“This is Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, California.

It’s about 5 o’clock in the morning.

 

That’s the Hollywood studio. Complete with celebrity worship and systemic greed.

A murder has been reported from one of those great big houses in the block we call corrupt.

You’ll read about it in the late editions, though I’m not entirely sure which version.

You’ll get it over your radios, see it on television, and on your phones.

Because an outdated system is involved, one of the most problematic

Blown up to be lauded as “truth”

Before those Hollywood columnists and powerful institutions get their hands on it.

Maybe you’d like to hear the facts, the whole truth.

If so, you are now the spectator.”

— NO picture should ever “lower the moral standards of those who see it” and that “the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.” —

 

We see many of the films that have been lauded as the canonical greats; the films which defined a genre or “changed cinema,” commemorated each decade, or perhaps labelled as a “genre-bending” film, to categorise for the studios and critics- and even us, the spectator.

When we first exchanged ideas, we spoke of the genres we liked, and of which aspects of the media-making process we felt were our strengths, or perhaps were intrigued to explore further. My desire was to experiment with found-footage and sound composition, while Carly and Steff were to contribute footage, both found and original.

Presenting to the class our initial research and inspiration, a concept to re-appropriate genre films based on a poem was formed, exhibiting some of our inspirations and ideas to visually manipulate and sonically experiment with the traditional confines of genre.

Though collaborative work in the time of COVID was a challenging barrier to the planning and making of this film, it served as a learning experience in adjusting to varying communication styles. Such is the nature of our virtual learning environment.

In the pursuit of exploring a core concept and thematic concern, Kaplan’s reading (encountered in the studio’s introductory week) served as an integral base foundation for the film.  We spoke of women and the way in which they are presented. Their identities inscribed from a male gaze; the femme fatale, the killer woman  “the franchise heroine.”

In it, Christine Gledhill writes on genre and the “postmodern practises of picking and mixing,” of genre being the means in which “filmmakers [can] take inspiration from critical as well as studio categories”.

Fascinated by the time period, whether it be through the words of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, or Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon: Hollywood in itself is a genre as much as it is a place, not simply in the way it is presented on-screen, but in its “conventions”.

Despite the barrier of schedules and environments, knowing where our interests and initial concept stood, I embarked on the process of sourcing clips from a genre which I found to be a fascinating window of cinema, the film-noir genre, nestled in the bizarre world that is Hollywood.

What an interesting moment in history to observe… “The Golden Era”. Of wealth and excess, star power orientation, big-budget productions and a monopoly of film studios which made an active effort to hinder the efforts and work of women behind the scenes, instead pinning them up as the glamorous beauty, “the franchise heroine”. Though I lament this is still the reality. The systemic structures in place inhibit this growth, it is only in the works of the avant-garde and experimental means of filmmaking and genre-mixing that I have encountered a message. A statement of sorts.

The selection of clips/sourced footage started with a development of a concept I began earlier in the year, of re-appropriating existing films from the canon and remixing their message and meaning.

Or, “picking and mixing,” notes Gledhill. And that I did.

With the screening of Sunset Blvd encountered earlier in the semester, I began to steer my research away from the No-Wave movement of New York and the Sydney Co-Op movement of the 70s, directing my search to film noir on the genre map, though not too distant from its modernist upheaval in the realm of neo-noir, a space of which one of my favourite films, Blade Runner occupies- though I must say the musical stylings of Vangelis is integral to the viewing experience for me.

 

Inspired by the likes of Helen Grace (Serious Undertakings) and Lizzie Borden (Born in Flames), and similar to my previous short Watching News, I began to brainstorm ways in which I could explore the traditional genre conventions of film noir, but reinterpret their messages and meanings, altering their intention – their perspective – whilst centring the film to its thematic core and not shying away from being expressive in commentating on the social order and politics of the time.

My research and viewings took me down the noir vortex as I screened many of these films for the first time, compiling key sections of dialogue in an attempt to construct a “poem” of sorts. Other media sourced ranged from Armenian-American protests on Sunset Blvd, or archived stock footage of Hollywood award ceremonies of last century, reaching to European interpretations of noir: Godard’s Breathless, edited by Cecile Decugis & Lila Herman; or Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques, edited by Madeleine Gug.

Now which genre category do we enter? An experimental short? Narrative non-fiction? Audio-visual collage? A found-footage genre criticism piece? Conceptually, this is to the spectator of the film an interpretation that urges the spectator to do their own research,

Colours and tonality of light had fascinated me in my previous films, something in the way the reflection creates a dream-like mirage over an image, a visual hypnosis of sorts. I requested some footage from my group members of shots of water and/or movement in order for me to incorporate their contributions in the editing process,using their original clips to experiment with texture and distorted overlays and image manipulation.

As the collection of clips and dialogue were coming together, I approached a few friends of mine who kindly allowed me to include their music in the film, a variety of Naarm-based producers with disparate sounds and styles. Blending each of these components, I began experimenting on a 4-channel mixer to create a multi-layered soundscape, experimenting with echo and filter effects, as well as overlaying different mediums of sound, though there were some errors in the original recording that I was unable to tweak in post-production.

 

 

>>>> THE FEMALE SPECTATOR_ORIGINAL SCORE

Consider this film a critique of the patriarchal, imperial structures of Cinema. A magnifying glass on a small scope of the conventions of such films that derive from the Hollywood studio system, as well as its European counterparts that feature in the film. In a black and white world, with charging flashes of red that reflect the obscuring of women, their accolades perpetually shadowed by their male counterparts.

The recurring motif of water rippling serves to represent the dreamlike state, in which we, the spectator, view images of Alice Guy, “the forgotten mother of Cinema” and of the female editors that live in the shadow of the auteur, their legacies shattering like the mirrors in The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles/Viola Lawrence).

Exploring genre through the historical and social devices of film noir/neo-noir was the underlying ethos of deconstructing, or remapping, these archaic and outdated structures of Hollywood and its depiction of women, its erasure of woman, and predetermined identity and place of “belonging” of which they had been prescribed. Their contributions and artistic input obscured amongst an industry and film culture of which is polluted/populated by the worship of the male auteur; an outdated cinema, still stuck in its B&W era, the male gaze of which is perpetually lauded in noir film.

 

 

 

Who is the female spectator?

How long must women still remain a “spectator” in the world of Cinema?

The Female Spectator strives to replace and critique the ways women’s roles are framed in the Film Noir genre, whilst sticking to themes which define film noir. A taste of moral ambiguity, with the eventual downfall of the protagonist by the “alluring woman,” or in Rita Hayworth’s case, “The Love Goddess”…

Put the blame on mame me, boy.