Sound in REAR WINDOW

The relationship between sound and film has been developed since 1929 into one of the most complex parts of filmmaking. Alfred Hitchcock, as one of the few directors to have worked in both silent and talking pictures, used sound in a variety of unique ways. In Rear Window he tells a murder mystery and a love story where both the suspense of the narrative and the point of view of the film rely on sound.

The music at the start of the film is a seemingly non-diagetic jazz beat. Looking around the courtyard reveals the setting and showing J.B. Jefferies asleep at the window reveals the main character. The jazz song ends and a radio advertisement begins. By looking into the musician’s apartment to the right the music is revealed to be playing over a radio. The musician tunes into a different station and a new song continues. The music that introduced the audience to the film turned out to be a diagetic part of the setting. This reversal of the first impression shows the audience that its point of view for this film is going to be very realistic. Throughout the film the point of view is completely limited to the apartment and the view from its window, and all the sounds occur in the reality of the story.

Another early scene is Jefferies talking to his editor over the phone. While he talks Jefferies watches and listens to his neighbors’ conflicts. Miss Torso is dancing around as she makes breakfast with her radio loud enough for Jefferies and the audience to listen from across the courtyard. The Sculptress who lives below Miss Torso angrily increases the volume on the radio she has hanging around her neck. Then the musician, attempting to write an original song, gets up from his piano to see what all the noise is. No one asks anyone else to turn down the music, each person sticks to himself or herself, but there is conflict being developed. When the owner of the strangled dog says to the courtyard, “You don’t know the meaning of the word neighbor. Neighbors like each other, speak to each other, care if anybody lives or dies,” she is putting into words what the audience already understands: these neighbors affect each other, but they don’t take notice of it.

The love story side of the film is alluded to during Jefferies’ first conversation with Stella, but Lisa Freemont doesn’t enter the picture until the following scene. At sunset the sounds through the window are traffic congestion, children playing, and a singer practicing scales. Behind the singer’s voice is the musician’s piano with an early version of “Lisa,” the song that will become the score for the film. Lisa approaches Jefferies and from her entrance to the slow-motion kiss the sounds fade away. Hitchcock is queuing the audience to its point of view and to the state of the film’s key relationship. Jefferies is not paying attention to the outside world when Lisa arrives, so the audience’s point of view follows his. The “Lisa” song becomes a reflection of their relationship. Jefferies is hesitant about marriage and the song is still unfinished.

LISA

It’s enchanting. It’s almost as if it were being written especially for us.

JEFFERIES

No wonder he’s having so much trouble with it.

Music reflecting a character’s relationship is not limited in this film to Lisa and Jefferies. When Lisa goes into the kitchen to prepare their delivered dinner Jefferies looks out to the apartment of Miss Lonely-hearts. She is preparing her dinner for two for one and has a melancholy Sinatra song playing. Jefferies looks up to the Thorwald’s apartment and again the sound reflects their relationship. Sinatra fades and instead of music foghorns and police sirens back up their argument. The selection of music and sounds explains both Miss Lonely-hearts and the volatile situation in the apartment above without any dialogue.

Following Lisa’s departure Jefferies spends most of the night watching his neighbors. All is quiet when there is a car horn, a woman’s scream, and the smash of glass. Jefferies glances around, but can’t see anything. A series of fades jump through the night. It starts to rain, and the sound drowns out any other noise from the neighbors’ apartments. Jefferies sees Thorwald come and go more than once, but doesn’t see him leave with a woman early in the morning. Throughout this sequence the rain remains constant and unbiased. As a sound effect it doesn’t alter the point of view like the music or police sirens, and since this is the night that will be debated throughout the rest of the film it is best kept neutral. Without any leading sounds and by showing both what Jefferies sees and what he doesn’t the scene doesn’t betray the suspense of the film’s murder mystery plot and leaves the audience to decide on a meaning.

The next night Lisa is over, but Jefferies can’t keep his mind off of the mystery. The song in the background is their song, but the musician is playing it in a lower key with deeper tones and slower chords, as their relationship seems to be breaking apart. Lisa is ready to walk out when she sees Thorwald packing up the bedroom, which convinces her to stay and look deeper.

When Jefferies calls his police friend Tom Doyle to the apartment the next day he expects Doyle to believe him as easily as Lisa did, but Doyle is skeptical and happy to prove Jefferies wrong. Throughout their conversation Jefferies raises points and Doyle shoots them down. In the background a piece of circus music fades in. Like something that would come from a merry-go-round or an ice cream truck the music agrees with how Doyle sees the situation.

LISA

There’s that song again. Where does a man get inspiration to write a song like that?

JEFFERIES

Well, he gets it from the landlady once a month.

The “Lisa” song returns when Lisa comes over the next night. The musician is hosting a party and showing off what he has written. After Lisa arrives Tom Doyle returns. He is slightly more interested in the situation, but after a drink he gets a phone call that confirms Mrs. Thorwald is alive. He politely leaves. With Doyle gone the conversation quiets enough for the musician’s party to be heard again. The guests are all drunk and laughing but the musician is drunk and standing alone. Reflecting how disappointed Lisa and Jefferies are the sounds of the party mock them as they finally consider the ethical consequences of their actions.

The next night is the final confrontation. Lisa and Stella are with Jefferies when they realize something may be buried in the flowerbed. Jefferies writes a note and Lisa goes to deliver it. When Lisa is in the opposite building the musician is practicing with his band. They are playing an upbeat Jazz tune similar to the song at the beginning of the film. The similar styles of music, which bookend the film, queue the audience that this is the final scene. The music also runs contrary to the suspense of the scene. Jefferies has no way to contact Lisa as she is nearly caught by Thorwald when she leaves the note, but the music remains cheerful and quick throughout.

With a phone call Jefferies manages to get Thorwald out of his apartment. Lisa and Stella head into the courtyard to dig up the flowerbed. When they find nothing Lisa heads into Thorwald's apartment. At this moment the two sides of the film, the love story and the murder mystery, converge. Lisa is in the apartment waiting for a phone call to warn her if Thorwald is coming. The musician says to his band “Ok, guys, let’s try this once from the beginning,” just as Stella, Jefferies and the audience see Miss Lonely-hearts pick up the pills and water. Jefferies has to call the police for Miss Lonely-hearts, so he can’t call Lisa to warn her. The song that the band is now playing in its entirety is “Lisa.” At this moment Jefferies does love Lisa, and so the full and complete song reflects that. The song had previously only played for the love story, but now Lisa is in trouble and the song is playing. The love story is pushed into the murder mystery and all the elements of the film converge with them.

The police arrive for Miss Lonely-hearts, but hear Lisa scream for help. They get to the apartment in time to save and arrest her. Lisa, knowing Jefferies is watching, shows him Mrs. Thorwald’s wedding ring, but Mr. Thorwald sees. He looks up. Throughout the film the audience has been rooted in a realistic point of view by not being shown any image or sound that someone in the apartment wouldn’t. The moment when Thorwald looks directly at the audience is shocking because of this conditioning. It is as if Thorwald is looking at them and not just Jefferies.

The buildup with Lisa in the apartment seemed like the climax, but the police, Lisa and Stella all leave the scene. Jefferies is alone and suddenly he can’t see Thorwald, and he didn’t see him leave. Again the conditioning to see everything from Jefferies’ point of view creates suspense. After the commotion of Lisa’s arrest the musicians stopped playing. The situation Jefferies is in gets no background music to distract from the pounding of Thorwald’s footsteps up the stairs and down the hall. Thorwald enters the apartment and Jefferies stops him with a flash bulb. The crack of the bulb, Jefferies frantically replacing it and Thorwald stepping closer increase tension as one sound follows another in a rhythm.

The rhythm of the flashbulb scene contrasts wildly with the final fight. Thorwald grabs Jefferies and pulls him out of his chair. Fast cuts to people outside the apartment break the point of view that has been developed. Fast shots of Thorwald pushing Jefferies toward the window and people running to watch are inter-cut with close-ups and wide shots. Throughout this tension there is no music, and almost no sound except Jefferies’ panicking breath and Thorwald’s grunts. The point of view is brought back to Jefferies and he falls to the courtyard below. A woman screams and then the fast cutting ends. Jefferies is alive and looking into Lisa’s eyes. The final conflict of the murder mystery ties up with the final resolution of the love story. The scene in most films would have a heart-pounding soundtrack, but keeping to his completely diagetic score Hitchcock created a nearly silent final confrontation.

The film’s resolution paints a quick picture of the future Lisa and Jefferies will have together. He sleeps in two casts while she reads a travel book before switching to a fashion magazine. In the background is the finished record of “Lisa.” The mystery is solved, their relationship has progressed, and the song has been written. The story is done and Hitchcock, as the storyteller, makes a quick exit.

TOM DOYLE

(Talking about the buried evidence)

Wanna look?

STELLA

No thanks; I don’t want any part of it.

RAGING BULL

The editing style of Raging Bull, like its cinematography and narrative, uses discontinuity and rapid changes in pace and point of view. The leapfrog narrative drops large segments of time to condense twenty years into two hours, and the editing of the fights reflects that same structure. Jake bullies his way through life, jumping from one fight to the next, and the editing bullies through the plot.

The six fights that are shown in full are Jake versus Reeves, Robinson twice, Janiro, Fox, and then a final fight with Robinson. The first fight is very straightforward, with little or no change in continuity or pace. When Jake loses by technical knockout a riot ensues, and the discontinuity that will be used in other fights comes in. The camera follows a chair flying through the air, but with a pure black background it is impossible to know where it is going until it crashes down in the ring. The camera jumps between Jake, a woman being trampled, Reeves being carried off, the announcer starting the music, the piano player with the ring in the distance behind her, and someone being tossed into the crowd. It’s ended by a sudden cut to Jake’s home.

The next fight is against Sugar Ray Robinson. Fast cuts to close reaction shots break up a master shot which tracks the fighters from right to left and then back across the ring. This tennis match back and forth is rhythmically matched to the pounding of the fighter’s fists. The scene builds until the bell and then they back off. Jake is in slow motion in his corner, and then he rounds the edge approaching Robinson at regular speed. The two collide and the fast pounding continues. The slow build up to a furious attack adds to the rhythm of the fight.

The third fight is against Robinson again, but between the two is a three-week gap. The only scene from those three weeks shown is the intimate bedroom scene where Vickie kisses his bruises. This pause between fights stands out because it runs at such a different pace. Tension is built because of the adrenaline rush of the first fight and the suspense leading up to the next. After their conversation Jake closes the door and the film cuts to the fight.

The camera is zoomed in to the fighters, so the black background leaves no stationary objects for them to be moving in relation to. Disorienting the action in this way matches the alternating pace to rebuild the adrenaline of the previous fight. When Robinson goes down the scene leaps forward with a jolt, interrupted by camera flashes, and then Robinson rises slowly. The ballet-like movements continue until the announcement at the end of the fight that Robinson is the winner. This is followed by a sudden cut to Joey smashing a chair in frustration.

Each of the fights is followed by a sudden cut to a very different scene, usually in the locker room after the fight. Sometimes the scene is quiet like Jake’s apartment or house, or it is jolting like Joey breaking the chair. After Jake beats Janiro to a pulp the scene is Jake in the steam room. All sense of setting is lost, it is just Jake in smoke, until his trainer enters and Jake asks for water. After Jake loses to Fox by technical knockout there is a sudden cut to him crying. Each scene matches the fight that preceded it with Jake’s character being revealed through the Kuleshov effect.

The point of view of Raging Bull changes slowly like the pacing in one of the fights. During the fight scenes and immediately after, the POV is very close to Jake. As the energy of the fights wear off the film backs away to see Jake in a more objective light. After he loses the title in his final fight with Robinson the POV moves further back from Jake until the final scene. There the camera is stationary, watching the overweight, broken man recite a scene from On the Waterfront.

The editing in Raging Bull works with the cinematography to carefully guide the audience through the darker parts of Jake La Motta’s personality and career. It uses uneven pacing and discontinuity to tell the story of a man with violent mood swings and a fractured life. The result is a film that is not watched, but instead it is experienced.

REAR WINDOW: Microcosms

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is among a rare type of film that devotes its entire running time to a single location. Two other examples are Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat and Sydney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men. As with both of those films, Rear Window creates microcosms – miniature representations of larger ideas – with its various supporting characters. If any one of these secondary characters were made the lead protagonist of a feature film they would seem cliché. However, since they are only given small parts in the films they become archetypes, or microcosms representing larger sections of humanity.

J.B. Jefferies looks into eight windows from his apartment. By looking into them one at a time and checking back at certain moments the audiences learns the basics of these people’s lives. Out the left side of Jefferies’ view are the newlyweds, a young couple caught up in the romance of marriage, who are the only ones to close their window during the summer heat. Kept out of sight their relationship is barely noticed except by its absence. When Jefferies is asked about the window he simply says, “No comment.” This couple is a representation of so many others like them. They are people who believe so blindly in their situation that they don’t think any problems can affect them. This couple, like most in the real world, end up fighting because reality always slips in.

Continuing to the right, after a narrow alley, is a two-story building with two tenants. On the ground is a sculptress who owns a cat. She is seen either reading on her lawn chair or carving abstract clay statues. A stereotype that has developed – whether true or not – is that artists are solitary. This woman represents part of that image very naturally. Although she doesn’t actively shut people out the only time she is seen talking to someone else is when she warns her neighbor’s dog to get out of the flowerbed. She also never complains to the woman above her, Miss Torso, who spends large amounts of time bounding around the apartment in her underwear. This would make lots of noise for the sculptress below, but the topic is never breached.

Miss Torso seems one-dimensional for most of the film. She dances, she hosts three men at once, and she doesn’t seem to be trying to improve her life in any way. The final reveal that adds complexity to her character is when her husband, a glasses-wearing army private, arrives home and she is overjoyed to see him. This effectively jolts the audience and sums up one of the moral lessons of the film, which is don’t judge a book by its cover.

Next to the short building is a four-story apartment. From top to bottom there are four archetype characters: two career girls who sunbath on the roof, a couple who own a dog, a salesman with an unhappy marriage, and a love-sick woman that Jefferies calls Miss Lonelyheart. These four sum up most people’s love lives. The career girls seem to avoid it to focus on a modeling career (in the first pan around the yard a flashbulb can be seen in their window). The couple below them has a happy and long-term marriage, which contrasts to the newlyweds and the couple below. The salesman, it turns out, killed his nagging wife. Although this isn’t the regular outcome for an unhappy marriage there is a very high rate of divorce around the world. Finally Miss Lonelyheart is the perfect representation of the rest of the population. She is love sick and shy, two opposing personality traits that ironically go hand-in-hand.

The last window seen with regularity is the studio apartment, owned by the songwriter. Another artist, he represents the type who celebrates his talents publicly, as with the large party he hosts half way through the film. Unlike the sculptress he often has people over, but when he is alone he is violent and frustrated by his inability to live up to the public image. Because of this form that his personality takes it is interesting to note that for his traditional cameo appearance Alfred Hitchcock chose the songwriter’s apartment to appear in.

CASABLANCA and CHINATOWN: Film Noir / Neo-Noir

Film Noir. Named by the French to indicate an American genre of good people who get involved in bad situations. Usually because of their own weekness.

-Roger Ebert (Casablanca DVD Commentary)

Film genres have been adapted and altered throughout film history. As soon as one filmmaker has adapted an idea into something new, another filmmaker is adapting it further. This slow, evolutionary process of film genres has created strings of changing styles that reach back to the birth of film. One string was begun with the German Expressionist movement sybolized by the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920). American directors in the 1940s adapted this into the well-known style of Film Noir, which includes the Academy Award-winning classic Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942). In the 1960s a “New Wave” movement came out of the tensions of the Cold War era, and French director Roman Polanski made a third change to the string, Chinatown (1974), which is considered a Neo-Noir. Both Film Noir and Neo-Noir share conventions with the Expressionist movement that they came from, but the different ways they approach them through changes in narrative, production design, cinematography, acting, editing and sound make them unique aspects of film history.

In the political climate of the 1940s, where the world was at war with itself and the future seemed impossible, excapist works like The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) and epic romances like Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) were extremely popular. In the 1970s, when the U.S. was embedded in Vietnam and the Cold War tension was mounting, there was a rush of anti-hero films about dissilusionment and dispair. Best Picture winners The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971) and The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) are prime examples. Casablanca was a contemporary story about the world of 1941, and although Chinatown was set in the 1930s the subject of political corruption was very relevent in the Vietnam era. Both films were products of their environments. The same could be said of the Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which was an experiment at a time when all filmmaking was new and untested.

The introductions of the films’ narratives could be described as zooming-in versus zooming-out. Casablanca, following the title credits, begins with a narrator describing the political situation of a refugee trail to North Africa, and from there it zooms-in to the story of several people in the city of Casablanca. Chinatown moves in the opposite direction. Following its title credits, the film opens with black and white photographs of a couple in the park; next it zooms-out to reveal the man who is looking at the photographs, and then the man who took them. Both ways connect to the subjects of the films’ stories. Casablanca is telling the story of three people who “don’t ammount to a hill of beans in this crazy world,” but Chinatown is the story of a man who has “no idea what [he’s] getting into.”

A screenwriting convention developed from theater to structure a narrative into acts. Each act is a step where the conflict rises to another level and create a beginning, a middle and an end. Both Casablanca and Chinatown use this form. Casablanca introduces dozens of characters and subplots in its first act until Ilsa walks into Rick’s bar. In act two Rick and Ilsa confront each other and face mounting problems with the police and Nazi officials. In act three Rick sends Ilsa away and kills Major Strasser. In Chinatown Jake Gittes is introduced and hired to follow Mr. Mulwray, which he does until he discovers he was hired by a fake employer. In act two Jake searches for the truth until he gets more than he expected from Evelyn and Noah Cross. The final act is the attempt to escape the city, which ends in Evelyn’s tragic death. Both films stick to the structure and use major twists to push the stories on into the next act. This style is considered very “Hollywood”. Foreign and independent filmmakers usually try to distance themselves from Hollywood by breaking this convention first. Barton Fink (Joel Coen, 1991), Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005), Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, 2007), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, 1975), Annie Hall (Woody Allan, 1977), and I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007) are all examples of where the beginning, middle and end structure of the three act system is abandoned to create a different style. In the studio system that produced Casablanca the act structure was standard. In 1974 it was more popular to break classical structure than to repeat it, which is why Chinatown’s traditional style causes it to stand out in film history.

Films in the crime, horror and film noir genres rely on suspense and surprise more than most others because they are effective ways to build the emotional response that the story’s form demands. Both Casablanca and Chinatown have questions at their core that create suspence. Who will use the letters of transit out of Casablanca? Who murdered Hollis Mulwray? Why is Ilsa so torn between Laszlo and Rick? What is Evelyn hiding? Hints, clues and red herrings populate the films until the suspence can be justly paid off. In both cases the questions are answered by single moments where the characters reveal the answers to the audience. Rick tells Captain Renault to fill in the names Mr. and Ms. Victor Laszlo on the letters of transit, Jake reveals the broken glasses to Noah Cross, Ilsa reveals she was married to Victor before she met Rick, and Evelyn reveals that she had a child with her father. The question-and-answer form of narrative is universal among film noir, which includes the aptly named sub-genre of “who done it?” mysteries such as Murder on the Orient Express (Sidney Lumet, 1974). While some genres, such as the western, move in and out of popularity, mystery films have enjoyed regular boxoffice success because of this basic entertainment principle.

Another important aspect to the film noir narrative are the character archetypes. There are heroes, villains and femme-fatals. The characters of Rick Blaine and Jake Gittes are Hollywood versions of the Byronic Hero. They are flawed men, exiled and trying to escape their pasts. They are far from perfect and they make mistakes over the course of their films, but they are the heroes that the audience wants to see succeed. Major Strasser is an uncomplicated villian, a product of his times where Nazis were best left as rigid, emotionless, and evil. Noah Cross, on the other hand, is a complex and twisted villain; introduced as a kind old man he is revealed into a hateful monster that is rich and corrupt enough to get away with anything. The third archtype is the femme-fatale, which is perfectly written in the forms of Ilsa Lund and Evelyn Mulwray. Both women have secrets that they are keeping from the men they love, and neither get to have happily ever after endings. Ilsa is stuck between Rick and Laszlo and is forced to chose duty over true love. Evelyn is pushed into a desperate struggle to save her daughter, which ends with her death and her daughter’s abduction. These three character archtypes, backed up by supporting players like Victor Laszlo, form the triangle that is the core of every film noir.

A poet needs a pen, a painter a brush, and a film-maker an army.

-Orson Welles

An important aspect of building suspence and creating a film’s setting is the repitition of images. Chinatown has the repetition of water as a theme, which relates to the films narrative as well as to the film’s asthetic; the story is set during a drout in 1930s L.A., so the air is hot and dry, cars kick up dust on the desert roads and the riverbed is dry rock. Many people are desperate for water, which adds more weight to the death of the water commissioner, and the pressure carries on to Jake’s mystery. Casablanca is during wartime, so characters in uniform, politics as a regular conversation topic, mistrust and violence are all pieces of the puzzle to create the setting. Rick’s café is next to the airport and a searchlight makes long sweeps of the surrounding area, so every time the outside of the café is seen it is swept by a searchlight. The light is an image many people connect to prisons, which re-enforces the question of who will get out of this dangerous situation with the letters of transit?

The productions of these two films were very different processes. Casablanca was shot on the Warner’s backlot with everything created artificially. Chinatown, thanks to the lightweight camera that was used, was shot on locations around California. The differences between the two add to the films’ design styles. Casablanca was a major studio release that was meant to be a big Hollywood picture to rally the Allies spirits heading into the depths of the Second World War, so realism was less important than the appeal of the film. Chinatown went the other way as a more independent film about corruption, and released at a time when Nixon was president and America was deep into Vietnam. Both films include scenes of characters driving cars. In Casablanca Rick and Ilsa are driving through French hills in a flashback sequence and the shot is clearly a rear-projection of a road, which fades into a projection of a different road without changing Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. In Chinatown the camera usually remains behind the characters, but even through action sequences like the chase through the orange groves the driver is clearly Jack Nicholson. These different approaches to reality also reflect the audiences of the periods. In the 1940s people didn’t think or care about the falsity of rear-projection shots, but in the 1970s there was a demand for realism that altered the way a film could be shot.

Classical composition of actors in the frame is present in both films; the use of over-the-shoulder shots and two-shots to cover conversations is undistracting. In Chinatown more than Casablanca, this form of comfortable framing is abandoned to alter the audience’s point of view. In a scene like Jake’s interview with the fake Ms. Mulwray, Ida Sessions, Jake is placed in an awkward position against the right side of the frame while talking to the right. The lack of space in front of him is less comfortable than when Rick is speaking to Major Strasser in the café and he is relaxed in his seat on the left, looking to Strasser on the right. These basic composition decisions fit with the overall form that these films fall into. Casablanca is a Hollywood adventure, while Chinatown is a tough tragedy.

More obvious than the films’ different themes is the different forms of cinematography: black and white film versus colour film, high key versus low key lighting, and deep space versus shallow space.

Although some successful colour films had been made in 1939, the overwhelming majority of films in the 1940s were black and white. The opposite can be said of the 1970s where black and white was almost non-existent. Although both films stand out in film history as unique classics of their era, neither cut against the standard in this regard. Instead both used the techniques and technologies of the time to tell a new type of story, and did not depend on technical style to stand out. Films like The Wizard of Oz (1939), Jogukumon/Gate of Hell (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953), and the first 3-D film, Bwana Devil (Arch Oboler, 1952), all used new technologies to draw audiences.

Shadows and lighting can be used to great effect when portraying the mood of a scene or the emotions of a character. Starting with the basic human fear of the dark, cinematographers have been able to relate bright scenes with positive feelings and dark scenes with negative feelings, and high key lighting with intense conflict and low key lighting with relaxation. Rick drinking himself to sleep after Ilsa’s return is a very dark, high contrasting scene. The spotlight can be seen crossing the doors and when Ilsa walks in she brings with her a bright light. During their talk he is in shadow while she is in light. Contrasting emotional situations for the two characters are put on screen with the silent effect of different lights.

The sequence where Jake and Evelyn escape the retirement home uses lighting in a similar way. When they enter the building and meet the manager, walk around and talk to the seniors, they are in a well-light area. Then the manager discovers who they are and escorts them to where Claude Mulvihill is waiting. At this point the scene gets darker, when they step out onto the front steps it darkens further. Finally Evelyn drives the car around front and Jake jumps in, Mulvihill shoots at them from the steps as they disappear into darkness. What started as a unimposing situation darkens into a run for their lives.

When considering how to create shadows cinematographers have to consider some elements that are not under their control. If the costumes include hats or if the scene is inside or outside they need to fit their lighting into the design structure. Even the casting of certain actors can effect the lighting design, such as Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972); cinematographer Gordon Willis used overhead lighting to create long shadows and hide Brando’s deep eyes in darkness. Both Rick Blaine and Jake Gittes wear fedora hats during the films. The wide brim casts a dark shadow over Jake’s eyes when he is looking over the dry riverbed or looking at Evelyn’s dead body. Rick’s eyes are not as hidden because some form of reflector board would have been used to illuminate his eyes in scenes like the final confrontation with Major Strasser. The reflector board causes less realistic lighting, but allows the audience to see Rick’s eyes, which is much more important than considering where every light is in relation to Rick’s face.

Different approaches to realism with deep space also affect the composition of the cinematographer’s shots. The many conversations in Casablanca, even those in the busy Café American, have very tidy backgrounds. Despite the crowds present there is always lots of room behind Rick or Ugarte or anyone so that the audience doesn’t get distracted by unimportant motion. Chinatown’s camera is much less restrained, so it allows for more movement and less order. This is a more realistic form. Instead of controlling every aspect of the foreground and background to create clear shots, Polanski allowed other action to be included. The most contrasting examples are the market scene following Rick’s drunk speech to Ilsa and the final sequence of the crowd forming around the car and Evelyn’s body; the extras in the market are distant and unintrusive, which allows Rick, Ilsa and the vendor lots of space; the police and on-lookers push in on Jake and the car so that the camera gets pushed around, which is much more true to the perspective of someone on the scene.

Changes in camera angle can create subliminal messages for the audience. Traditionally a low angle allows characters to dominate the screen and seem more powerful, such as when Noah Cross looms over Katherine at the end of Chinatown. Conversly, high angles are less imposing, such as the final shot of Casablanca where Rick and Captain Renault walk together into the fog with nothing to fear.

The Film is like a battleground … love … hate … action … violence … death … in one word: emotions.

-Sam Fuller in Pierrot le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1968)

The Film Noir and Neo-Noir genres are connected by certain emotional problems that the characters face. Fear, seduction, betrayal, secrecy, trust and most of the deadly sins are parts of stories like Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924), Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944), and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Robert Zemeckis, 1988). Those three films are, in order, a silent drama, a film noir/thriller, and a neo-noir/comedy. Each film required very different styles of acting and were made in periods that had very different types of actors. Casablanca and Chinatown were at the respective peaks of romantic melodrama and gritty realism, but neither includes the type of performance that becomes dated by age or multiple viewings.

The two heroes are played by Humphry Bogart and Jack Nicholson. Both men became icons of their generations, and in these early films it is easy to see why. Both men had the talent to be both instantly likeable and instantly flawed. Similarly for the femme-fatals. Both Ingrid Bergman and Faye Dunaway became icons of elegance and beauty, which stand to this day.

The casting of John Huston in Chinatown and Conrad Veidt in Casablanca were flawless decisions, which created iconic characters. John Huston was equally known as a director of such films as The Maltese Falcon (1941), Key Largo (1948) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); all of them examples of Film Noir’s darker emotions of greed and mistrust. His too-friendly politician/businessman, Noah Cross, would inspire Daniel Day-Lewis’ equally disturbing role of Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (P.T. Anderson, 2007). Conrad Veidt, who had played Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, was a character actor who became type-cast as the villain playing characters like Rasputin and Ivan the Terrible. Casablanca was his second-to-last film, but his performance in The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni, 1928) inspired the character of the Joker in the Batman comics, as well as Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008).

Casablanca is made even better by its large cast of supporting characters. Paul Henreid received the short straw by playing the perfectly boring hero Victor Laszlo, who never shows weakness and never makes a mistake. But Claude Rains shines as Captain Renault, who is at the core of many of the film’s best comic moments. A third set of supporting actors, who are rarely considered, were the European refugees that had settled in California at the start of the war. Although Casablanca was shot on a Hollywood sound stage, most of the supporting roles are played by actual Europeans. Their involvement helped a great deal to create the authentic atmosphere of the film.

Don’t give them too much extra film, then they can’t cut it a different way.

-John Ford

Before the creation of the non-linear editing systems in the 1980s, editing was a highly technical process. The regular ammount of footage shot was so large that an editor’s job began after the first day of shooting. Slowly adding more footage would be easier than sifting through hundreds of reels. Both films, by virtue of their tightly-written screenplays, were shot without much excess. Planning went into every scene and the editing is very well balanced because of it.

The act structure of the screenplays builds to climaxes and quick conclusions. The editing of the final confrontations best illustrates the increase in tension created by faster pacing. Longer shots populate the conversations in Casablanca until Rick’s final speech to Ilsa before she boards the plane. When Major Strasser arrives the situation is dangerous, and the editing speeds up. The editing jumps between shots of Strasser, Rick and Renault as the three face off, catching specific looks and reactions as Strasser reaches for the phone, Rick pulls a gun, Strasser makes his move and Rick fires. The pace builds the tension to a point as Strasser falls to the ground and then Renault says, “Major Strasser has been shot.” The pause is the absolute peak of the climax’s tension, and then Renault says, “Round up the usual suspects.” The audience’s emotions are built by pacing and sustained by the performance. From there it is a long, relaxing final shot that pulls away from the two friends.

Chinatown’s ending is significantly darker and less inspiring, but works along the same principles of pacing. Jake hopes he’ll be able to hold Cross back so that Evelyn can escape, but when he arrives in Chinatown the police are there as well. Lieutenant Escobar listens to Cross instead of Gittes and Jake sees the situation tumbling out of his control. The camera is jolted around by the situation and cuts from Jake to Cross to Escobar to Evelyn coming out of the building. Like a news crew in the middle of the fight things get hard to see and frantic cutting to different angles doesn’t allow the audience or Jake to get in to save the day. Cross pushes foreward and then Evelyn pulls a gun. There is a tense pause as she goes to the driver’s side and leaves. Escobar fires at the car’s tires, then Jake pushes his gun away. Loach steps in to fire and he aims higher up. The quick cutting stalls when the horn sounds from the car. The tension is allowed to stay at this peak for a few moments before Katherine screams. The pacing picks up for another moment as Cross sweeps Katherine away, the cops move in with the crowd, and Jake is pulled away by his associates. The final shot slows everything down again as it pulls away from the dark road.

Both conclusions rely on sound to clue the audiences into the action. The moment when Rick fires his gun creates the tense question in the audience’s mind, how will Rick get away? The pause in Renault’s response holds the tension for as long as possible before his answer relaxes the situation. The same works for the gunshots and the pause before the car horn. Then the horn plays for a second to allow the audience to connect with the previous time it was sounded – when Evelyn bumped her head on it talking to Jake – and once the connection is made, Katherine screams to confirm the audience’s worst fear. Once the question in the audience’s head has been answered the conclusions of both films last only a few seconds.

Casablanca and Chinatown have both earned a high place in film history due to the power of their stories and how they are told. Although neither film includes the technical achievements of films like Citizen Kane (Orson Wells, 1941) or Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) both have achieved equally great popularity. Both films launched the careers of iconic superstars and included famous performances by already famous people. The Film Noir string of genres started by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari still continues to this day with modern Neo-Noir films like Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994), Sin City (Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, 2005), and Batman Begins (Christopehr Nolan, 2005). The legacy that these films have is untouchable. In 2005 when the American Film Institute made a list of the 100 greatest quotes in film history the instantly recognized closing lines of both films were included:

Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown.

-Walsh (Joe Mantell) in Chinatown, #74 (AFI)

Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

-Rick (Humphry Bogart) in Casablanca, #20 (AFI)

CHINATOWN

The main theme of Chinatown is power and who holds it. Roman Polanski re-enforced this through framing. How he chose to arrange characters and items on the screen showed the audience what it needed for the story, and also evoked an emotional response to create the film’s powerful atmosphere.

In the very first scene, in the third shot, the main character is introduced. JJ Gittes is comforting Curley, but he is layed back in the chair behind his desk. Gittes, in his white suit with his right leg crossed over the left, looks comfortable. This is the place where Gittes is in his element, lying to make someone feel better. The authority in the scene rests with him. Over his right shoulder is a picture of FDR, a trophy, and a plaque – images of power and authority.

The first scene contrasts with the next, where Gittes meets the fake Mrs. Mulwray. Gittes, layed back in his chair, has lots of room ahead of him to look, but when he speaks with Mrs. Mulwray he is at the right side of the frame, and he is looking to the right. The space in front of him is limited, he can not see as far. Over his shoulder is his associate. This image clearly shows the situation Gittes is getting into; it is a mystery where he can not see much ahead of him and his associates will be in the dark.

After he is hired by the fake Mrs. Mulwray he begins following Mr. Mulwray. The framing here shows how Gittes isn’t seeing the whole picture. Since he never actually meets Mr. Mulwray he only sees him through other things and other people. First he sees him at the town hall meeting where the two do not appear together in the frame and Gittes is near to the back of the room. After that Gittes sees him through binoculars, in his car’s side mirror, in the pictures that Walsh takes, through the camera where he takes Mulwray’s picture, and through the pictures of Mulwray in the offices of Water and Power.

Gittes, spurred into the investigation by his hatred of being conned, follows the trail to find Noah Cross. At a lunch meeting at Cross’ ranch Gittes and Cross sit on joining sides of a square table. It begins with the two men equal and balanced on opposite sides of the frame, with the servant in the mid-ground between them. In the middle of the conversation (which falls at the very middle of the film) Gittes is annoyed by what Cross says regarding Evelyn and he stands to leave. When he stands the background on his shot changes from Cross’ property to the clear, bright sky. He seems to have hope to figure out the mystery and he is looking down on Cross. But then Cross tells him he does not know what he is dealing with, Gittes says that was what the DA told him in Chinatown, and he sits down. Now he is being pulled into Cross’ web of lies and the camera moves closer to Cross. Now Noah is larger in the frame, Gittes is leaning in, listening carefully.

The tragic conclusion of the film is shot unlike any other scene in the film. Though the steady camerawork at the beginning slowly becomes more uneaven as the mystery deepens, it is here in the final scene where a significantly less organized, handheld style takes over. Longer shots that move around more lose the balance that the steady images held. Like a news camera at a breaking story this scene is hectic and confusing. However, Noah Cross breaks through each shot that he is in to push himself to the foreground. When Katherine appears he moves up to her and takes up two thirds of the frame, looming over her like a monster. Gittes and Evelyn are shuffled apart, and pushed in the backgrounds of the frame until finally she drives away to her death. The final shot begins with a close up on Gittes, but as the police move in to cover up the entire story Gittes’ associates pull him away and they walk into the darkness.