I always consider LAURA an odd fit with the rest of noir.
I think that's what makes it memorable. It's a little bit Chandler and a little bit inside-out
Gaslight.
Are there really very many "noir" films outside of the noir era that were shot in high-contrast B&W?
I will say, when I try to think about noir as a genre, my only happy candidates for modern-noiritude are ones that do not ape their forbears stylistically.
Blod Simple; After Dark, My Sweet;
and others that are resolutely part of their own era. Even
The Grifters,
a classic of noir literature, comes across as something broader and more ambitious when you see it on film, unmoored as it is from time. Period pieces always feel like, like period pieces, rather than like films noirs. Like museum objects rather than nasty living things.
Of nasty living things (I'll allow the name "neo-noir"), there seem to be waves, and the latest wave (in the late 80s, early 90s) was almost completely in independent film, so nobody saw them. (Unless you're us.)
what's Miller's Crossing if not noir?
Also speaking of nasty living things, I'd be really interested in seeing a remake of the original
The Glass Key,
in a modern gangsterish setting. I think it would be really cool, and still pretty relevant today. The villain could be Puffy Combs.
Does any classic noir film have a happy ending?
Kiss of Death
ends with Victor Mature shot several times in the guts, but alive and having kept his daughters and wife out of danger. So, that's kind of happy, presuming they took him to a good surgeon.
So, a question for all us noirheads: what's your ur-text of (original) noir? What's the one movie you would point to and say "That's film noir"? Mine is
Night and the City
(1950).
I think maybe I'd choose Double Indemnity.
Body Heat is good neonoir, I think. It works in all the noir ways without feeling pastichey.
I'm in a rush so maybe I misunderstood... I don't understand why the creators have to be consciously thinking "I am working in this genre" in order for it to count. Was Poe not writing detective stories? I don't even know what it means to say it's a "real" genre or not. None of them are real. They're just categories.
And unrelated: I love the Coens… except for Raising Arizona.
And unrelated: I love the Coens… except for Raising Arizona.
Oh no! I have that saved on my DVR for eventual viewing.
But, of course, you often have weird tastes, and I like Nicolas Cage.
except for Raising Arizona.
DUDE! That movie is the best of the Coen's work! "Son, you've got a panty on your head."
I liked Nicolas Cage in
Raising Arizona,
and I think possibly never again after that.
Was Poe not writing detective stories?
I'd posit that, if you don't know you're part of a tradition -- in Poe's case, if there is no tradition until you've invented it -- then you interact differently with the elements that make up that tradition. Poe's mysteries are really very strange, to the eyes of a modern mystery reader, because the generic elements of
mystery
hadn't been formalized yet.
I think the point David is trying to make (hold on a second while I channel his brains) is that the films noirs are very hard to describe with a single set of formal descriptors or narrative descriptors, because they were all over the map both formally and narratively. The original noir grouping is a mood grouping, and the retroactive "well all films noirs have this element or that element" tends to simplify what was going on at the time.
I'd posit that, if you don't know you're part of a tradition -- in Poe's case, if there is no tradition until you've invented it -- then you interact differently with the elements that make up that tradition.
That may be. I don't know why that matters. I mean, I'm not being snarky... Like I said, genre describes the product. What happens in the artist's head is irrelevant to that, as far as I'm concerned.
the retroactive "well all films noirs have this element or that element" tends to simplify what was going on at the time.
Well, sure. All classifications simplify. That is what they're for.
But, of course, you often have weird tastes, and I like Nicolas Cage.
I liked Cage fine then. The being contrary thing really does come naturally to me, though. I guess I was 14 when we saw it? My parents really liked it, and I was meh. Babies; whatever. But that led them to rent Blood Simple, which was something we could all enjoy.
