Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas guys!

Hope y'all are having a good break from school.

Outline

Memento Presentation Outline

I.                   Introduce the film.

The overall point of the movie is following Leonard Shelby, a man with Anterograde Amnesia, as he tracks down the man who raped and killed his wife. But a lot of stuff happens in the process.

 

II.                What makes the film a work of noir?

1.      The ambiguous protagonist, Leonard Shelby.

A.    The protagonist in Memento is Leonard Shelby. He has something called Anterograde Amnesia, meaning he cannot form any new memories. So, he is virtually stuck in the same moment in time and unable to know or remember what he has done. This makes him very easy to control and manipulate. In the film, he kills two men of his own free will, and is guided into killing two others. Leonard is not inherently good or bad, because he can’t be either for more than five minutes at a time. So he tends to do things on impulse, which makes him even more susceptible to being pushed into doing something. Because of this, he is constantly on the edge of the moral line.

2.      The femme fatale.

A.    The femme fatale in Memento is a woman named Natalie, pictured in the last slide. She is an evil, scheming, manipulative lady. Though, you wouldn’t know it at first. For half the movie, she seems to be a victim of one thing or another, and appears to be helping Leonard find the killer. But then we discover that she is trying to use him to eliminate people she doesn’t want around anymore, including Teddy, another character that is helping Leonard search.

3.      Use of amnesia and flashbacks.

A.    This is why Memento is so hard to understand. The entire film is told in a series of small segments, which wind up overlapping each other, shown in reverse chronological order. Essentially, we have to experience the movie as Leonard experiences all of the scenes. We get small bits of information at a time, and we have to do what we can with it while it is there.

 

B.     Breaking up these segments are short scenes of forward-progressing time, where Leonard talks to a mysterious person over the phone about Sammy Jankis. The two storylines eventually meet up in the end-beginning of the film.

 

C.     A small change though, I think. Generally, amnesia in films implies memory loss. In this film, he can remember almost everything before his injury but cannot make any new ones. So it’s lack of memory gain I suppose. Not the usual way amnesia is used, but it’s still there.

 

4.      The setting.

A.    The very first scene is in an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere. Much of the major story telling points in the movie are told in ‘Just some anonymous motel room’, as the movie says. The film, for the most part, takes place in a fairly large city. Not Los Angeles, but not some rural place either.

 

III.             How does the film update the noir genre, and go into neo noir?

1.      The search for self.

A.    Pretty early in the film , Teddy asks Leonard who he is. When Leonard answers with his name, Teddy says “That's who you were, you don't know who you are”. This is true. Leonard has no idea who he is. He couldn’t tell you when his wife died, who he knows, even what he ate for breakfast. He is a blank slate from the time of his assault onwards. He doesn’t know what he does or has done.

2.      Sammy Jankis.

A.    Throughout the movie, Leonard tells a mystery person about Sammy Jankis, a man who went through the same sort of situation as himself. He tells all about how Sammy gets in an accident, loses his ability to make new memories, and winds up accidentally killing his wife by overdosing her on Insulin.

B.     Teddy gives the movie a huge plot twist though. When he is arguing with Leonard about his identity, he reveals to us that Sammy is, if you choose to believe it, actually Leonard. Sammy was a real person, but he was a con artist. He was faking his condition. Leonard made up the Sammy he tells everyone about to hide from himself.

C.     The strongest evidence supporting this is during the super quick memory lapses Leonard has while Teddy is telling him all of these things. There is an image of a man, presumably Sammy, in an institution of some kind, sitting in a chair. An orderly walks across the frame, and the person in the chair changes to Leonard.

 

Quotes from outside sources:

Quote one:

In their review of the film, titled “Neo-Noir Elements of Memento”, Chamandeep says that “Natalie is one of the constant characters in Leonard’s life, but someone he meets after his accident.  So when we meet her and Teddy, we are left wondering if these characters are helping Leonard or if they are playing on Leonard’s condition and trying to use it to their advantage.  It turns out that Natalie is the one that is lying to Leonard and using his condition to her advantage” (Chamandeep).

This really sums up Natalie as a character. We don’t know who she is, and Leonard doesn’t know who she is. She starts out all sweet and innocent, and acting the victim for parts of the movie, then turns around and sets up all of the situations she sends Leonard into herself. She lies to him, she manipulates him, and she is overall a bad person.

Quote two:

In their article “Memento and Neo Noir”, Nandini Godara writes that “The ambiguity provided by the shuffling narrative is used to put the audience in the same shoes as the protagonist. We know only as much as he knows, and much like his photographs and tattoos, every scene is a piece of the puzzle that the audience needs to solve it” (Godara).

I like this quote because it helped me make a little more sense of the movie. I was very confused at first, but after I read this, I began to view the film differently. I found it to be a very accurate statement, we really are made to view the entire film as Leonard would have to, bit by bit, and slowly piecing together the story.

 

Film clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6DxaxuUJXQ

This is a scene in the movie where Natalie has sent Leonard to go and ‘take care’ of a man named Dodd. Mid chase, he forgets what he is doing and has to figure it out on the run. Literally.

This just shows how bad his amnesia is, and how easy it would be to get lost in the world for Leonard. It shows how amnesia becomes the main point of focus in telling this story, because this happens to Leonard all the time.

-Random-

Hello, everyone. How are you all doing? How are your papers coming? Nobody has to respond to this, I'm just bored and procrastinating.

Blog #... Whichever one we are on.

Okay. I still don't have the book so I really can't do this assignment. But I will try anyway. I was going to try to cobble together a response from all of the other blogs, but I don't have any understanding of the stories so I don't think I should. Plus, it is my own fault that I don't have the book yet so it wouldn't be fair.
I only kind of know one of the stories in L.A. Noir, and I don't think it is in the sections given so this will be totally off topic.
I only got bits and pieces of the story I was given in class, about the man (Russell something) and his mistress and his Silicone computer chip company.
I didn't really think it was very Noir at all. That is probably because I had to speed read chunks of it though, so I didn't get the whole story.
The crime itself, the kidnapping and the killing, could have happened anywhere. The author certainly knew about the area, and described what one might see out the window of a car if you were there. The only real Noir like thing that I read was that the wife orchestrated the whole deal for money and revenge. She was definitely a bitch. I mean, Femme Fatale.
I was rushed, and didn't like the authors writing style so I didn't take much more from the story. It could have happened anywhere, but the description of the environment made it seem like it might be more likely to happen in that area.
Plus, the circumstances of particular crime, with this particular victim and his job as a computer chip producer, made it so that it really was more likely to happen there. It's Silicone Valley. Where computer innovators and all of the delicate part factories reside.

Blog #6

Jerold J. Abrams, in his article “Space, Time, and Subjectivity in Neo-Noir Cinema”, delved into the similarities and differences between Neo Noir and classic Film Noir. I had some difficulty understanding the majority of what he was talking about, probably because I need sleep, but this is what I was able to make out of it all: The main differences are the setting (Now not confined to cities) and the protagonists.

The protagonists in Classic Noir are, as Abrams puts it, “always a detective looking for clues to unravel the mystery of whodunit” (pg.1). They are your typical ‘Hard boiled’ detectives, looking for criminals and taking crime head on. They hunt the bad guys.

The protagonists in Neo Noir are a bit different. While they may also be detectives, their primary search is not for a criminal. It is for themselves. Be it by amnesia, trauma, hypnosis, or some other means of memory loss, our protagonist has lost or forgotten themselves. They spend the whole story looking for what is missing.

Abrams discusses three types of Neo Noir; past, present and future.

In past Noir, the story was typically in a low tech time and asked a lot of theological questions. One of the examples given, of George Lucas’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, is a perfect representation of this. In the film, Indiana Jones is looking for treasure (the Ark of the Covenant), as much for the adventure as he is “looking for an experience of the Ark in order to test his faith—or whether he has any” (pg. 6). He is searching for himself in a spiritual sense, searching for the Ark ultimately to see if he can have faith in God or if science is the way to go.

Present Neo Noir is… Present. It’s happening in the now. Having never seen the films listed as examples, I have to go from Abrams’s descriptions. Bourne Identity sounds like a good example of this style of Neo Noir. It is a man who has no recollection of who he is or what has happened, who suddenly turns into a killing machine when faced with a threat. He has to spend the majority of the movie trying to figure out who and what he is, and who is after him and why. Another film I might think would fit this form of Neo Noir is the X-Men series, more specifically focusing on Wolverine. He has no memory of what his claws are, where they came from, why he can regenerate, none of it. He needs to figure out who did this to him and why.

Future Neo Noir is like the other ones, just based sometime in the future. The film Minority Report is a good example. It follows John Anderton, who runs the Pre-Crime division. But when the Precogs see him killing someone in the future, he is forced to run from his own team in search of his himself (or, his future self), in order to stop the crime he doesn’t know why he is committing. Another possible example for this is the movie Looper. While he isn’t looking for his philosophical self, the protagonist here is looking for his physical self, from the future, trying to stop him from finding and killing someone in the present.

Blog #5, Response to Brian Gallaghers Article.

Whoa, that was a lot to read.

‘I Love You Too’: Sexual Warfare and Homoeroticism in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity” by Brian Gallagher brought up a lot of interesting points about the film and the novel that I didn’t pay much attention to before. But, I disagree with some of what Gallagher said.

First off, I still do not see the homoeroticism in either the novel of the film. Not as it is described anyway. I don’t see any sexual tension, suppressed or otherwise, between Walter and Keys. All I can see is a close bond, either a long lasting friendship or a father-son sort of thing, between two men who have been working close together for a long time and have come to know and respect each other. When Walter says that he loves Keys, it doesn’t mean that he has any sort of desires to be with him. I ‘Love’ a lot of people. I care a great deal about them, and I would do almost anything for them. A lot of them are guys. I don’t want to be intimate with them. They’ve just made their way into my circle of people that I trust, and who I consider family.

As for the cigar being a “Clearly phallic” (234) object, I would like to ask why it is seen that way. Cigars are typically a male thing, and most people in my experiences who smoke them are men. Yes, lighting another persons smoke is typically seen as a romantic thing, or something that men do for women, but it could also just be a kind gesture. Keys refuses to carry matches because they are unsafe, and Walter always happens to have some because he also smokes. He’s just helping his friend.

Something interesting that he pointed out, but I have not real argument for, is when Keys picks up Walters phone when he is in his office, assuming the role of the “Secretary”. I just like how observant and analytical some people are.

 

The only time that I saw that might have been slightly homoerotic was the very end of the film, when Keys states that Walter was closer than just across the desk. But again, these men have been working together for a long time, and have come to know and respect each other. They trust each other. They are friends, and friends don’t normally like to accuse each other of murder and insurance fraud. Also, death can do something to you. Keys saw that Walter was in serious pain, and might not make it to the hospital. I don’t really like putting personal things in here but I’ve sort of been in that situation. You get either really desensitized to the world, or you realize just how much someone meant to you. Gallagher says that this is the only time that he feels he can express his true feelings; I think it is just how humans work.

Gallagher compares the tension between Huff and Keys to that of soldiers in the war. Where, if a comrade is dying, it is acceptable to hold them, kiss them, show affection. This irritates me. If Mr. Gallagher was reading this, I would ask him to place himself in their boots. That is a person you have gone through hell with. They are your brother. You are watching your brother die, in an already emotionally tense situation. Nobody would just let them die. You comfort them, you let them die in a friends arms, in relative peace.

I’m at 600 words now, so I have to stop. This was a good article, and I liked some of the perspectives it took. I just don’t see them in the story.

*Totally unrelated to class, browse over if you want to.

Hey guys, I have another blog where I put up some of the things I've written in the past. I'm not very good at it, but if you have some free time I'd appreciate some honest feedback. (If it sucks, tell me it sucks. If you have suggestions, give them to me). It's linked on the right, under "Home". It says "I like to write". Thanks.
-Michael

Blog Entry #4

For this entry, I tried to respond to Zero Draft Questions one and two.

One:

The ending of Double Indemnity is very different in the novel than it is in the film. In the novel, Keys puts Walter on a boat with Phyllis. After they find each other and talk a little, they decide that suicide would be the only way to avoid what was ultimately coming for them. In the film, they shoot each other. Only Phyllis dies, and Walter is sent to prison. At least, that is what is implied. Both the book and the movie leave the true ending up to the reader a little bit, never saying what exactly happened to Walter or Phyllis.

I would say that the ending of the film was more in line with what we have learned of Film Noir. It was more exciting, there was more action, and more back-stabbing. The end of the novel was too peaceful for me, they shouldn’t have been able to choose when or how they died. Keys, who was pretty much the leading detective in the story, shouldn’t have let them go. They got off too easy. The film was much better. We see Walter go to Phyllis’s house, planning to kill her. But she’s planning to kill him. They both wind up shooting, but only Walter makes it out. While he was finishing up his confession and planning to make his escape, Keys comes in and catches him. He’s on his way out and he bleeds out. Keys calls the police, and it’s over. I still think Walter got off too easy, but it is a better ending.

Two:

The Film Double Indemnity has heavy use of shadows and other visual elements of Film Noir from the beginning. The opening scene is Walter Neff, slowly walking through his workplace, totally surrounded by shadows, with his back to the camera. We don’t see his face until he sits down in the office, which is also totally dark. All throughout the film, we can see the use of blinds to cast lines over a character, in a time where they would have felt trapped. I noticed this the most when Keyes brings in Mr. Jackson, the man from the observation car. After he recognizes Walter from somewhere, and says that he is sure that it wasn’t Mr. Dietrichson who jumped, he leaves. Walter walks over to the desk, and you can see the bars being cast over him as he realizes he is that much closer to being caught. The film also uses rain, when Phyllis comes to see Walter in his apartment the first time.

I would agree that the film only views Phyllis as Walter would, with our view shifting as his did. Over the course of the story, we see her develop from just a pretty face to a full on basket case. In their first meeting, she is barely clothed. Walter is obviously distracted, and only sees her as a beautiful, mysterious woman. As he learns about her intentions, and gets drawn into her plans, he realizes just how cold hearted and evil she is. She’s emotionless when talking about the murder, she acts perfectly when she is brought in for questioning, and she threatens him when he goes to pull out. Then, when he realizes he’s too tangled in the web, she tries to kill him.

Blog Entry # 3, Making a Noir Story.

Okay, so I'm going to try to make my own story. Professor Toth said it sounded okay as an outline, let me know if I should change anything before Sunday and I will. It turned out to be 800 words so over the limit a bit. Sorry.

My name is Roger Thompson. I am a lawyer working for a small firm operating in Queens, NY. I don’t have many friends, I try not to make enemies. I live alone. Every day I go to work and come home. Nothing changes. But one day, something horrible happened.

 

It was just a normal day for me. I got coffee at the gelato place down the street, sat at my desk, filed some paperwork, talked to some clients, then went to go home. It was about nine P.M. I went out and got in my car, but it wouldn’t start. Very odd, considering I just had it looked at last week. Oh well, I live a few blocks away. It was dark. The few street lamps still working cast long shadows everywhere.  The evenings mist was starting to creep in. I pulled my hat down, tightened my coat and set off.

About halfway home, the streetlights were all out. I still don’t know why that was. Against my better judgment, I went down this street anyway. I wanted to be home as quickly as possible. Up ahead I heard a scuffling sound, like someone was wrestling. Then I heard the cries for help, muffled by something but clear enough that I could hear the fear in the persons voice. I crept over to investigate, and saw what appeared to be a mugging. Two men were holding down a woman, and one of them was going through her things. As I took this all in, I realized that I recognized the woman. Her name was Brenda. She lived across the street from me, we talked sometimes. I’d had feelings for her for quite some time now and I think she knew it. One of her attackers turned and saw me, and yelled at me to stay where I was. A porch light came on next door, casting shifting shadows from the trees and bushes over the scene. Brenda managed to free her mouth and told me to help her, and that she could find a way to repay me later. At some point before I arrived, some of her clothes had been torn, exposing her curves. Oh, she was beautiful. And I wanted to help and see just what she had in mind when it was all over.

I felt around in my pockets for anything that might help me here, a pen, a pencil, anything. I had a letter opener. I remember vaguely thinking that my boss would be mad that I hadn’t returned it when I left. Oh well. Now, how do I take these guys out? I’m not a big guy, most would say I’m scrawny. I decided full on charge. So I jumped at them, and stuck one of them in the shoulder. The other one socked me in the temple, and I couldn’t see for a few seconds. I dropped my makeshift knife. I felt a sharp pain in my stomach, and when my vision cleared I saw Brenda, holding the letter opener with my blood dripping off of it. “A pity it had to be you he spotted. I kind of liked you. Give us your cash and valuables and you may go.” Shocked, I didn’t react. One of the guys pushed me, and I punched him with all of the strength I could manage so he fell into the second thug. Then I ran, as fast as I could. It seemed to be getting darker, and it was surrounding me as if it was waiting for me to bleed out and die there in the street. I could see the shadows of the two men catching up to mine. Fueled by panic, I ducked down an alley and took random turns to try to ditch my pursuers. But they stayed on my tail like a couple of blood hounds. I was getting tired, and I had lost a lot of blood. I tried one last time to escape my attackers, and jumped on to a dumpster and over a wall. Right into a dead end. There was a light up above, in a fire escape. The grating cast a shadow over the whole place, turning it into a big cage. I indeed felt trapped in a cage. At the open end of the alley, I saw a silhouette walking towards me. All I could do was slump against the wall and fall to the floor as their shadow came over me. The last thing I remember was Brenda, telling me that I should have just cooperated and that pain again, in my ribs this time. I blacked out and woke up in a hospital.

A little digging revealed that she was actually an accomplished thief, and that she had done this many times before. I moved and never went back. I still have nightmares about it.

Blog Entry #2

The article “Towards a Definition of Film Noir”, by Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton says that “Film Noir is crime from within; from the point of view of the criminal.” The novel Double Indemnity is exactly that. The story is told by an insurance salesman named Walter Huff. He starts off just doing his normal job, going to inform his client Mr. Nirdinger that his auto insurance policy is about to expire. When he tricks the servant into letting him in, he finds that he is not home. Instead, Walt runs into Mr. Nirdingers wife, Phyllis. They chat a little, and out of nowhere she asks about accident insurance. Walter starts to get a weird feeling about the whole business and offers to leave and come back later. Skipping ahead a bit, Phyllis calls Walter at his office and they meet at the house three days later. When Walter gets there, only Phyllis is home. He ends up kissing her. By now he’s really confused and wary but curiosity is keeping him from dropping the case. She goes to his office later, he asks her what exactly she is planning. She caves and admits that she wants to kill her husband. He offers to help her do it and not get caught. In the text he actually uses the term “Amateur Murderer”. The story goes on with Walter and Phyllis meeting up to go over their master scheme and their alibies. All the while he has to keep up with his normal job. Eventually they get it figured out, and Walt goes and bores Mr. Nirdinger into signing papers that weren’t what he said they were. Then he goes around setting up his alibi. The last few pieces fall into place, and they are ready. Walter dresses up exactly like Mr. Nirdinger, and then breaks the mans neck when he gets in his car. They get to the train station and Walt goes by everyone acting like Nirdinger. Once the train departs and gets a little ways away from any onlookers he jumps off and they dump the body on the rails. Walt goes home, goes to work, talks to his boss, and acts like nothing happened.

The same article also said (towards the end of a quote) that “In every sense of the word, a noir film is a film of death.” This is the truest thing that can be said of Double Indemnity. The entire novel is literally about killing one person, from hatching the plot to carrying it out to getting away with it.

The article “Primary Characteristics and Conventions of Film Noir: Themes and Styles” from the website Filmsite, states that “Film Noir films (Mostly shot in grays, blacks and whites) show the dark and inhumane side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love, and they emphasize the brutal, unhealthy, seamy, shadowy, dark and sadistic sides of the human experience.” I find this true to Double Indemnity, because it is all based around Walters feelings for Phyllis. He wouldn’t have tried to kill anyone before he met her. Although, you can tell that he has at least contemplated it in the past, he had the basic plan in his head right off the bat. He’s put some thought into it. He falls for her, and she drags him into murdering her husband for the insurance money. And now he’s stuck with her while their alibies crumble.

 

It also says that "The primary moods of classic film noir are melancholy alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt and paranoia." Walter Huff displays many of these, especially the guilt and paranoia in the days following the murder. Mostly the paranoia, and mostly at work when the other insurance claimsmen are trying to piece together what happened in front of him.

Blog Entry #1, Response to Prompt 1 on the "Neo Noir 90s" Article.

“Film Noir” is a style of film making that takes a look at the dark, mostly hidden underbelly of the world. It is filled with corruption, deception, darkness and a multitude of shady individuals. For the most part, the average Noir film has the same basic elements. The most visually obvious is that they are all filmed in black and white. Film Noir is also notorious for the heavy use of dark shadows throughout the movies. Combining these two visual effects, along with an occasional storm or creeping wall of fog created an overall feel of mystery and an underlying feeling of danger.  They all have a general style as well, taking part in a world where trench coats, fedoras, fancy alcohol and cigarettes are all the rage.  

The usual plot for a Noir style film contains a lot of underground crime, an unorthodox detective who’s damn good at their job, a classic ‘Femme Fatale’, and a lot of sneaking about in the shadows. The detective, by choice or not, gets placed on the case of an almost always rich, white family with some kind of a problem the normal police can’t handle. The detective gets to work, and the further they investigate, the more they start to wonder just what they’ve gotten themselves into. The mischievous and ever distracting Femme Fatale spins our protagonist farther and farther into her web, drawing out the investigation and adding a sexy and dangerous feel to the film.