my presentation Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Amy Schmidt

English 101

Who Framed Roger Rabbit Presentation Outline

I. Introduction

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is set in the city of Hollywood the year is 1947. Eddie Valiant is the hard nose detective who is trying to find out who killed Marvin Acme and why. This movie is film noir for both adults and children.

II. Elements of Classic Noir

1. Eddie Valiant is the Detective of the story. He wears a trench coat, drinks whiskey and smokes cigarettes.



2. Jessica Rabbit is the femme fatale in the story. She is the image of what every guy thinks is the perfect woman. She sings at the ink and paint club and has every man there under her spell. She hits her husband Roger over the head with a frying pan. You don’t know if she is good or bad until near the very ending of the movie.

III. Elements of Neo Noir

As Mark Conard says in The Philosophy of Neo Noir “Important among these changes are the placing of social issues, like race, class, and gender” (8). This is important to the topic of my essay because it shows how film noir is developing in to something that makes you look below the surface of the film.



1. Half the cast in this movie is cartoons. They live in a place called Toon Town. The only place you see them are when they are working on the set or in the Ink and Paint club, or when we see Toon Town. This shows a separation of the races with very little mixing going on. That shows how it was back in the day and even a little bit today. The races shall remain separate and have very little mixing going on. This shows in the old film noir movies it was all white people and you never saw any people of color if you did it was very brief. Just there world and everything was rosy.



In the article “Opposite Attract: Light and Dark Who Framed Roger Rabbit” Frank Candiloro says “Eddie Valliant had all the characteristics of a cartoon character before turning into the cynical, hard-edge film noir detective we see in the film”(123). The shows how much of a change has happened to Eddie and how effected he is by all that has happened to him.

2. Back story in the movie we find out that Eddie Valiant’s brother Theodore was killed by a toon that dropped a piano on them from 15 stories Eddie only had a broken arm and his brother died. This has a dramatic effect on Eddie. His girlfriend Dolores says he hasn’t been the same since. How This is Neo Noir is you find out about past events that made him into the man he is today. In Classic Noir you see the detective and you have no idea how he has gotten to be the way he is. This gives the character more depth and allows you to have a closer connection to the character.

blog number 7

The story, The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones, from the Gold Coast section in the book Los Angeles Noir is, in my opinion, most like noir. The story that is least like noir is Kinship. I think that the story, The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones, by Scott Phillips is the most like noir, because it has a femme fatal and a protagonist. The femme fatal in this story is Cherie. She is describe as “Tall and leggy with hair dyed blond, hanging straight with an inward flip just below her jaw line, and looking at her face and body you wouldn’t take her for more then forty”(288). She calls Tate, the protagonist in the story, to come to a house she is house sitting to help her. Once he is inside, she starts rubbing up against him and giving him lots of lets have sex signals. They make it into the bedroom where they have very brief sex, and afterwards she turns on the light. Tate discovers the owner of the house on the floor bleeding to death. Cherie wants Tate to help dispose of the body. This is classic noir with a femme fatale, Cherie, who is trying to convince the protagonist to do something bad and using her body to do it.

The story Kinship, in the Gold Coast section of the book Los Angeles Noir by Brian Ascalon Roley is the least like noir. It doesn’t have a murder or a femme fatale in it. This story also doesn’t have a detective. It doesn’t have any of the things that make this a true noir story. All good noir has at least one of these elements in it. When it doesn’t, the story just lacks flavor and appeal. It’s basically a story of revenge for a wrong done to a family member. It’s about a guy who goes after the father of the child who is bulling his nephew. In the story it says, “They didn’t believe us. Said we were making false accusations against their son. Then Manny went over to confront the guy after he noticed Emerson’s slit braces. The fathers a soccer-dad from hell” (301).The story is mainly about a uncle who used to be a gang banger but is now a youth pastor and a pillar of the community. When he finds out his brother-in-law was beat up by the father from hell, he gets an ice pick and his brother-in-law and they go down to this guy’s house and kidnap him. Then they beat him up and drive an ice pick through his knee. This story is just lacking on all levels of what makes a story noir. I don’t have any idea what the editors of the book were thinking when they put this story in their collection. The only thing in this story that slightly resembles noir is the dark overtones. There is no murder, no protagonist, and no femme fatale. This story is just a waste of the reader’s time and effort.

blog # 6

The role of protagonist in neo noir is as different from film noir as night is to day. In film noir the protagonist is looking for a criminal, a person who has done wrong in some way. He searches through a city, usually Los Angeles, finding clues that ultimately lead him to the criminal, the one who needs to be brought to justice. The protagonist in neo noir looks into himself to find the bad guys. There are three different types of neo noir. They are past, present and future.

In movies that are past neo noir, the protagonist is placed in the distant past where he has to find himself. A perfect example of past neo noir is the movie Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark. The movie is set in the time of World War II. Indiana has to go against Nazis and femme fatals in order to find the Ark of the Covenant. He has to look deep into his soul to find out if he is a man of science or a man who believes in god. By the end of the movie, you find out that he is both. He believes in his science and also in the power of the lord.

In the movies that are present neo noir, the time is set in the here and now. A good example of present neo noir is the movie Bourne Identity. This movie is set in present day with a man who can’t remember anything about his past life. All that he remembers is from when he was in a fishing boat recovering from being shot in the back. Bourne goes on a journey to try and figure out who he is and who is trying to kill him. He has to look deep into himself to find the answers as his training takes over.

Future neo noir is the best of all neo noir. It gives us a look into the future to see what is possible. The protagonist is still looking into himself for the answers, but we get to see it in a way that is very interesting. Take the movie Minority Report; it is placed in the future in Washington D.C. In the future they have perfected a new way to solve crime by using clairvoyants to arrest criminals before they have even committed a crime. The next person the seers say is a murderer is the main character. He finds out and has to go on the run to find his victim and prevent this crime.

question 5 and 8

     As I read the zero draft questions for Double Indemnity, two of the questions just popped right out at me. The first question that grabbed my attention was the lone man walking with crutches, and the other was the one about relationships. Here is my try at answering these questions to the best of my ability. I will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth as I see it.

    A lone man walking with crutches approaches the camera. He is lit from behind so all we see of him is his body covered in black. Who is this person? I believe this person represents both Mr. Nirdlinger and Mr. Huff. I feel this way because when we see Mr. Nirdlinger with crutches, he is on his way to the train station. The next time we see a scene with a man with crutches Mr. Huff is impersonating Mr. Nirdlinger as he is getting on the train. Both of these men are at one time the same person, be it pretend or real. Why is the shadowed man at the beginning of the film? I think it is an important image to have at the beginning of the film, because it gives you a sense of foreboding and it raises your curiosity. It makes you think. Who is this guy? What part does he play in the movie? It gives you more reasons to be drawn into the movie as you try to answer these questions. You make more of a connection to everything that is going on in the movie.

   The next question that grabbed my attention was the one where it states, “Certain critics have interpreted the film version of Double Indemnity as an indictment of heterosexual relationships. What details from the film portray the relationships between men and women as duplicitous and destructive”? For me I can answer this question with the two scenes that stand out in my mind. The first scene is where we get our first look at Phyllis. She is standing at the top of the stairs wearing nothing more then a towel wrapped around her. We have Walter at the bottom looking up. If this isn’t an obvious attempt for her to show what she has and to get the guy to want a closer look at what he is missing then I don’t know my seduction scenes. Then when she dresses and comes down the stairs, she is wearing a flirty skirt and an anklet which draws attention to her ankle. Showing your ankle in those days bordered on very improper behavior. The next scene that I think shows a duplicitous relationship between Phyllis and Walter is the scene where Phyllis shows up at Walter’s apartment with a very flimsy excuse. She says he left his hat at the house, but she doesn’t have the hat with her. When she comes in and takes off her coat, she is wearing a tight top and says her husband won’t be home until late. To me this feels strongly like a back-handed invitation.

blog 3 The Ending

Now that we all finished reading the book “Double Indemnity” by James M. Cain, I have one question to ask everyone. Did you think that the ending was as bad as I did or did you actually like it? For me the ending was sadly disappointing. Walter tried to kill Phyllis and didn’t succeed. He ends up in the hospital where he tells Mr. Keyes everything. Mr. Keyes then allows him to escape by booking passage for him on a ship, telling him if he is caught the insurance company would prosecute him to the full extent of the law. While Walter is on the ship, he runs into Phyllis and through her finds out that their story is in the papers. While they are looking out over the back of the ship, they notice a shark is trailing the ship. Phyllis then tells Walter that she is planning on killing herself by jumping off the ship into the water. I guess that Walter likes this plan so much he decides that he is going to do this as well. The very ending of the book has Walter writing at his desk in his cabin as he waits for Phyllis to join him so they can go commit suicide together. She wants to wait until the moon rises so she can see the sharks fin cutting through the water. The very last words in the book are “the moon.”

   I felt that this ending was horrible. A better ending would have been Walter killing Phyllis and then having Mr. Keyes kill Walter. Anything would have been better than the ending James M. Cain had written. I can see why Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder changed the ending in the movie. If I was watching the movie and it had the books ending in it, I would have thrown something at the screen and demand my money back. You have no real sense of justice in the book. The characters get away and decides, “hey since everyone knows what we did, we might as well just jump off this ship and die“.

    For a film noir ending, it lacks all types of things. There is no sense of justice. You feel like it was all just wrong on so many levels. It is the most unsatisfying ending to a book I have ever read, and I have read a lot of books in my time. The detective Mr. Keyes, who is the one to uncover it all, just gives the bad guy a pass and says run free and don’t let us catch you or I will have to do what I should be doing now. A better ending to the book would have been Keyes booking passage on the ship for Walter then hiding out on the ship, then killing him and tossing his body overboard. Now that would have been a wonderful ending. I can only hope that the ending of the movie is going to be better then the ending of the book.

Double Indemnity

I have just finished reading the first part of the book “Double Indemnity” by James M. Cain, and I can say that for me it is a good book so far. It is about an insurance salesman who falls in love with the wife of a client, and he and the wife conspire together to get rid of her husband. I can see where parts of this book could actually be considered film noir. If you don’t believe me, just read the article “Towards a Definition of Film Noir” by Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton.

In the article it says “film noir is [crime] from within; from the point of view of the criminal.” The criminal in the book is the insurance salesman, and the book is written from his point of view. The first sentence says, “I drove out to Glendale to put three new truck drivers on a brewery company bond, and then I remembered this renewal over in Hollywoodland.” Right away you know he is an insurance salesman. In another part you read, “Phyllis (the wife), you seem, to think that because I can call it on you, you’re not going to do it. You are going to do it, and I’m going to help you.” So the plan is set to commit murder.

As I continued to read the book, I was caught up in an interesting part of the book that seemed to me to illustrate another important point in the article. “It is the presence of crime which gives film noir its most constant characteristic. “The dynamism of violent death” is how Nino Frank evoked it, and the point is well taken.” In the book the couple plots to make it look like the husband fell off a train so the wife can get twice the amount of money on the insurance policy. On page 44, Mr. Huff (the insurance salesman) says, “I raised up, put my hand over his mouth, and pulled his head back. He grabbed my hand in both of his. The cigar was still in his fingers. I took it with my free hand and handed it to her. She took it. I took one of the crutches and hooked it under his chin. I won’t tell you what I did then. But in two seconds he was curled down on a seat with a broken neck and not a mark on him except for a crease right over his nose from the crosspiece of the crutch.”

All good film noir needs a femme-fatal in it. In the article written by Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton, it states that, “Finally, there is ambiguity surrounding the woman: the femme fatale who is fatal to herself. Frustrated and deviant, half predator, half prey, detached yet ensnared, she falls victim to her own traps.” The femme-fatale in this book is Mrs. Nirdlinger also known as Phyllis. On page 5 it says, “She was maybe thirty-one or -two with a sweet face, light blue eyes, and dusty blond hair. She was small and had on a suit of blue house pajamas”. When she first meets Mr. Huff, she is wearing her pajamas. She pretends to be this helpless little creature, and I have a feeling we are going to find out she is anything but helpless. With all of these fascinating details in the book, you can see how it shares some traits with film noir.

Blog 1 The Neo-Noir 90s

How do you know if the film you are watching is classic noir or not? According to the article “The Neo-Noir 90s” you know you are watching film noir in it’s classical period if it has the following items in it. You need to be watching a film in black and white. If it is in color, the film may be noir; but it is not classic noir.

The leading man needs to be a guy who is troubled, a man who is willing to cross the line between right and wrong. He has to be willing to get his hands dirty doing what is needed to get the job done, the kind of person who could smile at you one minute and put a bullet in you the next.

The leading lady needs to be sexy and dangerous. Someone you never know whose side she is really on, a lady that might be leading you to your death or is going to save your life.

Even the movie lets you know if you’re watching a classic noir film. It needs to have a crime happen, something for our leading man to solve be it a murder or blackmail. Or it must have a mystery that can’t be solved right away. The movie should contain a scene in it where the rain is falling and something bad happens. It needs an over all dark quality to it. A good use of shadows and fog helps to convey this feeling. If you don’t have all these things, then the film is not classic noir.