A Feasible Comparison between The Lady from Shangai (1947) and Taxi Driver (1976) in Terms of the Phenomenon of Film Noir

1 Facultad de Filología GRADO EN ESTUDIOS INGLESES TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO CURSO: 2022/2023 Título: A Feasible Comparison between The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Taxi Driver (1976) in Terms of the Phenomenon of Film Noir / Comparación factible entre La dama de Shanghai (1947) y Taxi Driver (1976) en relación al fenómeno de film noir Alumno: Javier Llanes Duque Firmado: Tutor: Miguel Juan Gronow Smith 2 Table of contents 1 1. Preliminary Remarks and Objectives 3 2. Film Noir: Origins, Evolution and Lack of Critical Consensus 3 3. Characteristics of Film Noir 6 4. Neo-noir Cinema 10 5. The Directors Who Figure in This Project 12 5.1 The Figure of Orson Welles 12 5.2 The Figure of Martin Scorsese 12 6. Parallelisms: The Lady from Shanghai and Taxi Driver 13 6.1 Camera Techniques, Angles and Shots 13 6.2 Protagonists as Antiheroes 16 6.3 The Pivotal Figure of the Femme Fatale 17 6.4 The Literal and Metaphorical Representation of the Labyrinth 19 6.5 The Shoot-Out as Movie Ending 21 6.6 Eroticism and Lust 22 6.7 Influence of War on the Protagonists 23 6.8 Reflections and Windows 24 7. Conclusions 25 8. Bibliography Cited 27 8.1 Primary Sources 27 8.2 Secondary Sources 27 1 In terms of the mechanics of writing, it should be noted that the formatting and style of this document have followed the Author-Date system of The Chicago Manual of Style, in its 17th edition (2017). 3 1. Preliminary Remarks and Objectives This End-of-Degree Project, from the standpoint of its author at least, has to begin anecdotally, as well as sincerely, so that its raisin-de-être may be explained. Having had the opportunity during the last Christmas break of viewing the Welles and Scorsese movies entitled, respectively, The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Taxi Driver (1976), this same author became aware, intuitively speaking, that both movies were somehow comparable, although not in any directly interactive way. While further mulling over this idea, based on repeated viewings, the notion of how noir narrative elements, together with noir aesthetics and noir cinematography, seem to be the factors upon which the potential comparison between both movies may be undertaken became increasingly feasible. Given what has just been stated, with hindsight, it would now seem possible to be able to clarify the objective of this Project, which aims to carry out an aesthetic, narrative, and technical comparison between Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, while aiming to prove that, fundamentally speaking, and almost exclusively, it is the characteristics of film noir that make such a comparison feasible. In order to contextualize this undertaking, what also becomes clear to any reader of it is the inevitable need to explore secondary-source material that sheds light on the phenomena of noir aesthetics and film noir in paradigmatic terms, together with brief overviews of the careers and styles of the two directors of these cinematic works. Thereafter, the Project moves on to carrying out a systematic comparison between both movies based on the noir-related characteristics of a plot dealing with murder and betrayal in a chaotic and unfair society; a femme fatale that hopelessly leads the protagonist into destruction; the constant use of firearms, mirrors and cigarettes to portray an immoral world; characterization based on the dark side of human nature (treachery within relationships, cruel attitudes, greed, fear); social violence of the most debased kind; and aesthetic features, with atmospheric aims, such as lighting effects and shadows. Having reached the part of the Project entitled “Conclusions,” prior to the testimonial section of the Bibliography consulted, it is hoped that the objective set down in this opening section would have been reached. 2. Film Noir: Origins, Evolution, and Lack of Critical Consensus Trying to define film noir is not an easy task. In this sense, Margaret Wintersole claims the following: “[B]ecause the noir film incorporates elements of style and subject matter from other film periods, genres, and sources other than film, and because other genres use the noir 4 style, a definition of film noir as a genre in itself becomes problematic” (1991,15-16). It would seem that the label film noir was coined in 1946 by the French critic Nino Frank, who pinpointed a range of characteristics common to certain Hollywood films and fixed on the idea of circumscribing them all under the same label. Paul Schrader, coinciding with other French critics, states the following in this regard: Seeing the American films they had missed during the war, [Europeans] noticed the new mood of cynicism, pessimism and darkness which had crept into the American cinema. The darkening stain was most evident in routine crime thrillers, but was also apparent in prestigious melodramas (1972, 8). As stated, then, when Nino Frank coined the term, it referred to a group of already-existing films from Hollywood, which explains why it is the USA which is the country regarded as the birthplace of film noir. Moreover, Frank’s label encompasses those films, the origins of which can be traced back to the Second World War. This violent and traumatic dark event was responsible for the mood and tone of the films of that time, since “…towards the end of the Second World War and immediately thereafter, US reviewers were well aware of a tendency in current crime thrillers towards bleakness and cynicism and an apparent preoccupation with psychological disturbance” (Langford 2005, 213). The aftermath of the War was inevitably a period marked by great pessimism and sorrow, while the movie directors of that time hit upon the portrayal of such phenomena as a common topic, or mood, as recognized by Frank. Nevertheless, as cinema historians have revealed, the USA is not the only country responsible for film noir’s existence, together with its early development. On the eve of the Second World War, a large number of German citizens working in the film industry fled the country (and surrounding countries) and moved to the USA, Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder being oft-cited examples. This caused a huge impact on American cinema, given that its own, together with German cinematic traditions, started to merge. As historians also point out, therefore, it is the fusion of American societal cynical pessimism, i.e. mood, on the one hand, and European avantgarde aesthetics, on the other, which would translate into film noir as it is understood today. Schrader makes the following observation in this regard: “The German expressionist influence, with its reliance on artificial studio lighting, seems incompatible with post-war realism, with its harsh unadorned exteriors; but it is the unique quality of film noir that it was able to weld seemingly contradictory elements into an uniform style” (1972, 10). The aesthetic dimension of German Expressionism, as described by Shrader, implies "[o]blique and vertical lines [being] preferred to horizontal. Obliquity adheres to the choreography of the city, and is in direct opposition to the horizontal American tradition” 5 (Schrader 1972, 11). German Expressionism, therefore, rejects realism and, instead, resorts to dramatic creativity by exploring characters’ internal phobias and turmoil, that is, “shows an impression of a scene, as opposed to its physical reality. On film, this ideology can apply to every aspect of the creative process, from dream-like set designs to melodramatic onscreen performances” (Movements in Film, 2018). Likewise, the silent-era is also cited by scholars dealing with Expressionism and noir aesthetics as its origins and in terms of how actors performances tend to be more patently expressive and histrionic. Similarly, with regard to noir cinema as a creative category, Langford claims the following: “For film-makers, organizing production around genres and cycles holds out the promise of attracting and retaining audiences in a reliable way, so reducing commercial risk” (2005, 1). Consequently, it is no surprise that a high number of noir movies created in the USA back then “were often shot on a very low budget” and “were originally screened as b-list movies” (Stillwell 2019), which made them easier and cheaper to create and watch. These B movies were usually noir or at least contained noir elements, a fact that somehow helped this movement achieve popularity and general acknowledgement. Research for this Project has led its author to an awareness of how, according to historians, in the post Second World War period, what had been thus far an essentially American genre spread to the rest of the world. It made it possible for noir to keep evolving and keep developing until its transition into neo-noir became discernible, in international terms. Despite this internationalization, certain critics continued to defend the idea that film noir’s origins were so deeply-rooted in American culture that they could not have been emerged from anywhere else, as emphasized by Roger Ebert, for example: “[Film noir is] the most American [of] film genre[s], because no society could have created a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naïve and optimistic” (1995). Researching this Project has also led to an awareness, on the part of its author, of how there exist three main critical approaches to film noir as a genre. The first is the conception of film noir as a cinematic genre per se. In this sense, such critics believe that the similarities shared by these films are not something to be overlooked. Several authors consider that if a group of elements share a great number of analogies and common characteristics - as in the case of those previously mentioned -, they can be encompassed as members of a same group. Among these critics it is important to mention Roger Ebert, who in his Internet-based A Guide to Film Noir, encapsulates the main features of noir, from his critical standpoint. Another example of defenders of film noir as a genre are Borde and Chaumeton, who refer to this issue 6 stating that “unclassifiable films exist, of course (…) But often a great film is unclassifiable only because it's the first in a new series and the necessary time lag is lacking” (1955, 2). Nevertheless, not everybody agrees with Ebert and his posture. A different approach to film noir’s nature is that which identifies it as a subgenre rather than as a genre per se. These critics state that all film noir movies, despite sharing similarities, are not different enough to be separated from other established genres, such as crime or detective cinema. Among these critics, worthy of mention is Robert McKee, who believes that film noir is nothing but a subgenre of the crime genre. He states that within crime cinema, film noir is a “[POV] of a protagonist who may be part criminal, part detective, part victim of a femme fatale” (McKee 1997, 82). James Naremore, in turn, states that there is “[l]ittle wonder that no writer has been able to find the category's necessary and sufficient characteristics, and that many generalizations in the critical literature [regarding the phenomenon of noir] are open to question” (1995, 12). There is also a third approach to this topic, which is against the conception of film noir as being categorizable as a genre (or subgenre) at all. In turn, this third approach states that film noir is not a genre, but a general tone or mood. In other words, it constitutes an atmosphere that envelops a given movie, and therefore, it could be applied to a wide range of films no matter their genre. It could be said that, for them, it is just an individual feature of a film rather than the film in terms of its totality. On of this posture’s most well-known defenders is the American director and screenwriter Paul Schrader: Film noir is not a genre (…) It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film noir, as opposed to the possible variants of film grey or film offwhite (1972, 8). This is highly ironical perhaps since it was Schrader who wrote the script to what nowadays may be considered one of the cornerstones of neo-noir, i.e the movie Taxi Driver, which is key to this Project. He does not think such a genre even exists, and claims that “[a] film of urban night life is not necessarily a film noir, and a film noir need not necessarily concern crime and corruption” (1972, 9). 3. Characteristics of Film Noir Although the controversial nature of film noir’s categorization as a cinematic genre makes it difficult for it to seem to possess certain characteristics per se that help differentiate it from other genres, some authors have been able to withdraw some elements which are 7 common to many films, thus including them under the same heading. The main issue, therefore, may be expressed thus: The theme or focus that divides film noir from other genres, that melds a somewhat uneasy alliance into a group is not only its style but also what the style indicates, confusion-confusion about good and bad, right and wrong, masculine and feminine, real and unreal (…). The sets, actors, characters, themes, plots, cutting, lighting, and so on become means for expressing synecdochic figurations of disorder: chaotic elements standing for a chaotic world (Wintersole 1991, 17-18). In this same sense, being able to delineate the different characteristics of film noir is also a demanding task in critical terms. One set of such features has been described thus: The nocturnal settings, Expressionistic lighting schemes and staging, complex, sometimes cynical and anti-heroic characters, and tortuous, often downbeat narratives of criminal intrigue, deception and violence featured – though by no means consistently or uniformly in these films - starkly differentiated them from the standard Hollywood register of high-key optimism” (Langford 2005, 214). What needs to be underlined, therefore, is the mood or tone of such movies which implies a general atmosphere of darkness and cynicism which envelops them overall. The darkness, mostly due to the black-and-white photography typical of bygone cinema, is emphasized and highlighted through the phenomenon of nighttime. According to Wintersole, if one understands “light as part of the day and thus of life, then, darkness represents the end of life, and night death” (1991, 78). Consequently, almost all noir and neo-noir movies make an excessive use of night scenes so as to establish symbolically analogies with the characters’ minds and the plot’s obscure development. Night also symbolizes weakness in the characters, for they tend to find themselves alone with their thoughts and which are usually marked by vices and addictions. In part due to the tradition of German Expressionism, and in part due to how noir’s “powerful light source can also allow silhouettes and shadows to form part of the shot composition” (Nomada Productions 2017), these films usually resort to dark and pollutantladen, steam-filled environments, as well as to silhouettes and shadows, and, likewise, to reflections, thereby giving rise to a general atmosphere which envelops the characters and locations in an aura of mystery, threatening gloom, sadness and confusion. In Ebert’s words, these films tend to occur in “[l]ocations that reek of the night, of shadows, of alleys, of the back doors of fancy places” (1995). Therefore, alleyway steam emerging from inefficient heating systems and smokey, or foggy, environments are a resource by which to make the locations more labyrinthine and threatening, hence the importance of cigarettes, guns, or sewers that help maintain the continuous flow of smoke. There is always smoke, for “[e]verybody in film noir is always smoking” (1995). 8 Because of “[l]ow lighting schemes, which results in stark contrasts of light and dramatic shadow patterning” (Stillwell 2019), silhouettes and shadows are a key aesthetic device which helps the viewer to focus attention on the frame as a whole instead of any particular aspect of it. Likewise, the use of reflections has the fundamental function of symbolically separating a character’s own perception of reality and the reality as it really is. Thus, mirrors help differentiate the true self of a character from the masks he / she wears when interacting with other characters. Through a character’s reflections and shadows, “the world has been transformed into a reflection of his [or her] own psychological loss and entrapment” (Hirsch 2019). Technically speaking, all these aforementioned elements are highlighted even further due to the range of camera techniques, shots and angles employed in filming such movies. According to Wintersole, film noir makes use of “low-key lighting, day-for-night shots, depth- of-field focus, wide-angle distortion, and framing devicesby describing them in terms of being anti-traditional” (1991, 18-19). Thus, film noir prefers to use more risky or unusual shots and frames so as to accentuate metaphorically what the characters are feeling or what they are hiding. It is not difficult, therefore, to find scenes in which the frame is empty (that is, showing just a bare hall or corridor with no trace of a human figure whatsoever), thus revealing loneliness, or scenes in which oneiric and distorted elements make their appearance. Critics also highlight how another key feature of film noir is the nature of the protagonists. They are antiheroes rather than heroes, given that “[n]oir protagonists […] are more likely to be drawn into crime by simple greed or sexual desire, external pressure or simple error than by ambition, and are typically far more passive and easily defeated” (Langford 2005, 216). Although they may seem to be good-willed sometimes, the means to achieve what they think is right are usually far from being moral, since “[t]he noir protagonist commits an act - murder, robbery, sex - that in some way estranges or disaffects him in such a way that the world rejects him” (Wintersole 1991, 123). The city streets and the plot test the protagonists’ questionable crumbling moral values. They tend to be detectives or policemen which resort to addiction or violence as an excuse to be able to fight off their inner turmoil, or their demons, in an effective way. And that is precisely one of the most important elements of this list of character features: they are far from being the vigilantes or heroes they are supposed to be, they are humanized. They are like everybody else, which means having to deal with one’s own issues while trying to do the right thing, and usually “evil forces often outmaneuver the otherwise good person or heroes fall victim to their own confusion because they cannot distinguish between right and wrong” (Wintersole 1991, 36). And the viewer soon 9 learns that being a man of the law is not a reason for them to not commit crimes or illegitimate actions. Their clothing choices, besides, tends to be quite similar, making a common analogy between a vast number of noir and neo-noir films. Film noir’s main characters are, frequently, a victim of a femme fatale’s seductive methods, which leads them to perdition and destruction, mainly because “the unobtainable femme fatale dominates the thoughts of the hero; because of the hero's obsessive desire to obtain the woman, what he cannot have haunts and preoccupies his mind,” which leads to the hero’s “loss of rational self” (Wintersole 1991, 117). This is nothing strange, since the figure of the femme fatale is as important as that of the protagonist in film noir. At the same time, they contribute to the advancement of the plot advance while, mercilessly, leading the main character into his descent into destruction, or, more commonly, self-destruction. Such women, within the noir tradition, make the protagonist feel important and desired, and once they have fallen into their trap, their naivety and beauty turn into elements of control. Ebert claims that these kind of female characters in film noir are “women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa,” leading to “relationships in which love is only the final flop card in the poker game of death” (1995). These femmes fatales are usually helped by certain locations within the movie which suggest eroticism and lust. Such places range from warm, sundrenced beaches to city brothels. In such places, their seductive powers are increased. Langford states the following in this regard: “The image of the nocturnal metropolis as a labyrinth with the sexually available and aggressive women at its center is key to many American noir films” (2005, 217). It could be said that everything that occurs throughout such movies is nothing but a series of events that translates into a foreshadowing of the inevitable tragedy that is meant to happen at its conclusion, given that a film noir work is “[the kind of] movie which at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending” (Ebert 1995). And there is nothing wrong with this assumption or statement. There is not a single moment in noir movies in which a glimpse of a happy ending can be detected. Everything leads to a final catastrophe that is likely to end with some character or other ending up dead. It is not a surprise then that shoot-outs become a recurrent motif by which to bring a noir movie to an end. This is precisely one feature that distinguishes film noir from other genres. Wintersole states the following in this respect: “Whereas in previous genres the hero finds the world turns in his favor and embraces him at the almost inevitable happy ending, the noir hero discovers the pointlessness of his actions at a pessimistic ending that shuts him out” (1991, 123). 16 symbolizes, or enacts, his perception of his having executed God’s will and of his being contemplated by Him from above. The second meaningful scene as far as camera techniques are concerned occurs when Travis is having a telephone conversation with Betsy -the girl he tried and failed to seduce- (00:36:57-00:38-34). Travis goes to the payphone, which is on the left, outside the screen frame once it moves to the right. Instead of showing the viewer how Travis talks and reacts to his conversation with Betsy -who is rejecting him-, the frame shows an empty corridor, with no movement or motion at all. The viewer can hear his conversation but cannot see it. The camera frame, therefore, gives the impression of trying to avoid focusing on him and on his awkward and pathetic failure at trying to get her back. Besides, and as in almost every scene in the film, the frame is a single shot, thus only showing Travis on camera, with no one around or by his side whatsoever. In this film, as in The Lady from Shanghai, kaleidoscopic elements also function aesthetically, and socio-culturally in the case of Scorsese’s film, as is highlighted in the sequence involving the final credits (01:50:44-01:52:49): the city streets, via kaleidoscopic, almost expressionistic overlapping, are portrayed as a living being, congested, stressful, glaringly lit, and as a labyrinth of perennial vice, i.e. a metaphor for Travis’ disturbed state of mind and everything that he has had to go through. 6.2. Protagonists as Antiheroes The main characters of both films, i.e. Mike O’Hara and Travis Bickle, rather than prototypical heroes, are depicted as antiheroes, that is, as “a protagonist or main character who does not embody traditional heroic qualities such as grand displays of bravery or unwavering loyalty/honesty” (WHP 2019). Nonetheless, this is by no means an obstacle for them to act, to a greater or lesser extent, as vigilantes which are encouraged and led by a strong and deep set of moral values and behavioral systems. Mike O’Hara, the main character of The Lady from Shanghai, is an unrefined and somewhat naïve character who, at first sight, may seem impolite and driven by the forces of wantonness and greed. Although permanently unsure of himself and doubt-laden, Mike ends up falling for the tricks that are played on him because of his craving for a hoard of money which he never receives and for the love of a woman that never really responds to him. To a certain extent he may seem no more than a criminal that will do whatever it takes to get those things he wants, no matter if it means interfering with, and ending, a married couple’s relationship or allegedly killing a man and breaking the law. 17 Mike O’Hara’s personality, nevertheless, also features certain positive qualities that need to be mentioned so that the complete spectrum of his moral code be recognizable. He possesses the physical and mental strength required to help those in dangerous situations, as occurs when Elsa Bannister is being robbed, and when he has no doubts about entering upon the scene in order to defend her from the felons (00:02:22-00:03:09). Moreover, he never ceases to be haunted by the fact of having killed a man, a reality which his mask of indifference cannot compensate for. It is that same deed which destroyed his world as he knew it and, henceforth, would fill him with terrible remorse. As a result, it is the role of tough guy, visible in the movie, that functions as a perennially inadequate psychological defense mechanism in his existence. In psychological terms, a similar unstable configuration characterizes Travis Bickle, the protagonist of Taxi Driver. He is highly unreliable: he may tell the truth or lie depending on what he aims to achieve. Such instability is also the result of the loneliness he experiences, together with his bouts of insomnia which result in the constant need to consume alcohol, drugs, and pornographic cinema which function as compensatory mechanisms in his life of solitude. The motives for his violent actions are not explicable in any simplistic way. In terms of universal morality they may be considered unfounded and excessive, while the tremendous contradiction between his uncontrollable desires, on the one hand, and his so-called conception of justice, on the other, tends to complicate his character. And it is that strong sense of justice which generates different layers of depth in Travis’ character. He aims to defend a world of peace and justice, without the existence of poverty or sexual exploitation. As a crusader figure, he believes in a clean and pure city, a city free from drugs and drugsrelated violence. However, these are precisely the elements that he himself resorts to when trying to destroy violence. His obsessive sense of justice becomes dangerous when a series of unlucky events start to mingle, such as his asphyxiating loneliness and obsessive search for someone to love him. Finally, it is his insomnia which leads him into a state of paranoia and lack of lucidity, made worse by the failure of his appreciation of Betsy as a person with her own emotional needs and her own value system. 6.3. The Pivotal Figure of the Femme Fatale In both films, what comes to be appreciated is how the figure of a woman, to a greater or lesser extent, becomes the obsession of the main character, making the plot move forward and, at the same time, leading to catastrophic outcomes in both cases. As was mentioned 18 earlier, this typical noir figure “take[s] on an alluring, manipulative sexuality that threatens to destroy the man, a psychological symptom of male dominance being threatened by women's emerging freedom from a social role overly defined by gender” (Wintersole 1991, 114). This figure of the femme fatale in The Lady from Shanghai can be seen in the character of Elsa Bannister. She is the perfect example of the extremely beautiful young woman who resorts to seduction to make the protagonist feel extreme desire for her, thereby making him vulnerable to her control over him. She teasingly acts naïvely and even petulantly to try and seduce the main character, Mike, who becomes infatuated with her. And once he has fallen into her trap, she asserts her dominance over him. By convincing him he is her savior, the seduction process becomes consolidated, while finding out everything about him in moments of intimacy, tends to ensure further her absorption of Mike into her scheme. But eventually - and in keeping with one of the key characteristics of the figure of the femme fatale -, she reveals her true face: she is, it is discovered, the evil mastermind behind all the immoral deeds and murder attempts that occur throughout the movie. The once innocent character turns into the agent of chaos, as reflected in the final bloody mirror-maze sequence. As Mrs. Bannister herself said, “one who follows his nature keeps his original nature… in the end” (00:23:29- 00:23:34). In Taxi Driver, the situation is perhaps more challenging when it comes to pointing out the existence of a femme fatale in the story. In this case, such a prototypical figure is spread between two female characters in terms of a bicephalous female presence in the movie. The first ‘half’ of such a figure corresponds to Betsy, a girl who works at the political campaign office. She acts as the seductive woman, self-conscious of her intellectualism and her beauty, irresponsibly capable of treating Travis as a plaything, while her rejection of his immature love acts as a catalyst to the deepening of his self-invented morality and, at the same time, accelerates his fall into madness, violence, and almost death. However, in this specific film, it is not she who actively tries to seduce the main character to make him obey her desires, but quite the opposite: it is Travis, the protagonist, who becomes infatuated with her and follows her everywhere to thus have chance after chance of making her fall in love with him. His failed attempts to seduce her are only the cause of his pain, while she just acts normally or, rather, indifferently in emotional terms. Keeping in mind the term ‘plaything’, as indicated above, the challenging critical issue becomes whether seduction on the part of Betsy is, in the end, present, while being explicable in terms of the manipulation of Travis as a kind of socially experimental guinea pig within her world of political research and voting 19 intentions. In a similar way, the candidate to the presidency surveys Travis as a prototypical citizen during the taxi journey. Meanwhile, the second ‘half’ of the femme fatale figure is represented by Iris, the twelve-year-old prostitute girl. Iris does indeed resort to the seduction of her clients, but for reasons of economic survival, rather than with the aim of fulfilling her fantasies. Instead of seducing her, Travis becomes fond of her and tries to help her to free herself from the underworld of vice. As in the case of the Betsy-Travis relationship, the factor of seduction, a key feature of the figure of the femme fatale, emerges in an equally complex way since Travis is being seduced by the altruistic facet of his character-as-crusader which, in terms of his identity as an antihero, does indeed exist deep down within his personality, but which postmodern, urban reality strangles. 6.4. The Literal and Metaphorical Representation of the Labyrinth The archetypal figure of the labyrinth is a recurrent motif in noir films. It could be either a literal labyrinth acting as a symbol of the protagonist’s hardships and feeling of loss, or either a metaphorical labyrinth concerning the plot or the psyche of a character. That is, the city “is like a labyrinth with the hero as the thread running through it. The labyrinth is shaped not just from the convoluted complexity of narrative maneuverings, but also from the persistent use of representational apparatuses […] that bound up the drama in a subjective over determination” (Clarke 1997, 95). In Taxi Driver, the symbol representing a labyrinth is the city of New York itself. The enormous amount of crowded streets and high buildings seem to go on and on indefinitely, all very much alike and similar, thus giving the impression of not knowing if one may have arrived at a completely different part of the city or just maybe one is at the starting point again: a mesmerizing urban maze which Travis drives / wanders through night after night. Likewise, both symbolically and psychologically, Travis’ restless, depressed and increasingly paranoiac mind never stops roaming and wandering through the dark corners of his psyche. His mind is a prison, a labyrinth, from which he cannot escape. Moreover, his need to help himself enters into conflict with his desire to crusade on behalf of others, while the element of egoism involved in such a psychological equation has its basis, tragically, in the desire for revenge upon an unjust society. This sense of loss is closely related to the paranoia such movies’ characters go through, characters which “tried to find meaning in a confusing life, to construct a pattern, or to impose some order on a world they could neither control nor understand” (Neimneh 213, 75). 20 In The Lady from Shanghai, the archetypal figure of the labyrinth needs to be conceived of in an equally metaphorical-symbolic way, while emerging, in this case, in terms of the factor of intricacy of plot. In the first of these cases, it is the archetype of the mirror maze that stands out (01:22:34-01:24:40). It is a quite literally a maze made up of mirrors. The characters do not know where the other characters are located nor are they aware of from which directions bullets are being shot. Real bodies and their reflections acquire an equal status or merely a reflection of them in a mirror. This generates the sensation that three characters -that is, the protagonist, the woman he desires and the husband of that womanare simultaneously close by one another and completely apart. A mobile, yet static, kaleidoscope of jagged images fills the screen. The scene is full of different reflections of the three characters, these reflections showing the different faces they possess depending on what they want to achieve. In a movie in which double-double crossing is a constant form of behavior, such kaleidoscopically jagged fragmentariness acquires aesthetic and moral value. The characters never even come to terms with themselves. At the same time, it is the movie’s plot which may be considered maze-like or labyrinthine. As the film evolves, the initial idea of what seemed an understandable and linear movie plot starts to blur until it finally becomes a spiral of different characters deceiving each other with lies, secrets, intrigue and betrayal. A point is reached when the spectator does not know if the telling of a truth by any character at all has ever been witnessed. This immoral labyrinth thus interacts with the already-mentioned symbolic labyrinth. In the end, the only way to exemplify the intricate and labyrinthine plot is to describe it while the protagonist, Mike, struggles to unravel it, thus giving a clue to its intricacy and laboriousness. After accepting to work for the wealthy Mr. and Mrs. Bannister, Mike encounters Mr. Grisby -Mr. Bannister’s associate-, who asks Mike to help him fake his (Grisby’s) death and in exchange earn a hefty quantity of money. However, Broome, the private detective hired by Mr. Bannister, finds out about their plan and threatens to use the law against him and arrest him, after which Mr. Grisby decides to kill the detective. Broome, in his last moments alive, calls Mrs. Bannister and tells her that both Mike and Grisby are attempting to kill her husband in order to become benefactors of the money from his insurance. Mike also finds out what Mr. Grisby is planning (killing Mr. Bannister and accusing Mike of it) and goes to Mr. Bannister to tell him the truth, but he finds Mr. Grisby dead instead. Then a trial takes place in which Mike is accused of murdering Mr. Grisby and in which Mr. Bannister decides to defend him as his lawyer. Mike manages to escape the building and once outside, he seeks refuge in a 21 Chinese theatre where later Mrs. Bannister finds him. Mike then discovers that it has been her, Mrs. Bannister, who plotted with Mr. Grisby to kill her husband, Mr, Bannister, but who had to kill Grisby after Broome discovered him, since he may spill the beans with regard to their plan. Later, having been led into a maze of mirrors, both Mr. and Mrs. Bannister end up killing each other and Mike manages to get out alive. This summary, therefore, would seem to constitute a clear exemplification of the labyrinthine nature of this film’s intricate plot. 6.5. The Shoot-Out as Movie Ending In both films, all the events that take place determine not only the evolution of the main characters and the development of their breaking of moral values, but also foreshadow the outcome of all of this, slowly escalating until it reaches a final climax of chaos, violence and self-destruction. Everything that occurs leads to a bloody shoot-out at the end. In The Lady from Shanghai, the final shoot-out scene is easy to predict. Murder and guns have been making their appearances, slowly but steadily, since the very beginning. In fact, the film starts with the protagonist saving the life of Mrs. Bannister (00:02:22-00:03:09), whose purse encloses an unused pistol. That same scene would appear again almost at the end of the film, at the very precise moment when Mike finds out who she really is (01:19:52- 1:20:23), but in this case, she hides her pistol in her purse with the intention of firing it at the person who had once been her savior, the aforementioned Mike. But the guns are also related to other characters, such as Mr. Grisby -the character who falsely fooled Mike into shooting him-, a man who is closely related to these guns, since he starts this shoot-out cycle that will accelerate the criminal ending of the movie. All throughout the plot, guns begin to gain more and more weight, until they eventually become the culprits that will end up killing almost all the key characters in the film, with the exception of the protagonist. In Taxi Driver, guns play a different but similar role. Owning a gun, what at first started as a repulsive idea for Travis, slowly evolves into something to have for precaution, and finally something to kill and almost die for. Travis is unstable and aggressive, but does not mean any harm. Nevertheless, his moral values rapidly begin to break down as the plot advances and he starts to think about defending his beliefs no matter the means by which to achieve it. What started as a complain-but-do-not-act character, develops into a cynical one capable of massacring and shooting at an entire building and everyone inside it, even if his own life may constitute the price to be paid for it (01:38:10-01:44:52). 22 6.6. Eroticism and Lust In both films, the concepts of eroticism and lust play a fundamental role in the development of the characters, their idiosyncrasies and even the evolution of the plot itself. And although they are elements which are obviously strongly related to the aforementioned figure of the femme fatale, they are not solely understandable in this restricted sense. They empower the surroundings and general atmosphere of the stories which become endowed with matters of further depth rather than just a series of physical impulses. In The Lady from Shanghai, the main source of eroticism can be clearly observable in the character of Elsa Bannister. She is the main sensual element of seduction that Mike craves for, and therefore the beginning of everything that later takes place. From the very start, she is seen as a girl who is constantly looking for Mike’s attention and affection. This idea is highlighted during certain episodes that help weave the plot, such as the scene in which Mr. Grisby seems to be spying on her as she swims in the ocean (00:13:15-00:13:44), being her almost nude body the only image displayed on camera during some seconds, thus giving the viewer the idea of her erotic nature. It is even more clearly emphasized by the constantly reiterated number of scenes of her being next to her husband, for she is presented as a beautiful young lady and he quite the opposite. Nonetheless, lust can be sensed as a presence throughout the film. To do so, it is important to take into account the locations in which the film evolves, locations which are culturally related to these two factors. That is why the yacht and the beach play such an important role here, including the Caribbean scenes which involve night parties (00:26:50-00:32:25). All of the above are but resources to make it easier for the protagonist to fall hopelessly into the temptation presented by Elsa Bannister’s potential for passion. In Taxi Driver, these factors of eroticism and lust are viewed from a completely different perspective and approach. For its protagonist, lust and eroticism are nothing but filth that floods New York’s streets. He feels disgust toward for all the prostitutes he constantly sees everywhere and desires them to stop existing, but, at the same time, and paradoxically, he himself is a regular visitor to pornographic cinemas. Eventually, this becomes ironical since it is Iris, a young prostitute, who becomes his main safe-passage to doing anything -moral or not- to protect her and get her out of the brothel she works in. He tries to save her from that very thing he hates the most, and his fondness for her makes him unaware of the future consequences of his choice. The brothel is a pivotal element in the film, for it becomes the symbol of Travis’ descent into self-destruction. He dislikes such places, but ends up almost dying in one of 23 them. This could perfectly exemplify how he finally became that which he promised himself he would never become. 6.7. Influence of War on the Protagonists As usual in a wide range of noir films, the protagonists of the two movies share the common experience of having been direct witnesses to the atrocities perpetrated during a given international war, either the Second World War or the Vietnam War. These films explore how these traumatic events have molded the personality of the main characters and how they play an important role in the choices that they make and which would irredeemably end in catastrophe. In The Lady from Shanghai, there is an interesting dialogue between Mike O’Hara and Mrs. Bannister in which he tells her that he once killed a man during the war - the Second World War - (00:05:10-00:05:20). This apparently almost anecdotical incident has meant a burden for Mike, far heavier than he would like to admit to. First of all, this confession would translate into both Elsa Bannister knowing that she could use him to fulfill her macabre plan, and into Mr. Grisby being sure that Mike would be the perfect candidate to act as the fake killer in an exchange of money. Had Mike not revealed anything about his obscure past, these two interconnected plots would have never interacted and the film would have lost a great deal of its significance. Secondly, his killing a man has made him a character full of doubts and remorse. Since then, Mike has never acted on the spur of the moment, but has instead hesitated and contemplated his options thoroughly. Thus, it is the factor that transformed Mike from being a reckless man into a person aware of the importance of taking choices and of the fragility of one’s life. In Taxi Driver, something similar can be appreciated in the character of Travis Bickle. At the very beginning of the film, Travis tells his future boss that he took part in the war, for he was a marine during the Vietnam War (00:02:10-00:04:12). The traumatic experiences that he lived during this war would give rise, then, to this unstable and paranoid character, possibly suffering from PTSD. Since then, he would have begun to lose faith in humanity, while starting to suffer from insomnia and paranoia. One clear example of this state of affairs is the scene in which he is talking to the Secret Service agent during Palantine’s political speech (01:01:31-01:05:40). His relationship with weapons and guns also started back there, but he decided not to resort to them anymore, a choice he ended up breaking as Betsy rejects him and the plot 24 advances. The final massacre scene is nothing but a natural response to the atrocities that Travis had to undergo while being on active war service. It is supposed that those who had to go through the experience of a bloody and violent war can never really feel free from those haunting memories, memories which will eventually be translated into more death and destruction. 6.8. Reflections and Windows Mirrors, reflections and windows in general play a fundamental role in both films, acting as a sort of lens or “third eye” that sees the characters from outside and which, at the same time, project a manifestation of their inner selves and secrets. In The Lady from Shanghai, there is a scene which is invested with several layers of depth due to the role of the icon of mirrors and what they reflect. The sequence which reveals this is the last in the movie, the one involving the maze of mirrors (01:22:34-01:24:40). As previously indicated, the icon is not only used to make it difficult for the characters to tell where they themselves, together with the rest of characters, really are, but also as a metaphorical representation of their true identity. The different reflections of each character are a representation of the different personae they try to convince the others that they possess, while always opting to reveal a particular one for a given situation. In Taxi Driver, there is a mirror scene which is quite important: the well-known scene in which Travis is seeing himself reflected in the mirror and rehearsing how he will look and act with his new firearm (01:05:50-01:07:47). This is a highly significant scene since we again see how mirrors act as the symbols of the many faces each human being possesses. Travis has not yet decided how he will look, so he practices in front of a mirror, shaping his new persona. Moreover, an element which needs to be mentioned is the cab itself, and more precisely its windows. Travis sees life and reality through the windows of his taxi, and not through his own eyes. He sees and talks to his passengers through the central rear-view mirror instead of looking directly at them, thus keeping a certain distance between reality and his perception of reality. The different windows and mirrors of the taxi act as a lens through which the protagonist shapes his own reality and, at the same time, draws away from it, thus generating distortion within that same reality. And the fact that he constantly looks through mirrors and windows, and not just at given moments, highlights and extols his distorted vision and perception of reality. 25 7. Conclusions Having carried out, in real terms, what was proposed in the opening section of this Project, it would seem possible to affirm that any comparative study of the movies entitled The Lady from Shanghai and Taxi Driver will always benefit from a prior study of the narrative, aesthetic, and technical dimensions of the phenomenon known as film noir. In this sense, the study carried out here has revolved around the issue of to what extent each of these movies could be understood as film noir because of its somewhat imprecise definition, terminologically speaking, as well as being not fully understood as a genre, since although some authors do consider it a proper cinematographic genre, others understand it as a subgenre, or merely as a tone rather than as a genre per se. Nonetheless, the first part of this Project has been dedicated to the definition and characteristics which could be found in any noir or neo-noir film, thus making it easier to identify any of the movies assimilable within this particular genre frame. Among these aforementioned features of film noir, those which stand out are the figure of a protagonist which tends to be as criminal or immoral as those who he is chasing, making him an antihero rather than a hero; a femme fatale who irrevocably leads the main character to his own destruction; a steamy, gloomy, low lighting, which together with the smoke that pollutes, firearms, and scenario-related shadows, endow the film with a decadent, disturbing tone; the use of kaleidoscopic reflections and windows by which to show the protagonists’ identity crises and his pursuit to understand how he really is; and the recurrent motif of violence, murder and death which is strongly related to the characters’ awful memories and traumas related to the theater of war. In this Project, then, having proved that a noir aesthetics constitutes a fundamental factor when it comes to identifying both movies generically, the specific ways in which the parallelism between them may be scrutinized represented a challenge, to a certain extent at least, in terms of analytical criticism. This was seen to be especially so with regard to the paradigmatic characteristics of noir aesthetics and film noir identifiable as the icon of the femme fatale, on the one hand, and of the labyrinth (or maze), on the other. Interpretative effort was required in order to foreground how those same icons function as representations of the mental meanderings of the main protagonists of both movies, together with the twisted, egoistic minds of all members of Western urban societies in the mid-twentieth century: the Cold War, the glorification of materialism, the decline in spiritual values, together with the heightened awareness of the mental condition of the prototypical urban dweller due to the unfettered access to the arts.