Sin city

Sin city follow the traits of a typical film noir genre. Firstly film noir are typical for having their films in black and white, and they have a non linear narrative this makes the film hard to follow as no everything you see is in chronological order and it uses a lot of jump cut editing’s. This Helps add to the mystery of the film and give it an eyrieness that scares but also intrigues the audience. This is no exception of sin city; the film mainly follows the stories of three male cynical protagonists whose stories all interlink just because of one main character. As these characters don’t have anything else in common when the film jumps from one to another its hard to truly follow the story but it keeps the audience watching and waiting for the scene where all three characters to come together (which doesn’t happen). I previously mentioned the term ‘cynical protagonist’ it is very typical to the film noir genre to have this main character in sin city these would be heartegen, Marv and Dwight. These three all provide a voice over through out their scenes which is another typical film noir convention. Through out these voice over we get to hear what the main characters are thinking, which is mainly cynical. For example heartegen often refers to him self as a ‘useless old man’ also ‘she’s forgotten about you old man’ he put him self down he’s not good enough no matter how hard he tries’ friends your another example is Dwright when he’s driving the car says ‘prove to your friends your worth a damn’ he feels he has to prove him self and he would never be good enough for his friends.

  Another typical character of a film noir is a femme fetal this is a dominating female character who is in control over the men. The main techniques the director uses are lots of low angled shots as this makes the women look down at the audience so we know who is in control. In sin city the director cleverly uses bits of colour such as a dress a woman’s lipstick. In the beginning of the film the only colour that could be seen is a woman’s red lips and dress, red if often a connotation of death and danger which often surrounds the femme fetal, this is no exception to this character as after only a few minutes of her being on screen she is killed another trait of the femme fatal is to be a smoker which again the first woman we see was so she follows criteria of a femme fetal.

  The third character that is in film noir and sin city is a corrupted cop this makes people feel unprotected as some cops are against them and there is no sense of authority. An example of this would be when Dwright is being followed  a police car he says’ I don’t have enough money to pay this one off, and what if this is one of the good ones’ this suggest that the police often easily paid off and may people don’t pay for their crimes therefore don’t learn. This is why there is a high crime rate in basin city; there is theme through out the film which is with more violence and death there is the more rain and lightning there is to wash away all the blood and theoretically wash away the sins. This is very typical of a film noir to use lots of rain and lightning.