Beckie and I watched Francois Truffaut's classic Jules & Jim last weekend and immediately several things came to mind. The relationship between noir and French New Wave, the influence of noir on the New Wave, and the noir elements in the film. Catherine is the epitome of noir femme fatale. Men are attracted to her and when they get too close they can't return to where they were before and are lead to their demise. Jules and Jim are these characters. The morally ambiguous male without any obvious motivation except to be near the female. I won't ruin the end for you if you haven't seen the movie but I will say that the end is very noirish. Besides the femme fatale other themes appear in the work that make me contrast the two genres.
1. The self-conscious rejection of classic cinematic forms - Obvious in French New Wave, many noir classics portrayed a type of rejection of the classic happy ending.
2. The relationship between cinema and politics - The 60's of the French New Wave and the implicit political ideas of noir.
3. Radical experimenting with editing, style - The everything-goes attitude of New Wave with the stark colors and dramatic angles of noir.
Maybe these two genres are more similar than first thought.
3 comments:
Steve, have you considered including film in your future studies, perhaps in a more formal way (i.e. a grad certificate or something of the sort)? I think with your knowledge and love of film you could do really cool things. I wonder how it could fit into your current project?
I agree with what Ben said, maybe you should do something with film...
The film, weird. I just didn't love it. I thought the ending was entriguing but those guys were so dumb I couldn't get over it.
I love you
Truthfully, I haven't really thought of it. Are there many programs who do that kind of thing? Maybe I should think about it more seriously. We'll see.
One thing I'm doing is trying to incorporate my topic into the film theory paper. I want to write about the black character in film noir. I found an excellent article called "The Whiteness of Film Noir" that approaches the topic of race in the genre. It's really interesting. From what I've researched there are very few things about the topic. The main things I've found are the idea of a "black" film noir. Film noir themes inside of a black cultural and social context. (i.e. Menace to Society)
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