Similar Products - Film Noir Plots

Many Film Noirs have recurring characteristics. In order to understand some of them, the basic plots can be compared.


1. Sunset Boulevard
The story, set in '50s Hollywood, focuses on Norma Desmond, a silent-screen goddess whose pathetic belief in her own indestructibility has turned her into a demented recluse. The crumbling Sunset Boulevard mansion where she lives with only her butler, Max who was once her director and husband has become her self-contained world. Norma dreams of a comeback to pictures and she begins a relationship with Joe Gillis, a small-time writer who becomes her lover, that will soon end with murder and total madness. [1]


2. M
In Germany, Hans Beckert is an unknown killer of girls. He whistles Edvard Grieg's 'In The Hall of the Mountain King' while attracting the little girls for death. The police force pressed by the Minister give its best effort trying unsuccessfully to arrest the serial killer. The organized crime has great losses due to the intense search and siege of the police and decides to chase the murderer. [2]


3. Double Indemnity
In 1938, Walter Neff, an experienced salesman of the Pacific All Risk Insurance Co., meets the seductive wife of one of his clients, Phyllis Dietrichson, and they have an affair. Phyllis proposes to kill her husband to receive the proceeds of an accident insurance policy and Walter devises a scheme to receive twice the amount based on a double indemnity clause. When Mr. Dietrichson is found dead on a train-track, the police accept the determination of accidental death. However, the insurance analyst and Walter's best friend Barton Keyes does not buy the story and suspects that Phyllis has murdered her husband with the help of another man. [3]


4. The Third Man
An out of work pulp fiction novelist, Holly Martins, arrives in a post war Vienna divided into sectors by the victorious allies, and where a shortage of supplies has lead to a flourishing black market. He arrives at the invitation of an ex-school friend, Harry Lime, who has offered him a job, only to discover that Lime has recently died in a peculiar traffic accident. From talking to Lime's friends and associates Martins soon notices that some of the stories are inconsistent, and determines to discover what really happened to Harry Lime. [4]


5. The Maltese Falcon
Sam Spade is a partner in a private-eye firm who finds himself hounded by police when his partner is killed whilst tailing a man. The girl who asked him to follow the man turns out not to be who she says she is, and is really involved in something to do with the 'Maltese Falcon', a gold-encrusted life-sized statue of a falcon, the only one of its kind. [5]


There are instant similarities in the plots of these films; the most apparrent of them all is the fact that the stories are based around a common concept; crime. A murder occurs in every one of the 5 films chosen, indicating common ground in terms of the fact that a crime such as a murder can be incorporated into almost any film noir storyline, unlike many other crimes. All of the films (besides sunset boulevard) revolve around some sort of mystery; usually the murder itself, but this differs from film to film as the crime is not always the focal point of the film. Another noticable point about the plots is that they are usually located in popular/famous post war destinations such as Hollywood, America, Vienna, Austria & Berlin, Germany.




References
[1] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043014/plotsummary (accessed 20/01/12)
[2] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022100/plotsummary (accessed 20/01/12)
[3] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036775/plotsummary(accessed 20/01/12)
[4] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041959/plotsummary(accessed 20/01/12)
[5] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033870/plotsummary(accessed 20/01/12)