CHINATOWN

Chinatown is a film-noir that was made in the 1970s. The thing that most distinguishes Chinatown from other film-noirs is the fact that it was produced in color. This movie is about JJ Gittes a cheating specialist who Evelyn Mulwray hires to find out who her husband is having an affair with. But, when Hollis Mulwray gets murdered JJ gets assigned to a new case, one that requires him to find Hollis’s killer. This film supports an all star cast including big names such as Jack Nicolson Faye Dunaway and Roman Polanski.
Well some may consider this a film-noir I would have to disagree. This film takes on more aspects of genres such as mystery, thriller and tragedy. I say this because, number one this movie is in color, number two it doesn’t exhibit much low-key lighting and number three and JJ Gittes is not a typical hardboiled detective. The color of the film I think makes this film more interesting and all together more pleasurable to watch but I do feel that the color takes away from the film-noir aspects. The coloring makes it hard to show things such as low-key lighting which is yet another important part of film-noir. My third point of JJ Gittes not being a typical hardboiled detective, I say that because he doesn’t drink and he shows too many feelings in his work. He feels sorry for Evelyn Mulwray after her husband dies, which your normal hardboiled detective would not do.
Overall I felt that this was a fabulous movie. It was kind of weird though to see Jack Nicolson at such a young age. This movie has it all killing, nudity, mystery and a surprise ending.

Kiss Me Deadly

Kiss Me Deadly was one of the first movies to try to incorporate color into a film noir. Kiss Me Deadly is about a man named Hammer who picks up a girl on the side of the road. This girl turns out to be involved in serious stuff, which is why she is captured, tortured, and killed by men in black suits. After this woman was killed Hammer feels obligated to find out who did this to her and why.
I found the movie to be very interesting, not in a good way though. I felt that the film was a downward spiral of plot and bad acting. The ending to the movie emphasized the poor quality of the film. I don’t mean to ruin the end of the movie for you but in order for me to critique on it I need to tell you the logistics. Besides I don’t think that you would want to see this movie. Well, in the end everyone dies after the box containing nuclear explosives is opened. This might sound cool but it is most definitely not. In one of the endings which were used as the primary ending today, Hammer and Velda get out of the burning house before it falls to the ground. While they are in the house and trying to get away from the house, there is a “wawawawawa” sound. It sounds just like static or white noise. This noise goes on for at least two minutes and by then you can’t take the noise any longer. After I watched this ending I proceeded to watch the original ending. This ending was a drastic improvement. The original ending showed Hammer and Velda burning in the house along with the girl that opened up the box. The most important difference though was that the “wawawawawa” was shortened to a mere 30 seconds.

OUt oF The PAst

While studying film noir, we watched Out of the Past a film directed by Jacques Tourneur. The film is about a man named Jeff Bailey who gets himself in a real bad situation. He is assigned to help Whitt Sterling (Kirk Douglas) find his girlfriend Kathie (Jane Greer). What Jeff finds out while he is on the case is that Kathie is a fox. Jeff ends up falling head over heels for Kathie. But, when Kathie ends up killing a man, Jeff wants out. Jeff learns quickly that he cannot escape Whitt.
What made this film the least bit successful was the presence of film noir. Jane was designated to play the role of femme fatal. What characterizes a woman as a femme fatal is her strength, her sex appeal and her devilish ways. Jane really brings out these elements in her character Kathie. Another element of film noir is the usage of low key lighting. For those of you who do not know what that is, it is a high contrast between dark and light. This lighting was used in often in the film to convey mystery and darkness. When Kathie and Jeff are sneaking around in Mexico low key lighting was used to show the hush, hush of their relationship.
This movie was a two out of five. Even though I liked the way the director used the elements of film noir, I didn’t like anything else. Part of the reason why I didn’t appreciate this movie to the fullest is because it’s out of date. I feel that people back when the movie was made were in to the hype of this new genre of film, but now people aren’t into this type of film.

EtErNaL SuNsHiNe

We were lucky enough to watch Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind in Art of Film. This movie is about a man named Joel who fell in love with a psychotic girl named Clementine. The thing he doesn’t know is that he had Clementine erased from his memory after she erased him. This confusing plot makes for a great film.
I found it amazing how director Michel Gondry was able to make the movie so captivating with little special effects. I thought it was cool how Joel kept on running away from his memories being erased and as he did things behind him would fly into the sky and vanish. It made you wonder how long can he run away from his memories before he gets sucked away too. My favorite part though was when Joel went into the memory erasing office and he sees Elijah Wood’s face without any of the facial features. It was sweet!
This movie has suspense, passion, confusion and everything you could want and then some. It was a great movie, even though confusing at times. Jim Carrey did a great job playing someone that is different from his typical roles. The only thing bad I can say about this movie is that Kirsten Dunst can’t act. She tried to be all sad when she found out her memory was erased but you could totally tell she didn’t feel anything.