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)