The Big Sleep, so that's promising.

Oh! Watch closely, and you can tell us who killed the chauffeur.

Are there really very many "noir" films outside of the noir era that were shot in high-contrast B&W?

And, if so, were the filmakers doing so not already pastiche artists (I'm thinking of the Coen Brothers and THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE)?

Oh! Watch closely, and you can tell us who killed the chauffeur.

That's just MEAN!

Are there really very many "noir" films outside of the noir era that were shot in high-contrast B&W?

I have seen some color films shot outside the noir cycle that did feel genuinely noir though also a bit Not!Noir. The classic example, I think, would be Boorman's Point Blank with Lee Marvin. It's kind of a meditation on Noir. Almost like Noir as a Noh Drama / Revenge Play. Very stylized and abstracted. Slightly unreal.

So I don't think it's the B&W. I think its the particular mix of cultural forces that produced Noir. They just aren't present any more.

That post-war era with all the soldiers returning back from seeing horrific action in the war. That's an audience that had its innocence burned off hard and could handle the cynicism. The German ex-pats that worked in the film industry then and brought in so much expressionism and psychological nuance to the productions. The economic structure of Hollywood that produced so many B-movies. All those elements disappear.

I don't know how you counter the argument that a genre work is made to genre conventions. Since Noir wasn't itself a genre at the time the films were being made, I can't see how a bunch of melodramas and policiers can be lumped together generically.

Well, I think the French critics that named it certainly looked at it in that way. I would tend to say that it has evolved into a genre, that is, I think that today one can say a film is noir and the audience would have certain aesthetic and narrative expectations of that film.

I always consider LAURA an odd fit with the rest of noir.

Well, they have an unusual mix of movies ( The Third Man, It's a Wonderful Life, etc. ), and discuss how "noir" this or that film is.

Oh! Watch closely, and you can tell us who killed the chauffeur.

That would be meaner if I hadn't already seen it umpteen times. Big Bogie and Bacall fan.

I am intrigued that it is paired in the podcast with The Big Lebowski, which I loathe (I know, I know).

It's a Wonderful Life

I guess they're talking about the AU segment with Pottersville or Pottsville or whatever it was called where George was never born?

The Big Lebowski, which I loathe

!!!

::shuns megan and her offspring to the sixth generation::

I am intrigued that it is paired in the podcast with The Big Lebowski, which I loathe (I know, I know).

MY SISTER!!!

Thank you, for I have felt so alone.

I can't explain it, it just is.

I am intrigued that it is paired in the podcast with The Big Lebowski, which I loathe (I know, I know).

Oh, yeah, I do remember reading that The Big Lebowski is supposed to be sort of a noir parody. As far as loathing, I fell asleep the first time I tried to watch it with friends, but years later, I gave it another shot in another mass viewing and really enjoyed myself.