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The Dark Side of the Screen—A Resistance to Changing Times
Maria Antónia Lima
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2020.09.012
University of Évora, Évora; University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies, Lisbon, Portugal
This essay argues that black and white cinema spawned a resistance to changing times that is still very present in the new generation of directors who follow classic film traditions while subverting them with consistent narrative inventions. The Artist, the best picture Oscar award winner in 2012, is an example of this resistance as it pays homage to some of the greatest silent films of the first two or three decades of cinema history. “The Dark Side of the Screen” aims to underline that there is an unchanging power of the phantasmagoria so present in black and white movies, produced not only in the silent era but also in film noir through lighting effects and camera angles which characterize the work of major noir directors like Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, and Orson Welles, who knew everything about the unutterable mysteries hidden on the dark side of the screen.
film noir, black and white cinema, dark side, resistance
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