Blade Runner a Noir Movie? A Study on Multigeneric Filmmaking
Western, thriller, romance, noir, comedy, drama, horror, science-fiction; genres are the face of cinema, giving films discernible features and recurring motifs. Genre is the main way that moviegoing audiences can classify films and develop specific cinematic interests. Each genre has a set of codes that are recognized by both the filmmaker and viewer. Expectations emerge after genre conventions are recognized by viewers through narrative patterns, meaning, and character. However, something interesting happens when a filmmaker decides to combine two genres in one film. Susan Doll and Greg Faller label films like these “multigeneric,” or “The mixture of genres in a particular film that precludes a simple, single, or predominant generic classification” (Doll). For instance, Gremlins combines the conventions of a family comedy with character traits of science fiction. Science fiction lends itself to multigeneric stories because of the genre’s open-ended possibilities.
The 1982 film Blade Runner, based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is multigeneric for its combination of the science fiction and noir genres. In Blade Runner’s future, bioengineered humanoid robots called replicants are created for handiwork and pleasure purposes. Each replicant was built with a four-year lifespan, a safety mechanism. In the film, a group of replicants escape slavery in off-world colonies, kill those in their way, and search for a cure to their short lifespans. After the replicants arrive in Los Angeles, the LAPD hires Rick Deckard, a blade runner, to execute the runaway replicants. Blade Runner director Ridley Scott was interested in the film because, “[It] crossbred a noir film with a police story with science-fiction, and I could sense a lot of opportunities in that hybrid” (Sammon). Scott used the thematic elements of classic noir genre to inform details of Blade Runner’s futuristic setting, characters, and themes. Rhidian Davis, director of programming for the British Film Institute, said, “[Blade Runner] has rebooted, updated and colourised a lot of the tropes of film noir. It pushes the embryo of noir to give birth to something new” (Curry). Ridley Scott and his team turned Blade Runner into the perfect multigeneric film by carefully melting film noir and science fiction together. Therefore, Blade Runner is as much a noir film as it is a science fiction one, sharing pretext (subject matter, content, and theme) and text (style—setting, decor, lighting, mise-en-scène. editing, and music) with classic noir cinema.
First and foremost, it is crucial to analyze where and how Blade Runner pulls from the noir genre. According to Doll and Faller, the most easily-identifiable traits of genre come from both pretext and text. In order to discover the noir genre within Blade Runner, both pretext and text will be used. The first book ever about the noir genre, A Panorama of American Film Noir 1941-1953 by Raymond Borde, lists three general specifications that link a film to the noir genre: the presence of crime, anticipation of death, and a private detective character. Each of the three specifications can be traced to the pretext of Blade Runner.
In Blade Runner, there is a strong presence of crime, one of the needed noir specifications Raymond Borde outlines in his book: “It is the presence of crime which gives film noir its most constant characteristic.” Noir is intrinsically tied to crime, and vice versa. Borde believes that, through noir stories, “The moviegoer is presented a less severe version of the underworld, with likable killers and corrupt cops. Good and evil go hand in hand to the point of being indistinguishable.” Blade Runner follows Borde’s quote to the word, implementing many noir conventions that relate to crime. In film noir, killers are often portrayed as sympathetic, ordinary people put in extraordinary situations. For instance, the Walter Neff character in Double Indemnity is a neighborly, average insurance salesman until he gets caught up in a murder scheme. Blade Runner protagonist Rick Deckard is essentially the LAPD’s replicant assassin, yet the audience is pushed to feel and root for his character. Deckard is a “likable killer” through and through. Roy Batty and the other escaped replicants can be deemed “likable killers” since their quest for my life serves as humanization. Blade Runner also features “corrupt cops,” mostly portrayed through Captain Bryant's character. In the early scene where Deckard goes to LAPD headquarters to be briefed on the replicant situation, Bryant refers to the replicants as “skin jobs.” Referring to these androids in such a derogatory manner plays into noir’s corrupt cop convention. Blade Runner’s neon dystopian world is one where, “Good and evil go hand in hand to the point of being indistinguishable.” The line between good and evil is constantly blurred throughout the film, a way in which noir conventions help address Blade Runner’s moral complexity. While his character does suffer physically, the main source of conflict is Deckard’s confused morality. Deckard is constantly torn between doing his job and feeling empathy for the replicants. Deckard is the perfect vessel for the audience since he exists as an outsider, peering in on the vile cops and understandable killers.
Borde’s second specification is noir’s intimate relationship with death: “Sordidly or bizzarely, death always comes at the end of a tortured journey. In every sense of the word a noir film is a film of death” (Borde). Noir stories are typically about those who are trapped, creating a sense of inevitable doom. This specification absolutely fits the violent, dystopian world of Blade Runner. The clearest example of the specification is through the escaped replicant group’s characters. The replicants have come to understand that death will come at the end of their tortured four-year life journey; this is the biggest conflict and motivation for the replicants. They’re trying to escape a very literal doom in the narrative. Furthermore, Deckard is trapped in the blade runner profession. While briefing Deckard, Captain Bryant says that Deckard has, “No choice.” This serves as another step on Deckard’s tortured journey. Especially with his complicated relationship with Rachael, Deckard feels confusion and some hesitation with his line of work. The replicants are trying to prevent the death of their tortured journey, and Deckard is struggling with the lives he must take on his tortured journey. Blade Runner’s noir/science-fiction fusion allows the narrative to explore the nature of life itself in a science fiction world.
Finally, Borde’s third specification is the inclusion of a private detective, the best person to navigate noir’s web of moral complexity. Borde states, “The private detective is mid-way between lawful society and the underworld, walking on the brink, sometimes unscrupulous but putting only himself at risk, fulfilling the requirements of his own code and of the genre as well” (Borde). The private detective has some legal authority but is outside the law enough to navigate the dark world of the criminals. Rick Deckard follows noir’s outline of the private detective archetype, serving as a middleman between the criminals and the police. Rhidian Davis states, “[Deckard] is an outsider. 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” (Curry). In one of the first scenes of the film, Deckard must be taken into custody in order for the captain to see him. When Deckard arrives, Bryant says, “You wouldn’t have come if I just asked you to.” Right from the start, the audience can see the rift between Deckard and the other police officers. Conversely, Deckard feels empathy and remorse for replicants, eventually falling for Rachael instead of turning her in. As an outsider to both worlds, Deckard is able to explore the ambiguous moral landscape of the story.
Ridley Scott compared Deckard to Phillip Marlowe, noir’s most iconic private detective played by Humphrey Bogart: “It’s very Marlowe-esque. And very dark” (Lessons from the Screenplay). In Blade Runner, some of Deckard’s tactics are quite similar to Marlowe’s. In Marlowe’s first film The Big Sleep, Marlowe pretends to be a pretentious book fan in order to gain information on a lead. Similarly, Deckard poses as a geeky union representative to get close to one of the replicants he’s chasing. These examples are the type of deceit that police officers are not allowed to utilize. Operating outside an organization, Deckard can use unorthodox, risky-yet-successful detective strategies, a staple of noir. In Borde’s book, a private detective is described as, “An inglorious victim who may suffer, before the happy ending, appalling abuse…As such, he’s far from the ‘superman’ of adventure films.” Deckard often experiences severe abuse throughout the narrative. He is far from a “superman,” losing as many fights as he wins. Often, the humanistic Deckard survives due to luck and outside help, instead of skill. Deckard’s close calls show the real danger in Blade Runner’s world; death is truly always around the corner. Deckard’s character embodies Blade Runner’s complex morality and serves as noir’s private detective archetype.
Richard Borde’s three specifications—major presence of crime, surrounded by death, and inclusion of the private detective—allow for the identification of the noir genre traits relating to pretext (subject matter, content, and theme). On the contrary, the futuristic visuals, design, and music of Blade Runner share text (style—setting, decor, lighting, mise-en-scène. editing, and music) with the noir genre. Noir’s genre conventions are often initially based on visual style. J. K. Place and L. S. Peterson outlined four characteristics to visually identify film noir: low-key lighting, shadows and/or reflections, claustrophobic framing, and great depth of field. Susan Doll and Greg Faller added three more: urban landscapes, rain-soaked environments, and costuming.
Blade Runner’s stylistic cinematography is indicative of film noir’s visuals—low-key lighting, shadows and/or reflections, claustrophobic framing, and great depth of field. Ian Brookes, author of Film Noir: A Critical Introduction, said, “[Noir films] were shot in a very dark way, often with dark, despairing and nihilistic stories. The visual style is central: low-key lighting, the use of darkness, urban settings, and so on” (Curry). The low-key, high-contrast lighting of Blade Runner emulates the typical film noir lighting design. The style of lighting is consistent throughout the film, with many emphasis locations such as Bryant’s office, Tyrell’s office, or Deckard’s apartment. Each of these environments are shrouded in darkness with non-traditional sources of light beaming through. Often, Scott and his cinematographer Jordan Cronenworth shined light through venetian blinds in Deckard’s apartment. This high-contrast look is undoubtedly a call to the typical film noir lighting approach. “We used contrast, backlight, smoke, rain and lightning to give the film its personality and moods. Blade Runner is a piece that calls for extremes. It’s naturally a wonderful vehicle for this kind of lighting,” explains Cronenworth (Lightman, “Blade Runner: Cronenweth's Photography”). Film noir is often focused on mood, so it’s fitting that Cronenworth utilized contrast and backlight.
Aside from lighting, Cronenworth channels film noir through claustrophobic framing and great depth of field. In the opening interior scene when Leon is forced to take a Voight-Kampff test, Cronenworth employs claustrophobic close-ups to build tension. Another instance of this are shots of Rachael and Deckard in his apartment. The tight framing allows the audience to identify the characters’ emotions in the scene. These types of tight close-ups are signature for noir films. Also, Cronenworth shoots most of the film with the entire frame in focus, otherwise known as great depth of field. As one opens the iris of a lens to get more light in, the depth of field lessens, and the focus gets softer in the background. Many films prefer a look with a dreamy, blurry background, but Blade Runner emphasizes the grand sci-fi environments instead.
Blade Runner’s unique urban landscapes highlight the text of noir genre classification. Brookes states, “You have a futuristic, science fiction genre spliced with an historical one, film noir. There are sometimes specific reworkings of some of the tropes from 1940s noir projected onto a future setting” (Curry). With Blade Runner, the filmmakers had to find a way to merge the classic urban geography of noir with the advanced, futuristic locations of science fiction. Before the audience is exposed to any visuals in the film, there is a large text that reads, “Los Angeles. November 2019.” Due to LA-based noir writers such as Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, Los Angeles became the setting for most American noir films in the 1940s and 1950s. Scott and his team could have set Blade Runner in any city, or even created a new one, but instead they chose to call back to noir cinema’s typical location. Syd Mead, an industrial designer who served as a “visual futurist” for Blade Runner, explains that, “The difficult part of designing for a film is that you have to use audience in-head memory. People will believe something is real only if it is done right and compared to what they think it should be” (Lightman, “Discussing the Set Design of Blade Runner”). By giving the audience the film’s precise location and time period, Blade Runner’s production team prepares the audience’s in-head memory. Blade Runner’s location is familiar to most, yet the film’s year—for the release date’s time—is inherently futuristic. Special photographic effects supervisor Dave Dryer recalled that, “One of the principles in the design of the film is that while it is 40 years in the future, it is also 40 years in the past” (Lightman, “Discussing the Set Design of Blade Runner”).
The best example of Blade Runner’s fusion of noir buildings and science fiction landscapes is the Bradbury Building filming location. The Bradbury Building can be seen in many classic noir films, such as Double Indemnity, Shockproof, and The Unfaithful. In Blade Runner, the location served as J.F. Sebastian’s apartment. Regarded as one of the “most overused locations in the history of cinema” (Sherlock), the Bradbury Building was utilized by Scott and his team in an unfamiliar way. GameRant’s Ben Sherlock says that, “[They] dressed it up with Styrofoam columns and a canopy, lit the interior with revolving spotlights, put in a couple of smoke machines, and filled the place with trash to give it a ramshackle, dilapidated look.” Through this process, the team turned a noir-appearing building into a futuristic, dystopian apartment complex. According to Rhidian Davis, “People didn’t really think about the future as a decaying carcass of its own making before Blade Runner” (Curry). This artful combination of past and future reflects the impact of Blade Runner’s multigeneric elements.
Another environmental aspect of film noir is the inclusion of rain-soaked landscapes, normally at night. In Blade Runner’s Los Angeles, the weather usually consists of rainfall. However, Scott and his team use the classic noir aesthetic of rainfall to enhance the story. In Blade Runner, Earth’s climate change has worsened and some have moved to the outer colonies in space. Another effect of Blade Runner’s polluted streets are large clouds of smoke, an expansion of noir’s classic murky rainfall. Cronenworth noted, “The story lent itself very well to it, in the context of a highly polluted environment” (Lightman, “Blade Runner: Cronenweth's Photography”). Therefore, since it was used as a story device, the constant rainfall is an example of both noir’s pretext and text in Blade Runner.
Blade Runner’s costume designs share visual similarities with noir cinema’s costumes from the 1940s. The clearest examples of Blade Runner’s costume throwbacks are Deckard and Rachael’s outfits. In most scenes of Blade Runner, Deckard wears a trademark trench coat. Private detectives in 1940s noir, especially Phillip Marlowe, tended to dress in trenchcoats to prepare for noir’s rainy environment. Rhidian Davis feels that Deckard’s costume follows the format laid out in film noir, “Harrison Ford is the quintessential private detective…straight out of the 40s” (Curry). Furthermore, Rachael sports a thick-padded blazer and several tight-fitting dresses, as well as a 1940s-inspired hair-do. Brookes believes that, “Rachael is certainly modeled on a 40s look – the veil, the pillbox hat, the shoulder pads, the mascara, the continual smoking – it’s classic 1940s noir” (Curry). Sharing many parallels with Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep or Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce, Rachael seems as if she could easily fit in a 1940s noir. Blade Runner special photographic effects supervisor Dave Dryer detailed the philosophy behind the costumes: “Rather than having people running around in shiny suits with brilliant zippers on them, they took 40-year-old clothing styles. And it has very much a Philip Marlowe kind of detective look to it. And an Art Deco look to a lot of things” (Lightman, “Discussing the Set Design of Blade Runner”). Yet again, Scott and his team merged film noir and science fiction to create a distinctive look for the film.
Through J. K. Place and L. S. Peterson’s four characteristics (low-key lighting, shadows and/or reflections, claustrophobic framing, and great depth of field) and Susan Doll and Greg Faller’s additional three criteria (urban landscapes, rain-soaked environments, and costuming), the viewer can visually identify film noir’s text in Blade Runner. However, I believe that it would be remiss to not include Blade Runner’s atmospheric score by Vangelis and its ties to the sound of film noir. Vangelis’ now-iconic score features film noir’s trademark saxophone but imbues it with the futuristic sounds of synthesizers. Stanford University’s Hamza Ali Zahurullah believes that Vangelis’ score matches Blade Runner’s mood scene-by-scene due to the score’s jazz noir tendencies: “When the film is shadowy, lonely and contemplative, the jazz sensibilities creep in. When Rick Deckard explores the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles circa 2019, we hear the electronica and Middle Eastern notes enter the fray. When the film reaches its philosophical and emotional climax in its last act, the sweeping synths dominate.” There is a constant battle between the robotic sound of the synths and the human sound of the saxophone, depending on the visuals and themes of the scene. NME writer Dean Van Nguyen likens the score’s traits to the film’s characters, “Like the AI replicants Harrison Ford must hunt down, the score, primarily composed using the Yamaha CS-80 and Roland VP-330, was synthetic but held a stirring deep-rooted sense of humanity.” Through Blade Runner’s multifaceted score, the nostalgic sounds of film noir extenuate the noir visuals.
Throughout all aspects of filmmaking, Ridley Scott and his talented team imbued Blade Runner’s science fiction story with noir archetypes and characteristics in both pretext and text. Richard Borde’s three specifications—major presence of crime, surrounded by death, and inclusion of the private detective—allow for the identification of Blade Runner’s noir genre traits in terms of pretext (subject matter, content, and theme). For text analysis (style—setting, decor, lighting, mise-en-scène. editing, and music), J. K. Place and L. S. Peterson chose four characteristics to visually identify film noir: low-key lighting, shadows and/or reflections, claustrophobic framing, and great depth of field. Susan Doll and Greg Faller furthered Place and Peterson’s list with urban landscapes, rain-soaked environments, and costuming. In addition, Vangelis’ score also highlights traits of the noir genre through the strategic use of jazz noir instruments.
Forty years from its release, Blade Runner appears like an obvious pop culture sensation that massively affected the science fiction genre. However, when Blade Runner released in 1982, both critics and audiences were polarized and confused by the film. Therefore, Blade Runner was a significant flop for Warner Brothers, only grossing $41 million on a $30 million budget. Typically, for a studio to make back its money, the film has to gross at least double its budget. Investors were unsure of Blade Runner’s genre combination, with Ridley Scott stating, “I said, ‘It’s called film noir,’ they said, ‘What's a film noir?’ That was a big problem” (Howard). Because of investors’ disappointment with Blade Runner’s noir tendencies, the studio forced Scott to change the ending of the film. Originally, Blade Runner had a very ambiguous ending involving a piece of origami that was straight out of a 1940s noir. Yet, the new ending had Rachael and Deckard escape to the wilderness together and utilized unused nature shots from The Shining. The new ending and the studio’s constant request for changes upset Ridley Scott deeply: “I had finished Blade Runner, and it was a disaster. My investors were giving me a really hard time…And [they] said, ‘We have to test this with an uplifting ending, where they will go off into the wilderness together.’ I said, ‘Well if they go off into a beautiful wilderness, why do they live in this dystopian environment?” (Howard). Additionally, the studio required Scott to include voiceover from Deckard for exposition over wide shots and other scenes. Scott’s disagreements with the studio seemed to stem from Scott’s devotion to the noir genre. For Scott, it was integral to keep Blade Runner closely tied to noir elements.
The tense relationship between Scott and the studio would continue for years as three new cuts of Blade Runner were created, including the International Cut, the Director’s Cut, and the Final Cut. Despite all the conflict, Blade Runner was not an average studio flop and did not become forgotten after its release. Blade Runner’s success came long after its release, with its status as a cult classic. The film has managed to stay relevant and influential for almost half a century, which is largely due to its unconventional use of noir elements. Blade Runner is a prime example of experimental multigeneric filmmaking’s importance. If genres are like the three primary colors on a palette, filmmakers need to combine them and create brand new colors of their own.
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