Sunset Boulevard 1950 by Billy Wilder - A man is found dead in a Hollywood mansion floating in the swimming pool. The narrator then comes in to explain that the man in the pool is an unsuccessful screenwriter. The film then cuts to a flashback were the audience discovers that the narrator is the main character in the flashback and is identified as Joe Gillies; in this flash back we find out that Joe is a screenwriter who was trying to make some fast cash to save his car from being repossessed.
Desperate, Gillis makes various calls to Hollywood friends and contacts, and manages to secure a meeting with a producer at Paramount Studios, where he pitches a script he has written called ‘Bases Loaded’. Sheldrake, who is a producer, seems interested in the property until a young woman from the Reader Department, Betty Schaefer, is summoned and arrives with an outline of the script, but dismisses it as a mediocre work. Angered at the rejection, Gillis leaves and then manages to locate his agent, who is playing golf in Bel-Air. He does not help Gillis with his financial problems.
While returning back to Hollywood along Sunset Boulevard, Gillis is spotted by two repossession men and a chase starts. When a tire blows on Gillis' car during the pursuit, he swerves into a local residence in order to escape the repo men. And discovers that he has entered the grounds of what he assumes is a deserted mansion. He hides his car in a garage. And as he gets out of the car a voice from the upstairs balcony calls down for him to go up. He is meet at the door by a butler called Max, who we later find out is a director. He goes upstairs and meets Norma Desmond who was a silent movie star. She learns that Joe is a scriptwrighter and lets him stay and helps him out with his financial difficulties, but Joe is completely dependant on Norma. He occasionally shows discomfort towards Norma’s affection, but he makes no effort to change his situation.
Norma throws a New Years Eve party and Joe finds out hat there are no other guests invited. At this party Norma tells Joe that she is in love with him. He leaves Normas and heads to another party. At this party he meets the woman who said his baseball script was rubbish but likes some of his other scripts. With this news Joe Rings Nomra’s house were max tells Joe that Norma has attempted suicide.
The two seem relatively content as Norma continues preparing for her movie 'comeback'. But Paramount studio only wants to hire Norma's vintage Isotta-Fraschini car for use in a film and has no interest in her script. Max and Joe keep this from her. By now, Max has revealed he was the first of her three husbands, and is a former film director who had discovered her. Joe has secretly begun meeting with Betty to work on a screenplay together, and they fall in love. When Norma discovers this, she phones Betty and insinuates what sort of man Joe really is. Joe returns to the house in time to hear what Norma has said and takes the phone from her. He tells Betty to come to the house, where he explains his side of the situation before turning Betty away.
Joe brushes her aside and begins packing to leave. Norma threatens to shoot herself but he does not take her seriously. As he walks away, she follows and shoots him three times before he falls into the pool, now dead.
Having explained the corpse in the pool, the film returns to the present, where Norma, seated before a mirror in her bedroom, appears to be lost in fantasy
This film has many noir traits within it. The curvy staircase is an icon to noir. As the curvy lines on each of the steps. And most of the shots show someone on the staircase or a close-up of them walking up or sown the staircase. Also the opening and closing scenes when Joe is shown floating face down in the pool with the distorted images of police and reports with cameras is very specific and gives the film its noir feel.
Detour 1945 by Edgar G Ulmer - We were introduced to a man in a bar narrating his thoughts to the audience, about a girl in a broad way show. He travels to California by foot to be with the love of his life, but on his way gets offered a lift by a Mr Haskell, he takes him up on the offer, and begins travelling with him. Mr Haskell begins to feel tired and so they pull over and swap drivers, Al is then driving while Mr Haskell sleeps, when it begins to rain uncontrollably and they are in a car with a convertible top. After carrying on for a while he decides it is too wet to carry on so pulls over to lift on the top. As he try’s to wake Mr Haskell to help him put up the top, he realises something terrible has happened and he is unable to awaken him. He then dumps Mr Haskell in a gutter off the road and steals his identity, by taking his money, clothes, ID and driving away in his expensive car. While in the car with Mr Haskell, Al was told a story about a woman he had once picked up while driving along named Vera whom was very violent and a terrible woman towards Mr Haskell. Now whilst driving along Al sees a vulnerable looking woman waiting for some assistance so offers her a lift as they are going to the same place, after driving with Vera for a few miles, after she has asked him some peculiar questions, he begins to realise this is the same Vera that Mr Haskell had picked up, and that all he could do was tell her the truth about Mr Haskell as she is blackmailing him and threatening to turn him in for murder. He hands over all the money and carries on driving her to California. Once in California they sell his car and rent out an apartment for a night, while discussing what is going to happen next they see in a local newspaper that Mr Haskell was about to come into a large inheritance, at this Vera jumps at the chance for more money and so try’s to persuade Al to impersonate Mr Haskell and get the money. Al strongly disagrees with this and the two don’t talk all evening after a row about this subject. They then get drunk together, and Vera takes Al up on his angry offer to phone the police on him for murder, and doing so locks her drunken self in the bedroom with the phone, in doing so Al pulls the phone lead to get her off and stop her from calling the police, and without realising accidentally strangles her with the phone cord. Once this incident has happened Al has nothing to do but to begin hitching back East and on his way back on the finally of the film we see him get picked up by the police near Reno.
Double Indemnity 1944 Director Billy Wilder - I think that double indemnity is a prime example of film noir. It’s probably in the top 10 most popular film noir’s. So much content in the film screams film noir traits and perfectly defines everything noir stands for;
• Crime
• Murder
• Femme fatales
• Misery
The antagonist who is a salesman named Walter Neff meets the wife of one of his clients and after they have met they have an affair. The plot is to murder his client and him and the cliants wife gain accidental insurance of her husbands death. Walter Neff aims to receive a “double indemnity clause” and get twice the amount of money (hence the title of the film). He succeeds in fooling the police once the woman’s husband is found dead on a railway track. But the insurance company becomes suspicious and believed the death was intentional. This story-line is typical of film noirs as the wife/adulterer is described as “seductive” which is typical of the representation of women in the genre’s era. And the plot line makes the viewer feel misery, like no one wins
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