150-517: Strange Days may refer to: Film and television [ edit ] Strange Days (film) , a 1995 science fiction film directed by Kathryn Bigelow "Strange Days" ( Entourage ) , an episode of the TV series Entourage Literature [ edit ] Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys with Gardner Dozois , a short-story collection by Gardner Dozois Strange Days: My Life with and Without Jim Morrison ,
300-520: A "glibber and slicker" actor would be better for the role, but admitted that Fiennes made Lenny "a sexier character—a guy you can care about very much." The Hollywood Reporter also announced that Bono was expected to join Fiennes and Bassett in the role of Faith's love interest and manager Philo Gant. In March 1994, columnist Army Archerd reported in Variety that Bono was still being sought for
450-473: A "pathway" in his screenwriters taxonomy; explaining that a pathway has two parts: 1) the way the audience connects with the protagonist and 2) the trajectory the audience expects the story to follow. Other critics treat film noir as a "mood," a "series", or simply a chosen set of films they regard as belonging to the noir "canon." There is no consensus on the matter. The aesthetics of film noir were influenced by German Expressionism , an artistic movement of
600-427: A 16-foot jump between two buildings by a stunt performer without a safety harness , took two years to coordinate and has hidden cuts. For example, the jump was filmed with a helmet camera , while the run up a staircase required a Steadicam . According to Cameron, "We designed transitions that would work seamlessly. It was a very technical scene that doesn't look technical." The sequence where Iris runs in front of
750-441: A 90-page treatment based on these dialogues, stating that it was "practically a novel, but it was unwieldy; it needed structure." The treatment was then presented to screenwriter Jay Cocks , who turned it into a script. Cameron felt that the resulting script was very well structured and only did a dialogue polish on top of it. The script was completed in 1993. Bigelow was motivated to start work on Strange Days shortly after
900-584: A B-movie soul. Perhaps no director better displayed that spirit than the German-born Robert Siodmak , who had already made a score of films before his 1940 arrival in Hollywood. Working mostly on A features, he made eight films now regarded as classic-era noir (a figure matched only by Lang and Mann). In addition to The Killers , Burt Lancaster 's debut and a Hellinger/Universal co-production, Siodmak's other important contributions to
1050-405: A Dark Shadow (1955), directed by Lewis Gilbert . Terence Fisher directed several low-budget thrillers in a noir mode for Hammer Film Productions , including The Last Page (a.k.a. Man Bait ; 1952), Stolen Face (1952), and Murder by Proxy (a.k.a. Blackout ; 1954). Before leaving for France, Jules Dassin had been obliged by political pressure to shoot his last English-language film of
1200-679: A Lonely Place (1950) was Nicholas Ray 's breakthrough; his other noirs include his debut, They Live by Night (1948) and On Dangerous Ground (1952), noted for their unusually sympathetic treatment of characters alienated from the social mainstream. Orson Welles had notorious problems with financing but his three film noirs were well-budgeted: The Lady from Shanghai (1947) received top-level, "prestige" backing, while The Stranger (1946), his most conventional film, and Touch of Evil (1958), an unmistakably personal work, were funded at levels lower but still commensurate with headlining releases. Like The Stranger , Fritz Lang's The Woman in
1350-405: A bodyguard and limousine driver. Mace has unrequited feelings for Lenny from when he was still a cop and acted as a father figure for her son after her boyfriend was arrested on drug charges, but disapproves of his SQUID-dealing business. While Lenny and Max are drinking at a bar, Iris drops a SQUID disc through the sunroof of Lenny's car before it is towed away. Mace picks Lenny up and takes him to
1500-429: A bodyguard and limousine driver, as they are drawn into a criminal conspiracy involving Nero's ex-girlfriend Faith Justin (Lewis) and the murder of a prostitute. Blending science fiction with film noir conventions, Strange Days explores themes such as racism , abuse of power , rape and voyeurism . Although the story was conceived by Cameron around 1986, Bigelow found inspiration from high profile incidents such as
1650-432: A chase film as might have been imagined by Jean-Pierre Melville in an especially abstract mood. Hill was already a central figure in 1970s noir of a more straightforward manner, having written the script for director Sam Peckinpah 's The Getaway (1972), adapting a novel by pulp master Jim Thompson , as well as for two tough private eye films: an original screenplay for Hickey & Boggs (1972) and an adaptation of
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#17327974793181800-479: A confession - and Max stabs Lenny in the back. The fight culminates with Lenny on the balcony with Max hanging over; Lenny pulls the knife from his back to cut his necktie and drop Max to his death. Meanwhile, on the crowded streets, Mace subdues Steckler and Engelman with baton and taser, but other officers take down Mace. The crowd moves in, in support of Mace, and a major riot seems inevitable. Strickland, who has viewed Iris's disc, arrives and orders Mace's release and
1950-413: A dangerous war zone. A Chinese restaurant is robbed by a group of criminals, with one recording the event with a SQUID (Superconducting QUantum Interference Device), an illegal electronic device that records memories and physical sensations directly from the wearer's cerebral cortex onto a MiniDisc -like storage device. Lenny Nero, a former LAPD officer turned black marketeer of SQUID recordings, buys
2100-407: A dock. Steckler pours gasoline on the car and sets it on fire, but Mace drives it into the harbor, extinguishing the flames. When they reach the surface, the cops have left. Mace takes Lenny to her brother's house and they watch Iris's disc, showing Iris was with Jeriko One when Steckler and Engelman pulled him over and murdered him, because his anti-police lyrics and activism incited protests against
2250-501: A film noir, it has largely disappeared from considerations of the field. Director Jules Dassin of The Naked City (1948) pointed to the neorealists as inspiring his use of location photography with non-professional extras. This semidocumentary approach characterized a substantial number of noirs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Along with neorealism, the style had an American precedent cited by Dassin, in director Henry Hathaway 's The House on 92nd Street (1945), which demonstrated
2400-399: A genre as determined by "conventions of narrative structure, characterization, theme, and visual design." Hirsch, as one who has taken the position that film noir is a genre, argues that these elements are present "in abundance." Hirsch notes that there are unifying features of tone, visual style and narrative sufficient to classify noir as a distinct genre. Others argue that film noir is not
2550-480: A genre. It is often associated with an urban setting, but many classic noirs take place in small towns, suburbia, rural areas, or on the open road; setting is not a determinant, as with the Western . Similarly, while the private eye and the femme fatale are stock character types conventionally identified with noir, the majority of films in the genre feature neither. Nor does film noir rely on anything as evident as
2700-466: A greater debt to French poetic realism than to the expressionistic American mode of noir. Examples of British noir (sometimes described as "Brit noir") from the classic period include Brighton Rock (1947), directed by John Boulting ; They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), directed by Alberto Cavalcanti ; The Small Back Room (1948), directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger ; The October Man (1950), directed by Roy Ward Baker ; and Cast
2850-600: A humid, erotically charged Florida setting. Its success confirmed the commercial viability of neo-noir at a time when the major Hollywood studios were becoming increasingly risk averse. The mainstreaming of neo-noir is evident in such films as Black Widow (1987), Shattered (1991), and Final Analysis (1992). Few neo-noirs have made more money or more wittily updated the tradition of the noir double entendre than Basic Instinct (1992), directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Joe Eszterhas . The film also demonstrates how neo-noir's polychrome palette can reproduce many of
3000-544: A matter of days." The production team also received permission from the West Hollywood film commission to film on Sunset Boulevard for a two-day period, which required the shut down of several lanes of traffic. The scene where the crowd celebrates the turn of the new millennium at the end of the film was shot at the corner of the 5th and Flower streets, between the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and
3150-578: A memoir by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison "Strange Days", a regular section of the magazine Fortean Times Music [ edit ] Strange Days (Doors album) , a 1967 album by The Doors "Strange Days" (Doors song) , the title track of the Doors album Strange Days (band), a 1980s British band "Strange Days" (Matthew Good Band song) Strange Days , an album by Government Alpha Strange Days (Natacha Atlas album) , 2019 Strange Days (The Struts album) , 2020 "Strange Days",
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#17327974793183300-410: A monstrous scale. The work of other directors in this tier of the industry, such as Felix E. Feist ( The Devil Thumbs a Ride [1947], Tomorrow Is Another Day [1951]), has become obscure. Edgar G. Ulmer spent most of his Hollywood career working at B studios and once in a while on projects that achieved intermediate status; for the most part, on unmistakable Bs. In 1945, while at PRC, he directed
3450-500: A nightclub where Faith is going to sing. There, Lenny receives a SQUID disc from a contact and unsuccessfully tries to get Faith away from her new boyfriend, Philo Gant. Gant is a music industry mogul who managed the recently murdered rapper Jeriko One. While in the car with Mace, Lenny plays the disc the contact gave him and watches as Iris is brutally raped and murdered by an attacker at the Sunset Regent hotel. As they approach
3600-578: A noir cult classic, Detour . Ulmer's other noirs include Strange Illusion (1945), also for PRC; Ruthless (1948), for Eagle-Lion, which had acquired PRC the previous year and Murder Is My Beat (1955), for Allied Artists. A number of low- and modestly-budgeted noirs were made by independent, often actor-owned, companies contracting with larger studios for distribution. Serving as producer, writer, director and top-billed performer, Hugo Haas made films like Pickup (1951), The Other Woman (1954) and Jacques Tourneur, The Fearmakers (1958) . It
3750-532: A noir mode than Preminger; his other noirs include Fallen Angel (1945), Whirlpool (1949), Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) (all for Fox) and Angel Face (1952). A half-decade after Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend , Billy Wilder made Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Ace in the Hole (1951), noirs that were not so much crime dramas as satires on Hollywood and the news media respectively. In
3900-617: A novel by Ross Macdonald , the leading literary descendant of Hammett and Chandler, for The Drowning Pool (1975). Some of the strongest 1970s noirs, in fact, were unwinking remakes of the classics, "neo" mostly by default: the heartbreaking Thieves Like Us (1974), directed by Altman from the same source as Ray's They Live by Night , and Farewell, My Lovely (1975), the Chandler tale made classically as Murder, My Sweet , remade here with Robert Mitchum in his last notable noir role. Detective series, prevalent on American television during
4050-500: A range of plots; common archetypical protagonists include a private investigator ( The Big Sleep ), a plainclothes police officer ( The Big Heat ), an aging boxer ( The Set-Up ), a hapless grifter ( Night and the City ), a law-abiding citizen lured into a life of crime ( Gun Crazy ), a femme fatale ( Gilda ) or simply a victim of circumstance ( D.O.A. ). Although film noir was originally associated with American productions,
4200-502: A result, Strange Days was considered a commercial failure, due in part to the poor marketing strategy and lack of audience understanding. The film almost derailed Bigelow's career, as five years would pass before she directed her next film, The Weight of Water . Internationally, Strange Days was distributed by United International Pictures where it grossed $ 9 million for a worldwide total of $ 17 million. Upon release, Strange Days polarized film critics. Roger Ebert , who gave
4350-531: A screenplay by Graham Greene . Set in Vienna immediately after World War II, it also stars two American actors, Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles , who had appeared together in Citizen Kane . Elsewhere, Italian director Luchino Visconti adapted Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice as Ossessione (1943), regarded both as one of the great noirs and a seminal film in the development of neorealism. (This
4500-533: A screenplay by James Cameron and Jay Cocks , and based on a story by Cameron. The film stars Ralph Fiennes , Angela Bassett , Juliette Lewis , Tom Sizemore , Michael Wincott , and Vincent D'Onofrio . Set in Los Angeles on the last two days of 1999, the film follows Lenny Nero (Fiennes), a black marketeer of an electronic device that allows a user to experience the recorded memories and physical sensations of other people, and Lornette "Mace" Mason (Bassett),
4650-617: A series of cultural incidents that occurred in the United States in the early nineties, such as the Lorena Bobbitt trial and the 1992 Los Angeles riots that followed the Rodney King verdict. Referring to the latter, she noted, "I was involved in the downtown cleanup, and I was very moved by that experience. You got a palpable sense of the anger and frustration and economic disparity in which we live." She also developed
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4800-518: A song by Brazil from The Philosophy of Velocity "Strange Days", a song by Creepy "Strange Days", a song by Humble Pie, the B-side of the single " Big Black Dog " See also [ edit ] "Strange Daze", a song by Quiet Riot from Rehab Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Strange Days . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change
4950-399: A specialist in what James Naremore called "hypnotic moments of light-in-darkness". He Walked by Night (1948), shot by Alton though credited solely to Alfred Werker, directed in large part by Mann, demonstrates their technical mastery and exemplifies the late 1940s trend of " police procedural " crime dramas. It was released, like other Mann-Alton noirs, by the small Eagle-Lion company; it
5100-418: A speeding freight train was shot backwards, with the train backing up. The footage was then reversed during editing. World music was chosen as the primary music style of Strange Days due to its variety of sounds and instruments. According to music supervisor Randy Gerston, who previously worked on True Lies , this type of music helped the film-makers create a futuristic atmosphere, noting that "the world
5250-550: A step up the ladder, known as "intermediates" by the industry, might be treated as A or B pictures depending on the circumstances. Monogram created Allied Artists in the late 1940s to focus on this sort of production. Robert Wise ( Born to Kill [1947], The Set-Up [1949]) and Anthony Mann ( T-Men [1947] and Raw Deal [1948]) each made a series of impressive intermediates, many of them noirs, before graduating to steady work on big-budget productions. Mann did some of his most celebrated work with cinematographer John Alton ,
5400-533: A trend, let alone a new genre, for many decades. Whoever went to the movies with any regularity during 1946 was caught in the midst of Hollywood's profound postwar affection for morbid drama. From January through December deep shadows, clutching hands, exploding revolvers, sadistic villains and heroines tormented with deeply rooted diseases of the mind flashed across the screen in a panting display of psychoneurosis, unsublimated sex and murder most foul. Donald Marshman, Life (August 25, 1947) Most film noirs of
5550-524: A vibrant film noir period from roughly 1946 to 1952, which was around the same time film noir was blossoming in the United States. During the classic period, there were many films produced in Europe, particularly in France, that share elements of style, theme, and sensibility with American films noir and may themselves be included in the genre's canon. In certain cases, the interrelationship with Hollywood noir
5700-403: A week later on October 13, 1995 in 1,691 theaters and grossed $ 3,656,012 on its opening weekend. The film's poor performance at the box office was compared to Jade and The Scarlet Letter , which opened at the same time and had a similar budget. Overall, the film went on to make $ 7,959,291 in the United States and Canada, little more than a sixth of its $ 42 million production cost. As
5850-554: A wholly American film style." However, although the term "film noir" was originally coined to describe Hollywood movies, it was an international phenomenon. Even before the beginning of the generally accepted classic period, there were films made far from Hollywood that can be seen in retrospect as films noir, for example, the French productions Pépé le Moko (1937), directed by Julien Duvivier , and Le Jour se lève (1939), directed by Marcel Carné . In addition, Mexico experienced
6000-489: Is Kiss Me Deadly (1955); based on a novel by Mickey Spillane , the best-selling of all the hardboiled authors, here the protagonist is a private eye, Mike Hammer . As described by Paul Schrader , " Robert Aldrich 's teasing direction carries noir to its sleaziest and most perversely erotic. Hammer overturns the underworld in search of the 'great whatsit' [which] turns out to be—joke of jokes—an exploding atomic bomb." Orson Welles's baroquely styled Touch of Evil (1958)
6150-580: Is The Invisible Man (1933), directed by Englishman James Whale and photographed by American Arthur Edeson . Edeson later photographed The Maltese Falcon (1941), widely regarded as the first major film noir of the classic era. Josef von Sternberg was directing in Hollywood during the same period. Films of his such as Shanghai Express (1932) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935), with their hothouse eroticism and baroque visual style anticipated central elements of classic noir. The commercial and critical success of Sternberg's silent Underworld (1927)
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6300-535: Is "arbitrary". Expressionism-orientated filmmakers had free stylistic rein in Universal horror pictures such as Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1932)—the former photographed and the latter directed by the Berlin-trained Karl Freund —and The Black Cat (1934), directed by Austrian émigré Edgar G. Ulmer . The Universal horror film that comes closest to noir, in story and sensibility,
6450-525: Is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylized Hollywood crime dramas , particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir . Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key , black-and-white visual style that has roots in German expressionist cinematography . Many of the prototypical stories and attitudes expressed in classic noir derive from
6600-461: Is among the first crime films of the sound era to join a characteristically noirish visual style with a noir-type plot, in which the protagonist is a criminal (as are his most successful pursuers). Directors such as Lang, Jacques Tourneur , Robert Siodmak and Michael Curtiz brought a dramatically shadowed lighting style and a psychologically expressive approach to visual composition ( mise-en-scène ) with them to Hollywood, where they made some of
6750-452: Is frequently cited as the last noir of the classic period. Some scholars believe film noir never really ended, but continued to transform even as the characteristic noir visual style began to seem dated and changing production conditions led Hollywood in different directions—in this view, post-1950s films in the noir tradition are seen as part of a continuity with classic noir. A majority of critics, however, regard comparable films made outside
6900-512: Is mirrored in the Warner Bros. drama I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), a forerunner of noir. Among films not considered noir, perhaps none had a greater effect on the development of the genre than Citizen Kane (1941), directed by Orson Welles . Its visual intricacy and complex, voiceover narrative structure are echoed in dozens of classic films noir. Italian neorealism of
7050-636: Is obvious: American-born director Jules Dassin moved to France in the early 1950s as a result of the Hollywood blacklist , and made one of the most famous French film noirs, Rififi (1955). Other well-known French films often classified as noir include Quai des Orfèvres (1947) and Les Diaboliques (1955), both directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot . Casque d'Or (1952), Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), and Le Trou (1960) directed by Jacques Becker ; and Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958), directed by Louis Malle . French director Jean-Pierre Melville
7200-487: Is often assigned." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called Strange Days Bigelow's " magnum opus " and credited Bassett's "standout" performance, describing her as "fierce, funny and heart rending". In contrast, Sizemore and Lewis were considered miscast in their roles. At the 22nd Saturn Awards , Bassett won Best Actress and Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director award. Retrospectively,
7350-552: Is set in 1930s Los Angeles, an accustomed noir locale nudged back some few years in a way that makes the pivotal loss of innocence in the story even crueler. Where Polanski and Towne raised noir to a black apogee by turning rearward, director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader brought the noir attitude crashing into the present day with Taxi Driver (1976), a crackling, bloody-minded gloss on bicentennial America. In 1978, Walter Hill wrote and directed The Driver ,
7500-435: Is shrinking and people are getting acclimated to strange languages being part of the pop vernacular." Michael Kamen was the first composer hired to create a score for the film. Michel Sanchez and Éric Mouquet , the French duo known as Deep Forest , were then hired to replace Kamen's work. In addition to their score, Deep Forest teamed with Peter Gabriel to write an original song for the film's end credits, titled " While
7650-453: Is the pursuer rather than the pursued. A woman invariably joins him at a critical juncture, when he is most vulnerable. [Her] eventual betrayal of him (or herself) is as ambiguous as her feelings about him. Nicholas Christopher , Somewhere in the Night (1997) While many critics refer to film noir as a genre itself, others argue that it can be no such thing. Foster Hirsch defines
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#17327974793187800-536: Is widely recognized for his tragic, minimalist films noir— Bob le flambeur (1955), from the classic period, was followed by Le Doulos (1962), Le deuxième souffle 1966), Le Samouraï (1967), and Le Cercle rouge (1970). In the 1960s, Greek films noir " The Secret of the Red Mantle " and " The Fear " allowed audience for an anti-ableist reading which challenged stereotypes of disability. . Scholar Andrew Spicer argues that British film noir evidences
7950-539: The Nouvelle vague' s deeper waters), and Alan J. Pakula (1971's Klute ) directed films that knowingly related themselves to the original films noir, inviting audiences in on the game. A manifest affiliation with noir traditions—which, by its nature, allows different sorts of commentary on them to be inferred—can also provide the basis for explicit critiques of those traditions. In 1973, director Robert Altman flipped off noir piety with The Long Goodbye . Based on
8100-498: The American Film Institute ranked it as the greatest American film of the 1980s and the fourth greatest of all time—it tells the story of a boxer's moral self-destruction that recalls in both theme and visual ambiance noir dramas such as Body and Soul (1947) and Champion (1949). From 1981, Body Heat , written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan , invokes a different set of classic noir elements, this time in
8250-548: The Lorena Bobbitt incident and the 1992 Los Angeles riots . Principal photography began in Los Angeles on June 6, 1994, and concluded on October 14. Several of the film's scenes, which offer a point-of-view shot , required multi-faceted cameras and considerable technical preparation. A major commercial failure, Strange Days nearly derailed Bigelow's career, grossing only $ 17 million against its $ 42 million budget. The film polarized critics upon release, while some praised
8400-493: The Los Angeles Public Library . Over 50 off-duty police officers were hired to control an assembled crowd of 10,000 people, who had to pay $ 10 in advance to attend the event. The filmmakers also hired rave promoters Moss Jacobs and Philip Blaine to produce performances featuring Aphex Twin , Deee-Lite , as well as "all the cyber-techno bands they could garner". It was reported that a total of $ 750,000
8550-512: The O. J. Simpson murder trial "[echoed] the film events", adding that Strange Days was filmed during the summer and fall of that year. The film was entirely shot in Los Angeles over a period of 77 nights. Producer Steven-Charles Jaffe said that the city was generally very cooperative, except for the subway scene as the team only had four hours a night to film it. Jaffe, however, remarked that Bigelow "was so well prepared that what would have taken another director several weeks to do, she did in
8700-399: The gangster film to the police procedural to the gothic romance to the social problem picture —any example of which from the 1940s and 1950s, now seen as noir's classical era, was likely to be described as a melodrama at the time. It is night, always. The hero enters a labyrinth on a quest. He is alone and off balance. He may be desperate, in flight, or coldly calculating, imagining he
8850-493: The hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Great Depression , known as noir fiction . The term film noir , French for "black film" (literal) or "dark film" (closer meaning), was first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, but was unrecognized by most American film industry professionals of that era. Frank is believed to have been inspired by
9000-536: The major studios or by one of the smaller Poverty Row outfits, from the relatively well-off Monogram to shakier ventures such as Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) . Jacques Tourneur had made over thirty Hollywood Bs (a few now highly regarded, most forgotten) before directing the A-level Out of the Past , described by scholar Robert Ottoson as "the ne plus ultra of forties film noir". Movies with budgets
9150-575: The 1910s and 1920s that involved theater, music, photography, painting, sculpture and architecture, as well as cinema. The opportunities offered by the booming Hollywood film industry and then the threat of Nazism led to the emigration of many film artists working in Germany who had been involved in the Expressionist movement or studied with its practitioners. M (1931), shot only a few years before director Fritz Lang 's departure from Germany,
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#17327974793189300-476: The 1940s, with its emphasis on quasi-documentary authenticity, was an acknowledged influence on trends that emerged in American noir. The Lost Weekend (1945), directed by Billy Wilder , another Vienna-born, Berlin-trained American auteur , tells the story of an alcoholic in a manner evocative of neorealism. It also exemplifies the problem of classification: one of the first American films to be described as
9450-560: The Cain approach has come to be identified with a subset of the hardboiled genre dubbed " noir fiction ". For much of the 1940s, one of the most prolific and successful authors of this often downbeat brand of suspense tale was Cornell Woolrich (sometimes under the pseudonym George Hopley or William Irish). No writer's published work provided the basis for more noir films of the classic period than Woolrich's: thirteen in all, including Black Angel (1946), Deadline at Dawn (1946), and Fear in
9600-466: The Cold War. This cinematological trend reflected much of the cynicism and the possibility of nuclear annihilation of the era. This new genre introduced innovations that were not available to earlier noir films. The violence was also more potent. While it is hard to draw a line between some of the noir films of the early 1960s such as Blast of Silence (1961) and Cape Fear (1962) and the noirs of
9750-512: The Earth Sleeps ". New Zealand composer Graeme Revell , fresh off writing an acclaimed score for The Crow , was then hired to replace most of Deep Forest's work, and he wrote the electronic-driven score used in the finished film. Revell also teamed with singer-songwriter Lori Carson to write an original song that appears over the film's final scene, titled "Fall in the Light". Bigelow
9900-449: The French literary publishing imprint Série noire , founded in 1945. Cinema historians and critics defined the category retrospectively. Before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic films noir were referred to as " melodramas ". Whether film noir qualifies as a distinct genre or whether it should be considered a filmmaking style is a matter of ongoing and heavy debate among film scholars. Film noir encompasses
10050-476: The LAPD. The two return to Tick, who Max explains has been rendered brain-dead from forceful exposure to amplified SQUID signals. Lenny fears Iris's attacker covered his tracks by "killing" Tick and will come after Faith. Back at the nightclub, Lenny and Mace confront Faith, who reveals that Philo is afraid Iris's disc would reveal that he kept his artists under surveillance. Lenny and Mace disagree over whether to trade
10200-450: The Lake (1947)—he was an important screenwriter in the genre as well, producing the scripts for Double Indemnity , The Blue Dahlia (1946), and Strangers on a Train (1951). Where Chandler, like Hammett, centered most of his novels and stories on the character of the private eye, Cain featured less heroic protagonists and focused more on psychological exposition than on crime solving;
10350-498: The Lake in 1947 had "experimented so extensively with the subjective camera". In a mixed review, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B−" rating, concluding that Strange Days "has a dazzling atmosphere of grunge futurism, but beneath its dark satire of audiovisual decadence lurks a naggingly conventional underworld thriller." Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle criticized
10500-403: The Night (1947). Another crucial literary source for film noir was W. R. Burnett , whose first novel to be published was Little Caesar , in 1929. It was turned into a hit for Warner Bros. in 1931; the following year, Burnett was hired to write dialogue for Scarface , while The Beast of the City (1932) was adapted from one of his stories. At least one important reference work identifies
10650-574: The Pajiba website considered Strange Days an "extremely underappreciated film" and "the best piece of cyberpunk to grace celluloid since Ridley Scott 's Blade Runner ." Strange Days also garnered a small cult following , who felt that the film has been overlooked by a casual mass audience and misguided critics. On Rotten Tomatoes , the film has an approval rating of 67% with an average rating of 6.5/10, based on reviews from 55 critics. The website's consensus states: " Strange Days struggles to make
10800-470: The Third Floor still lost its studio, RKO , US$ 56,000 (equivalent to $ 1,217,900 in 2023), almost a third of its total cost. Variety magazine found Ingster's work: "...too studied and when original, lacks the flare [ sic ] to hold attention. It's a film too arty for average audiences, and too humdrum for others." Stranger on the Third Floor was not recognized as the beginning of
10950-605: The United States, containing all the features from the LaserDisc version except for the music video and photo galleries. The film was released on Blu-ray in Germany on April 23, 2015, by Koch Media , containing all the features from the LaserDisc version except the photo galleries. The Blu-ray was released in the United Kingdom on September 25, 2017, by Mediumrare Entertainment. Film noir Film noir ( / n w ɑːr / ; French: [film nwaʁ] )
11100-535: The Window (1944) was a production of the independent International Pictures. Lang's follow-up, Scarlet Street (1945), was one of the few classic noirs to be officially censored: filled with erotic innuendo, it was temporarily banned in Milwaukee, Atlanta and New York State. Scarlet Street was a semi-independent, cosponsored by Universal and Lang's Diana Productions, of which the film's co-star, Joan Bennett ,
11250-665: The arrest of Steckler and Engelman for murder. Engelman commits suicide ; Steckler threatens Mace, but the officers gun him down. Faith is taken away in a police car. Lenny finds Mace, and the two share a hug before she gets in Strickland's car. Then Lenny drags her out and they share a kiss as the crowd celebrates the turn of the new millennium. The story of Strange Days was originally conceived by producer James Cameron around 1986. He eventually presented it to his former wife and director Kathryn Bigelow , who immediately found it impressive. According to her, "These two characters on
11400-417: The basis for Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), and Slightly Scarlet (1956; adapted from Love's Lovely Counterfeit ). A decade before the classic era, a story by Hammett was the source for the gangster melodrama City Streets (1931), directed by Rouben Mamoulian and photographed by Lee Garmes , who worked regularly with Sternberg. Released
11550-418: The character depth. Similarly, in her review for The New York Times , Janet Maslin said that Fiennes "gleefully captures Lenny's sleaziness while also showing there is something about this schlockmeister that is worth saving, despite much evidence to the contrary." As for Bassett, she felt that the character "looks great and radiates inner strength even without the bone-crunching physical feats to which she
11700-409: The character of Mace from Cameron's original script to make "valuable connections between female victimisation and racial oppression." The film was named after the 1967 song of the same name by The Doors . Both Strange Days and Cameron's 1994 action film True Lies were part of a multimillion-dollar production deal between Lightstorm Entertainment and 20th Century Fox . However, the financing
11850-403: The cinematography, visual style, and performances of the cast, others criticized its portrayal of rape and violence. Its critical standing has improved over the years, gaining a cult following . At the 22nd Saturn Awards , where the film received five nominations, Bassett won Best Actress and Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director . As 1999 nears its end, Los Angeles has become
12000-408: The classic era to be something other than genuine film noir. They regard true film noir as belonging to a temporally and geographically limited cycle or period, treating subsequent films that evoke the classics as fundamentally different due to general shifts in filmmaking style and latter-day awareness of noir as a historical source for allusion . These later films are often called neo-noir . While
12150-489: The classic noir period in Great Britain: Night and the City (1950). Though it was conceived in the United States and was not only directed by an American but also stars two American actors— Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney —it is technically a UK production, financed by 20th Century-Fox 's British subsidiary. The most famous of classic British noirs is director Carol Reed 's The Third Man (1949), from
12300-473: The classic period were similarly low- and modestly-budgeted features without major stars— B movies either literally or in spirit. In this production context, writers, directors, cinematographers, and other craftsmen were relatively free from typical big-picture constraints. There was more visual experimentation than in Hollywood filmmaking as a whole: the Expressionism now closely associated with noir and
12450-434: The conventions of classic film noir as historical archetypes to be revived, rejected, or reimagined. These efforts typify what came to be known as neo-noir. Though several late classic noirs, Kiss Me Deadly (1955) in particular, were deeply self-knowing and post-traditional in conception, none tipped its hand so evidently as to be remarked on by American critics at the time. The first major film to overtly work this angle
12600-496: The disc to Philo for Faith's freedom or release it publicly, which could incite a citywide riot. As midnight approaches, Lenny and Mace sneak into a private party that Philo is hosting at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel for the city's wealthy elite. Lenny has a change of heart and tells Mace to give the disc to deputy police commissioner Palmer Strickland. In Philo's penthouse suite, Lenny finds Philo brain-dead on
12750-555: The enemy, then we're the enemy, since by not changing it we're reproducing it... The film ends in a strong insistence on hope. Ultimately it's humanity - not technology - that takes us into the next century and the next millennium." In 2015, The Washington Post editor Sonny Bunch felt that Strange Days was still relevant, comparing the imagery captured by the SQUID units to that of first-person shooters or cellphone videos on YouTube . He added that events such as Jeriko One's murder and
12900-406: The era; at least four qualify by consensus: Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951) and The Wrong Man (1956), Otto Preminger 's success with Laura (1944) made his name and helped demonstrate noir's adaptability to a high-gloss 20th Century-Fox presentation. Among Hollywood's most celebrated directors of the era, arguably none worked more often in
13050-445: The eve of the millennium, with one character trying to get the woman who loves him to help him save the woman he loves. It's this great emotional matrix." After a series of dialogues, Cameron and Bigelow developed the film's society and political element. Cameron focused more on the romantic side, while Bigelow centered more on "the edginess, the grit" part of the film, which was something she was always interested in. Cameron later wrote
13200-494: The expressionistic effects of classic black-and-white noir. Like Chinatown , its more complex predecessor, Curtis Hanson 's Oscar-winning L.A. Confidential (1997), based on the James Ellroy novel, demonstrates the opposite tendency—the deliberately retro film noir; its tale of corrupt cops and femmes fatale is seemingly lifted straight from a film of 1953, the year in which it is set. Director David Fincher followed
13350-458: The femme fatale, the private eye, came to the fore in films such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), with Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade , and Murder, My Sweet (1944), with Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe . The prevalence of the private eye as a lead character declined in film noir of the 1950s, a period during which several critics describe the form as becoming more focused on extreme psychologies and more exaggerated in general. A prime example
13500-427: The film "has characters that the viewer is supposed to identify with, and a plot full of thrills, exciting action sequences and unexpected twists. But at the same time, Strange Days is very much an experimental film, one that questions and inverts the traditional and Hollywood structures of identification and involvement, in ways that are consonant with the ideas that have been put forward by feminist film criticism over
13650-563: The film and music clips from the soundtrack, were made available only through the "College Special" issue of Rolling Stone magazine that was sold at record stores. Although Strange Days is generally classified as a science fiction thriller , the film uses multiple narrative elements such as film noir conventions like the femme fatale . The terms " techno-thriller ", " tech-noir ", and "futuristic erotic thriller" have also been used. In 2001, cultural critic Steven Shaviro compared Strange Days to Cameron's earlier films, stating that
13800-628: The film for failing to commentate its violence, saying that "Bigelow's style is so visceral [...] that her movie reminds us of a snuff film , rather than a well-reasoned cautionary tale about our animal instincts." New York magazine writer David Denby called the rape scene "the sickest sequence in modern movies". The performances of the lead characters were highlighted very positively. Writing for Chicago Tribune , film critic Michael Wilmington praised Fiennes' performance because it captures "the weaselly, pleading side of Lenny", while noting "the slight formality of his diction", which he felt gives
13950-458: The film four out of four stars, described it as "a technical tour de force" and highlighted the film's astute use of SQUID technology, stating that "Bigelow is able to exploit the idea of what is happening; she forces her audience to deal with the screen reality, instead of allowing us to process it as routine 'action.'" The film's technical aspects were also praised by Variety editor Todd McCarthy , who remarked that no other film since Lady in
14100-413: The film was directed by a woman was even more controversial, with film critic Michael Mirasol noting that had Strange Days been directed by a man, these scenes would likely have been criticized as sexist and misogynistic . Nevertheless, Bigelow insisted that the film does not glorify violence and that it has a positive purpose. According to her, "I wanted to treat 'the system' fairly, because if it's
14250-462: The film's hero and moral center, whereas Lenny is the antihero ; Mace is black and Lenny is white ; and finally, Mace represents the "hard-edged, reality-based" component, while Lenny is dominated by fantasies. This is especially notable when Mace yells to Lenny, "This is your life! Right here! Right now! It's real time, you hear me? Real time, time to get real, not playback!" The film's white characters also tend to be nihilistically concerned with
14400-647: The film's commercial success and seven Oscar nominations made it probably the most influential of the early noirs. A slew of now-renowned noir "bad girls" followed, such as those played by Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946), Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Ava Gardner in The Killers (1946), and Jane Greer in Out of the Past (1947). The iconic noir counterpart to
14550-412: The film's critical standing has improved. Roger Ebert's correspondent Michael Mirasol felt that Strange Days had some obvious weaknesses, including a dialogue that is too polished for its setting, but nevertheless judged its "devotion to its characters, its remarkable use of POVs to create its consistent atmosphere of apprehension and excitement, and most of all, its fearlessness." In 2009, Drew Morton of
14700-505: The film, they ultimately had to lip-sync. Industrial punk band Season to Risk performed the song "Undone" live in the nightclub scene, selected for their sound and stage presence. Other musicians featured on the soundtrack included British trip hop artist Tricky , Belgian electronic group Lords of Acid and American heavy metal bands Prong and Testament . A soundtrack album was released on October 3, 1999. In addition, 60,000 promotional CD-ROMs , which contained production material from
14850-461: The first "true" film noir is Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), directed by Latvian-born, Soviet-trained Boris Ingster . Hungarian émigré Peter Lorre —who had starred in Lang's M —was top-billed, although he did not play the primary lead. (He later played secondary roles in several other formative American noirs.) Although modestly budgeted, at the high end of the B movie scale, Stranger on
15000-559: The first of many attempts to define film noir made by French critics Raymond Borde [ fr ] and Étienne Chaumeton in their 1955 book Panorama du film noir américain 1941–1953 ( A Panorama of American Film Noir ), the original and seminal extended treatment of the subject. They emphasize that not every noir film embodies all five attributes in equal measure—one might be more dreamlike; another, particularly brutal. The authors' caveats and repeated efforts at alternative definition have been echoed in subsequent scholarship, but in
15150-419: The floor and another disc, revealing Faith's affair with Max, who "fried" Philo's brain with an amplified recording of them feigning rape. Pointing a gun at Lenny, Max explains that Philo hired him to kill Iris, but when Philo wanted Faith dead as part of the coverup, he decided to frame Lenny for the murders. Lenny and Max struggle in a fight, Faith intervenes and pulls off Max's wig with a SQUID inside - assuring
15300-490: The genre include 1944's Phantom Lady (a top-of-the-line B and Woolrich adaptation), the ironically titled Christmas Holiday (1944), and Cry of the City (1948). Criss Cross (1949), with Lancaster again the lead, exemplifies how Siodmak brought the virtues of the B-movie to the A noir. In addition to the relatively looser constraints on character and message at lower budgets, the nature of B production lent itself to
15450-588: The genre's films. Because of the diversity of noir (much greater than that of the screwball comedy), certain scholars in the field, such as film historian Thomas Schatz, treat it as not a genre but a "style". Alain Silver , the most widely published American critic specializing in film noir studies, refers to film noir as a "cycle" and a "phenomenon", even as he argues that it has—like certain genres—a consistent set of visual and thematic codes. Screenwriter Eric R. Williams labels both film noir and screwball comedy
15600-495: The hotel, Iris's body is taken out on a stretcher. The next day, they take the disc to Tick, who cannot identify the source of the recording, but recalls that Iris was looking for Lenny. Deducing Iris may have left something in Lenny's car, Mace and Lenny go to the impound and find Iris's disc. Steckler and Engelman appear and demand the disc at gunpoint, but Lenny and Mace escape in her bullet-resistant car before being forced to stop at
15750-483: The immensely successful neo-noir Seven (1995) with a film that developed into a cult favorite after its original, disappointing release: Fight Club (1999), a sui generis mix of noir aesthetic, perverse comedy, speculative content, and satiric intent. Working generally with much smaller budgets, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have created one of the most extensive oeuvres influenced by classic noir, with films such as Blood Simple (1984) and Fargo (1996),
15900-414: The inceptive noir, Stranger on the Third Floor , was a B picture directed by a virtual unknown, many of the films noir still remembered were A-list productions by well-known film makers. Debuting as a director with The Maltese Falcon (1941), John Huston followed with Key Largo (1948) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Opinion is divided on the noir status of several Alfred Hitchcock thrillers from
16050-409: The industry blacklist—as well as Henry Hathaway ( The Dark Corner (1946), Kiss of Death (1947)) and John Farrow ( The Big Clock (1948), Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)). Most of the Hollywood films considered to be classic noirs fall into the category of the B movie. Some were Bs in the most precise sense, produced to run on the bottom of double bills by a low-budget unit of one of
16200-494: The last thirty years." The film's dystopian society and use of SQUID technology, which has been compared to the "simstim" technology in William Gibson 's 1984 novel Neuromancer , were also considered cyberpunk concepts. The film explores controversial themes such as abuse of power , racism , and rape . Voyeurism is also a major element due to the protagonist's extensive use of SQUID technology. The fact that
16350-427: The late 1950s, new trends emerged in the post-classic era. The Manchurian Candidate (1962), directed by John Frankenheimer , Shock Corridor (1963), directed by Samuel Fuller , and Brainstorm (1965), directed by experienced noir character actor William Conrad , all treat the theme of mental dispossession within stylistic and tonal frameworks derived from classic film noir. The Manchurian Candidate examined
16500-440: The latter as a film noir despite its early date. Burnett's characteristic narrative approach fell somewhere between that of the quintessential hardboiled writers and their noir fiction compatriots—his protagonists were often heroic in their own way, which happened to be that of the gangster. During the classic era, his work, either as author or screenwriter, was the basis for seven films now widely regarded as noir, including three of
16650-562: The latter considered by some a supreme work in the neo-noir mode. The Coens cross noir with other generic traditions in the gangster drama Miller's Crossing (1990)—loosely based on the Dashiell Hammett novels Red Harvest and The Glass Key —and the comedy The Big Lebowski (1998), a tribute to Chandler and an homage to Altman's version of The Long Goodbye . The characteristic work of David Lynch combines film noir tropes with scenarios driven by disturbed characters such as
16800-477: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Strange_Days&oldid=1150348055 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Strange Days (film) Strange Days is a 1995 American science fiction thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow , from
16950-492: The major studios that have been chosen for the United States National Film Registry . Of the others, one was a small-studio release: Detour . Four were independent productions distributed by United Artists , the "studio without a studio": Gun Crazy ; Kiss Me Deadly ; D.O.A. (1950), directed by Rudolph Maté and Sweet Smell of Success (1957), directed by Alexander Mackendrick . One
17100-455: The monstrous or supernatural elements of the horror film , the speculative leaps of the science fiction film , or the song-and-dance routines of the musical . An analogous case is that of the screwball comedy , widely accepted by film historians as constituting a "genre": screwball is defined not by a fundamental attribute, but by a general disposition and a group of elements, some—but rarely and perhaps never all—of which are found in each of
17250-452: The month before Lang's M , City Streets has a claim to being the first major film noir; both its style and story had many noir characteristics. Raymond Chandler , who debuted as a novelist with The Big Sleep in 1939, soon became the most famous author of the hardboiled school. Not only were Chandler's novels turned into major noirs— Murder, My Sweet (1944; adapted from Farewell, My Lovely ), The Big Sleep (1946), and Lady in
17400-474: The most famous classic noirs. By 1931, Curtiz had already been in Hollywood for half a decade, making as many as six films a year. Movies of his such as 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) and Private Detective 62 (1933) are among the early Hollywood sound films arguably classifiable as noir—scholar Marc Vernet offers the latter as evidence that dating the initiation of film noir to 1940 or any other year
17550-612: The most famous: High Sierra (1941), This Gun for Hire (1942), and The Asphalt Jungle (1950). The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the classic period of American film noir. While City Streets and other pre-WWII crime melodramas such as Fury (1936) and You Only Live Once (1937), both directed by Fritz Lang, are categorized as full-fledged noir in Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's film noir encyclopedia, other critics tend to describe them as "proto-noir" or in similar terms. The film now most commonly cited as
17700-504: The most of its futuristic premise, but what's left remains a well-directed, reasonably enjoyable sci-fi fantasy." On Metacritic , it holds a weighted average score of 66 of out 100, based on 30 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B" on a scale of A+ to F. Strange Days was released on VHS in the United States by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on April 2, 1996. A special widescreen THX certified LaserDisc
17850-481: The most understandable of femme fatales; Dan Duryea , in one of his many charismatic villain roles; and Lancaster as an ordinary laborer turned armed robber, doomed by a romantic obsession. Some critics regard classic film noir as a cycle exclusive to the United States; Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, for example, argue, "With the Western, film noir shares the distinction of being an indigenous American form ...
18000-501: The noir style for economic reasons: dim lighting saved on electricity and helped cloak cheap sets (mist and smoke also served the cause). Night shooting was often compelled by hurried production schedules. Plots with obscure motivations and intriguingly elliptical transitions were sometimes the consequence of hastily written scripts. There was not always enough time or money to shoot every scene. In Criss Cross , Siodmak achieved these effects, wrapping them around Yvonne De Carlo , who played
18150-416: The novel by Raymond Chandler, it features one of Bogart's most famous characters, but in iconoclastic fashion: Philip Marlowe, the prototypical hardboiled detective, is replayed as a hapless misfit, almost laughably out of touch with contemporary mores and morality. Where Altman's subversion of the film noir mythos was so irreverent as to outrage some contemporary critics, around the same time Woody Allen
18300-578: The parallel influence of the cinematic newsreel. The primary literary influence on film noir was the hardboiled school of American detective and crime fiction , led in its early years by such writers as Dashiell Hammett (whose first novel, Red Harvest , was published in 1929) and James M. Cain (whose The Postman Always Rings Twice appeared five years later), and popularized in pulp magazines such as Black Mask . The classic film noirs The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Glass Key (1942) were based on novels by Hammett; Cain's novels provided
18450-459: The period, updated the hardboiled tradition in different ways, but the show conjuring the most noir tone was a horror crossover touched with shaggy, Long Goodbye -style humor: Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974–75), featuring a Chicago newspaper reporter investigating strange, usually supernatural occurrences. The turn of the decade brought Scorsese's black-and-white Raging Bull (1980, cowritten by Schrader). An acknowledged masterpiece—in 2007
18600-542: The post-classic area. Some of these are quintessentially self-aware neo-noirs—for example, Il Conformista (1969; Italy), Der Amerikanische Freund (1977; Germany), The Element of Crime (1984; Denmark), and El Aura (2005; Argentina). Others simply share narrative elements and a version of the hardboiled sensibility associated with classic noir, such as Castle of Sand (1974; Japan), Insomnia (1997; Norway), Croupier (1998; UK), and Blind Shaft (2003; China). The neo-noir film genre developed mid-way into
18750-491: The present, while the black characters are generally future revolutionaries. Bigelow considered Strange Days her most personal film, claiming that "It's a synthesis of all the different tracks I've been exploring, either deliberately or unconsciously, ever since I started making art." Strange Days premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 6, 1995, grossing $ 31,062 on that weekend. It expanded
18900-566: The proto-noirs They Drive by Night (1940), Manpower (1941) and High Sierra (1941), now regarded as a seminal work in noir's development. Walsh had no great name during his half-century as a director but his noirs The Man I Love (1947), White Heat (1949) and The Enforcer (1951) had A-list stars and are seen as important examples of the cycle. Other directors associated with top-of-the-bill Hollywood films noir include Edward Dmytryk ( Murder, My Sweet (1944), Crossfire (1947))—the first important noir director to fall prey to
19050-446: The robbery clip from his main supplier Tick. Elsewhere, Iris, a prostitute and former friend of Faith Justin (Lenny's ex-girlfriend), is chased by LAPD officers Burton Steckler and Dwayne Engelman. Iris escapes on a subway car , but Engelman pulls off her wig, revealing a SQUID recorder headset. Lenny pines for Faith and relies on emotional support from his two best friends - Max Peltier, a private investigator, and Lornette "Mace" Mason,
19200-403: The role, which would eventually be played by Michael Wincott. In May 1994, Juliette Lewis, was cast alongside Fiennes and Bassett. The fact that Lewis was able to sing was important because the producers wanted to avoid lip-synching . Filming of Strange Days was originally slated to begin on May 12, 1994, but that date was delayed to June 6, 1994 as the cast was finalized. Bigelow said that
19350-559: The semi-documentary style that later emerged represent two very different tendencies. Narrative structures sometimes involved convoluted flashbacks uncommon in non-noir commercial productions. In terms of content, enforcement of the Production Code ensured that no film character could literally get away with murder or be seen sharing a bed with anyone but a spouse; within those bounds, however, many films now identified as noir feature plot elements and dialogue that were very risqué for
19500-470: The situation of American prisoners of war (POWs) during the Korean War . Incidents that occurred during the war as well as those post-war functioned as an inspiration for a "Cold War Noir" subgenre. The television series The Fugitive (1963–67) brought classic noir themes and mood to the small screen for an extended run. In a different vein, films began to appear that self-consciously acknowledged
19650-400: The subsequent coverup of the crime by the two police officers contribute to activist movements like Black Lives Matter , and that their media documentation amplifies their reception and consequences. Mace was seen as a strong yet very feminine character, as she often rescues Lenny in dire situations and shows maternal concern for him. Both characters represent a significant contrast: Mace is
19800-594: The term has been used to describe films from around the world. Many films released from the 1960s onward share attributes with films noir of the classical period, and often treat its conventions self-referentially . Latter-day works are typically referred to as neo-noir . The clichés of film noir have inspired parody since the mid-1940s. The question of what defines film noir and what sort of category it is, provokes continuing debate. "We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir oneiric , strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel ..."—this set of attributes constitutes
19950-558: The time. Thematically, films noir were most exceptional for the relative frequency with which they centered on portrayals of women of questionable virtue—a focus that had become rare in Hollywood films after the mid-1930s and the end of the pre-Code era. The signal film in this vein was Double Indemnity , directed by Billy Wilder; setting the mold was Barbara Stanwyck 's femme fatale , Phyllis Dietrichson—an apparent nod to Marlene Dietrich , who had built her extraordinary career playing such characters for Sternberg. An A-level feature,
20100-411: The words of cinema historian Mark Bould, film noir remains an "elusive phenomenon." Though film noir is often identified with a visual style that emphasizes low-key lighting and unbalanced compositions , films commonly identified as noir evidence a variety of visual approaches, including ones that fit comfortably within the Hollywood mainstream. Film noir similarly embraces a variety of genres, from
20250-425: Was French director Jean-Luc Godard 's À bout de souffle ( Breathless ; 1960), which pays its literal respects to Bogart and his crime films while brandishing a bold new style for a new day. In the United States, Arthur Penn (1965's Mickey One , drawing inspiration from Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste and other French New Wave films), John Boorman (1967's Point Blank , similarly caught up, though in
20400-470: Was a fan of English musician PJ Harvey , and chose two of her songs, "Rid of Me" and "Hardly Wait", to be performed onscreen by Lewis. Alternative rock band Skunk Anansie appeared in the film, performing at the New Year's Eve party, and were encouraged to jam between takes, so Bigelow could record them live and give the rave a greater sense of authenticity. Although the band would have a live sound on
20550-464: Was adapted into film in 1960. Among the first major neo-noir films—the term often applied to films that consciously refer back to the classic noir tradition—was the French Tirez sur le pianiste (1960), directed by François Truffaut from a novel by one of the gloomiest of American noir fiction writers, David Goodis . Noir crime films and melodramas have been produced in many countries in
20700-436: Was an independent distributed by MGM , the industry leader: Force of Evil (1948), directed by Abraham Polonsky and starring John Garfield , both of whom were blacklisted in the 1950s. Independent production usually meant restricted circumstances but Sweet Smell of Success , despite the plans of the production team, was clearly not made on the cheap, though like many other cherished A-budget noirs, it might be said to have
20850-400: Was in this way that accomplished noir actress Ida Lupino established herself as the sole female director in Hollywood during the late 1940s and much of the 1950s. She does not appear in the best-known film she directed, The Hitch-Hiker (1953), developed by her company, The Filmakers, with support and distribution by RKO. It is one of the seven classic film noirs produced largely outside of
21000-501: Was largely responsible for spurring a trend of Hollywood gangster films. Successful films in that genre such as Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1932) demonstrated that there was an audience for crime dramas with morally reprehensible protagonists. An important, possibly influential, cinematic antecedent to classic noir was 1930s French poetic realism , with its romantic, fatalistic attitude and celebration of doomed heroes. The movement's sensibility
21150-494: Was not even the first screen version of Cain's novel, having been preceded by the French Le Dernier Tournant in 1939.) In Japan, the celebrated Akira Kurosawa directed several films recognizable as films noir, including Drunken Angel (1948), Stray Dog (1949), The Bad Sleep Well (1960), and High and Low (1963). Spanish author Mercedes Formica's novel La ciudad perdida (The Lost City)
21300-480: Was paying affectionate, at points idolatrous homage to the classic mode with Play It Again, Sam (1972). The " blaxploitation " film Shaft (1971), wherein Richard Roundtree plays the titular African-American private eye, John Shaft , takes conventions from classic noir. The most acclaimed of the neo-noirs of the era was director Roman Polanski 's 1974 Chinatown . Written by Robert Towne , it
21450-401: Was released in the United States on May 22, 1996. The LaserDisc's special features included a one-hour lecture about how the opening scene was filmed, two deleted scenes , a music video for " Selling Jesus " directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the original teaser and theatrical trailers , and photo galleries of storyboards and production stills. On September 28, 1999, the film was released on DVD in
21600-438: Was spent building a specialized camera that could reproduce the effect of looking through someone else's eyes. Bigelow revealed that it was essentially "a stripped-down Arri that weighed much less than the smallest EYMO and yet it would take all the prime lenses." Cinematographer Matthew F. Leonetti was also hired to help Bigelow film the scenes, which were choreographed weeks in advance. The opening sequence, which features
21750-475: Was spent on the event, which included the rental of half of the 1,300 rooms in the Bonaventure. The event started at 9 pm on a Saturday night and ended shortly before its scheduled end at 4 am, as five people were hospitalized for suffering overdoses of ecstasy . The film's SQUID scenes, which offer a point-of-view shot , required multi-faceted cameras and considerable technical preparation. A full year
21900-684: Was the inspiration for the Dragnet series, which debuted on radio in 1949 and television in 1951. Several directors associated with noir built well-respected oeuvres largely at the B-movie/intermediate level. Samuel Fuller 's brutal, visually energetic films such as Pickup on South Street (1953) and Underworld U.S.A. (1961) earned him a unique reputation; his advocates praise him as "primitive" and "barbarous". Joseph H. Lewis directed noirs as diverse as Gun Crazy (1950) and The Big Combo (1955). The former—whose screenplay
22050-762: Was the second biggest shareholder. Lang, Bennett and her husband, the Universal veteran and Diana production head Walter Wanger , made Secret Beyond the Door (1948) in similar fashion. Before leaving the United States while subject to the Hollywood blacklist , Jules Dassin made two classic noirs that also straddled the major/independent line: Brute Force (1947) and the influential documentary-style The Naked City (1948) were developed by producer Mark Hellinger , who had an "inside/outside" contract with Universal similar to Wanger's. Years earlier, working at Warner Bros., Hellinger had produced three films for Raoul Walsh ,
22200-485: Was unevenly divided between the two films, with Strange Days being initially budgeted at $ 30 million and True Lies at $ 70 million. Angela Bassett was attached to the film from its early stages, after Bigelow sent her the treatment document and Bassett accepted the role. In January 1994, it was reported that Andy Garcia was close to being cast as Lenny. However, on February 3, 1994, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Ralph Fiennes had been cast instead and that he
22350-571: Was wrapping up negotiations to play the role. Fiennes' breakthrough role in Schindler's List , for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor just days later, impressed Bigelow enough to cast him as Lenny. She stated that the role "required somebody who had a tremendous amount of intelligence, complexity, depth, a series of qualities that I really felt only Ralph could supply." Cameron, however, initially felt that
22500-412: Was written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo , disguised by a front—features a bank hold-up sequence shown in an unbroken take of over three minutes that was influential. The Big Combo was shot by John Alton and took the shadowy noir style to its outer limits. The most distinctive films of Phil Karlson ( The Phenix City Story [1955] and The Brothers Rico [1957]) tell stories of vice organized on
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