For my Analysis of a Film Noir scene I have chosen the one you can see below. The story consists of a customer who seems to be distracted looking out of the window and around the room as if he is waiting for something to happen. The bartender in reaction to this the bartender is watching him whilst cleaning the bar with a white cloth. When he stops cleaning to observe the man more the man turns around to give him a confused hesitant look the bartender then continues to try to cover his mistake by asking the man if he wants another drink. When the man bluntly replies no the bartender goes back to work, however shortly after he places down his cloth under the counter over a gun the camera closes up on this so we know it is of importance. After placing down his cloth he asks a friend to watch the bar for a few minutes while he claims he is going for ‘another bottle of Vermouth’. From here he walks into the back and begins keying in a number on the phone and suddenly behind him appears the man who was at the bar, this time with the gun we saw in the previous few shots, and shoots the bartender in the back, he then turns around to the rest of the pub and makes the remark ‘nobody’s leaving’ and the scene comes to a close.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xZrTJCRXEYw
On finishing watching the scene, and with my knowledge of Film Noir I knew that the scene was from a film of that genre below are some of the things I picked up on that helped me come to this conclusion:
Camera Angles:
One of the first thing I picked up on in this scene was the way the camera was capturing things, and how the things it was capturing and bringing my attention to made me feel. For example one of the first examples of this in the scene is when the bartender stops cleaning to bar to focus on what the man focussing out the window is looking at, here the camera focuses on how to man has stopping moving the rag to clean the bar, and how in response to this the man he is observing turns around to show him he is aware of him watching. Another example of this I can see very clearly in this scene is when the camera focuses on the gun under the counter of the bar this as a viewer made me feel uncomfortable and made me aware that the gun is going to be of some significance in the scene. These feeling that these camera angles gave to me made me feel as-if something wasn’t right, and that something was going to happen which are very much conventions and codes of the Film Noir genre.
Location:
The scene is set in a pub which makes me this that something violent may start (linking in with the Film Noir genre), due to fact people are drinking, and due to my knowledge if films I know that pubs are a great place for things like fights and shootings to take place.
Sounds:
Some of the sounds which implies to me that the scene is from the Film Noir genre is most definitely the dialogue and the gun shot towards the end as these were pretty much the cherry on top for me and backed up my first initial ideas, as the gun shot told me the obvious that the film was going to be violent and mysterious, and the dialogue from the man throughout and how his replies where curt and brief and didn’t given anything away about the character told me that the scene fitted in to the genre norms easily.
Characters:
The characters did give me a very good idea that the film was going to be of the Film Noir genre, and they fit into the norms of the genre very easily, because you have the mysterious businessman type, with the suit, and the hidden identity, and then you have the local bar man who everyone knows and is an open book.
Lighting and Colour:
When it comes to lighting there isn’t really very much to be said, as it didn’t really give too much away until the very end, when the lighting went very darl and shadowy, as the mysterious man shoots the bartender, and by that time most of the audience has figured out what sort of film the film is going to be anyway, due to other factors. Colour is very similar to lighting as well due to the fact that the only time you can see a difference from the regular black and white is when the man shoots the bartender at the end, as you can see all the shadows, but by that time the audience have already pretty much guessed the types of genre.
Mise-en-scene:
lastly is mise-en-scene, which is probably the biggest indicator of them all into what the genre might be throughout the scene. The biggest indicator I can see when watching the scene is the gun under the bar which tells the audience the Film is definitely not going to be a comedy and that it is definitely going to go down the murder mystery Film Noir genre root.
Feature image from:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir
LucyJMcGuire- mediayear2 