Casino Royale - Film Noir

Unlike other very popular and highly famous James Bond films, Casino Royale brings a bit of variety into the opening scene of the film as it portrays it in a film noir style. As Daniel Craig's first bond movie its like they're trying to bring out a darker side with him and the important parts of film noir such as deep shadows and tight shots really do set the scene. Film noir is such a unique style of film and can make a film  become very deep and real, but film noir as been fading away and Casino Royale bring it back very well.

The shot i would like to talk about is the very opening scene, the shot has particular things about it that are perfect and very popular in other noir films to have in a scene, such as the mist coming from the drain, and the lamppost giving of the only light in the shot. having these features makes the shot almost cliché as these are the sorts of things you see in old noir films and very early films, but having them together with modern architecture fits nicely.

The second shot focuses on this mysterious man, keeping with the theme the shot has not a lot of light and is very dark on one side of his face to show that there could be two sides to this guy or just to hide the guy to tell you he could be trying to hide in the shadows. The shot also is quite low and views the guy with power and maybe leadership as he could own the building in the background. And finally the shot is slightly tilted which be trying to show that the is being quite shady and sly.

Although this is quite a short shot it has a lot of noir features init which, again build on the dark opening to the film. The shot at first is a bit disorientating as there are several things in the way of the focus of the shot, the shot almost looks like it is taken under a table and after that the is a lamp taking up part of the shot. not only that, the shadows take up a lot of the shot which makes it very dark and makes the man walking in still shady.

Again with this shot it is taken up with mostly a lamp which even though is clearly on, doesn't give of much light in the scene and still puts a shadow on the mans face. The use of this much of the shot taken up by the lamp seems a bit to much in my opinion but the shot does well to show that maybe the man is in a dangerous position at this moment in time due to James Bond being in the room.

With this final shot it focuses on the gun about to be pull out of the draw. with this shot it combines all of the techniques I've talked about previously to make a perfect noir shot, for example it uses the dark shadows to only show half of the contents of the draw and has the table and the other surroundings to block out the full view of the draw to bring in some suspension, with it also being a classic noir shot it adds in its own little things such as a electronic gadget to show that its a new film but still has the noir theme.