Alfred Hitchcock: thriller influence

Hitchcock: The Master of Suspense Thrillers
No list of suspense or thriller films can be complete without mention of English film-maker/director Alfred Hitchcock. He helped to shape the modern-day thriller genre, beginning with his early silent film The Lodger (1926), a suspenseful Jack-the-Ripper story, followed by his next thriller Blackmail (1929), his first sound film (but also released in a silent version). Hitchcock would make a signature cameo appearance in his feature films, beginning with his third film The Lodger (1926), although his record was spotty at first. After 1940, he appeared in every one, except for The Wrong Man (1956). [See all of Hitchcock's cameos here.] Although nominated five times as Best Director (from 1940-1960), Hitchcock never won an Academy Award.
Alfred Hitchcock is considered the acknowledged auteur master of the thriller or suspense genre, manipulating his audience's fears and desires, and taking viewers into a state of association with the representation of reality facing the character. He would often interweave a taboo or sexually-related theme into his films, such as the repressed memories of Marnie (Tippi Hedren) in Marnie (1964), the latent homosexuality in Strangers on a Train (1951), voyeurism in Rear Window (1954), obsession in Vertigo (1958), or the twisted Oedipus complex in Psycho (1960).
Hitchcock's films often placed an innocent victim (an average, responsible person) into a strange, life-threatening or terrorizing situation, in a case of mistaken identity, misidentification or wrongful accusation (i.e., in The 39 Steps (1935), The Wrong Man (1956), and in North by Northwest (1959)).
He also utilized various cinematic techniques (i.e., the first British 'talking picture' - Blackmail (1929), the extreme zoom shot of the key in Notorious (1946), the glowing glass of milk in Suspicion (1941), the prolonged cross-cutting tennis match in Strangers on a Train (1951), the virtuoso set-piece of the crop duster in North by Northwest (1959), the montage in the shower sequence accentuated with composer Bernard Herrmann's screeching violin score in Psycho (1960), the dolly-zoom shots in Vertigo (1958), or the heightening of anticipation with the long pull-back shot from inside a building to the outside and across the street in Frenzy (1972)).
Visually-expressive motifs were also his specialty (i.e., the surrealistic dream sequences in Spellbound (1945), the key in Notorious (1946), the staircase or the use of profiles and silhouettes in Vertigo (1958), the murder reflected in the victim's glasses in Strangers on a Train (1951), the concept of "pairs" and guilt transference in Shadow of a Doubt (1943)), or the making of technically-challenging films (such as Lifeboat (1944) and Rope (1948)). [Rope was a film of many 'firsts': it was Hitchcock's first color film and his first film as an independent producer; it was his first film released by Warner Bros.; it was his first and only attempt to make a film appear as a single shot, with a series of ten-minute takes cleverly spliced together; and it was his first film with James Stewart. The basis of the film was the famed Leopold-Loeb case.]
In many of his films, there was the inevitable life and death chase concluding with a showdown at a familiar landmark (for example, London's Albert Hall in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur (1942), the UN and Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest (1959), Westminster Cathedral in Foreign Correspondent (1940), and the Golden Gate Bridge in Vertigo (1958)). He also reveled in tight and confined spaces, to heighten emotion (i.e., Lifeboat (1944), Rope (1948), or Rear Window (1954), etc.) or restrictive train journeys (i.e., The Lady Vanishes (1937), and North by Northwest (1959), etc).



(Information from: http://www.filmsite.org/thrillerfilms.html) (using to reference in making and planning of our thriller)

Film Noir Conventions

Film Noir (literally 'black film or cinema') was coined by French film critics (first by Nino Frank in 1946) who noticed the trend of how 'dark', downbeat and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France to theatres following the war, such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), Murder, My Sweet (1944), Double Indemnity (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Laura (1944). A wide range of films reflected the resultant tensions and insecurities of the time period, and counter-balanced the optimism of Hollywood's musicals and comedies. Fear, mistrust, bleakness, loss of innocence, despair and paranoia are readily evident in noir, reflecting the 'chilly' Cold War period when the threat of nuclear annihilation was ever-present. The criminal, violent, misogynistic, hard-boiled, or greedy perspectives of anti-heroes in film noir were a metaphoric symptom of society's evils, with a strong undercurrent of moral conflict, purposelessness and sense of injustice. There were rarely happy or optimistic endings in noirs.
Classic film noir developed during and after World War II, taking advantage of the post-war ambience of anxiety, pessimism, and suspicion. It was a style of black and white American films that first evolved in the 1940s, became prominent in the post-war era, and lasted in a classic "Golden Age" period until about 1960 (marked by the 'last' film of the classic film noir era, Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958)).

Important Note: Strictly speaking, film noir is not a genre, but rather the mood, style, point-of-view, or tone of a film. It is also helpful to realize that 'film noir' usually refers to a distinct historical period of film history - the decade of film-making after World War II, similar to the German Expressionism or the French New Wave periods. However, it was labeled as such only after the classic period - early noir film-makers didn't even use the film designation (as they would the labels "western" or "musical"), and were not conscious that their films would be labeled noirs.

Very often, a film noir story was developed around a cynical, hard-hearted, disillusioned male character [e.g., Robert Mitchum, Fred MacMurray, or Humphrey Bogart] who encountered a beautiful but promiscuous, amoral, double-dealing and seductive femme fatale [e.g., Mary Astor, Veronica Lake, Jane Greer, Barbara Stanwyck, or Lana Turner]. She would use her feminine wiles and come-hither sexuality to manipulate him into becoming the fall guy - often following a murder. After a betrayal or double-cross, she was frequently destroyed as well, often at the cost of the hero's life. As women during the war period were given new-found independence and better job-earning power in the homeland during the war, they would suffer -- on the screen -- in these films of the 40s.

Primary Characteristics and Conventions of Film Noir: Themes and Styles
The primary moods of classic film noir were melancholy, alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt, desperation and paranoia.
Heroes (or anti-heroes), corrupt characters and villains included down-and-out, conflicted hard-boiled detectives or private eyes, cops, gangsters, government agents, a lone wolf, socio-paths or killers, crooks, war veterans, politicians, petty criminals, murderers, or just plain Joes. These protagonists were often morally-ambiguous low-lifes from the dark and gloomy underworld of violent crime and corruption. Distinctively, they were cynical, tarnished, obsessive (sexual or otherwise), brooding, menacing, sinister, sardonic, disillusioned, frightened and insecure loners (usually men), struggling to survive - and in the end, ultimately losing.
Storylines were often elliptical, non-linear and twisting. Narratives were frequently complex, maze-like and convoluted, and typically told with foreboding background music, flashbacks (or a series of flashbacks), witty, razor-sharp and acerbic dialogue, and/or reflective and confessional, first-person voice-over narration. Amnesia suffered by the protagonist was a common plot device, as was the downfall of an innocent Everyman who fell victim to temptation or was framed. Revelations regarding the hero were made to explain/justify the hero's own cynical perspective on life.
Film noir films (mostly shot in gloomy grays, blacks and whites) thematically showed the dark and inhumane side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love, and they emphasized the brutal, unhealthy, seamy, shadowy, dark and sadistic sides of the human experience. An oppressive atmosphere of menace, pessimism, anxiety, suspicion that anything can go wrong, dingy realism, futility, fatalism, defeat and entrapment were stylized characteristics of film noir. The protagonists in film noir were normally driven by their past or by human weakness to repeat former mistakes.
Film noir films were marked visually by expressionistic lighting, deep-focus or depth of field camera work, disorienting visual schemes, jarring editing or juxtaposition of elements, ominous shadows, skewed camera angles (usually vertical or diagonal rather than horizontal), circling cigarette smoke, existential sensibilities, and unbalanced or moody compositions. Settings were often interiors with low-key (or single-source) lighting, venetian-blinded windows and rooms, and dark, claustrophobic, gloomy appearances. Exteriors were often urban night scenes with deep shadows, wet asphalt, dark alleyways, rain-slicked or mean streets, flashing neon lights, and low key lighting. Story locations were often in murky and dark streets, dimly-lit and low-rent apartments and hotel rooms of big cities, or abandoned warehouses. [Often-times, war-time scarcities were the reason for the reduced budgets and shadowy, stark sets of B-pictures and film noirs.]
Some of the most prominent directors of film noir included Orson Welles, John Huston, Billy Wilder, Edgar Ulmer, Douglas Sirk, Robert Siodmak, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Henry Hathaway and Howard Hawks.

Femmes Fatales in Film Noir:
The females in film noir were either of two types (or archetypes) - dutiful, reliable, trustworthy and loving women; or femmes fatales - mysterious, duplicitous, double-crossing, gorgeous, unloving, predatory, tough-sweet, unreliable, irresponsible, manipulative and desperate women. Usually, the male protagonist in film noir wished to elude his mysterious past, and had to choose what path to take (or have the fateful choice made for him).
Invariably, the choice would be an overly ambitious one, to follow the dangerous but desirable wishes of these dames. It would be to pursue the goadings of a traitorous, self-destructive femme fatale who would lead the struggling, disillusioned, and doomed hero into committing murder or some other crime of passion coupled with twisted love. When the major character was a detective or private eye, he would become embroiled and trapped in an increasingly-complex, convoluted case that would lead to fatalistic, suffocating evidences of corruption, irresistible love and death. The femme fatale, who had also transgressed societal norms with her independent and smart, menacing actions, would bring both of them to a downfall.

(Information from: http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html ) using for reference in the making/planning of our thriller.

"Essex Boys" Opening - Shot Analysis

Shot Analysis

Initial thriller planning – Initial shot list

Initial thriller planning – Initial shot list

·         over the shoulder shot of summer (contemporary femme fatale character) (diegetic sound of headphones on summer) walking under a ladder (reference to third man-    )

·         low angle panning shot of summer round corner (feet)

·         summer point of view seeing Elliott approaching with the package (enigma)

·         Point of view shot of villain looking at exchange between Elliott and summer (Dan?) (audience not aware its point of view only a long shot) (see summer turn to camera (villain) but think nothing of it) (diegetic light breathing)

·         cut to close up of hands and exchange

·         close up of Elliott’s face as point of view of summer

·         cut to close up of summers face (close ups identifying characters emotions and engaging with audience) (film the shot turning to villain and seeing him but don’t include until convoluted plot comes in) (like in Jackie brown changing room scene)

·         back to point of view (villain) (diegetic light breathing getting heavier) panning as summer walks away and then follows

·         high angle if possible of summer walking further connoting vulnerability (showing villain following/shadowing her in the background

·         summer over the shoulder looking paranoid looking around a lot (going in to grafti underground bit connoting entrapment)

·         close up rule of thirds shot summers face (2 thirds) and villain following her in distance (the third part of shot(blurred using focus pull so everything but her face is blurred))

·         medium close up of summer turning around and seeing villain

·         back to close up showing summers emotions of suddenly realising she is being followed

·         Cut to flash back of exchange (blurred borders in edit to show its flashback focusing of centre action in mise-en-scene) replaying the exchange scene but including the point of view of summer seeing villain (realising it was him) instead of point of view of villain point of view from summer.

·         Long shot of villain turning (point of view turning and then following) and then following summer (including all action from scene in mise-en-scene) (explaining the plot)

·         (Back to normal time) close up of summer very afraid with villain visibly starting to run as summer quickens pace

·         Long shot tilted showing them both getting faster until running (quick zoom half way of villain getting something from coat) (enigma- weapon or something) back to long shot of running in panic as it fades out.

"Once Upon A Time In America" - Shot analysis

Shot Analysis - 'Once Upon a Time in America' from laurawatson131


We worked in a group to do this as we thought it would be good to do some thriller reseach together to prepare our group for thriller planning and the making of our thrillers.

“Once upon a time in America”

“Once upon a time in America” (opening scene)

 

·         Directed by Sergio Leone (auteur director) in 1984

·         Set in 1930’s end of alcohol prohibition (1920-1933) in America

·         Loop narrative

·         Pays tribute to classic film noir thrillers such as; “Gilda”

How Sergio Leone establishes thriller genre?

 

·         Music “God bless America” (non diegetic sound) in opening credits continues into first scene. This is ironic as film made by Italian and played in a relatively dark scene in which the woman gets shot. Intertextual reference: “Deer hunter” (1978) same kind of message about ironic America (also Italian director). Robert De Niro plays in both films.

·         Establishes a fem fatale in opening scene who is killed off in the same scene establishing genre and adding interest and suspense over sudden death whilst paying tribute to classic fem fatale in film noir thrillers. (costume: pearls, lipstick, pearl ring, nail varnish, glamorous clothing.)

·         Generic costume/characters: fem fatale, criminals, underworld, gang.

·         Noir lighting (chiaroscuro lighting): connoting surrealism whilst adding aesthetic pleasure to the mise en scene

·         Shot from eve (fem fatale) to man being beaten up further establishing genre.

·         Sound bridge ( when sound anticipates the next scene):

·         Pearls on Eve’s costume representing bad luck and tears

Opening scene:

·         Non ambient lighting: spot light on Eve. Lamp creating smooth light tone possibly suggesting the light is part of her/location.

·         The men all wearing generic costume for classic thriller gangster.

·         Long shadows

 

Cut two:

·         Diegetic sound

·         Close up ion guy being beaten up engaging audience with character

 

Cut three:

·         Non diegetic sound of phone (sound bridge within his mind): sound adds suspense, mystery, creating an enigma making audience tense.

Cut four:

·         wet shiny streets

·         noir lighting

·         flashback

·         sound bridge continues

·         Unglamorous decaying location