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All posts by Ayisha A
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Completed Script
Editing work in – progress
This is a series of Screenshots of my editing practise.
Improved Comparative Script
Comparative clips
Deckard is introduced to Rachael by Tyrell
Deckard is confronted by Captain Bryant
This scene shows that Deckard is a tool for the people in power – he is being forced into a situation that he doesn’t want to be involved with because Bryant implicitly threatened him if he did not cooperate and kill the replicants.
Rachael and Deckard love scene
The District attorney interrogates spade
https://www.youtube.com › watch
This scene shows how Spade is hostile to authority and it shows that the people in power are detrimental to Spade’s investigation by trying to get in his way. This is similar to the way that Bryant threatens Deckard in Blade Runner
Femme Fatale
For my third film role , I am a writer and I decided to write a film that was inspired by the classic film noir films – unlike the typical film noir , the main lead in my film will be a beautiful young woman who seemingly conforms to the femme fatale stereotype , but the audience knows that she is a kind person who cares about others and the characters within the film think that she is deceitful due to the mere fact that she is beautiful and they suspect that she killed her grandfather for his money but the audience knows that there was no way that she could have done anything that she was accused of – I have done this in order to demonstrate how demeaning the femme fatale trope is.
I intend to completely subvert the stereotype of the femme fatal , because the characters that fit into this archetype often use their feminine wiles to achieve a hidden purpose but the ‘femme fatal’ in my story does not use her femininity to get what she wants and she does not initially have an agenda and she is actually a kind individual but it is the men who surround her who project their hateful ideas of women onto her and they don’t question them , despite the fact that she is innocent and this links to the idea that the femme fatale is a sexist archetype that turns women into bland, one dimensional characters whose only purpose is to satisfy male onlookers.
Comparative Essay
The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 film noir that was directed by John Huston and it follows a private detective called Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart ) and it follows his attempts to locate the titular Maltese Falcon , he is impeded by several characters , like Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) , who is the stereotypical femme fatal and Joel Cairo ( Peter Lorre) and the main villain of the film , Kasper Gutman (Sidney Greenstreet) – they all want the Falcon for themselves and they all have competing motives for wanting to posses the statue. A major theme in film noir is the duplicity of individuals and this is reflected in the way that all of the principle characters manipulate and double cross each other. Furthermore , Spade’s actions and general demeanor reflect the way that film noir “… created the “tough” a cynical way of acting and thinking which separated one from the world of everyday emotions “(Notes on Film Noir , Schrader) and Spade conforms to the ideals that men were expected to uphold in that time period : he is the epitome of cool and collected and he does not allow his emotions to get in the way of any of his decisions , and this is clearly demonstrated when he gives Brigid O’Shaughnessy up to the police at the end of the film.
The historical contexts that The Maltese Falcon and Blade Runner were made in were completely different – The Maltese Falcon was released in 1941 , at the beginning of the Second World War and this influenced the way that the characters in the film were presented , the characters are shown to have duality and things are not as they seem. This chaos reflects the feelings of confusion and disillusionment that was felt by many Americans at the outbreak of the Second World War. On the other hand , Blade Runner was made in 1982 , near the end of the Cold War and it is set in a distopian world where nature has been completely destroyed and this is a reflection with America’s preoccupation with the fear of nuclear war and the deeply held anxiety that it inspired. Both of the films are about social fears that the American people had at that particular point in time.
Blade Runner (1982 , directed by Ridley Scott) is similar to The Maltese Falcon in many respects – it is part of the Neo – Noir movement that rose to prominence in the 1970’s and 1980’s and this movement involved films that payed homage to the classic film noir movement of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Firstly , both Sam Spade and Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) have a cynical outlook on the world and they both quit the police force in disgust due to the corrupt elements in the force – and both characters communicate their thoughts to us through the means of an internal monologue that takes the form of a voice over and “the narration creates a mood of temps perdu : an irretrievable past , a predetermined fate and an all – enveloping hopelessness”(Notes On Film Noir, Schrader) and this also gives us a special insight into what the characters are actually thinking and at times this technique creates a disconnect between what the protagonists are thinking and what they are doing – this is particularly evident in the scene where Deckard first sits down with Bryant ( who is a sleazy and underhanded police officer – this is a reference to the archetypes of film noir) , the police chief , his face is outwardly passive but his interior monologue tells the audience in no uncertain terms , that he holds nothing but contempt for him.
In The Maltese Falcon, Brigid O’Shaughnessy fits squarely into the archetype of the femme fatal , who is a woman who uses her beauty and feminine wiles in order to achieve a hidden goal – this is often done at the expense of the male protagonist and in The Maltese Falcon , she uses her sexual allure in order to manipulate Spade so that she can achieve her own goals , this is seen when she blatantly lies to Spade about her motives in order to get her to help him – she wants The Falcon for herself and her motivations are purely self – serving , according to Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey , the femme fatal fits into the archetype of ‘Woman As Temptress” as she tries to tempt Spade away from his goal but in film noir the femme fatale often leads men to their destruction.
Furthermore , Rachael (Sean Young) is initially the archetypal femme fatale , but unlike Brigid O’Shaughnessy in the Maltese Falcon , she turns out to be a good person and she is not the villain in this instance but we do not know that fact initially and in classical film noir , the true motivations of the characters are not immediately obvious and the fact that Scott decided to make Rachael a heroine instead of a villain is a subtle subversion of the trope of the femme fatale – instead of being evil , she is an individual who needs to be protected instead of a villain who needs to be stopped.
In addition , one of the biggest things that differentiates Blade Runner from The Maltese Falcon , if the fact that Blade Runner is a genre hybrid between sci – fi and neo – noir and Steve Neale says that all genres “contain instances of repetition and difference, difference is essential to the to the economy of the genre.” and we have an example of this in the way that Blade Runner cleverly combines the standard plot of a film noir film with high – concept science fiction and this creates something new that the audience wouldn’t expect and this helps to engage the audience with the film. On the other hand , The Maltese Falcon was made by Warner Brothers and it was a studio film that was mass – produced and this film was not unique at the time and it was released at the point that film noir was at its peak of popularity with audiences – it was considered to be cliched by the standards of the time , while Blade Runner takes the old film noir aesthetic and places it into a new context.
Theorist bibliography
Notes on Film noir – Paul Schrader
Mass Culture Modernism : Guilt and subjectivity in film noir – Fluck and Winfred
Crime , guilt and subjectivity in film noir – Fluck
Does film noir mirror the culture of contemporary America ? – Lise Hordnes
Does Film Noir mirror the culture of contemporary America – Lise Hordnes
The “Bad Girl” Turned Feminist: The Femme Fatale and the Performance of Theory – Michelle Mercure
Noir and the urban imagery – Sean Maher
Blade Runner and genre hybridity
Blade Runner is a hybrid between the Neo – noir genre and the science fiction genre – the film combines many of the recognizable tropes that are associated with the film noir style with a original sci – fi concept and this is an example of genre hybridity which is the combination of two established genres in order to create something entirely new and this makes the film more interesting than if it was just from one
This Genre hybridity is one of the factors that helps to make Blade Runner such an interesting film – the high concept sci – fi creates an ethical grey area which perfectly plays into the conventions of film noir , the replicants are robot slaves that Deckard has to kill , but when he falls in love with Rachael , his job becomes more complicated ,as he develops feelings for Rachael and this is the catalyst for the main ethical dilemma of the film. Additionally , Rachael conforms to the film noir archetype of the femme fatal , her motives are mysterious and the fact that she is a replicant is hidden from her , however the trope of the femme fatal is subverted when Rachael turns out to be a good person and the femme fatal is usually the villain and this is an example of how genre hybridization can lead to new and interesting takes on popular genres.
Notes on Film Noir quotations
Post – war disillusionment
“The disillusionment many soldiers , small businessmen and housewife/ factory employees felt in returning to a peacetime economy was directly mirrored in the sordidness of urban crime film”
The hardboiled tradition
“… created the “tough” a cynical way of acting and thinking which separated one from the world of everyday emotions – romanticism with a protective shell”
“when the movies of the Forties turned to the American “tough” moral understrata , the hardboiled school was writing with preset conventions”.
Noir conventions
“The majority of the scenes are lit for night. Gangsters sit in the offices at midday with the shade pulled and the lights off”
“in film noir , the central character is likely to be standing in the shadow”
“it , of course creates a fatalistic , hopeless mood”
“the rainfall tends to increase in direct proportion to the drama
“there is a love of romantic narration”
“the narration creates a mood of temps perdu : an irretrievable past , a predetermined fate and an all – enveloping hopelessness”
“it is obvious there is no hope for any future : one can only take pleasure in reliving a doomed past”
“A typical film noir would rather move the scene cinematographically around the actor than have the actor control the scene by physical action”
Themes of film noir
“the private eye had quit the police force in disgust”
“the over – riding noir theme : a passion for the past of present , but also a fear of the future”
“Thus film noir’s techniques emphasize loss nostalgia , lack of clear priorities”