The Usual Suspects

The protagonist, "Roger 'Verbal' Kint" gets interrogated by Kujan, the police officer. Verbal is alienated from society through his clever way of telling the officer complete lies. Added to this, Verbal is purposely trying to interrupt the interrogation simply by asking for a coffee or asking for a cigarette and he will not stay calm and keep on giving arguments why he needs that coffee. Also, to provoke the officer he drops a lighter, so that the officer can pick it up. Even though the officer tries to put the protagonist under pressure in his interrogation, he has no chance of keeping up with the menthal strength of Verbal. In that time, the movie switches back and forth from present to past. Verbal has his own moral code simply because he fools the officer and leads him into the whole different story, and as soon as the officer notices, puff "hes gone", like verbal said.

Film Noir Elements in Brick

Femme Fatale
Film noir contains elements which support the theme and the film noir theme gets served by codes and conventions. An example is the femme fatale. The femme fatale in film noir serves the purpose of bringing the protagonist into danger. However, the femme fatales can be broken into two types. There is the one that brings the protagonist purposely into danger, and theres the femme fatale that does not do it on purpose. Emily in Brick is the femme fatale and tells Brandon, the protagonist, to not care about her since things have gotten too intense. Brandon is in love with Emily and therefore he starts the adventure into the underworld of criminals.

The femme fatale ties the protagonist further into the knot of problems. The protagonist gets pulled into a world of wealth, corruption and drugs, which are also elements of the underworld in film noir. Example in brick is when Brandon gets kidnapped and brought to The Pin. This is the first time Brandon is seriously in danger and the first time he has contact to the world of wealth, corruption and drugs. A twist in the story leads Brandon to cooperate with the underworld, just in order to get the information he wants, which is extremely dangerous, but at the same time extremely brave and clever.

Film Noir

Codes include characters, plot structure, narrative structure, and
Conventions

Protagonist is alienated from society.
Protagonist in film war have their own moral code.
Difference is that a protagonist in detective fiction have their own rules for getting justice, in film war the protagonist has his complete moral code. (Generally without morals)


Protagonist
Film Noir HBDF

Amoral own moral code
Alienated from society loner(possibly with partner)
Anti-hero







Anti-hero
Violent
Likely to be an Alcoholics
t-shirt/"wifebeater", jeans and leather or bomber jackets are physical iconic elements.


Crime
Investigation
Punishment



Plot

Film Noir -> alienated protagonist (loner) -> Femme -> destruction


Narrative

-Use of flashbacks
-no happy ending
-convaluted story-telling
-often a series of twists in the storyline

Antagonist=Femme Fatale



Themes:
-Dark and sinister world
-paranoia rules
-psychology influences everyhthing





Noir conventions
Black and white-in sharp contrast
-smoking
-extreme camera angles
-venetian blinds
-lamps
-alcohol
-fog
-weapons
-dark alleys
-the underworld, as a setting
-diners
-bars
-high heels
-obscured light
-single source light
-colour contrasts
-shadows



Camera angles
Tilted
-dutch tilted
-pov (point of view)
-looking up at other characters

paragraphs