Cordelia: I get it now. You're all spies. Probably all Russian. And you've brainwashed me, and want me to believe we're friends so I'll spill the beans about some nano-technology thingy that you want. Gunn: So I look Russian to you? Cordelia: Black Russian. Angel: That's a drink.

'Hell Bound'


Buffista Movies 5: Development Hell  

A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.


Sean K - Nov 06, 2006 8:51:36 am PST #5499 of 10001
You can't leave me to my own devices; my devices are Nap and Eat. -Zenkitty

So, people who didn't think much of it the first time around, what made you rewatch?

As should be obvious, I liked it the first time, so this isn't directed at me so much, but one of the reasons I rewatched it was having lived in LA for a few years. It takes on some new layers if you've lived here. It's a very LA movie. Or, more appropriately, it's a very North Hollywood movie, in that it captures a little of the experience of the people who are not filthy rich, or in show buisiness, or fabulous artists, but still live in LA. The mundane, average people who live in the midst of the other craziness in this weird and wacky city.


Frankenbuddha - Nov 06, 2006 8:51:53 am PST #5500 of 10001
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"

Dude! (so to speak) It is a gangster movie. Which really is a genre.

Well, so is OUT OF THE PAST, isn't it? Isn't the Kirk Douglas character a gangster?

However, I'd grant that BLOOD SIMPLE is closer to noir than MILLER'S CROSSING, much as I love it.

So, people who didn't think much of it the first time around, what made you rewatch?

Probably a combination of enough things I liked the first time around coupled with the fact that I'd already had the "better the second time around" experience with Coen's before.

There just didn't seem to be enough there there for a second viewing.

This what worried me prior to second viewing, but then I realized the lack of there there was a huge part of the joke, plus not worrying about the (a?) plot.


bon bon - Nov 06, 2006 8:52:19 am PST #5501 of 10001
It's five thousand for kissing, ten thousand for snuggling... End of list.

Yeah, you could distinguish the gangster movie from the mob-movie off-shoots. David is persuading me that noir is arguably a style that is used in a limited number of genres.


Hayden - Nov 06, 2006 8:53:23 am PST #5502 of 10001
aka "The artist formerly known as Corwood Industries."

I don't think there's as much distance between "genre" and "cycle" as you do, David. Is dance-punk, for instance, a genre or cycle?

Of course, Altman had kinda already done this in THE LONG GOODBYE, albeit with more of a hipster/beatnik Marlowe, and somewhat less overtly parodic (though ultimately probably much more subversively).

Oh, definitely, on every part of that statement. That final scene of The Long Goodbye, with Marlowe sunbeaming his way down the street, is a coffin nail in the heart of noir, not a goofy celebration of it.

So, people who didn't think much of it the first time around, what made you rewatch?

I heard people whose opinion I respected talk well about it and thought I should give it another try. As it so happened, I was reading through Chandler's novels at the same time, and got it.


Tom Scola - Nov 06, 2006 8:57:41 am PST #5503 of 10001
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

noir is arguably a style that is used in a limited number of genres.

Noir is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but I think that it has a very specific, detailed definition.


Hayden - Nov 06, 2006 8:59:02 am PST #5504 of 10001
aka "The artist formerly known as Corwood Industries."

Incidentally, I didn't get The Long Goodbye the first time I saw it, either. I thought it was wrong to change Marlowe into a mumbly monologuist who responds to a great wrong done to him with a bullet. When I watched it again, though, it made a lot more sense as an evocation of how perceptions about the past affect the present. And Marlowe made sense as a slightly creepy loser, which brings up another question for Megan's Marlowe-is-Bogie thing. Does the reverse work? In a Lonely Place: yes or no?


bon bon - Nov 06, 2006 8:59:43 am PST #5505 of 10001
It's five thousand for kissing, ten thousand for snuggling... End of list.

Noir is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but I think that it has a very specific, detailed definition.

Go for it.


DavidS - Nov 06, 2006 8:59:57 am PST #5506 of 10001
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

Well, so is OUT OF THE PAST, isn't it? Isn't the Kirk Douglas character a gangster?

Tsk, just because there are gangsters in it, doesn't make it a gangster movie. Gangster movies are filled with anxiety about incursions of new ethnic groups, and always comment specifically as a black mirror on capitalism. "He had the American dream...with a vengeance." The DePalma Scarface is very conscious about all these elements and hits every genre element for a gangster film. It was a popular genre in the thirties and has been a source for many movies (and series) since. But it is very distinct from Noir.

Gangster movies are always concerned with dynamics and relations within the gang. Noir movies almost always isolate the protagonist, and pull them out of their social stratum, pulling them down generally because of one stupid mistake (generally sex) or often random fate.

You can have a Noir without a crime. You can't have a Gangster movie without it.


Aims - Nov 06, 2006 9:00:23 am PST #5507 of 10001
Shit's all sorts of different now.

INterrupting the noir talk to say that Shirley Henderson (Moaning Myrtle) is in Marie Antoinette and gods, was it hard to get past that voice and not be waiting for to strip naked and jump in the bath with Marie.


Tom Scola - Nov 06, 2006 9:01:06 am PST #5508 of 10001
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

I didn't write this, and I don't remember exactly where I got this from.

Elements of Film Noir:

  • Dark settings, night scenes, a sense that we aren't watching quite the same world we live in.

  • Shady or disturbed characters or outright criminals.

  • A sense of alienation or isolation in the main characters. They can't seek help where others might.

  • Society seen from the underside, where hypocrisy shows best. Institutions fail on individuals. Officials are corrupt. Cops are crooked.

  • A true femme fatale, a woman who primes the pump for fatal things to happen.

  • A sense of fate or even predestination that transcends mere contrivance. Film noir characters exist in a closed world, even if they are fleeing cops over hundreds of miles. Their options are very limited.

  • Implicit social protest. If people and institutions did what they were supposed to, we wouldn't have these problems.

  • Perverse sexuality or obsessive relationships. An ordinary family relationship or romance would be bizarre in a film noir, except as subsidiary contrast to a central relationship.

  • No happy ending. If characters seek redemption, they either don't find it or find it only in death.