Film Analysis: Blade Runner As A Future Noir Film

Directed by Ridley Scott, the original Blade Runner (1982) portrays a futuristic, dystopian society in its science fiction and neo noir genre touches. The film is best categorized as future noir or sci-fi noir, a genre at the intersection of cyberpunk-styled near-future science fiction and film noir visuals. The genre emerged in the 1980s and is closely associated with Blade Runner (1982) and The Terminator (1984). As a hybrid genre of film noir and science fiction, future noir combines the classic film noir elements with the more modern science fiction ideas and visuals, and produces its own unique aesthetics. By using the futuristic mise-en-scène, noir lighting and narrative elements, Blade Runner (1982) builds a decaying cyberpunk world and explores the question of identity and human nature.

Aesthetically and thematically, Blade Runner (1982) combines many of the formal features of German Expressionism of the 1920s with narrative elements of the classic film noir. From the former tradition, Scott borrows generously with a set dominated by dark shadows, hazy lighting, and odd camera angles-all of which creates an atmosphere of splendor and mystery, but ultimately conveying what critic Dempsey has described as ‘vision after vision of a definite ‘terrible beauty,’ both urban and human’ (Dempsey, p. 34). The film begins, the same critic recalls, with “… opening sweeps over the tenebrous, phosphorescent city as it spreads from horizon to horizon and spews rolling fireballs into the twilight; creepy, vertiginous views down skyscraper canyons to arterial streets; the streets close up, pulsating with forests of beings who look human but seem robotic; the death of Zhora, which hurls her in slow motion through a succession of plate glass windows, with their flying shards throwing jagged flashes of neon in all directions” (Dempsey, p. 34-35).

More specifically, the images that predominate in the film bear a number of strong resemblances to Fritz Lang’s classic Metropolis. Kellner, Leibowitz and Ryan draw attention to parallels such as the visual salience in both films of the contrast between an upper city of fortress-like buildings which house the powerful and the privileged, like the Tyrell Corporation and the police, with a lower city containing the world’s uprooted masses (Kellner et al., p. 6-7). The high towers of commerce and power are accessible only to special flying devices, in the sole possession of the police, or by controlled-access elevators-in effect creating a microcosm of the ‘off-world’ distinction that underlies the whole film. There are several other cinematic parallels between Blade Runner and Lang’s Metropolis. Viewers of both films cannot help but be struck by the marked physical resemblance of the techno tycoon Tyrell and Metropolis’s boss, John Federson; and Deckard’s climactic duel with Roy imitates several aspects of the confrontation between Freder, the capitalist’s disenchanted son turned revolutionary, and the malevolent Dr Rotwang, who, like Tyrell’s conglomerate, designed robots to be laborers.

More generally, expressionist themes run deeper still in Blade Runner. The emphasis throughout the film on the alienating and degraded city finds a number of parallels in expressionist ‘street films’. Kellner et al. point out that the replicant leader Roy’s frequently poetic speeches, “… seem like abbreviated versions of the ideologically ambiguous rhapsodic monologue found in expressionist theatre, and his conversion from poet-warrior to Christ-like savior recalls expressionist ‘transformation drama’” (Kellner et al., p. 6).

With the presence of many stylistic elements of the film noir, Blade Runner (1982) is more aesthetically complex and imaginative. In the 1982 original US theatrical cut, Deckard adopts the voice-over, first-person narrator’s role of the film noir detective in the classic Raymond Chandler style, and tells the audience before the film begins that he had retired as a blade runner because the machines he was obliged to destroy had become so much more life-like with each passing model that he could no longer hide behind the euphemism of ‘retiring’ them. Later in the film, when Rachel asks him, ‘have you ever retired a human being by mistake?’, despite his immediate reply in the negative, he obviously suffers from acute doubts. Thereby Deckard is depicted as the classic film noir hero haunted by defeatism. His moral compass wavers and he does not hesitate when it comes to ‘retiring’ the escapee replicants; however, his emotions get the better of him when he meets the replicant, Rachael, who is unaware of what she is. The main adversary to Deckard in the film is the leader of the escapee replicants, Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer). Roy is a charismatic character and his name alludes to his craziness but he does have moments of calm. He is also highly motivated in saving fellow replicant Pris and is possessed with a great sense of humor as well as a strong inclination to violence. The lines are blurred between human and replicant and the issue of identity becomes an increasingly dominant theme throughout the film. At the end, Roy is given the chance to become a hero as he saves Deckard’s life; he is capable of empathy for Deckard, while Deckard was unable to for him. In his famous final speech, Roy exclaims “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” The ending of the film further illustrates, not only the issues with identity, but also the moral wavering of Deckard, a principal characteristic of a film noir protagonist.

The stylization of the android women Pris (Daryl Hannah) and Zhora Rachel (Joanna Cassidy) also injects classical femme fatale noir elements into the film. Masquerade is an important part of the femme fatale’s persona that she is unpredictable, unmanageable and never as she seems. Pris and Zhora are duplicitous by their very being: they are non-human but are masquerading as human. They are sexually powerful women who physically fight Deckard, and as such can also be viewed as threats to his masculinity. Zhora is an exotic dancer in a nightclub. Feminist critic Mary Ann Doane asserts that striptease provides the perfect iconography for film noir (Doane, p. 89). Emphasising her sexual power, her costume includes a snake, which represents Zhora herself because it is also synthetic yet dangerous. Pris can be viewed as the “spider woman” in classic noir films. Her duplicitous nature is revealed in her first scene that she is initially seen walking the rain-soaked streets, then playing the frightened waif in order to gain the trust of genetic designer JF Sebastian (William Sanderson). Although exhibiting a number of identifiable features of the classic noir femme fatale, the replicant women in Blade Runner (1982) with more explicit exploration of sexual power and violence also represent the beginning of the neo noir femme fatale.

In contrast to Pris and Zhora, Rachael’s replicant status is reversed in a sense, as she is humanized through her romance with Deckard. When she visits his apartment, she begins the transformation from femme fatale to romantic heroine, vulnerable and in need of rescue. When he returns to his apartment after Batty died, he fears that she has also expired, and is visibly relieved to find she is only sleeping. The warmth and love he shows her at this moment solidifies her as heroine, with him as her rescuer. The female protagonist is often a source of redemption and hope for the film noir hero (Ursini, p. 234), and such is the case with Rachael and Deckard. She offers him the chance to escape a repetitive and lonely life of killing for a life of love, away from the dangers of the dark city. Deckard’s realization that he may also be a replicant, which occurs after he makes the decision to run away with her, serves to strengthen their bond.

The film displays a stunning visual style; it is dark and gritty with flashes of neon throughout. Ridley Scott has credited Edward Hopper’s painting ‘Nighthawks’ as inspiration for the film’s aesthetic. The most common recurring visual themes throughout Blade Runner that can be attributed to film noir are the use of venetian blinds, largely used in Deckard’s apartment. The use of venetian blinds in film noirs are common as they create distinct shadows and a stark contrast of light and dark, known as chiaroscuro, and also occasionally serve as a foreshadowing for a certain character’s fate. In the scene Deckard kisses Rachael, light coming through the venetian blind from outside the window casts bars of shadow on them and portrays a sense of fatalism. The fact that it is always raining is another common visual which heavily complements the darker atmosphere of noir films. The eye is a recurring motif throughout and can be linked to seeking the truth and, as they are the windows to our souls, they are symbolic when dealing with replicants. The opening shot is of an eye and a burning city is reflected in it, another distinct trope of film noir. The film also adapts color and infuses flashes of neon and other aspects of visual style to develop a neo noir aesthetic.

Future noir and cyberpunk had in common a vision of a grungy, hopeless future that promised only greater threats to human life and prosperity. The world of somber and rain-misted LA in 2019 is an unappealing one. Artificial neon light has replaced natural sunlight and the huge illuminated adverts add to the sense of disorientation. The humid streets are crowded with inhabitants who speak in a strange, yet familiar language and the frequent downpour of heavy, warm rain onto the waste-filled streets emphasize the sense of claustrophobia. Lighting is noir in the sense that its strong, directional source light created sharp areas of darkness in the frame. Cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth used many more light sources than was typical of noir, which creates numerous pockets of light and shadow in a single setting. The shafts of light emerge from thick smoke, rain and neon glow. These lights depict an “invasion of privacy”, says Cronenweth, and lend credence to the sense that control was in the hand of unknown forces in a chaotic world. The cinematography alone conveyed the cyberpunk idea of technology leading to social decay.

The film noir mood is best defined as claustrophobic. Visual motifs in the film enhance this mood. There are eyes everywhere, creating an atmosphere of constant surveillance. After the opening credits, there is a shot of the flaming smokestacks reflected in an eye; eyes are used in the emotion test to detect replicants; the replicants visit Chew (James Hong), a genetic engineer who ‘only does eyes,’ and before killing him, Roy remarks, ‘If only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes.’ Later, Roy puts out Tyrell’s eyes. Scott also uses images of fans, also common in noir. In most cramped, polluted urban noir landscapes, the fans are required for ventilation. They are a visual symbol of the oppressive environment from which they provide a barely adequate source of relief.

Birds are also a common motif in Blade Runner. Nothing represents freedom quite as well as a bird in flight, and nothing represents imprisonment quite as well as the same bird caged. However, different birds appear at different times, each serving a different function. Roy refers to ‘shores burning with the fires of a hawk,’ a bird known as a hunter and predator, perhaps meant to represent Roy himself. Instead, the dove released by Roy when he dies symbolizes peace and his soul. In the beginning of the film, there is an owl in the lobby of the Tyrell Corporation. It is a bird known for its large eyes and it is also mechanical. As it flies across the lobby, its image is juxtaposed to that of Rachael, looking like a flawless doll as she walks out to meet Deckard. The message is obvious: the owl is artificial and so is Rachael.

In ideological and philosophical terms, the simultaneous presence and interplay between elements drawn from both expressionism and film noir make Blade Runner an extremely thought-provoking film. Both styles convey a sense of deep malaise and disillusionment with the current state of society, but against the backdrop of quite different outlooks on the future and the potential for redeeming social action. Works of expressionism have tried typically to express the anxieties and intense pains of humanity ‘by revealing a suffering and a longing for regeneration which all share’ (Lunn, p. 59). In contrast, the underlying ethos of film noir characteristically has been that of the irredeemably ‘corrupt society,’ a society of amoral, cynical and resigned human beings. The co-presence and simultaneous play of these two cinematic forms within the same film thus provides the audience with a paradigm of a work that embodies the contradictions of human lives.

Fear and paranoia is the essence of film noir. Film noir were most popular in the 1940s and early 1950s, when rapid technological advances after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the chilliest era of the Cold War. Despite the economic boom, the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation instilled a sense of collective dread. It is not surprising that future noir films are heirs to the Cold War film of the fifties. Western Cold War fantasies about communists is replaced by a fear that humanity has already been lost to technological development and corporate interests. Similarly, when Blade Runner was released in 1982, Reagan’s Second Cold War was underway, and the United States was at the tail end of a protracted economic recession, in which being eclipsed by Japan as the world’s economic superpower seemed like a real possibility. In Blade Runner (1982), Japanese businesses and culture have overrun Los Angeles, and the world in general is a bleak, inhospitable place. Virtually all animals have died, leaving lonely humans to design and build artificial creatures for companionship. Classic noir suggests that increased industrialization breeds alienation, and in the hyper-industrialized world of Blade Runner, this is especially true. Individuals are insignificant cogs, helpless and lost in their urban environment.

As a future noir film, Blade Runner (1982) blends the strong visual style of classic film noir with the modern technology of the science fiction world. The film is dark, gritty and grimy. Mirroring reflections, venetian blinds across Deckard’s face, issues with morality and identity, femme fatales and an atypical hero all convey the film noir conventions.