Entry 3: My Film Noir Short Story

Bait by Christian Vargas

Will Fischenich, "Fish" they would call me, poor little fish didn't know he had it coming. Not a bad man, just never fully got his life together. Routine job as a bank teller living in a lone apartment in Glendale. Relationship status: single man in his 40s, by choice due to internal issues settling down. 

My life changed that Friday around noon though, as she walked in. Sienna Moore, seductive, fierce, and tempting to look at to the common eye. I had the pleasure to attending her as she asked for a simple cash withdrawal, but with much simplicity in the job being done, words were exchanged as were gazes that I felt had much deeper meaning. A connection was made with every smile she gave me, every clever sentence that left my mouth. By the end of our conversation, she handed me a small piece of paper with her home address and a time that read 8 o'clock that she jotted down with her ring-worn hand. A wink and grin goodbye, and my eyes walked her out.

That day all I could think about was her. Though at first I discarded her as an alluring married woman that gave herself out too easliy, there was something about that invitation that made me feel good about myself, confidence rose within me and I had decided to pull through with a visit later that night. As I walked the dark, empty streets to her house not too far from my flat I continued asking myself what I was doing, a welcome sign to adultery on her side of the coin. I hadn't ever done something like this, and it didn't seem to bother me. But the ambiguity of it all, I liked it.

My cruel fate layed on the other side of that door as I arrived to her small home, then the doorbell. She opens the door and invites me in, sits me down in the living room on her cold black leather sofa. Mrs. Moore tells me how silly she felt doing such a thing, but starts talking about her problems with her husband and how he's an alcoholic that abuses of her, how intruiging I was to her, and how she loves my nickname. Ironically enough she brings out a wine bottle and we drink as we continue to talk about our everyday lives. Kissing and touching begin, then more intimate behaviors. In a corrupt blink of an eye the tables turn as the door knob from the entrance door turns and the husband walks in, shouts and curses angrily at what he witnesses, pulls out his firearm and shoots. Two bodies hit the floor. Sienna Moore, both the luring bait and the unreliable hook, drops her gun after cleaning off the finger prints as she walks away from the scene. Never alone, but always on her own. As for the poor fish, the curiousity of experiencing something new, dangerous but alas captivating, led to my morbid end.         

Entry 1: What Defines Film Noir?

Dark and gloomy senses derive from film noir. This type of hollywood movies deal with '40s-'50s crime, very grim settings, and characters of mischief and violence. "The Neo-Noir '90s" article says that noir film "invites us to glamorously rebel against an age of abstinence and political correctness," and that is clearly seen and expressed in these type of films. It follows complex plots where our hero/ protagonist is not the good-guy archetype that we are used to, but instead has conflicts of his own, both internal and external, and may possibly be misunderstood both by the other characters in the film, and even the audience watching the film. The directors creating these films make sure their characters have depth and are not linear, that there is plenty of distrust amongst the characters to keep a challenging theme in the story. Noir films are also about tragic events occuring with these criminal characters, some of which we as the audience may have liked despite the characters' questionable intentions. The article mentions that prior to the noir films era in Hollyood, it "had diverted a besieged nation with escapist entertainments and patriotic cheer," because that was what the nation as a whole needed at the time was for them to escape a depressing reality. Then it goes on to say that with our nation's victory, "our storytellers let down their psychic guard, and what poured out was dark and troubling fantasies of a dangerous, corrupt new world where the lines between good and evil got crossed." The noir stories are corrupt; where criminals and rebels of the law could quite possibly be considered the good guys and characters we care about despite their ethics, and the bad guys could be considered those who oppose our main characters, whether it be other criminal enemies or the authorites. Film Noir is very interesting storytelling, and its defining properties have everything to do with that.