The Maltese Falcon (1941)
This Film noir is a detective mystery starring Humphrey Bogart as a private investigator and Mary Astor as the femme fatal. It is a very dark film using moments of confusion, romance and even thriller. The narrative is set in the urban surroundings of San Francisco and features the stereotypical characters such as corrupt, deceitful villains and independent, hard-hitting heroes. The narrative is as followed, Bogart is competing against three murderers for the jewel encrusted statue of a falcon. This is a low budget movie filmed for Warner Brothers; it was originally a novel written in 1929, of the same name, by Dashiell Hammett., at first the film was called “The Gent from Frisco”. The film uses low key lighting and interesting camera angles (dutch tilt and low angle shots to make the character appear larger and highlight their actions).
This Film noir is a detective mystery starring Humphrey Bogart as a private investigator and Mary Astor as the femme fatal. It is a very dark film using moments of confusion, romance and even thriller. The narrative is set in the urban surroundings of San Francisco and features the stereotypical characters such as corrupt, deceitful villains and independent, hard-hitting heroes. The narrative is as followed, Bogart is competing against three murderers for the jewel encrusted statue of a falcon. This is a low budget movie filmed for Warner Brothers; it was originally a novel written in 1929, of the same name, by Dashiell Hammett., at first the film was called “The Gent from Frisco”. The film uses low key lighting and interesting camera angles (dutch tilt and low angle shots to make the character appear larger and highlight their actions).
Sunset Blvd. (1950)This classic film noir is directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, it is set in America and shows the darker side of Hollywood, the emptiness, the self deceit, greed and all for the price of fame. The film is narrated by a dead man in Beverly Hills. The story is set in the 1950s, the main character Norma, a silent screen actress, she lives in a mansion in Sunset Boulevard which is falling apart, she wants to go back to working as an actress but the film ends with her murder. It uses classic noir cinematography, such as being filmed in black and white, using intriguing camera angles and shots, for example, in some scenes the director sprinkled dust in front of the camera to give it a look of mustiness.
Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)
This is a Film noir thriller, starring Peter Lorre and co-written by Nathaniel West, it was a small B movie that was largely unnoticed and only discovered in the 1970s, it was claimed to be the very first Film noir. The narrative is about a reporter called Ward, who is a key witness in a murder trial; he claims he saw the accused men standing over the body. However he starts to become doubtful and is haunted by whether he really did see this, soon after his neighbour is killed in the same way as the first murder yet Ward gets arrested. “Stranger on the third floor” uses low contrast lighting and low level angles to emphasis on the actors. It uses deep shadows, voiceovers and flashbacks.
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