1. In the documentary titled American Cinema: Film Noir, Abraham Polonsky describes what occurs when the mood of a film, the story and the actors reflect in their portrayal a "sense of jeopardy in life". When this sense of danger and desperation in life is expressed in film noir, "then it is a correct representation of anxiety cause by the system". Polonsky states that this is a characteristic of all film noir.
In Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958), the demeanor and actions of the police captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) represents anxiety caused by the system, in this case the justice system. Quinlan often feels the need to be police officer, detective, and justice all in one-- and through backstory we find that he often plants evidence to frame who he believes is guilty, even if they turn out to be not the one who committed the crime. Still, Quinlan finds them guilty in his own gut, and that's enough for him. His line of work is stressful, and has become a "crocked cop" due to horrific life experiences. He is a quintessential film noir character, dealing with the hardships of everyday life and surviving the only way he knows how: dangerously.
2. The "femme fatale" in film noir is presented as not only a temptress of men but also a threat to them. A powerful, self-assured woman endangers male dominance and control of situations, and leaves them at the whim of the female. Scholar Janey Place describes the femme fatale persona as being "very smart, powerful, and extremely sexual. She uses her sexuality to get what she's after, and what she's after is not the man-- he's just another tool. What she's after is something for herself."
Dorothy Vallen (Isabella Rossellini) from David Lynch's 1986 Blue Velvet best embodies the femme fatale characteristics. Dorothy's allure appeals to not only psychotic gangster Frank Booth (Denis Hopper) but also college student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan). While she is shown as a submissive character to Frank Booth's antics, ultimately she is one who does what is necessary in order to achieve her goal: to get her husband back and most importantly, her son.
3. The cynical type of narrative in film noir distinctly defines the genre, but what is essentially noir comes from the cinematography and art direction. Noir photography accentuates the light and shadow contrasts and utilizes deep focus to gain a large depth of field, in turn allowing for all grounds in the composition to be in focus. Location, props, and costume design is often consistently defined in film noir. Nightlife in large urban cities, dark alley ways, guns, cigarettes, and classic 1940's garb are just some of the many ways one can describe the style.
The location in Touch of Evil is meant to represent a border-town, on the edge of the US and Mexico (actual location: Venice Beach, California). Lawless and corrupt, the border-town captures the sense of grittiness that all film noir expresses. The photography is conventional film noir, utilizing deep focus, plenty of low angles, high angles, and dutch angles as a form of showing sharp contrasts. The black-and-white aspect of the film lends assistance to emphasizing the light and shadows within the shot. Harsh back-light and shadows enclosing the actor's face symbolizes the sense of dread or danger of the character, while light represents the innocence or hope of another.
4. Neo-noir is a modern style of filmmaking, utilizing elements of classic film noir but using updated media, themes and styles that express ideas of our modern times. Beginning to take form in the 1970's and still being produced today, neo-noir works with the social problems of the last quarter of the 20th century into the 21st century. Within this historical context many things have changed, from the medical field to crime to technology. As did classic film noir, its newer cousin dramatizes real life misfortunes and struggles in the most raw and simplistic way.
Blue Velvet is considered a neo-noir film, as it upholds similar noir photography and themes, however the differences between this film and classic film noir is recognizable. The location in Blue Velvet is represented by suburban America (actual location: Wilmington, North Carolina)-- white picket fences, cookie-cutter housing, green lawns and smiling two-dimensional characters represent the appearance that all if uniform and life is good. Underneath the surface however we see that life is not all good, with the extreme close up to the grass, Lynch reveals a swarm of bugs, representing the underlying social problems of the town, and possibly a commentary of the real-life problems of the time.
The movie also differed by its use of color photography-- the archetypal style being black-and-white. A negative effect of this choice was that by using color film, lights and shadows became less pronounced and more able to be neutralized. However, Lynch was able to utilize color in a way that classic film noir was unable to. In deep focus shots like in the introduction sequence, every inch of the lawn and street were brightly illuminated by color. The bold red of the flowers along the white picket fence underneath the bright blue sky drew the eye towards them to gaze in their beauty. To compensate for the loss of black-and-white's high contrast of light and shadow, Lynch used color in place of it. Chiaroscuro became defined by colors-- warm hues represented softness and comfort, while cold hues worked as the shadows by representing danger or sadness. In the scene where Dorothy is at the club singing "Blue Velvet", deep blue spotlights define her silhouette, smothering her like a blanket of sadness, as a harsh shadow would for a perilous character in classic film noir.
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