Madere - Frantic

In his film Frantic, Roman Polanski uses many elements of noir to create the setting for Harrison Ford's distressed search for his wife. From the opening credits of the film, Polanski sets up the noir feeling of Frantic. The credits roll as though they are cars traveling on a busy highway, first appearing large and becoming smaller and smaller the further down the road they get. This and the opening scene with Harrison Ford's character Dr. Walker and his wife traveling in the cab gives ample opportunity to show the cityscape of Paris. This element, also known as the city in decline, portrays Paris as a seedy character of its own in the film. It also shows how Paris, especially given that Harrison Ford's character is an American who doesn't speak French well, adds to the element of psychological entrapment.

Another noir element employed by Polanski is the use of not only suspense, but helpless suspense. Once Harrison Ford's character steps out of the shower to find his wife gone, he is at a loss of how to address the situation. He begins the film-long search for her by wandering around the hotel looking for her, then by asking the hotel staff if they'd seen her. Finally, he ventures outside of the hotel to ask people if they might have seen anything. After finding a piece of his wife's jewelry, Dr. Walker seems unable to determine what his next move should be. He instinctively knows his wife is in danger, yet he doesn't know how he should go about looking for her. This theme follows throughout the film--with Dr. Walker helplessly grasping at straws and finding himself in dangerous situations while he tries to figure out what happened to his wife and how to get her back.

Still another noir element in Frantic is the femme fatale, embodied by the character Michelle. Everything about Michelle, from her heavy eye make-up to her leather clothing to her involvement in drugs as both an abuser and a mule, reveals her femme fatale status. She agrees to help Dr. Walker for her own selfish reasons as is constantly shown with her demands to get paid for her work transporting the bomb. It isn't until the scene in the cafe with the police from the embassy that she truly shows herself as a trustworthy ally.
The scene where Dr. Walker meets Michelle is particularly noir-ish. The lighting in the scene is dim, with highlights on the door and the murdered DeDe. Even the characters in the scene, Michelle and Dr. Walker, are obscured by the dim lighting. This scene is significant because it is the first time Dr. Walker comes into real contact with violence in the film and the dim lighting with the murder highlighted shows the significance of this fact, as well as foretells of more violence still to come in the search for Mrs. Walker. The camera proxemic of this scene is social, so as to reveal both Dr. Walker and Michelle in the scene, as well as the dark hallway and staircase in which the scene takes place (and the initial struggle between Dr. Walker and Michelle) and DeDe's murder. Again, the camera proxemic serves as foreshadowing: Dr. Walker and Michelle have fallen into a dark world and more darkness is to follow with violence accompanying it, and there will continue to be somewhat of a struggle between Michelle and Dr. Walker in the film. The relatively loose framing of the scene gives the characters some space to move around. This shows that both of them have choices in the film--Dr. Walker has the choice to stay true to his morals and not sink too far down in the dark world to achieve his goal and Michelle has the choice to be trustworthy, to work loyally with Dr. Walker, and to act for reasons that are less selfish and prompted by instant gratification. The framing is not too loose, however, revealing the fact that Dr. Walker and Michelle are not completely in control of how the story will play out from there on; they are somewhat at the mercy of Mrs. Walker's kidnappers.