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.

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.

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.

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?

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

Go for it.

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.

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.

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.

The DePalma Scarface is very conscious about all these elements and hits every genre element for a ganster 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.

When I was making gangster movies, we didn't even HAVE chainsaws!

I also dislike Lebowski. On viewing one I was underwhelmed. On viewing two, I was also underwhelmed. The humor makes me laugh some, but not in a way that makes me care as much as everybody else seems to care.