Chinatown: Tribute or Satire

As I read John G. Cawelti's article "Chinatown and Generic Transformation in Recent American Film", I began to question Chinatown's role in the genre of Film Noir. Cawelti portrays Chinatown as more of a satire on the film noir genre. When I say satire, I am not referring to the humorous satire. Rather, Roman Polanski's film is showing the flaws in the film noir genre by having an imperfect protagonist, a weak femme fatale, and an incredibly dark ending.

However, in my opinion Chinatown was just as much (if not more) a tribute to the film noir genre as it was a satire of it. The important thing to note about Chinatown was when it was made, 1974, compared to film noir which was made in the 1940’s and 1950’s. The difference between the two eras was The Hays Code, which dictated strict rules on movies. In 1967, the code was replaced by the rating system, allowing far more taboo subjects to be shown on screen. This change coincided (or potentially caused) the rise of New Hollywood directors, including Roman Polanski.

The possible reason that Chinatown was so dark was because it could be. In 1945 there would have been no way that Chinatown could have been released. Here are just a few examples. The fact that incest was a major plot point would have disqualified the film. Faye Dunaway’s death was shown with violent realism and thus would be cut out. Even the passionate kiss between Dunaway and Nicholson might have been too much for the censors. Yet all of these factors added so much more to the film that in my opinion it would be criminal to censor these factors.

This is why I feel Roman Polanski made Chinatown as an ode to the older film noirs. Ironically, John Huston plays a character that is so evil that he could have never have appeared in Huston’s own film noirs. Polanski tired to make the film noir that many directors might have wanted to make but were not allowed to make. It is the ultimate form of noir, one without restrictions. It shows how dark the genre could get. Thus rather than satirizing the noir film of old for their somewhat idealistic plotlines, Chinatown is the culmination of all of these older film noirs. It is the darkest of the dark. This film is the noirest of the noirs.

Don't Read too much into this Post.

In the film Donnie Darko, Donnie is shown a portal, a window to view another part of the world, while he is watching a movie. The delicious irony is of course that film is just such a portal. It allows us to see an entirely different location as if it were right in front of us. The only difference between film and a portal is film feels natural, so we don’t even realize what’s occurring.

As I read Christian Metz, I often found myself thinking he was grossly overanalyzing film as a psychological experience. For example, the idea of voyeurism is often taken too far. To me a voyeur is someone who watches the taboo, or that which they should not be watching. In contrast a spectator is one who watches something they are supposed to be watching and cannot interact with that event. Finally, a bystander is one who can interact with the action but chooses not to.

The problem I have with this analysis is it hardly talks at all about the role of the director. It is the director who has the most control over how we act as an audience. If we stand agape at the chariot race in Ben Hur, then we are spectators. If we feel uncomfortable with a violent scene, we are voyeurs.

However, for the most part, film makers try to makes us feel like false bystanders. Watching and contemplating a film, but never interacting with the action on screen. In fact, we never feel a desire to join the film, and are rather content just to watch it unfold. This is due to both our rationality and the bystander effect, where few people want to take the lead in changing an action they are watching. Still, for a film like Rocky Horror Picture Show the audience gets directly involved with the film, deciding to be bystanders no more.

Metz wants us to believe that we enjoy film due to a subconscious voyeuristic desire. However, I feel this is all wrong. I feel we enjoy film because it is simply a great representation of real life. I also feel that are feelings are affected far more by the choices of the director than by some obsolete Freudian metaphors.

In contrast to Metz, I feel Laura Mulvey is analyzing the psychotic aspects of film in the right way, by looking first at the filmmaker. She treats film as it is a work of art. Thus she works to analyze the artist first and only then moves to analyze the viewer. Also she doesn’t take the psychological theory too far, applying sexual desires to the depiction of women in film. I believe film theory has for too long made mountains out of molehills. Film theorists need to understand that sometimes the simplest answer is the best, and the reasons I like film are very simple and easy to understand. But that’s just my opinion.

The Power of the Cinematographer

As I read Garret Cooper's "Narrative Spaces" and Stephen Heaths' "Questions of Cinema", I began to wonder how much of cinematography is intentional. Of all art forms, video is best at replicating life, portraying it as it is seen naturally. Thus the role of the cinematographer is to choose how to frame this slice of life. However, it seems that the choices of the cinematographers fall into one of three categories: decision of the cinematographer, film convention, or a natural choice. I will address all three in this post.

The first to address is decisions by the cinematographer. There are two types of choices. The first is the usual choices by a cinematographer. These include how to light a scene, what camera angles to shoot a scene, what is to be in and out of focus, etc. Most of these types of decisions have to be made for each scene, and all have a large variety in the selections made by the cinematographer. The second type of choice is a breaking of film convention, which I will discuss in more detail in the next paragraph.

Film conventions were discussed in detail by Cooper as he described how cinematographers use many of the same techniques for effects. This includes “shot-reverse shot” to portray conversation, two actors coming into the same frame to portray love, or the frame zooming in on a face to show fear. These standbys have been in the movies for many decades, and are almost always used to portray there intended state of being. When a cinematographer chooses to break these conventions and portrays these states of being in a different way, it stands out. It tells the audience that something is different about this current situation. For example, the way Alfred Hitchcock portrays the relationship between Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine as being not quite natural since their courtship is portrayed with both characters in shot. This lets the audience realize that the relationship began too aggressively. These conventions have been so well established that they feel natural to audiences, as if this is the way life really is.

The final type of choice by the cinematographer is that of the natural choice. This is less of a choice, and more as something that the cinematographer must do, or a plainly logical choice. This is dealt with a lot in narrative space. The point of narrative space is to have the audience know what is occurring outside the frame on screen. It is the duty of the cinematographer to ensure the narrative space is accounted for. However, it is in my opinion that the cinematographer cannot make a choice when working with narrative space. If something occurs off screen, it must be accounted for on screen before or after the event occurs. This is why the narrative space has a naturalistic quality; it exists with specific instructions as to how to use it. In order to create a narrative space, there must first be an establishing shot to create the narrative space. It is only then that the narrative space can be exploited. It also feels that the director, as opposed to the cinematographer, has control over what exists in the narrative space.

Thus the amount of control the cinematographer has over the visual experience depends on aspect of the shot. The cinematographer has nearly complete control of the smaller details like lighting and shot angles. The cinematographer does usually have to work within the paradigms of previous established shots, even when they are defying such paradigms. The cinematographer has the least control over the narrative space, which is governed by a specific set of rules in order to makes the film logical. This is how the cinematographer has control over some but not all of the visual aspects of film.