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From: markg@nvuxf.UUCP (M. Guzdial)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: re: Film Noir in Color
Message-ID: <111@nvuxf.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-May-85 13:33:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: nvuxf.111
Posted: Fri May 17 13:33:50 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 18-May-85 01:43:09 EDT
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Red Bank, NJ
Lines: 43

As I graduated last May, and my alma mater (Wayne State University) hasn't
even a single UNIX machine on campus (Can you concieve of such a CS program?),
hopes of getting some feedback from my film instructor on his comments are
small.

However, some insight may be found in his definition of film noir, which
is different from the one posted earlier to the Net.  I prefer the
one posted to the net previously by Jay Elvove.  My professors's is 
too specific.

The "film noir" that he described had to be a mystery of some sort.  Most
of its settings had to be on rainy nights so that the director could play 
games with reflections.  The overall tone was to be depressing.  As stated,
"the male protagonist must fall under the spell of a femme fatale" though 
neither must necessarily be destroyed.  A point that Elvove made that the 
instructor emphasized was that "protagonists were no longer heros and
the notion of good and evil was blurred," to use the Net posting's words.

I think his major gripe with "Blade Runner" was that he felt that the use
of color detracted from the camera's playing with the reflections.
He did, however, agree that much of "Taxi Driver" was of the "film noir"
genre, but wouldn't agree that the entire film was of that genre since it
wasn't really a mystery. 

Considering "Taxi Driver" as a "film noir" brings up an interesting
correlation between Elvove's explanation for the original cycle of
depressing "black" movies ("noir" is French for "black").  Scorsese does
indicate that Travis is a Vietnam vet, so perhaps he's encouraging the 
explanation of "film noir" as coming from the "anxieties produced by
the war."

(I think that at this point, if Woody Allen was moderating this newsgroup,
Scorsese would jump in and tell me how wrong I was and that he had a completely
different from the idea from the very beginning and what's "film newarr"
anyway?)
 
   Mark Guzdial
   {ihnp4, houxm}!nvuxf!markg

-- 
Mark Guzdial
{ihnp4, houxm}!nvuxf!markg
(201) 949-5471