Character does not have just non-physical appearence and animation. Commonly,
film always uses human character as the main character. In some cases, character
doesn‘t have to presence physically, like in telephone conversation or monitor video
or sometimes in playing with the physical and non-physical boundaries. 6.
Plot Structure
Plot is a structure for presenting everything that we see and hear in a film.
28
The way of movie‘s story is structured—its plot—also helps viewers to determine what it is genre.
29
Through plot, screenwriters and directors can provide structure to stories and guide viewer‘s emotional responses. Plot of Noir or Neo Noir most
twisting and flashbacks and amnesia suffered by the protagonist was a common plot device.
30
The typical Noir plot is the main character is lured into violence and usually to his own destruction by the femme fatale.
31
Jane Stokes gives an example analysis in comparing some conventions of gangster films and television situation comedy by six elements that he mentioned.
This is the example table by Jane Stokes.
32
Gangster Film Situation Comedy
Setting The city
Harsh social background The city
Middle-class USA
28
Ibid., p. 120
29
Ibid., p. 83
30
―Film Noir‖. Filmsite.org. Retrieved from http:www.filmsite.orgfilmnoir.html
accessed on March 2, 2015
31
Mark T. Conard. The Philosophy of Film Noir. Kentucky: The University of Kentucky, 2007, p.27
32
Stokes. Op. Cit., p. 88
Location The mob hangout
Glamorous clubs Lavish mansions
The home The workplace
Iconography Flash clothes
Guns Everyday Clothes
Narrative Events
Heists Hits social
Double-crossing Dating
Events
Barbeque
Characters Gang Leader
Gangsters Rival Gangsters
Family members Workmates
Plot Structure Closure
Sometimes dies Sometimes is reformed
Sometimes is redeemed Open-ended
Maintain equilibrum
Endless
Through this table, we can see the different of two genres and their own spesific conventions. By the six elements, we can see the film convention and the differences
between main genre and sub genre in film.
E. Crime Genre
The crime film is most enduringly popular of all hollywood genres and the only kind of genre that has never once been out of fashion since the dawn of the
sound era seventy years ago.
33
Crime film arises from a radical ambivalence toward the romance of crime like romance that gives the heroic detective Sherlock Holmes
as early as 1900 or 1903. Whether crime film focus on criminals, convicts avengers, detectives, attomeys, or victims, it depends on a nearly universal fear of crime and
equally strong attraction to the criminal word. It plays on a powerful desire for a modern-day version of the catharsis that Aristotle contended should evoke and purge
pity and terror.
34
Crime film consists of sub-genre, there are gangster and Noir.
35
Crime film like popular formulas, is defined by relatively small number of consistent plots and
plot transformations. Crime film and gangsters usually related to criminal action like bank robbery, theft, gambling, murdered, competition between group and
underground group who work in outside of the legal system.
36
This genre are often based on true story and sometimes this genre shows feuding between criminals and
court. Not like action genre, crime films often show cruel violence. The typical of crime action are use club, machine gun, and bomb car. The story usually use setting
in the big city with solid citizens. Commonly crime film has three leading role :
33
Thomas Leitch. Crime Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 19
34
Barry Keith Grant. Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film. London: Thomson Gale, 2007, p. 384
35
Ibid., p. 384
36
Pratista, Op. Cit., p. 17
firstly, the criminal who commits the crime. The criminal character is a ambitious man, materialistic, immoral, cruel, and use any way to reach everything they want.
Secondly, the victim who suffers it. and thirdly, the avenger of detective who investigate it even the last one sometimes
doesn‘t exist in scene that depends on the director‘s focus.
37
1. Noir and Neo Noir Genre
Noir or ―the black film‖
38
, is the cinema of paranoia, of doubt and fear and uncertainty. Classic Noir period falls between early fourties in 1941 and the late
fifties in 1958. Classic Noir film the constant of light and shadow, tilted camera angles, it‘s the center scene of compositions.
39
It takes place in Los Angeles – but it
is always in the city and it is always a detective looking for clues to unravel mystery.
40
Noir marked visually by expressionistic lighting and deep focus. Settings are often interiors with low-key or single-source lighting, dark, claustrophobic, and
gloomy appearances. Exteriors are often urban night scene, dark alleyways, flashing neon lights and story location are in murky street, low-rent apartments and hotel room
of big cities or abandoned warehouses
41
The females in film Noir are two types or archetypes - dutiful, reliable, trustworthy and loving women; and
femmes fatales - mysterious, duplicitous, double-
37
Leitch, Op. Cit., p. 14
38
It was the French reviewer, Nino Frank who first used the term to describe a number of dark and stylised Hollywood movies that began to appear after World War and into the 1950s
39
Conard, Op. Cit., p. 40
40
Ibid., p. 16
41
―Film Noir‖. Filmsite.org. Retrieved from http:www.filmsite.orgfilmnoir.html
accessed on March 2, 2015
crossing, gorgeous, unloving, predatory, tough-sweet, unreliable, irresponsible, manipulative and desperate women. She would use her feminine to manipulate. Noir
deals with criminal activity and holds both promise and danger and the character involved always faces of many risks. Films with Noir as the central theme are
dominated with despair and violence scene. Indeed, the true domain of the Noir is night, just as inescapable of the Noir is the city
42
The sub-genre of Noir is neo-Noir. The term of neo-Noir describes any film coming after the classic Noir period that contains Noir themes and the Noir
sensibility. These film are likely not shot in black and white and lately don ‘t contain
the play of light and shadow like their classic.
43
However, it contains the same alienation, pesimism, moral ambivalence, and disorientation. New Noir of neo-Noir
still has all the old trappings of classic Noir, like labyrinths, and femme fatales. Contrasting space can be compared between Noir and neo-Noir to view of a home .
Noir lived at space; takes in rooms, halls, and ceilings as they appear. Neo Noir takes builder‘s view, a gutted house with pipes, ducts, wires, grids, circuit breakers, pumps,
furnaces, and compressor suddenly in view.
44
Amnesia suffered by the protagonist is a common plot device. This kind of
protagonist is often morally-ambiguous low-lifes from the dark and gloomy underworld of violent crime and corruption. Distinctively, they are obsessive sexual
42
Wheeler Winston Dixon. Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd, 2009, p. 14
43
Conard, Op. Cit., p. 11
44
Ibid., p. 179
