Dark Art: What makes a Film Noir

[Dalexs]

Came across an interesting little article in todays Globe.

Dark Art: What makes a Film "Noir"?

I believe its an except from the authors new book.

(I can't guarantee how long the article will be live on the site.)

Dalexs

 

[Andykev]

Nice link

Yes, it is an excerpt from the book.. nice article. Say, where have you been my friend. Thought you joined the Space Program and fell off the planet!!!!

 

[Dalexs]

I'm here and there... I'm tied up alot these days at work.
Always trying to get product out the door and all that...

 

[Rigby Reardon]

That was a great article, Steve - thanks!

You know, even with that thoughtful, insightful discussion...I'm still having trouble NOT calling 'The Big Lebowski' an example of 'film noir'. Especially considering the likely origin or the genre being an expression of fatalistic existentialism.

(I studied Existentialism and Phenomenology in college, so I am qualified to use that word now. )

J

 

[Hemingway Jones]

Thanks Mr. Dalexs,
What a thoughtful article. I am amazed our rag of a newspaper published it. It was worthy of the New York Times A & E section.

In any case, with a media as dynamic as film; one which borrows from many source, it is not easy to describe completely a genre in general or even the genre of a particular film. It may have to suffice to say that "Noir" is a matter of tone and like "Good Art" ya' know it when ya' see it.

 

[Feraud]

You know, even with that thoughtful, insightful discussion...I'm still having trouble NOT calling 'The Big Lebowski' an example of 'film noir'.

Same here! The Big L. certainly contains the elements of Noir. The investigator with a not so straightforward case, the dames, bad guys, double crossin nihilists, etc.
Memento is another movie that always struck me are 'Noir-ish'.

 

[Clyde R.]

Interesting article. A few years ago I read the book "A Girl and a Gun" about film noir and found it really fascinating. The author called Hitchcock's "Verigo" one of the ultimate Noirs...which I hadn't really thought of before because it was filmed in that vibrant technicolor and we tend to think of Noirs as being black and white, shadowy, etc. Hadn't really considered the The Big Lebowski in that light either, but it seems to fit.

 

[shamus]

I took a film class on Film Noir and kept a great book from it. I'll find it and let everyone know what it.

Another great "modern" film noir is Body Heat.

 

[Mycroft]

Wow, what a great article, the existencianist stuff I never pick up on man, I got to show this to my teacher, we are doing philocphy right now, includeing Sarte.

 

[Rigby Reardon]

Body Heat is a good example, if I'm figuring this right. If you can extend the model to include any detective/mystery involving the nihilistic spin of existentialism, then BladeRunner seems noir as well. Too bad he didn't wear a fedora...

 

[shamus]

blade runner is a film noir.

The book I have is...

"Film Noir" An encyclopedic reference to the american style, by Alian Silver and Elizabeth Ward.

It's a great reference 479 pages... lists every film noir up to 1976.

Worth the money.

 

[The Wolf]

Funny you should mention Blade Runner after Body Heat

I saw Body Heat as a double bill with Blade Runner back in the '80s at a theater in Petaluma that used to run interesting groups of films together.
I originally wondered why they chose to run the films together. Later I realized the films were modern takes on film noir. Whereas Blade Runner is a sci-fi Chandler, I think Body Heat's screenwriter was intentionally trying to write a James M. Cain (Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity) story.

The Wolf

 

[jake_fink]

I have to admit to being a film noir fanatic. I think the last great film noir before the Age of Irony was Chinatown. There was a real noir revival in the eighties. Blade Runner was sci fi noir and even used the Bradbury Building in downtown LA, scene of the climax of DOA. Body Heat was mentioned, and so were the Coens, but for Big Lebowski. Remember Blood Simple? That was pure noir, a James Cain influenced plot, a title taken from a line in a Hammett story... The revival went on into the early ninties but became more... um... ironic, either wrapped up in pastiche as in the series Fallen Angels, or wrapped up in cold-blooded hippness as in Pulp Fiction. I can't think of a good film in the noir mold for the last few years.

I agree that Vertigo is the ultimate noir, despite the colour. My favourite noir is Out of the Past with the always right on the money Robert Mitchum. That was remade in the eighties as Against All Odds. (A lot of noirs were remade in the eighties.)

Great article, and thanks for starting such a good thread.

(A smiley!?! How un-noir is that?)

 

[Clyde R.]

Jake, I agree Out of the Past is awesome. My personal favorite...
There was a good biography of Mitchum a few years ago that drew its title from a great line in that film..."Baby, I don't Care.":cool2:
Vertigo is tops as well. Perhaps the ultimate Noir, yes.

 

[Feraud]

Out of the Past is an awesome film. Revenge, lust, betrayal! Many of the elements that seem to comprise Noir.
What struck me about the film was Kirk Douglas. This was his second film I think? Yet he showed a confident and developed sense of screen presence.

 

[Quigley Brown]

I watched 'Collateral' last evening...Tom Cruise/Jamie Foxx. It's textbook film noir...dark characters, dark plot, set at night. It could have just have easily been made in the 50s with Richard Widmark and Ossie Davis.

The flick was okay (I wouldn't have paid to see it in the theater), but it just had a very non-climactic ending.

 

[Jack Scorpion]

I am a Noir Fanatic indeed. I'm writing a thesis on the role of the city (namely Los Angeles) in Noir flicks.

Bladerunner, Chinatown, The Big Easy, Blue Velvet, The Pledge, The Long Goodbye, Shoot the Piano Player, Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn't There, Fargo, Godfather I and II, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, True Crime, Dirty Harry, Heat, LA Confidential, etc etc... are all neonoirs, a genre I absolutely love, but they aren't Film Noir.

In the words of James Ellroy, the most prolific living noir writer, Film Noir is dead. It was the collective work of German Expressionists who fleed from Nazi Germany and brought their disturbing antiNazi leftist surrealist artstyle to the big screen with extreme lighting, existentialism, fatalism - It was a reaction to the nazis and to the red scare and to psychoanalysis. Most famously: Double Indemnity, Murder My Sweet, Out of the Past, Phantom Lady, Maltese Falcon. The 40s. It was a product of the time. Even the role of women is a huge theme in noir.

What neonoirs do is mimic the style, the feel, the characters and the plots, hardboiledness and acceptance of fate and masochism, but they never legitimately recreate Film Noir. They can't because they missed the window. Now they are just really cool movies with throwbacks to a very interesting time in history.

The neonoir which I think best relocated the genre into its own time was The Long Goodbye, probably my favorite movie of all time. Elliot Gould plays a Phillip Marlowe trying to carry on his chivalrous codes of honor in a changing world that he can't keep up with. Meanwhile it is still Chandler's mystery, all except for the ending which Altman changes completely. To this day it is still one of my favorite movie endings. (I hated the book's ending.)

 

[jake_fink]

Jack Scorpion,

That's true, I forget that Film Noir is not a genre but a period of film and that noir is just an adjective. cool: Dude, you are so noir.)

About The Long Goodbye.... sshhhh. It is a fabulous movie, a near perfect one, but the thought of a Philip Marlowe out of period gets some fedoras in a twist.

Nice post.

:cheers1:

 

[Jack Scorpion]

About The Long Goodbye.... sshhhh. It is a fabulous movie, a near perfect one, but the thought of a Philip Marlowe out of period gets some fedoras in a twist.

Hah. Well I wear fedoras and live the style, but I was a fan of detective fiction before I was a hep cat.

Oh and about noirs people should see: Phantom Lady. It is an amazing, beautiful movie that somehow has slipped the cracks. There isn't a DVD yet, but if you can find it, I recommend it doggedly. (Involves hats, but mostly women's hats for its detective figure is a chick.)

Another spectacular ending.

 

[HaraldTheSwede]

The neonoir which I think best relocated the genre into its own time was The Long Goodbye

My pick for this would be Body Heat. It's a superior piece of art that to me is just how film noir would've been had it been made in the 80s.

As for The Long Goodbye I just could never buy Elliot Gould as Marlowe. Perhaps I should give the movie another go.

Edit: Phantom Lady is really good, but I don't care too much for the ending though. Not noirish enough for me.