Character Archetypes - Characters in Film Noir
Noir (anti) hero
The male protagonist in a Noir film will always be either a hero, or an anti hero. Anti hero obviously being a villain of some sorts.
A hero can be anyone. Usually, it's along the lines of a police officer (cop in this case), a strong witted, hardened detective or another sort of private eye.
The anti hero is usually a criminal master mind or along those lines; mafia members, murderer etc.
It often transpired that the Noir hero wouldn't have the happy ending.
They were frequently stricken somehow, be it with a mental inability, like depression, a physical affliction, like a limp or an addiction, like alcoholism. Maybe they'd suffered some event like a divorce or similar. Regardless, it was not usually a happy story.
A perfect example of a hard boiled Noir detective - Sam Spade from The Maltese Falcon.
Femme Fatales
Female characters came in the form of two types of women.
The first form could be a love interest. A powerless and gentle victim, symbolic of pure emotion. Simply, a woman that the male protagonist develops feelings for.
However, often enough the character in question is what is considered a 'Femme Fatale' literally, fatal female. These characters were more alluring towards the male protagonist, using beauty or persuasive words to convince the 'Noir Hero' down a dark road of (often) self destruction, with the promise of love or affection. This may be through enticing them to murder or commit other crimes.
Kathie Moffat, female character from Noir film Out of The Past. A perfect example of a femme fatale!
You identify some key archetypes well here, Felix, and I'm pleased to see you mention one or two specific examples from real films. This woul dbe strengthened by developing your discussion of one of the examples: justify/ explain how character X is an example of... Adding a few sentences on this would make this blog post stronger.
ReplyDeleteFelix - where is the collage of images from film noir and the piece on Casino Royale? They should be on here by now.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to be the one to point this out but an Anti-Hero isn't a villain. Anti-hero is the protagonist usually and what it means is that they are more or less crooked in their ways, or more on the dark side than your usual hero. That however doesn't make them a villain, the villain is the antagonist. Also those are only TWO of the archetypes within film noir. Where's the Good Girl, or The Fall Guy? Where's our much needed Antagonist? And the Side-Kick (who really isn't usually in the story much for various reasons) or the Crooked Cops? Honestly, if this was to truly talk about the common character archetypes in film noir, then this is a very weak blog entry. If it was to only talk about the two that most people pay attention to then, well I'll give it a 6/10. Mostly due to some wrong information.
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