Robert Aldrich: Film Noir

AG
by Ashlee Green2 views·Updated Mar 5, 2022
Create your own

Chapters

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated

  1. Hello, my name is Ashley Greene.
  2. And the film nowhere director that I chose was robert Aldrich born august 9th 1918
  3. and three notable films were Kiss me, deadly, which is the one we watched
  4. for a class
  5. vera cruz in the big knife.
  6. Some common themes that I noticed were hopelessness, deceit and greed.
  7. And other important references were war in the female role in film nowhere
  8. getting in hopelessness.
  9. I noticed that a lot of characters feel trapped in their lives,
  10. which is often due to blackmail,
  11. which is
  12. again often financial or
  13. the character having some criminal
  14. act used against them or their loved ones are taken
  15. from them and they feel like they have nothing left.
  16. We can see this in the big knife where
  17. the main character Charles castle who is an actor slash model,
  18. one side of the business, but
  19. his manager team
  20. has blackmail against him, which was that he killed a young girl in a car crash
  21. and they use this to keep him within a contract even though
  22. he doesn't want it and his wife also wants him out.
  23. She
  24. even wants to divorce him over it,
  25. which is why he feels cornered and has nothing really going for him because he
  26. doesn't like his job and he's going to lose his wife because of it.
  27. The extent of his feelings of hopelessness are seen at the very end,
  28. where he actually commits suicide.
  29. Another common theme that we see are deceit and
  30. greed and these often go hand in hand because
  31. greed is a big thing in film,
  32. know where the characters are often looking for money or other valuable
  33. things in their lives because it's very superficial and they use deceit
  34. to get what they want.
  35. Both male and females use this tactic but females
  36. use it a lot more since they don't have
  37. the same kind of power that men do
  38. and we can see the sea and grade a lot in vera cruz
  39. where the main character, joe erin and Benjamin train.
  40. Benjamin
  41. meets joe in the very beginning trying to buy
  42. a horse from him and right from the start,
  43. joe tries to manipulate him by selling him a stolen horse.
  44. But then after chasing him, Benjamin
  45. actually turns the table and steals joe's horse from him, which is surprising and
  46. joe actually gains the respect from a respect to
  47. Benjamin after this and they kind of team up
  48. and meet up with this
  49. sort of spanish government royalty sort of group
  50. and are offered a job
  51. to safely transport the countess
  52. Uh to a certain location.
  53. But they later find out that the countess
  54. is actually a decoy and they're really transportation
  55. $3 million dollars worth of gold. And the countess know knows about this and
  56. was planning on stealing it herself, but once the other to find out
  57. they plan to split it amongst each other even though
  58. they really have no intentions of splitting it, especially joe And the countess,
  59. we can also see this in the character lily carver and kiss me deadly
  60. because
  61. at the very end,
  62. she
  63. really wants to know what's in the box even though she's told not to open it
  64. and ends up killing
  65. dr Sabirin over it
  66. despite his warnings that there's nothing valuable in it.
  67. She is a very greedy person and
  68. wanted to find out for herself. But as we know, the box just contained
  69. deadly heat slash radiation and she was killed.
  70. Mhm
  71. War was also referenced in film nowhere
  72. and the emotions surrounding it In
  73. real life.
  74. The character Benjamin train in vera Cruz actually was said to
  75. have served in the civil war on the confederate side.
  76. And
  77. it's known that
  78. he lost his home during this war. He states that his last battle was fought
  79. on his home and he lost everything.
  80. Which is why he's kind of a floater in this movie trying to find, you know,
  81. a new foundation and purpose
  82. which is common for war veterans at the time to come home
  83. to a
  84. a new society where gender roles are much different.
  85. Their role in society is much different.
  86. The men were struggling to refine their place in society.
  87. So this is a kind of a direct reflection of how men in real life during the,
  88. during World War Two were feeling,
  89. you could also say that Charles castle and the big
  90. knife was a reflection of these feelings as well because
  91. you could compare him to a soldier that was drafted into
  92. the war even though they don't want to be there,
  93. he didn't want his job.
  94. He was still forced to go anyway and
  95. you could compare him to a soldier that lost his life in the
  96. war because he felt trapped in his job and his life felt hopeless.
  97. You know, not really much of a purpose. So he killed himself.
  98. So there's kind of a big parallel there.
  99. Another important aspect was
  100. the female role in film nowhere and
  101. mostly every film has a farm fatality that is deceitful and uses
  102. sexual appeal and
  103. men to get what they want.
  104. But
  105. I noticed the character Nina in veracruz was unique even though
  106. she was a pickpocket and she stole from Benjamin train.
  107. She there was one scene where she showed a lot of power which was when the brigade of
  108. spanish soldiers were
  109. on their conquest. You know, transport the countess
  110. and they were attacked by a militant group of peasants and when when when the
  111. a soldier that was
  112. in control of the reins of the
  113. lead horse was killed, she took it upon herself to rain the horses and was able to lead
  114. the brigade out of the situation
  115. and you usually don't see this
  116. form of
  117. power and strength and a female character because normally
  118. the femme fatale a role is just deceitful and
  119. does things through others rather than doing it.
  120. Mhm
  121. purely by herself.
  122. But we can see traditional farm fatality roles in Kiss me, deadly
  123. with lily carver who was driven by greed and the big knife in
  124. the other female roles aside from Marion Castle who was Charles Castle's wife,
  125. she was purely devoted to him. But the other females can be seen to only
  126. be after Charles money as he was a wealthy man at the time.
  127. All in all
  128. vera cruz was drastically different in plot line to
  129. the other to Kiss me deadly in the big knife
  130. however it
  131. they all bring similar feelings of
  132. hopelessness which is
  133. very common in film nowhere.
  134. There was no instances of greed deceit which is also very common,
  135. which just goes to show that even though in
  136. film nowhere even if the plot is different,
  137. the
  138. key aspects are still the same
  139. and it really just shows
  140. the characters as having a
  141. a poor outlook on life or really just not much
  142. to look forward to.
  143. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you