Adam Graham

Adam Graham


Oral Presentation on Sin City


I. Sin City is a collaboration of three different stories. It was filmed in black and white with certain objects and features shown in color, with a Pulp-Fiction type story line.

The first story “The Hard Goodbye” Marv an unattractive, mentally unstable tough guy, spends the night of his life with a beautiful mysterious women who winds up dead next to him. Marv spends the rest of the story torturing and killing his way to the truth behind “Goldie’s” murder!

The second story “The Big Fat Kill” Dwight a reformed murderer, with a soft spot for women. Helps some prostitutes dispose of a corrupt cop they just murdered, In order to stop a turf war between the hookers, the police, and the mafia.

The third story “The Yellow Bastard” Hartigan is a detective that saves a little girl Nancy from a murdering pedophile, who 11 years later try’s to settle a vendetta against Hartigan who robbed him of his man hood so many years earlier.

II. The biggest characteristic of Sin City that links it to classic film noir is.
The fact that the whole movie was primarily done in black and white, another major characteristic that links this film to classic film noir is, every scene in the film was shot at night. All in the same dark, depressing, corrupt urban environment in Basin City.

The most obvious link of a character to classic film noir is in the story “The yellow bastard”. Hartigan Played by Bruce Willis is one of the more traditional film noir characters. The ambiguous protagonist, a detective that does the morally, honest, and right thing, but uses questionable means, and practices to accomplish his goals. When Hartigan catches senator Rourk’s son the cereal murdering pedophile, he takes away his pistol, and takes away his other weapon, Hartigan shoots him and blows off his man hood, so he could never hurt another little girl again. The ambiguous protagonist is a symbol of power, and so is the male penis. By taking away the villains genital, he also takes away his power in the subconscious of the audience.

III. One of the more obvious elements that deviate from classic film noir and link the film to neo noir is. The use of CGI computer generated imaging, Sin City was one of the first films to be shot with high-definition cameras and used CGI to create the back ground settings, thus creating a totally artificial environment that simulates the picture perfect nourish urban environment.

Another element of the film that deviates from the classic film noir and links it
to neo noir is the fact that there are three different stories in the film, and the storyline jumps from one story to another in no chronological order. But in the end the stories are linked together, and everything comes into light and makes perfect sense.

In the article Sin City, Film Noir, and the Animation, Fascination W Mclean quotes the film by saying “walk down the right back alley in Sin City, and you can find anything” I found film noir in Sin City (1). This Quote is the most memorable line in the whole movie, and it connects the film with film noir in a clever way.

Andrew Hartman in the article Sin City as Neo-Noir; Or, the Aesthetics of Post-Alienation explains “The brilliance of Sin City-and it is brilliant-lies not in its ability to connect to its audience in some human capacity, but rather, in the ways that it reflects America circa 2005, desensitized to horror by its awful war in Iraq and revelations of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib-torture sanctioned by the upper rungs of the chain of command” (3). This quote ties the film to neo noir, and shows the anxiety’s of the American public during its time period.

This is the opening scene of the film, where you have many elements of film noir, and also neo noir. The young handsome hit man on a terrace overlooking Basin City at night, with the beautiful femme fatale running from something. We don’t know from what, but it finally catches up with her. There are a lot of elements of film noir in this scene, he gives her a cigarette, and you have the voice-over narration giving the audience background information, black and white, with high contrast. They are both nicely dressed, and in the end you have the ambiguous protagonist shooting and killing the femme fatale, just like in Double indemnity where Walter shoots and kills Phyllis.