Genre, My Middle School Years, & Film Noir

Rick Altman’s critical piece “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre” seemed me to fit our film class as perfectly as Tania Modleski’s article compliments Rear Window.  As Altman says in the beginning of his article, “We all know a genre when we see one. Scratch only where it itches.”  While this is not, I’m sure, the case for all the members of our class, it most certainly was the case for me.  Before coming to college, I had in my mind a very clear idea of which names classified which films, and I had never really deviated from that.  How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days was romantic comedy (aka “chick flick”), Beauty and the Beast was animation for kids, Robin Hood: Men in Tights was plain comedy, The Bourne Identity was thriller, and Silence of the Lambs was horror. That was that, and I was blissfully ignorant. 

I then believed much in what I know now is the audience’s ritual relationship. I believed that film adhered to the supply and demand theory, that what audiences saw in theatres and the success they brought to released films carefully shaped what would next be produced. Spiderman 1 did well, so they made a Spiderman 2, which did well so they made a Spiderman 3. Suffice it to say, I personally won’t be the least bit surprised if I find myself lined up outside of the IMAX wearing Michael Pennock’s Spiderman shirt (the black one with the glow-in-the-dark Spidey eyes) waiting for the fourth film which is starting (gasp!) five minutes after (!!) midnight on opening day.

 

My middle school years were defined by Friday and Saturday nights at the movies (and Thursdays, as above), seeing whatever new “chick flicks” my girlfriends and I could convince our guy friends to come to while occasionally acquiescing to their demands to see Saw IV or other suitable gore.  It worked beautifully--we saw the same types of movies, which allowed us to continue to see (surprise!) more of the same.  As Graeme Turner discusses in the first chapter of his book Film as Social Practice, going to the movies decades ago was an event all to itself; for us, the same way true.  What was playing mattered less than being at the movie with friends.  Our very own Cocoaplex worked much in the same that the theatre in Cinema Paradiso did.   People mated, people dated, we laughed, we cried, we missed parts of or entire movies for the sake of our own social lives.   Truth was, it didn't matter--our knowledge of Hollywood's use of semantics and syntax allowed us to fill in the gaps, whether they gaps from lapse in attention or cinematographic gaps in film.  

The former can be left at that.  The latter, however, was only made possible by our understanding of genre through the use of Altman's notions of syntax and semantics.  We have been and continue to be "heavily conditioned by the choice of semantic elements and atmosphere, because a given semantics used in a specific cultural situation will recall to an actual interpretive community the particular syntax with which that semantics has traditionally been associated in other texts.  This syntactic expectation, set up by a semantic signal, is matched by a parallel tendency to expect specific syntactic signals to lead to predetermined semantic fields."  It is these semantic elements that allow us, for example, to make the connection between Annie (Meg Ryan) and Sam (Tom Hanks) in the film Sleepless in Seattle and thus classify it as a romantic comedy.  Conversely, when these are not present and our syntactic expectations are not met, as in  Caché, we begin to feel less certain about our understanding of the film and, consequently, find ourselves unable to classify the film with absolute certainty.  

Then there are those films that, despite classification in nomenclature, semantics, syntactics, and form, still manage to puzzle us.  Out of the Past is merely one of these, a paradigm of what is known as film noir.  In his critical work "Notes on Film Noir," Paul Schrader successfully classifies the influences, seven stylistics, and three phases of film noir.  Schrader's list of items captures perfectly the elements of Out of the Past that situate within such a genre.  The lighting, as he says, is mostly at night; and, if not at night, it is indoors.  In fact, it is established early on in the film that it is more a nocturnal thing--Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) won't meet Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) anytim in Mexico until dusk.  As well, the climax of the film all takes place at night with Bailey lurking in alley ways in San Francisco, quietly entering and leaving dimly lit rooms, and waiting by the fireplace for Kathie.  

Oblique lines, another of Scrader's elements, are also present in the film, most notably at white and Kathie's house--their gate, the architecture, their window panes--but also in the forest where Bailey and Ann Miller (Virginia Huston) meet.  Equal lighting--what Schrader defines as the same amount of lighting given--is to nearly every character in all scenes, save when Kathie is wearing white in Mexico.  Such lighting allows the characters to blend into the background and makes the setting feel authentic and less contrived.  (See image.)  Schrader also says that "compositional tension is preferred to physical action."  A great example of this is the scene of Joe's (Paul Valentine) death.  Joe has followed The Kid (Dickie Moore) down to the river where Joe knows that The Kid will find Bailey.  The tension in the film is high as Joe silently observes the spectacle and then draws his gun to shoot Bailey.  We the spectators are convinced that Bailey is done for until, at the last moment, the kid snags Joe's jacket with his fishing line and pulls him over the edge where he falls to his death.  The scene is pure mastery, full of suspense and tension.   Despite none of the three men acknowledging each other let alone coming in close close contact, we are tense with anticipation. 

The Freudian attachment to water that Schrader notes is most exemplified in Mexico as Bailey  and Kathie meet each evening on the beach.  The movement of the ocean contrasts against their silhouettes, creating brilliant compositions that sexualize their romance and fetishize Kathie.  This compliments another of Shrader's elemets--that of "a love of romantic narration."  Interestingly enough, there are several in this film, most of them overlapping.  But the main two players--Kathie and Bailey--are at the heart of it all, for Whit who loved Kathie hired Bailey to find her, and it is Bailey who is telling this whole story to his current squeeze, Ann.  Schrader notes that in Out of the Past, Bailey "relates his history with such pathetic relish that it is obvious there is no hope for any future: one can only take pleasure in reliving a doomed past."  This relates to his final point, one that boasts of a complicated order--not entirely chronological--in this films.  This is quite true for Bailey's story.  It begins in present, goes back to the past, returns to the present, and then moves forward to Bailey's demise. "The manipulation of time," says Schrader," whether slight of complex, is often used to reinforce a noir principle: the how is always more important than the what."  This is quite obviously true--the events that led to Bailey's death are far more intriguing than his actual death, and they impact Ann accordingly.  

And yet Schrader, in his perfect description of film noir, is unable to succinctly capture the genre.  With lists, history, and various other information, he is able to explain that movies such as Out of the Past constitute what we know as film noir.  But throughout his article, he not once captures the essence of film noir in one sentence.  It is not a fun or satirical film that ends with most everyone happy (comedy) or a story about a man and a woman and their struggles to find peace and happiness with each other (romance).  In truth, it is not even a genre that we can completely understand.  If such a film were made today (it wouldn't be), I still wouldn't see (new) middle school girls dragging their guy friends and crushes to it, or said guy friends/crushes coercing the girls to see it.  There isn't enough consistency to fill in the gaps from those lost moments or cinematographic moves; the semantics and the syntax don't ever quite add up, and even if they do, we still don't get what we expected.  This is, after all, what makes film noir so thrilling.  But it is likely that this same aspect contributed to its cessation in production in 1953--it was great (or later became great) for critics to explore, but audiences were unable to appreciate it in the same way.  "Film noir operates on opposite principles: the theme is hidden in the style, and bogus themes are often flaunted," says Schrader.  Critics and audiences loved it, but they love equally and understood better westerns and gangster films.  Without this understanding, there could never be true appreciation for the genius of film noir.  There is hope for this in retrospective study, as critics come closer to defining and truly understanding the complexity of film noir.  But until then, I'd bet you that given the choice, my friends and I (in Michael Pennock's Spidey-eye t-shirt) would opt to wait in line for Spiderman 4 any day. 

Hidden Cameras, Hidden Moments

"Really?" "Are you serious?" "What?!" The incredulity and ire enunciated in these (and other choise) words at the end of the film Caché perfectly captures the sentiments of those who just finished the film.  As David Bordwell duly notes in his critical work on classical Hollywood cinema, we the viewers are conditioned to follow our narrative from beginning to climax to end.  And so when Caché seems to leave us with no clear resolution after nearly two hours of building up tension, we are "really," serious"ly shocked.  

This final shock, however, comes on the heels of a series of shocks that, in theory, should have prepared us for such a dénouement in two ways.  The first is that throughout the entire film, we the viewers have been deprived of information.  We lose the omnipresence to which Bordwell refers.  Certainly, we see more than we could as characters w

ithin the story.  But that is not enough: we want to see everything, most especially he or she who is filming the tapes.  When we are deprived of that one wish, we begin to lose the control we so often feel we have over stories. And "this loss of mastery," says Pascal Bonitzer in his work "Cahiers du Cinéma, "implicates the spectator, call into question his or her place as spectator....it is in this uncontrollable 'off-screen space' that the splitting of the cinematic scene is located."  We begin the film at the center of its operation and are, within moments until the very end, become subjects and agents of it.  

The ability to perpetrate power but not to create and direct it becomes our obessesion throughout the film.  As Michel Foucault postulates in his work The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, power, knowledge and discourse are key, related aspects that dictate society and social norms.  Without one of these elements, the rest of triumvirate becomes ineffective.  In Caché, we are deprived of all three: we have no knowledge of who is filming the tapes and who has the power to instill fear in Anne (Juliette Binoche) and Georges (Daniel Auteuil) with those tapes, thus we have no subject for discourse.  Without any power, we find ourselves at the mercy of the film, blindly following its whims and whirls.  

It comes as no surprise, then, that this clearly unorthodox film would follow an obviously unorthodox storyline to an even more orthodox ending which is not the least bit impacted by what we, the views, believe or would like to think. The lack of music in the film underlines this notion.  A full score would provide audiences with impressions that help them prepare for what is to come and what they should make of it; it provides insights into the movie that even the best actors are unable to offer.  In Caché, however, we have no music.  We have do not have a certain harmony for the anonymous filmer, another for Georges, and yet a separate one for his wife.  There is only directionless silence.  We do not know what to expect, and so we must prepare ourselves for anything: from a resolution via pedagogical peroration (classical Hollywood) to a resolution via sudden termination (Caché).

The second reason that we should have been prepared for the final scene of Caché is that from prior experience (just under two hours) with the film, we know that despite our ignorance, the information that we can glean from each scene is, albeit transient, vital to our understanding of the film.  Within the picture, each interaction, each glance, each movement has meaning.  Within the production, each position, each light, and each background serves to situate us with an understanding of the film. Ironically, this is even discussed in the film.  Early on, Anne and Georges, struggling to make sense of the tape of their home and, without much success, begin with the most obvious of questions: where is this person filming from?  

We the viewers are forced to ask the same questions to understand not only the filmer but also the film; and inadvertently, we conflate the two.  Take, for example, the elevator scene in which Georges is trying to evade François.  The elevator, filled with mirrors, provides Georges, François, and us an omnipresence by use of mirrors not otherwise found.  In his critical piece "The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema," Daniel Dayan discusses the use of a mirror in Velasquez's Las Meninas.  In the painting, he says, "by virtue of a mirror in the back of the room (depicted at the center of the painting), 

we see what they are looking at: the king and queen, whose portrait Velasquez is painting.  Foucault calls this the representation of classical representation, because the spectator--usually invisible--is here inscribed into the paiting itself.  Thus the painting reresents its own functioining, but in a  paradoxical, contradictory way.  The painter is staring at us, the spectators who pass in front of the canvas; but he mirror reflects only one, unchanging thing, the royal couple."  Almost perfectly analagous to the elevator scene in Caché, it is the mirrors in both the painting and the elevator that provide the viewer with censored, but important information.  The relationship between our elevator king and queen--François (Walid Afkir) and Georges--is the one, unchanging thing as the elevator rises to Georges' office.   We see their eyes, moving to take in that which surrounds them as well as to monitor the other person.  We see distress in their physical statures and the shifting of their weight.  

But more importantly, our unfailing attendance to the "couple" has cost us critical information from the scene.  As Katrinah pointed out in her blog last week, Sergei Einstein identified the shot as "the montage cell."  Nowhere could this be more true.  The object, in this case the mirror, "hides the paintings textuality by preventing the viewer from focusing on it.  However, the text of the painting it totally offered to view," says Dayan.  "It is, as it were, hidden outside the object."  By focusing on the object, the mirror, the mirrors, we lose focus of what is important.  In the case of Caché's elevator, this is the cinematography and art of the film.  We forget that we are in a fully mirrored elevator whose images and reflections offer us the closest chance we have at identifying who is behind the camera.  And while Georges may not be being "filmed" at that very instant, the significance of this lies not in the actual information but in our inability to correctly seek it out and be receptive to it.

And yet, is is obvious that the current misperceptions shape our future conceptions.  For during the final scene of the film, we are watching the fence, the cars, the exiting of students from the school and then the steps.  Soon, the premises are nearly vacated.  Then there are credits.  What happened, we ask? "Really?" someone muttered.  But really, in reality, it wasn't the film--it was us.  Our preoccupation with the "object"--here, the aforementioned inconsequential parts of the scene--precluded us from noticing the only important part: the brief interaction between François and Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky), which has implications that are limited yet tremendous.  And while we may not, despite other clues, have been prepared for this non-classical ending, we really have a resolution and the meaning of this resolution is of a most serious nature.