammable sort of film, the dangers of movies remain in the form of the mentality they cultivate. When forced to endure lives that don’t live up to on-screen realities, disillusionment is inevitable. As put by Alfredo in one of his final soliloquies, “Life isn’t like the movies. Life is much harder.”
This declaration is a dramatic change in tune for Alfredo’s character, who, even after his accident, seems to deify the wisdom found in film and, frequently referencing the American movie canon as a source of real-life guidance.

Another example of Hollywood-hero worship is found in the association of Toto’s father with Clark Gable. It is mentioned that the two men bear great physical resemblance. As Toto walks hand in hand with his mother to his father’s burial, we see him glance at an old poster for the American film Gone With the Wind featuring the iconic image of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in a passionate embrace. It seems that throughout the rest of the film he is chasing the dream promoted by this film fantasy-- he yearns to live out the relationship his mother was denied by untimely death.

It seems that Toto’s adolescent life becomes defined by his desire to fulfill this fantasy. When he meets Eleanor, he is instantly convinced that she is the consummate love interest—the one and only object of his affection. Her appearance seems indicative of a very deliberate decision on behalf of the director—she may be Italian, but she looks every inch a blonde-blue-eyed Hollywood starlet. Her picture is even tacked to the wall by Toto alongside the headshots of major movie stars legends of the day.

Over and over we viewers are given ample reason to believe the Hollywood love myth. We are convinced that love will eventually conquer all, and that dreams, even if deferred, will eventually be obtained. For example, when a downtrodden Toto becomes convinced on a sad New Year’s Eve that Eleanor will never love him and that romance is worthless, he is proven wrong: she appears in the projection room and they share a blockbuster kiss. Later, we find Toto wallowing in despair, upset that Eleanor is away at college. He stares up at the stars as a movie flickers on an outside projector in the background, and viewers begin to wonder if perhaps he finally feels a disconnect from the film love featured on the screen behind him. Suddenly, his faith in love is restored when Eleanor appears dramatically in the rain for another Oscar-worthy smooch. Every time we are led to believe that Toto has been a fool to subscribe to the beliefs championed in movies, we are corrected by a love scene more dramatic than the previous disheartened one. We are meant to believe that romance transcends and trumps all.

The ending, however, defies all of our expectations and leaves us in the very place of disillusionment that Alfredo warned us about.

The audience expects another grand Hollywood rescue. We expect Toto to buy the theater and restore it, and to thus restore our faith in the concept of the movie. We expect him to follow his mother’s orders and settle down with Eleanor, the original love of his life. We expect him to pay some sort of momentous homage to his late mentor, Alfredo.

Instead, we see the demolition of Cinema Paradiso, the fizzling of the relationship between Toto and the preoccupied Eleanor, and the stoic, no-frills burial of Alfredo. The final scene presents the last stand and eventual collapse of Toto’s faith in film magic. As Toto sits in a dark theater watching a series of once-omitted love scenes, he seems to realize that his love for Eleanor was no more than an infatuation with the love depicted on screen. His tears stem from his understanding that his life’s devotion had been nothing more than a façade, and, as a director, that he had dedicated his own life to producing material that would similarly fool posterity.

While this ending is not uplifting nor is it expected, it is decisive, and proves that there is more than one way to end well.

How does film change the way we see the world?

How does film change how we view the world?

To me, the most obvious answer is that film convinces us that all the world is ours for the seeing. The camera has the ability to open up realms to which, according to everything from societal norms to the laws of physics, we would ordinarily be denied access. Given the right protagonist, viewers can go anywhere or do anything.

Movies allow for the willing and effortless suspension of reality, and both films we watched for this assignment--Amelie and Fight Club—seem to test the limits of this privilege. Thanks to modern camera tricks, the images that appear on screen appear real enough but are often undeniably absurd, as when Amelie interacts with an imaginary friend or Tyler Durden appears as a splice in the film for a millisecond.

These works, however, are rarely classified as part of the Science Fiction or Fantasy genres, and I might say this is because they are not meant to serve as documentation of a particular series of events, but rather to convey the inner workings of a specific individual’s mindset.

This we see in the personification of Tyler Durden, who is only a real being in the mind of Fight Club’s narrator. The world as seen through the eyes of this narrator is truly a manifestation of inward insanity, but it is the only version of the story we are told, and we accept it as truth.

Similarly, Amelie’s universe is a fantastical one, the result of an overactive imagination developed over the course of a lonely youth. The film introduces us to and submerges us in her world of dreams. Set in Paris, the landscape itself is a bit magical, and it along with a fairy tale soundtrack and computer graphics make imaginary friends and inanimate objects come to life in a way that is almost believable.

In this film, the camera and the narrator take on an impossible perspective, traveling in and out of many private spaces as well as across time. For instance, in the opening scene the narrator catalogs a number of seemingly unrelated happenings that occurred the moment the heroine was conceived. Later, the narrator follows various Parisians and lists off their likes and dislikes, demonstrating its ability to not only inhabit multiple perspectives but also to inhabit the psyche of multiple persons.

Later, Amelie herself seems to possess omniscient powers when she speculates about how many couples in the city below are having orgasms and comes up with what we are shown is the accurate answer. Thanks to the indoctrination of cinema, we accept that it is possible to be a billion places, or in this case fifteen, simultaneously.

This film is also self-referential in that it places heavy emphasis on spectatorship. Amelie is obsessed with watching other people. She observes their lives and yearns to fix their problems the same way filmgoers do. A specific nod to this concept is the relationship Amelie has with her camera, which she uses to create images of imaginary happenings. Upon receiving it, she uses it to capture a bunny rabbit she see in the clouds. Throughout the film she uses cameras to capture the poses of her father’s lawn gnome with the aim of making it seem that the gnome is traveling the world on his own. Her father is willing to suspend his own understanding of reality to believe this. The camera is thus established as a tool used to capture the world in a unique way that suits the whims of the beholder. Amelie, the beholder in this case, sees the world as moviemakers do and as moviegoers want to.

When Walter Benjamin posits in his “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” that “all film is political,” I am not sure that I agree completely, but I do see his point. Film as a medium has the capacity for enormous political influence by merit of the fact that it is so universally accessible, but also because it is overtly persuasive. If I learned anything from Fight Club or Amelie it is that the minute viewers submit themselves to watching of a film, they willingly sympathize with the protagonists and narrators and to some degree accept the stories they present, whether they involve the hallucinations of an insomniac or the caprices of a Parisian loner.

Introduction to Film