This week I will be writing about how The Maltese Falcon could relate to Neo-Noir Film.

Neo-Noir : The Concept

Niko Frank, a film critic has called films in this category as film noir, which stands for black films in French. Film noir features a wide world of criminals, that is where the darkness and violence come in. All the character's central motives are greed, lust and ambition. There is no good person in this type of films. The main way to differentiate this type films from others in that era has 3 main components, which is visuals, characters, and narrative. On visuals, film noir is very different from usual crime films in the 20s and the 30s, generally speaking ,the main character only has characteristics what we called as a good. Also, crowded and narrow rooms tend to highlight the visuals. But in film noir, the main character is an anti-hero, we are watching his story, but he does not look like a typical main character in crime films, it can be called a protagonist.

When it comes to characters, everyone in film noir is bad people, this mirrors the real world that everyone is not completely good, there is no pure good in the world, we are always paranoid. If there is a nice person, we would be worried about what that person was hiding. The last component to look into is narrative, there is a hopeless tone going on and death in movies like these is certain. Neo-noir films have specific settings that were very different from ordinary films, the city bounds are a corrupted and criminal filled, the shadows represents that every good has its evil, the lines which create distortion and enhance the story and characters in thus the criminalistic abnormal world.

Narratives also include the way the female characters were shown in film noir, they were tearing up all the time, using this schoolgirl act to reach their goals, also using sexuality to get what they wanted. Film noir is here to punish the girls that reflect that time period in the 40s, it shows a lot of questioning of ambitious female. The old film noir is a type of film that female characters were jailed, the new type of film noir these days is a type of genre that leaves female characters getting married and leaving the city to have a simple life.

Neo-Noir and The Maltese Falcon

It is quite clear that one could call The Maltese Falcon if they watched the movie and know the characteristic of Neo-Noir films. I will state it out one by one in the below paragraphs.

First and foremost, in The Maltese Flacon, the main character detective Sam Spade has the character of a detective but also a thief, he solves crimes and mysteries with a twist, he lies to his woman and put money as his first priority. The film demonstrates a very narrow setting, all the rooms are filled with furniture and there is no visual space for the audience to breath, also the lack of space for the characters to move brings out a feeling of people are trapped in that world. The use of lights in this film is brilliant, presenting the shadows of the characters, this shows that every character has a chance of being the bad guy, for example, the character Joel Cairo who looks like a gentleman, one moment he was talking gently to Sam Spade, another moment threatening him with a gun. This shows that people in the real world cannot be trusted completely if you are not on the side of someone, they could become your enemy.

The female characters in this movie often used the schoolgirl act to take the male characters to advantage, they usually use their sexuality to achieve their goals. And at the end, the girl Ruth Wonderly was betrayed by her own boss and got into jail, even at the time she was about to get caught, he used her sexuality to avoid getting into jail.

Verdict

Personally, I am not a fan of black and white vintage films, the most I could accept is films in the 70s. The culture and the way of life are very hard to relate if the film was very old. But I really enjoy the way they film this movie and the storyline has taught me that people back in the day how they react to situations and the way they talked.