Overpowering the Voiceover: Female Subjectivity and Sound in Klute

Some critics have called Alan J. Pakula’s neo-noir Klute (1971) progressive and radical in its positive depiction of an independent, sexually liberated woman; others have argued that the construction of the female character is no different than that found in classic noir, and that Klute actually operates in a profoundly anti-feminist way. This essay seeks to explore the reasons behind these diverging interpretations, locating the source of the difficulty in assessing the main female character’s power over the narrative in the disjunctive relationship between sound and image in the film. In marked contrast to the classic noir cycle, in Klute the story is filtered through the subjectivity of the female character, who poses a distinctive challenge to the patriarchal order and the foundation of the heterosexual couple. At the same time, there is a disconnect between the words she speaks in voiceover and the actions we see unfold onscreen that actively works to undermine her point of view. It becomes increasingly difficult, then, to say with any certainty whether the film’s central female protagonist can be considered an active subject or a passive object presented for the male gaze. 

High School Confidential

Roger Ebert opens his review of Rian Johnson’s debut feature Brick (2005) with the following quote from Elaine May’s A New Leaf: “You have preserved in your own lifetime, sir, a way of life that was dead before you were born.” The line is more than appropriate, considering Brick is, in a surprisingly straightfaced manner, carrying on in its own lifetime a style of film that was dead long before it was born. At the same time, the depth of feeling and sincerity that runs through the film makes it seem utterly, breathlessly alive. In part nostalgic for a time and a style long passed, in part playing with and updating the conventions of the classic noir, Johnson’s film transposes the snaking plots and sneaky moods of gritty detective fiction to a contemporary high school—90210 goes noir, or what we would imagine a David Lynch or Coen brothers reimagining of Heathers might look like.

The movie, which hums with constant menace and sparks with hipster slang, was awarded the Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision in 2005—and, whether or not you can take its premise seriously, there is no denying it is a work of originality and vision. Brick is an intriguing experiment in determination that unashamedly demands your attention, “one of those movies than seems not made but born—a small masterpiece that’s perfectly strange and strangely perfect” (Patterson). The combination is surprising, but what is even more surprising is the extent to which it works. The question begs to be raised, why is the Hammet-Chandler school so readily compatible with actual school?

Dark Streets, Dangerous Women and Knights in Dirty Armor: Frank Miller’s “Sin City” and the Conventions of Noir

“The air cools. The sounds change. The suits and brief-cases scurry to their fortresses and bolt their doors and balance their checkbooks and ignore the screams and try not to think about who really owns Sin City.”

                                                                                                                                            —Sin City Volume I: The Hard Goodbye

Sin City, its creator has said, is not a place but a state of mind (Booker 161). Eager to do comic books about crime, “about tough guys in mean cities,” in 1991 artist Frank Miller created the first story of the Sin City series, initially released in thirteen parts in Dark Horse Presents (Harvey 259). The story was retitled The Hard Goodbye, released as a graphic novel and followed by five more “yarns,” sordid tales of urban violence set in a climate of complete moral corruption. Influenced by Hammett, Chandler, Spillane, Jim Thompson and “long nights of living alone in Manhattan and discovering the black-and-white movies,” Miller’s illustrations drew their inspiration from outside the traditional confines of the comic book subculture (MacDonald 42, Gabillet 104). Sin City featured gritty black-and-white stylized graphics, over-the-top, hard-case crime retro dialogue, hardcore ultraviolence; it became an exercise in the celebration of film noir culture, one that is particularly extreme, violent and brutal, even by the genre’s standards. Steeped in darkness both physical and psychological, the style, characters, setting, themes, and tone of the graphic novel series, particularly the first four volumes (The Hard Goodbye, A Dame to Kill For, The Big Fat Kill and That Yellow Bastard) are undeniably indebted to film noir.  At the same time, Sin City self-consciously draws attention to the conventions of noir either by reducing or amplifying them, effectively critiquing its own narrative forms while remaining entirely within the rules of the genre.

The Counselor (2013)

The Counselor, Cormac McCarthy’s much-anticipated screen-writing debut paints an elusive, eccentric, exquisitely rendered picture of poetic pain. Filled with bizarre, bone-grinding violence, twisted characters, confusion and moral compromise, Ridley Scott’s movie becomes a sodden, sordid cautionary tale of good and—mostly—evil. If you were looking forward to the crime thriller—more Tony than Ridley—the film’s trailer seems bent on promoting, The Counselor is not it.

Michael Fassbender heads a burning hot all-star cast, all outshined, hover, by the pulpy, lyrical, hardboiled and hell-bound script, a foray into the mesmerizing and merciless milieu of corrosive drug trade on the American-Mexican border—a barrier as moral as it is geographical for much of American fiction. McCarthy and Scott enter a closed, dangerous, elite world, devoid of any ordinary people to act as gateways or guides for the audience or to remind us of a reality beyond the brutal one of the cartel.

Casablanca (1942) Analysis

The classic wartime romantic melodrama Casablanca has been tested by time and passes with flying colors. An accidental success of the studio system assembly line, it carries as much weight today, if not more, as it did in 1942. Its poignant and stirring love story is timeless and eternal. The rich and smoky atmosphere and chiaroscuro lighting, the lush black and white cinematography, and main themes of loss, honor, self-sacrifice and redemption in a chaotic world perfectly reflected the dark and pessimistic WWII social climate, and are still perfect seventy years later.

Rick Blaine’s (the unimitable Humphrey Bogart) tough, cynical, and efficient exterior is an imperfect armor, barely covering the core of sentiment and idealism. His ultimate sacrifice in the service of something greater than himself is instantly appealing. He becomes a true romantic hero worthy of the other characters’ and the audience’s admiration. The emotional effect on viewers warming in the glow of Rick’s gallant heroism is the thought that perhaps we too could achieve greatness through great sacrifice. The film’s ending is not happy, but it is hopeful. True love does not conquer all. It does, however, elevate its characters to higher levels of humanity. And this stands at the core of Casablanca, distinguishing it from the majority of noir films that chronicle the dark side of human nature, basking in their own deep shadows of gloom and disenchantment. The movie dares to rise above the dark atmosphere of the war years, demonstrating that nobility and honor are still alive and well, and run a café in the unoccupied French province of Morocco.

***This is a short analysis of the film. It contains spoilers.

Sex, Shadows, and Sin on Celluloid: The Femme Fatale and Silent Vamp as Threats to the Social Order

“The dark lady, the spider woman, the evil seductress who tempts man and brings about his destruction is among the oldest themes of art, literature, and mythology in Western culture. She is as old as Eve, and as current as today’s movies…” (Place 35). It is the movies that have given us some of the most memorable images of these women, modern Circes who trap men, use and ultimately destroy them. The beautiful and treacherous woman of classic film noir, the femme fatale, and the equally dangerous and deadly silent vamps are creations of threatened men’s imaginations; they are fantasies of destructive female sexuality as seen through male eyes, but they also become figures of female empowerment. They are strong, independent, self-serving and deceptive women removed from their “proper place” and submissive role in a patriarchal society, and thus challenge the social order. But while the silent film seductress, played most famously by Theda Bara, was a type, her cinematic descendant, the femme fatale, developed a fuller, sometimes ambivalent, more clearly drawn and individualistic personality. The women of films like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice or The Lady from Shanghai were not caricatures of male fear projected unto the collective consciousness of the screen like the vamps, but fully blown, empowered women.

The Big Sleep (1946) Analysis

Howard Hawks’ classic The Big Sleep, written by Leigh Brackett, might not have a regular femme fatale, but the women in it, all of them different, complex, and absolutely fascinating, more than make up for it. A film about process more than results, it chronicles private eye Philip Marlowe’s journey into the heart of crime, gambling, murder, and blackmail often masked by genteel manners in the world of rich urbanites. Although we have little more of an idea of what just happened and who killed whom and why at the end than we did in the beginning, the movie is a pleasure to watch, a black and white symphony conducted in the rich and smoky atmosphere of the post-WWII noir. With its moody, expressionistic chiaroscuro lighting, long and heavy shadows cast by the ubiquitous Venetian blinds, its classic, hardboiled romantic hero and the shady, powerful, beautiful women around him, The Big Sleep submerges us into darkness but, surprisingly, helps us see the light as well. While Bogart gave up everything in Casablanca for the greater good, here he might be even braver; instead of seeking redemption in a corrupt, chaotic world through self-sacrifice, he finds redemption and stability in an adult relationship of equals with the woman he loves.

***Spoilers ahead (although I can't really give away the plot; like both the film's director and writer, I have no idea what the solution to the murders is)! This is an analysis of Vivian's character as a noir woman and her relationship with Bogart's Marlowe.
 

"I Can’t Remember to Forget You": The Nolan Brothers’ “Memento Mori” and Memento

Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment. This moment a million times over. You have to trust me. If this moment is repeated enough, if you keep trying—and you have to keep trying—eventually you will come across the next item on your list.                      – Jonathan Nolan, “Memento Mori”

Jonathan Nolan’s short story “Memento Mori,” published in Esquire in 2001, and Christopher Nolan’s Memento, released in 2000, blend a black, jagged sense of humor with sobering thematic meditations on time, memory, knowledge, and grief. Focusing on a man suffering from short term memory loss, or anterograde amnesia, they present a character adrift in space, time, and experience, whose life is a waking kaleidoscopic nightmare of conflicting details, an endless repetition of first encounters and first impressions. He describes it as waking up, experiencing the same confusion and disorientation we all do when we get out of bed in the morning, but for him it happens roughly every ten minutes. While “Memento Mori” is all internal, capturing Earl’s setting, thoughts and actions without the introduction of any other characters or dialogue, the movie Memento, an aggressively nonlinear riddle tangled up in a dizzying, elegant spiral structure that moves backwards, forwards, and sideways, sometimes at the same time, takes the basic idea of the story and develops it into a feature length film, expanding and changing it to fit the requirements of the medium while maintaining the same darkly comic tone and general idea and backstory.

***This is a comparative essay and it contains spoilers.

Blonde Venus (1932) Analysis

 
Josef von Sternberg’s Blonde Venus, released in 1932, was decidedly of the pre-code sensibility. Starring the incomparable, irrepressible, incandescent Marlene Dietrich, a sex goddess of elusive and earthly beauty and sensuality, the film, already compromising in its family-upholding ending, would have been impossible to make only a year later. The title refers to main character Helen Faraday, a strong, independent, sexual and sexualized woman torn between her family and her career. The use of her stage name suggests the importance of her image, her façade, beneath which lies an enigma. Helen’s transformation throughout the movie is effortlessly expressed through the visuals; the shot selection, editing, lighting, costuming, and the position of the actors within the frame help reflect as well as create the changes in her role and identity. Helen’s choice is not between the two men in her life, but between her child and her independence, two sides of herself that stand in opposition, manifestations of her fundamental natures as mother and professional woman.

***This is an analysis, not a review, and it contains spoilers