Blade Runner - FOW

 For your film viewing notes (blog) reflect on the relevant question:

(neo-noir) To what extent does evidence from within the film support it's being identified as neo-noir?

(proto-noir) To what extent does evidence from within the film support it's being identified as a precursor to films noir?

In structuring your response/reflection it may be helpful to:

• connect your observations to your personal position regarding the genre/style/movement questions relating to classifying noir
• organise your response to having distinct foci for different sections, eg: themes, narrative aspects, visual motifs, other noir-distinct film elements such as lighting

Neo-Noir was a term that has been used in the 1970s. Unlike Noir films, Neo-Noir films made use of modern technology and modern circumstances.  

The characters similarities between noir and blade runner... 

The setting of the film and the shots he used to frame it, visual similarities Riley's protagonists and their characters of old are also remarkably strong. Trenchcoats, thick padded blazers and hourglass silhouettes abound in both, it's noted on a 40s look - the veil in the pillbox hat, the shoulder pads, the mascara, the continual smoking - it's classic in the 1940s Noir. 

Deckard as well follows the format layout in the Film Noir. Deckard too, follows the format laid out in film noir, says Davis. “Harrison Ford is the quintessential private detective ... straight out of the 40s,” he says. “[He] is an outsider,” notes Brookes, “he seems to be on the margins, he’s on the street; but, at the same time, he’s clearly somebody who has, or had, real expertise in the field, in detective work. The idea of the burned-out cop who got out of the force, there are obvious resonances with noir detectives there.”

Brookes goes a step further. “With Blade Runner, straightaway you’re introduced to the Tyrell Corporation, we see the building looming large, towering over the city … What it does – in a way that film noir couldn’t because there was no real ecology movement at that time – is to critique these corporations at least partially from a green perspective. It highlights a deregulated world where everything is synthetic, overcrowded. Animals have become endangered or extinct and now exist only as exotic manufactured copies.

It’s a futuristic city that’s gone wrong, it’s all smog and rain – even the weather has gone wrong. The parallels with today are unmistakable so it’s very prescient in that depiction. It’s taking a strand from 40s noir – its corrupt corporate world – and adapting it for today when everything is getting out of control. The replicants – ‘skin jobs’ – are effectively slaves produced by the corporation, different models designed to do different work. Pris, for example, is a ‘basic pleasure model’ – a kind of cyborgian punk sex doll. Zhora is similarly sexualised and fetishised, accessorised with a fake snake…Look at what’s happening today with the idea of female sex dolls – and that’s a good example of the reworking of a noir trope to reflect a contemporary concern.

On Blades Runner's Stylic Heritage

Of all the tropes that define noir, its striking, sullen visual style is perhaps the most recognisable. Widescreen shots of an endless, decaying metropolis, crowded, dark and diseased with societal discord; high-contrast Venetian blinds; people perennially smoking cigarettes and monsoon levels of rainfall are all elements that define the genre. “They were shot in a very dark way, often with dark, despairing and nihilistic stories,” says Brookes. “The visual style is central: low-key lighting, the use of darkness, urban settings, and so on.”

References Source List:

https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/37550/1/how-film-noir-influenced-blade-runners-darknesshttp://film110.pbworks.com/w/page/12610255/Lighting%20in%20Blade%20Runner#:~:text=From%20the%20first%20scenes%20in,bright%20or%20high%20lit%20shots.&text=The%20low%20lighting%20of%20this,nature%20of%20the%20film%20itself.