Film Studies - The Black Dahlia (0)

How genre and narrative
makes meaning in ‘‘The Black Dahlia‘‘
When analyzing a film , people understand the movie is much more complicated than it seems . To make a difference, to give a meaning to the film, film- makers have used different visual and thematic features . There are macro features (genre, narrative) as well as micro features (mise en scene , cinematography) and they are linked together in many ways. I have chosen to analyse the closing sequence of ‘‘The Black Dahlia‘‘, directed by Brian de Palma, and I will focus on macro features in this essay.
Brian de Palma is well known director , who is focused on noir area through his career (he was once considered as a Hitchcock imitator) ‘‘The Black Dahlia“ can be classified as Film Noir. The genre is called Film Noir due to the ‘serie noir‘ books , which were publised in France (bethween 1940s and 1950s). These books were translations of American novels by authors like Dashiel Hammet, Raimond Chandler and James M. Cain. The novels usually talked about a strong , violent hero (anti-hero?) who moves through a corrupt dangerous world. ‘‘The Black Dahlia‘‘ is based on a novel by James Ellroy and not on a true Black Dahlia ( murder ) case . The theme of murder/ crime /violence is one of the most important themes in Film Noir. In Film Noir morality is less clear (than in Western, for example, where there are simply to sides : good vs evil). There exists a feeling of paranoia about society, as we can clearly see in this film. At first , there is not explanation, why the horrible murder has taken place , at the end, the reasons , why come out, but they are mad and frightening. Sex is the other big theme in Noir. As the years have gone by, the more the audience sees it. In