It’s that time again where we feature the most informative and entertaining comments of the week. The first one is a bit of a doozy, and I even truncated it some, but it’s just so dang good that you owe it to yourself to read the entire thing. As always, our readership is 100% solid gold bling-bling.

The real feel of noir is not merely in the “down these dark streets a man must go” mentality. In actual fact, noir is more than merely a mood, it is a reflection, not merely of a director’s vision but of a society. The increased pessimism of American audiences in the early forties as they entered the war mirrored rather the very same sort of cynicism that had affected Europe in the years prior to the war. Noir as most people know it evolved out of French Poetic Realism, and out of the worlds created by Jacques Prévert, Marcel Carné and Julien Duvivier in such seminal works as Le Quai des Brumes, Pépé le Moko and Le Jour se Lève. Just as those films reflected the growing depression surrounding Europe post the early thirties depression and realising that another war was around the corner, so noir represented the same to French audiences. When the French critics finally came to see the Hollywood wartime output, they noticed a cynicism and bleakness about the film quite beside from the stylistic shadows – which were as much a part of keeping production costs down in the reduced climate of wartime as any conscious artistic movement. They were comparing the films to those seen from Hollywood pre-Vichy, and thus to the likes of the Capra pieces of the late thirties, Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and the like. Just as those French films of the late thirties influenced Hollywood – indeed several were remade there – so the Hollywood style reflected back on the French cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville through Bob le Flambeur, Le Doulos and La Samourai in particular.

It’s not a coincidence of course. Mention film noir to everyone and it conjures up images of detectives, hard-boiled femmes fatale, mysteries and shadows, with characters spitting back fatalistic nuggets of dialogue to each other. It’s a fallacy. That’s like saying that Renaissance art is all about naked figures; they merely make up the depiction, not the overall style. Noir literally means black, and thus it can be seen to correspond to the psyche of the nation that produced such output. And Lang was in the perfect position to understand that all too well. He had been a leading light of the German Expressionist’s movement of the early 1920s with his Mabuse films and Spione. Like Caligari before them, they reflected the state of mind of a defeated, cynical nation, whose overhanging oppressive designs and distorted camera angles spoke volumes about a nation in turmoil. To all intents and purposes, those German films were films noir every bit as much as the Hollywood films of the 1940s that are too often incorrectly credited with purpotrating the soubriquet. Not just in Germany either. World War I saw a malaise that affected much of the western world, and there can even be traces of the noir style found in American silent films. Take Cecil B.de Mille’s The Whispering Chorus for one, with its morality play balanced in a dark world of shadows, rough and poetic justice and psychological turmoil. People are all to quick to look for neo-noirs amongst the digital colour of the modern era, and cherish films as broad-ranging as Chinatown, LA Confidential and The Grifters. They recognise a similarity in mood, but refuse in looking ahead to find noir’s descendants to find their antecedents.

Allan Fish on The Woman In the Window

Is it just me or does the image titled “Ashoka and Anakin…I love these guys.” look distinctly like a still from an old Thunderbirds movie? Which leads me to wonder what would have happened had Matt Stone and Trey Parker written and directed this film?

“TA-TOO-INE – F*CK YEAH!”

Joel on Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Well, as long as I’ve already disclosed so much, I might as well tell you that I also have EVAN and LUKE tattooed across my knuckles instead of LOVE and HATE.

What city do you live in again Evan????

(phew… at least I didn’t reveal to these guys what the middle name of my first child will be.)

Fox on 300th Post Giveaway – UPDATE!

OSCAR WILDE said (at least I THINK it was him): There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want. THE OTHER IS GETTING IT.

It also reminds me of an old JESSICA LANGE interview that I dug out on the net. (I’ve always adored her. She’s a very cool woman.)

She had married young and that hadn’t worked out. Went to Paris. Modelled. Studied mime. Got involved with BOB FOSSE and then was in the middle of a tempestous relationship with MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV. (They never married but they have a daughter.) She took up with SAM SHEPARD permanently after this interview was published. They’re still together and she has a couple of kids with him.

The interviewer was discussing relationships with her. JESSICA said she felt a lot of pressure being in the public eye. Especially being involved with another famous person. He also had his own career and his own life. So it was tough.

She mentioned that she didn’t want to have to work at it. She didn’t expect it to flow like rivers of honey but she said she was paid to do a job (acting) and she didn’t want to have to make that many sacrifices in her personal life to keep it on an even keel. She wanted to have a stable romantic life. But she didn’t want to give up everything for it.

So the interviewer’s take was, “If a good looking, desirable, talented woman like yourself can’t get a grip on this mess where does that leave the rest of us?”

JESSICA laughed uproariously. “F*CKED,” she said.

Yeah…I think she’s right.

Miranda on Vicky Cristina Barcelona

1. After completing Thieves’ Highway, according to an article by Sandra Berg in 2002(?):

“‘Everyone heard that subpoenas were being handed out,’ says actor-producer Norman Lloyd, remembering one fateful night in 1949. ‘Dassin lived on Bronson, and there was a knock on Jules’ front door. Julie answered to find Darryl Zanuck [head of 20th Century Fox], who said, “You better get out of town.” He gave him the assignment to direct Night and the City in London. It was unheard of to have a studio executive come in person like that and try to help.’

“Dassin has never forgotten that experience: ‘Zanuck said, “You’re going to England. Get a fucking script done, begin shooting, start with the most expensive scenes and they won’t fire you, because it’s probably going to be the last picture you’re ever going to make.” I liked Darryl Zanuck! While I was working on the script, Zanuck called me and said, “I want you to write in a part for Gene Tierney. She’s going through hell, and she’s a good kid. Save her.” So I wrote her a part. She was at the end of her career. This was a side to Zanuck that people didn’t know.’”

films noir on Night and the City