Film Noir: Inspirational Directors

Edgar G. Ulmer
(1904-1972)




From the Czech Republic.

Edgar was very focused on props and set design. This encouraged us to make sure we had the appropriate props, like in the office scene at the beginning of our film we had a bible, two drinks glasses, a suitcase and a file for the photographs to be contained in.








He directed some films (like Detour, which I have spoken about previously) and Black Cat but he also was the set designer for many other films. This makes it more obvious that he was focused on these kind of details within a film.


Our attention to detail can also be evident in the detailed outfit we have given our character Bonnie. She carries a small case, wears heels, a red dress, scarf and visits suspicious locations. Ulmer used locations well too, with being a set designer this came with the territory. Bridges, under lamposts and dark country roads were commonly shown in his films. We used a country road in the changeover scene and lanterns visible in both the outside of the restaurant scene and the front door scene between Scarlett and Carter.









Alfred Hitchcock
(1899 - 1980)


'Psycho' was one of the well-known films that could be referred to when talking of Alfred Hitchcock. The suspense created in the music inspired me to use the kind of chilling, deep and depressing tones underlaying our own action in our film. The famous shower scene is important to note because you do not actually see the killing - it is all in the imagination. I like this because it saves the comedic aspect that could creep in if any gory elements were to be portrayed incorrectly. We had no gore in our film partly due to this enticing idea but also because we wanted our main male protagonist to have a more emotional attachment to the audience and the characters, which could be distracted from if gore were to have been included.


"A hero couldn't make a good suspense film."
Alfred, like the other directors appreciated the weakness in the main male character. Our weakness we gave Carter was the desire he had for Bonnie and his incapability of holding back, even when the danger of her ways was clear.



(Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Notorious)

The heroines in Alfred's films tend to be lonely. In our film we wanted our femme fatale to actually end up lonely to follow this. Even though she is not the type of lonely where we pity her because she has walked away with a lot of cash, but it does make us wonder who she could share it with and whether she may just become an unhappy, lonely woman.




Orson Welles
(1915-1985)

American actor, producer, director and writer.
'The Stranger' is a film that contains footage from concentration camps as the film was shot in 1946. This shows the importance of locations, and how where you shoot your film can have any kind of effect on the audiences who watch it. Of course we made sure that all our locations where appropriate, asthetically pleasing and mostly practical.

Orson was known for his floored camera shots and overlapping dialogue, so we used those both in our own film to have a similar effect. Overlapping dialogue can be seen in the shooting scene with Bobby Dents - the dialogue overlaps as the camera shots change.

Orson developed the character of an 'anti-hero' and so we used the failure of Carter in our storyline to reflect this.

"Criminals are never very amusing, because they are failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals." This quote reflects why Orson chose to develop 'anti - heros' into the world of film noir.

John Huston
(1906-1987)

American screenwriter, director and actor - he wrote the screenplay for the 37 films he directed, with most of them considered classics.



He was 'known to direct with a vision of an artist' which is evident in the films he has produced.

"To me the ideal film - which I have never suceeded in making - would be as though the reel were behind one's eyes and you were projecting it yourself, seeing what you wish to see. This has a great deal in common with thought processes... That's why I think the camera is an eye as well as a mind. Everything we do with the camera has a physiological and mental significance."






Huston's cinematography was something we wanted to make sure we had included.

A close look at the film 'The Maltese Falcon' allows us to see what kind of things we wanted.

Low key lighting, unusual camera angles (for example low to the ground) and panning shots following the characters are common elements in his camera work, and are evident in this film. In our own film we used low key lighting most obviously when Carter and Scarlett were outside Bobby's house. Inside the lighting was fairly dark on most occasions but when outside we used a minimal amount of lighting to make the mystery of the characters show in the fact that their faces were usually half hidden. At the beginning of this scene, the camera is on the floor - echoing Huston's inventive camera angle, introducing Carter in a different, more creative way. Our close ups of different body parts are also like this - Detective Carter's feet in the intro to the shooting scene, and Bonnie's behind in the changeover scene allow the audience a break from the more straightforward angles.