Features Sep 04 2008 @ 08:38 am
Rain, Guns & Cigarettes – Noir’s Past and Present
Anil Usumezbas is the founder of The Long Take, a site dedicated to thorough, exhaustive examinations of films, both classic and current. He has obviously placed a great deal of time and work into this detailed examination of noir’s history, as well as its myriad of cultural and sociological influences. It’s a wonderful piece with which to exit Noir Month at MovieZeal, so settle back and enjoy; tomorrow we’ll return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
If you have started reading this article here, then you probably know what a film-noir is. Chances are, you are also knowledgeable about the basic elements and characteristics of a film-noir to some satisfactory extent. Initially, I have intended this article to be informative and exhaustive; I wanted talk about the thematic and stylistic attributes of this genre as well as the whole timespan of influences and spin-offs; but then I decided it would be a little boring and completely unnecessary to do so, considering the intellectual capacity of the target audience. You have been told numerous times, I’m sure, by various other articles in the blogosphere that a film is not a film-noir without shadows, light-dark contrast, a femme fatale, a detective/private investigator, morally ambiguous existentialist undertones, complicated plots and an overall sense of pessimism. Therefore I will not merely remind you what I presume that you already know.
Instead, with your permission, I would like to wind the clocks back to 700 years ago.
Noir Always Existed
In the 1300s, Europe witnessed the birth of probably the grandest artistic revolution in the history of mankind, which would later on be called and known as ‘The Renaissance’. Neither time nor the feasibility limits of these blog spaces will allow me to talk about all the aspects of this upheaval, but there was one technical innovation that was critical to the development of the whole idea; something that is also closely related to the stylistic attributes of film-noir which automatically places it in the scope of this article. Tired from the conventions preceding them and in search for more natural and realist depictions of whatever constituted their subject matter, passionate Renaissance artists discovered the secret appeal of contrasts, especially that between white and dark; between light and shadows. Leonardo da Vinci blended this technique with his command over the anatomical details of humans to create some of the most impressive and lifelike depictions of people he knew or more legendary figures that he read about. Raphael used it with his delicate linear perspective to illustrate buildings, locations or simply portraits with more crowded backgrounds. Michelangelo was their reflection on architecture and sculpture.
The technique I’m talking about is of course ‘Chiaroscuro’ – ‘Tenebrism’ if the contrast is more dramatic. It is denial of harmony as the central element in painting and of two dimensionality as the basic principle. Since scholasticism was the predominant doctrine during the early Renaissance and religion was the agency that was most sceptical to accurate depictions of humans in paintings, it is also an indirect refusal of extreme fundamentalist limitations on art. But more important than all these aspects, chiaroscuro aesthetics was a trend that would persevere and endure even the most unfavorable circumstances. Before influencing cinema, it would be exaggerated in Baroque visuality by painters like Caravaggio and Rembrandt and prove for the first time its permanency in different artistic movements.
Fast forward 600 years: Germans are in trouble. Devastated after World War I and torn apart by extreme social and economical humiliation, depression is the color of human spirit. That, and the darkest of blacks. In the meantime, painting ceases to be the one and only visual art form: Louis Daguerre introduces photography -the first rival- and a couple of years later come the moving pictures. Audiences, who sneered at even the most wonderful paintings of their time, now scatter at the mere sight of a train approaching to the station. During more or less the same times; fueled both by their profound depression and the exhilarating potency of these new mediums, all German artists but especially the filmmakers create a movement known to us today as ‘Expressionism’ (or as ‘German Expressionism’ as far as cinema is concerned), where expressing emotions -often those that are dark, bizarre and gloomy- becomes the primary concern. These new generation artists oppose the views of the Renaissance people in nearly all aspects; naturalism is abandoned in favor of surrealist imagery that aim to capture the essence rather than merely copy what’s visible; reality is distorted and religious themes are alleviated or at times completely replaced by humans and their earthly desperation. The understanding is so different that art historians today categorize Renaissance paintings under the ‘Classical Period’ while expressionists are considered ‘Modernist’. Only one thing from the past endures and somehow manages to survive in this vastly dissimilar artistic movement.
One little idea that was also the aesthetic forefather of the film-noir genre.
Yes, you guessed right. Especially directors and cinematographers but also 20th century painters never renounced the magical beauty of chiaroscuro; on the contrary, they enhanced and emphasized this visuality with sharp angles, exaggerated makeup, surrealist set pieces and more daring compositions. With the help of new technological developments, they played with light and darkness in so many different ways that as a result, truly original and audacious pieces were created. As far as the movies are concerned, directors like Fritz Lang, F. W. Murnau and Robert Wiene channeled the overall feeling of despair that haunted their country into their works; dealing with the notions of madness, insanity, betrayal, injustice and moral ambiguity with an intellectual complexity that Hollywood would fail to reach even decades after the first expressionist film. They also invented the first modernist narrative elements in cinema such as flashbacks, visual effects, plot twists and surprise endings. From then on, more complex and nonlinear stories would make their way towards the cinematic medium. Their vision was unprecedented, is still unsurpassed but unfortunately short-lived.
Due to lack of major funding opportunities and marketing support as opposed to the gigantic proportions of the movies industry in Hollywood (which was reached thanks to the golden age of studio system) these gems failed to survive against their American contemporaries; despite vastly surpassing them intellectually and artistically. The German government of the time was in no shape to take measures that would support its artists as well – more basic needs regarding its ordinary citizens were at stake. A few years later Nazis came to power and that was the last drop that spilled the cup. Nearly all expressionist cinema artists (primarily the aforementioned three) migrated to United States, one after another like an endless stream, in order to escape from the numerous difficulties that infested their homeland; and to better fund the movies they would make in the future. Not that it would be remarkably easy to do that in America – they had brought their unique vision with themselves but they were forced to trim their extremities in order to please the public and therefore the wallets of the studio bosses. Their idealist European perspective would be challenged by cold, hard cash. And they would have to blend those two in order to survive.
Prevailing at more or less the same time in United States was the American pulp novel tradition. These inexpensive, thin, paperback books/magazines, which had no intellectual value whatsoever, were widely published and read from 1920s through the 1950s. This eventually turned them into a legitimate phenomenon, which would be frequently quoted, pastiched and paid tribute to by American postmodernists (the best example of which is undoubtedly Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction). This should not be surprising, considering how these pieces were blatantly typical in terms of their narratives, dialogues and literary styles – when a trend becomes as distinctly ridiculous as this, it is bound to be parodied once its heyday is over.
Admittedly, the whole thing was quite tedious and inane, but the variety in subcategories was nonetheless astonishing. Among the uncountable many were sword & sorcery fables, horror tales, mythical adventures, science fiction, westerns, war chronicles and sports stories; but it soon became apparent that only two of these genres were the real deal: softcore erotic romances occupied the number one spot (with the support of the rare female readers of these pulp magazines), followed closely by detective mysteries. Needless to say, the whole fad was extremely male-centric.
The detective fiction of this era was marked by the dominance of hardboiled crime stories, thanks to a bunch of guys like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, whose novels would later on would be adapted into quintessential film-noirs. Complex and enigmatic plots of the whodunits, which primarily consisted of a central riddle and its logical solution as the climax, were replaced by relentless action and gritty realism. Unsolved puzzles, unanswered questions and failed protagonists became more and more common. Crimes were unsentimental and plots became more sexually driven. Surprise endings were superseded by pessimistic anti-climaxes. The overall writing style was more lean and direct.
It was around this time that cocky American crime fiction impregnated delicate European sensuality that had been dispersing towards United States since the rise of Hitler in Germany. While the baby would inherit his plot devices and existentialist undertones from his father, the mother gave him the unique technical magnificence that had been dominating a continent for more than 6 centuries. He would be loved and praised by the masses due to his father’s popularity; while retaining the intellectual quality of the maternal side. The birth took place in the hands of a couple of German immigrants who had been working as filmmakers in U.S. for some time and had been greatly anticipating a half-breed with such potency. Impressed by the beauty of the baby, some French guys lost no time naming him themselves. He was called ‘film-noir’ and no one objected.
The rest of the story, up until 1960s, has been told here in MovieZeal since the beginning of this month with an impossible attention to detail and in dazzling variety. “Why did you write about all this?” you might be asking at this point; “Why the history lesson?” Because, like Joker says in The Killing Joke, “I want to make a point.” I want you to realize that noir has been out there much longer than we tend to believe and in places outside where it was born. Since the Renaissance and probably even before, you can track traces of noir in nearly all the artistic achievements of humanity; constantly changing, evolving, splitting and merging; constantly disguised under many different shapes and forms. The story of noir is a continuous one and that’s exactly why it’s hard to pin down the exact period of its existence or to come up with precise definitions as to what a typical film-noir really is. That is also why you hear a lot of discussions regarding what films can be included in this movement as neo-noir or retro-noir: how can you evaluate an organic entity using synthetic terms? How can you divide the lifetime of a natural phenomenon into abstract periods? Needless to say, it’s impossible and the proof to that is everywhere.
Why then? What makes noir so different from all the other movements we have seen in the history of film? What makes it so unique? The answer to that is indeed many and none of them is more true than another. My own observation is that the noir mentality, not only the films but everything related, deals with human condition more honestly and intensely than all the other artistic movements mankind has ever seen. It had a direct relationship to us, to the meaning of our existence on this planet (or the lack thereof) and has evolved with the humanity itself; adapted constantly to the changing conditions, survived and existed. Not one nor a group of people created it, so it has never been a temporary artistic movement that would be abandoned at the first sight of a major change. It does not tie itself to minute and unimportant earthly matters like politics, social conditions or technical issues related a certain art forms. Thematically and stylistically its concern is the human spirit, therefore it endures; all the while looking for best narrative and visual elements to do justice to its significant subject matter. And like humans, it never stays the same.
But that’s not all I had in mind when telling you all these. I also wanted you to realize that noir is not the result of an immediate discovery, an instant revelation or an innovation; which finally brings me to the second point that I want to make.
Noir Is A Postmodern Concept
Film-noir is not something original, nor is it an influential novelty. There is absolutely nothing new about it, technically or otherwise. What it does beautifully and where its real success lies is how it manages to blend fantasy and real-life drama; how it melds realism and surrealism together so smoothly that these two opposing ends of the same artistic spectrum fit into each other as gracefully as never before. Also, being a movement that has been founded by Italians, improved by Germans, brought to life by Americans and named by French, noir definitely enjoys the multicultural influences in its formation. American pulp novel tradition feeds on two different European movements in order to ascend and become noir: French poetic realism and German expressionism. As you can see, film-noir did not come out of nowhere like Dogma 95 (which was probably the most artificial and shortest-lived movement in film history) did, nor did it reflect the collective understanding of a group of filmmakers like Italian neo-realism did. The first noir artists borrowed techniques, recycled themes and looked for the perfect blend as opposing to their contemporaries who were seeking to discover the purest single malt.
Periodically, classical noirs should be considered modernist avant-garde; but the way I see it, noir represent altogether a different concept. The term ‘Avant-garde’ refers to works that are experimental and innovative and it represents “a pushing of the boundaries of what is accepted as norm or the status-quo”. This means denial of the past movements in favor of discoveries and new styles. In this sense, German expressionism is definitely an avant-garde concept, because although it borrowed a lot from Renaissance techniques, certain visual elements it embodies such as heavily-emphasized angles, surrealist sets and exaggerated gothic makeup were new; not only to the cinematical tradition but to all branches of visual arts. What constituted their subject matter, which I have mentioned a bit in roughly the 7th paragraph of this article, was never before touched upon in any art form by any artist. It was the denial of all preceding ideals (including but not limited to Renaissance, Baroque and Neo-classicism) and was pushing of the limits for something much more.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have the postmodernist agenda and its intertextuality principle, which refers to “an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text” to be used in his/her work. Cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard completes this definition with his statement that goes: “Everything has already happened… Nothing new can occur”; asserting that the attempts to create, produce and invent have become futile after a certain point in history. What we can do is merely recycle and use the older texts/styles, use them in different contexts or merge them together to come up with something sensible and worthwhile to pay attention to. Same principle applies to all the technical aspects as well. Considering the fact that postmodernism originally arose as a reaction to modernism, this kind of a declaration seems hardly surprising.
Whatever new or exciting we see in the film-noir movement is completely back-traceable. There are no gaps between postmodern art and the classical noir examples, save for the fact that in a real postmodern work, the intertextual attitude I have been talking about would be deliberate. In noir’s case, it’s more of a natural evolution. And this is exactly the reason why I have refrained myself from calling it ‘a part of the postmodern movement’ and contented with the term ‘concept’. Still, it has been my intention to prove this assertion by deconstructing all the so-called ‘originalities’ of a film-noir to show where they have been inherited from. Noir poses no innovation or invention; instead it constantly looks back and emulates past themes/techniques. The way all these things from the past blend together and are adapted for silver screen is what deserves the praise; along with the exhilarating idea that noir artists contributed to the formation of a postmodern concept way before the postmodernist movement started gaining momentum. Has any movement in the history of film ever been so much ahead of its time?
What Happens Today?
After passing through the mirror of postmodernity in 1960s, the classical period of film-noir ended when it ceased to be the outcome of the intertextual approach and became the source that much of the inspiration is drawn from. The brilliant collage of chiaroscuro, mannerism, low-key lighting, complex narrative, fatalistic realism, moral ambiguity, hardboiled attitude, mystery stories, existential loneliness, labyrinthine urban settings and sexually motivated, self-destructive endings now hardened into a shell until all these segmented components became indistinguishable. With its increasing popularity due to its nostalgic quality and swanky French name (which, when uttered, immediately makes you appear more intellectually capable than you actually are) the notion of film-noir was encapsulated into a mass that is more important than the sum of its parts. And that inseparable mass influenced a lot of new-age filmmakers.
It has always been profitable to pay homage to the noir style because noir clichés are so much fun to watch and play with. On a more depressing level though, noir-stained films always worked because it’s extremely hip nowadays to appreciate this genre and all its spin-offs. Because aside from everything else, noir has become a tool, used by film buffs all around the globe to convincingly fake an intellectual orgasm. Because cunningly hidden in its simple name are allusions to cinema’s most recent history, to stylized black & white visuality and to European understanding of art. Because a sentence that contains this word at least once will imply your listener/reader that you are well-informed about movies; that you are capable of evaluating older and more intellectual films; and that you have a firm grasp over film history as a whole. It has become the table around which many cinephiles like to circle-jerk all the time. Consequently, if you have referenced a film-noir in your movie, people should better like it; because if they don’t, it becomes evident that they are a bunch of illiterates who simply don’t get it.
This should not be read as my complaint regarding the noir-influenced films of our day, for they are great. It’s the holy and almighty quality that is attributed to noir and the untouchable status it has reached that’s bothering me. But it seems to be the prominent intellectual trend of our day, so I guess I must learn how to deal with it. On a final note, those of you who like noir for what it is and who are not afraid to criticize certain examples of it whenever necessary, please don’t be offended by my remarks. I am aware that people such as yourselves do exist, but you have to realize that you are not as big a majority as you would like to believe.
on Sep 04 2008 @ 11:16 am 1. Luke Harrington said …
Great piece here — I especially like the analysis of Renaissance art — but I guess I’d like to hear you elaborate on the last section a bit. Are you saying you’re not bothered by the numerous nods to noir in modern film, just the self-congratulatory acknowledgemnet of them by modern critics (and/or film buffs)? I agree that noir, like any other artistic movemnet, can be overrated, but you seem to be getting defensive before anyone’s mounted an attack. The last few paragraphs seem to come wholly out of left field — you have a detailed analysis followed by something of a “rant” (no offense, I hope). Can you explain your position a bit more?
on Sep 04 2008 @ 2:49 pm 2. Anil said …
I am not a noir purist. I still think that the best noir ever made is Sin City; so I think I can easily say that I like nods to noir for the simple reason that I like noir itself. A growing tendency to abuse the recent popularity of this movement would evoke hatret in me, but nothing of that sort has come up yet. So in terms of recent filmmakers in certain appreciation of noir, I have no problems.
I also have no problems with critics/buffs who praise noir for legitimate reasons (which are many) But it’s my observation that certain trend/movements/films/directors tend to become a tool in the hands of some people who, for some reason, are in dire need to prove their intellectual capabilities without getting into much trouble. The simple way to do that is automatically appreciating any example of a trend if it’s glorified by well-known and/or respected individuals – that might be film critics, famous bloggers, cinephile friends, art school students/teachers etc. Tarantino and his films suffered from exactly this phenomenon in the past (although I don’t know ’suffer’ is the correct word to use, for all this seemed to have increased the attention he is getting) and today noir seems to be at the same spot. I am surrounded by people in the internet and around me in real life who appreciate noir just because it’s hip to say that out loud. If you feel that I am being defensive about something, I will say this is exactly what I find offensive. Needless to say, people are free to like/hate whatever they want, but as long as they don’t contaminate me with their superficial appreciation. I can’t stand being exposed to such vulgarization, nor seeing something as complex as film-noir itself become the new expensive brand that people like to show off and brag about.
Granted, the last part of my article seems a bit out of touch with the rest in terms of the overall tone; but what I was trying to do was to follow a certain timeline when making a certain point, and the last step was to talk about what’s happening today and how film-noir steps to the other side of the mirror of intertextuality. And I thought my observations regarding to the most recent status of film-noir would be pretty conclusive.
By the way, I am not at all disturbed by the fact that the average star rating is 4.5 for the films reviewed in MovieZeal this month. I read nearly every review and I must say I enjoyed the whole thing immensely (Evan definitely did a good job with his selections and the organization of the whole thing), so do not take any of my remarks personal (unless of course you really are using noir for that purpose
)
on Sep 05 2008 @ 8:11 pm 3. Tony D'Ambra aka films noir said …
I will break my silence here and say that Ari’s intellectual hubris is breath-taking!
Film noir and it’s pre-cursors German Expressionism and French poetic realism are singular historical responses to modernity and its manifest alienation.
The view that noir is a “genre” has little currency.
Noir lighting was yes influenced by German expressionism, but was also a function of technology and the need to mask cheap production values, and only came into its own with faster camera lenses and films that allowed night-for-night shots and the use of a single key light in interior shots.
Noir is not just light and shadow, but an element of many used to express a unique angst – and has nothing to do with the Renaissance. Noir is not only a repudiation of Reassaisance and of the Enlightenment, but of modernity as manifested in the alienated existence on the modern metropolis.
This statement is pure bunk:
“Prevailing at more or less the same time in United States was the American pulp novel tradition. These inexpensive, thin, paperback books/magazines, which had no intellectual value whatsoever, were widely published and read from 1920s through the 1950s.”
The wholesale dismissal of the works of such writers as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Cornel Woolrich, is an affront to any honest or intelligent assessment of their writing.
Does writing like this from Cornell Woolrich have no ‘intellectual value’:
“We went down a new alley… ribbons of light spoked across this one, glimmering through the interstices of an unfurled bamboo blind stretched across an entryway. The bars of light made cicatrices across us. He reached in at the side and slated up one edge of the pliable blind, made a little tent-shaped gap. For a second I stood alone, livid weals striping me from head to foot.”
“She climbed the rooming-house stairs like a puppet dangling from slack strings. A light bracketed against the wall, drooping upside down like a withered tulip in its bell-shaped shade of scalloped glass, cast a smoky yellow glow. A carpet-strip ground to the semblance of decayed vegetable-matter, all pattern, all color, long erased, adhered to the middle of the stairs, like a form of pollen or fungus encrustation.”
I could go on…
on Sep 06 2008 @ 12:56 am 4. Anil said …
I see your criticism mainly divided into two parts so that’s how I will try to respond (ignoring your condescending tones, of course)
First things first, I have tried really hard but I couldn’t see a single thing opposing the following statements in my article:
“Film noir and it’s pre-cursors German Expressionism and French poetic realism are singular historical responses to modernity and its manifest alienation.”
“Noir is not just light and shadow, but an element of many used to express a unique angst – and has nothing to do with the Renaissance. Noir is not only a repudiation of Reassaisance and of the Enlightenment, but of modernity as manifested in the alienated existence on the modern metropolis.”
The fact that noir is an element of many is actually the thesis statement of my article. And the fact that it borrows technical styles from Renaissance does not necessarily mean noir imitates Renaissance ideologically – two are vastly different things. Your frustration, I presume, is due to the fact that you haven’t really read the following statement I have written:
“Considering the fact that postmodernism originally arose as a reaction to modernism, this kind of a declaration seems hardly surprising.”
Since I assert that noir is a postmodern concept, we are pretty much saying the same thing. It should also be noted that modernity and modernism are not necessarily the same thing: A piece that opposes modernity might as well be a part of the modernist movement, since one denotes an artistic trend while the other is much larger in scope. It’s something that affects everyone’s lifestyle.
That being said, I will easily disagree with the second point you have made: It was not the writers themselves whom I declared lacking any literary value, it was the magazines. The fact that a writer contributed to these magazines neither made him a pulp writer nor made the magazines something valuable. According to wikipedia, the writers who have contributed, at one point, to pulp fiction include Isaac Asimov, William S. Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Joseph Conrad, Philip Dick, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, O. Henry (who is probably my second favorite author), Jack London, H.P. Lovecraft, Mark Twain and H. G. Wells – needless to say, declaring all these legendary writers ‘literarily worthless’ is not something I can do nor something that I intended to do. But it is no coincidence that none of the masterpieces of the aforementioned writers were among the pieces they had submitted for these pulp magazines.
Additionally, if you think flamboyant sentences are proofs to literary talent, you simply have no clue about the whole thing – simple phrases and sentences work as much as the examples you have listed (i.e. “less is more”). As long as you try to justify the merits of any work of literature with a single copy-pasted paragraph, I will not be convinced, neither should anyone be. It’s where the phrases are used and how they serve the overall artistic style of the novel is all that matters.
on Sep 06 2008 @ 2:50 am 5. Tony D'Ambra aka films noir said …
Well, I was right about one thing Anil, your arrogance is truly monumental.
Perhaps it is your fractured English that obscures your ideas, but you compound this by a bombast that confuses the reader even more. As a speaker of four languages, and I am the first to admit I am less than fluent in all four, I believe it is best to keep your prose simple when writing in other than your mother tongue.
As far as the supposed influence of the Renaissance on film noir, and the merits of the works published in the Black Mask and the Dime Detective, you are cluelesss.
I don’t have enough time to waste on marshalling the arguments and evidence aganst your other poorly-conceived ideas, so I will focus on the pulp magazines and this statement of yours which is just plain wrong: “But it is no coincidence that none of the masterpieces of the aforementioned writers were among the pieces they had submitted for these pulp magazines.”
Raymond Chandler wrote of the Black mask:
“It was the smell of fear which these stories managed to generate. Their characters lived in a world gone wrong, a world in which, long before the atom bomb, civilization had created the machinery for its own destruction and was learning to use it with all the moronic delight of a gangster trying out his first machine-gun. The law was something to be manipulated for profit to and power. The streets were dark with something more than the night.” (Chandler 1950)
Hammett’s first four great novels, Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), The Maltese Falcon (1930), and The Glass Key (1931) were all published in Black Mask prior to their publication by New York publisher A. A. Knopf.
Chandler in the 1938 short story Red Wind in Black Mask wrote this poetic prose – another “copy/quote” paste:
“I went out of the bar without looking back at her, got into my car and drove west on Sunset and down all the way to the Coast Highway. Everywhere along the way gardens were full of withered and blackened leaves and flowers which the hot wind had burned.”
Mayer and McDonnell in The Encyclopaedia if of Film Noir (2007) on Cornell Woolrich:
“Woolrich’s Dormant Account published in Black Mask in May 1942, was bought by Columbia for its Whistler series of eight films between 1944 and 1948. RKO’s Deadline at Dawn,was based on Woolrich’s 1944 novel (under his pseudonym William Irish), which was expanded from his 1941 short story Of Time and Murder (published in Detective Fiction Weekly)… and three low budget films based on Woolrich’s short stories were released in 1947. Fall Guy was based on the 1940 Black Mask story C-Jag, The Guilty was based on the 1941 Detective Fiction Weekly story He Looked Like Murder, and Fear in the Night was based on the 1941 Argosy story And So to Death.”
You are full of so much hot air.
on Sep 06 2008 @ 8:19 am 6. Evan Derrick said …
Tony, you need to like, buy a puppy or something. And then play fetch with it.
Also, bigotry works better when you dress it up with wit. That way, the stupid minorities don’t know that you’re insulting them! It’s a win win win situation for everyone! Try it out next time. Works great at parties.
on Sep 06 2008 @ 9:24 am 7. Tony D'Ambra aka films noir said …
What the fuck do you know about minorities, Evan. I grew up being called a dago and a wop by better people than you. You are as both full of shit.
on Sep 06 2008 @ 10:49 am 8. Anil said …
You are obviously more interested in and informed about pulp magazines than I am. Pity, I would’ve loved to trade opinions with you and see my opinions challanged by plausible arguements; maybe even acknowledge the phrase “no literary value whatsoever” as my mistake and step back (which I guess would calm you down since I sense this whole aggression is fueled by your admiration for those pulp magazines) It is something I have done in the past, both in my blog and other websites, so do not think that I am a zealot when it comes to my opinions. Indeed, disagreements over a certain article should arise discussions, not contempt. But I admit, I am powerless against such baseless hatret as yours; I don’t find motivation in me to defend my personality, my English and my ideas by repeating myself. So I guess that ends this discussion, which could’ve been much more fruitful than it is.
on Sep 06 2008 @ 11:06 am 9. Luke Harrington said …
Tony, I really don’t understand what you’re trying to do here. To have a difference of opinion is thing, but to come here and start insulting our writers is just plain offensive…and at best betrays any number of character flaws that I’m not going to start listing here. Seriously dude, can the hostility, or quit drinking, or take care of whatever your major malfunction is, before you post anymore. Thanks.
on Sep 06 2008 @ 6:43 pm 10. Tony D'Ambra aka films noir said …
Luke, as Felix Unger once wrote…
on Sep 10 2008 @ 11:20 am 11. Anil said …
The article is listed today in IMDb’s Hit List.
on Sep 10 2008 @ 12:00 pm 12. Luke Harrington said …
Congrats, dude. Nicely done.
on Sep 25 2008 @ 3:24 pm 13. Kevin Burton Smith said …
Interesting, wide-ranging discussion, but it’s cheapened severely by your subsequent proclamation that SIN CITY is “the best noir ever made.”
That’s just silly. It’s not even that great a film, never mind a great film noir. And I’m not even convinced it’s actually noir. Mostly it’s a bunch of expensive, visually stunning trickery using a series of noir (or noirish) tropes and peep show shots aimed at horny adolescents — an emotionally and narratively shallow exercise at best, lacking the dark existential angst that lies at the heart of all the best noir films.
Think of classics like THE MALTESE FALCON, MURDER, MY SWEET, OUT OF THE PAST, TOUCH OF EVIL or CHINATOWN. Even last year’s GONE BABY GONE possess more of a true sense of noir in one scene than the whole of SIN CITY, which is little more than a vacuous PULP FICTION wannabe aimed at fourteen year-olds, with pretty pictures substituting for real vision and wit. I wish Frank Miller (arguably the most over-rated comic book writer to come along in years) and crew had spent as much time working on a decent, coherent plot as they reportedly did trying to get the look of the falling rain “just right.” High tech? More like lowest common denominator dreck, if you ask me.
Next you’ll be telling me 300 is the best war movie ever made…
As for the dust-up over the artistic value of the pulps, it’s true most of them were pretty bad as a whole, but as Tony pointed out, there were plenty of exceptions to support his claim that they offered up plenty more literary value than you gave them credit for. I know — I’ve been reading plenty of them over the last year for an upcoming project. Most of the stories are dreadful — the literary equivalent of SIN CITY, in fact — but the best stories in the pulps can stand proudly beside any of the best literature of its time.
on Sep 29 2008 @ 2:19 pm 14. Maurice said …
I do not like to defend films. Films usually stand and fall on their own legs of merit. As I wrote in my odd diatribe about the review of “The Ruins” done on this website, there is nothing more unjust in filmdom than the decision not to see a film because of some critics review. Go see what you want and damn the detractors. That way, the only thing about the film you will defend is your opinion of said movie. I am always ready to go to war about my opinion of a movie and have changed opinions during some excellent battles. I feel I am about to start another and am surprised and saddened to do it.
However, I am stepping up to the line in defense of one of my favorite films of the last decade and also the writer of the film, Frank Miller. I will ambulate under the concept that some folks, like Kevin B Smith, are not too familiar with the extensive body of work that Miller has produced over the last 27 plus years. Briefly, an evolution in the comic world exploded in 1986 in the form of a new super hero. This hero was a bitter, grim and overly violent personage, who managed weapons and fists with equal glee. He needed no provocation to react in a most cruel rage. Where he had once been a man who would go out of his way in order to resolve conflict with as little injury to an opponent as possible, he endured an event in his life that forever changed him and allowed the raw, seething, psychopathic rage he had kept in check to erupt to the forefront of his personality.
The new hero is Batman.
If you know anything about comics, you might have thought I was describing Frank Castle, “The Punisher.” Interesting considering that Miller handled that comic for a while also. He also redefined the parameters of Wolverine’s character as well. He even did a maker over on “Daredevil”, those issues ringing him to prominence back in the early 80’s. Three characters in the Marvel universe that hit a stride that they maintain to this day.
But it was “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” that made us all gape. That four issue series, to this day, I still pull out and pour over the pages of art and dialog that was not surpassed until the following year when Miller brought us “Batman: Year One” which was an in-yer-face series that said “ I showed you what he became. THIS is how he got there.” Kinda like the one-two punch we got from Coppola 15 years prior. So, to call Frank Miller an “over-rated book writer” is to call Arthur Miller a Broadway hack.
“Sin City.” My word, what an experience that was. To actually see the pages of a comic filmed for the first time was a real kick. Is it noir? Sure. Is it great noir? Mebbeso. Was it at the time the best film adaptation of a literary work ever filmed? Absolutely and it still is to this day. I am going to state my reasons but first want to point out that Marv is a buddy of mine and I cry every time I watch or read the ending to his story. Marv is the, without a doubt, the greatest anti-hero ever conceived. His demise is both a relief and a heartbreak that brings a tear to the eye while the mind says “I’ll sleep better at night from now on.”
“Sin City” is the perfect film adaptation of Fran Miller’s graphic novel. Here are the two best reasons why:
1. Every single word that Miller wrote is the script.
2. The film contains every single panel that Miller drew.
It was a thrill the first few times I sat with a copy of “Sin City” and read the dialog as the segment “The Hard Goodbye” played out on the screen. It has been a pleasure every time since. Even more amazing is being able to freeze frame the exact instance that the drawn panel is on screen and most are almost a pose from the graphic novel. There is no instance of this having occurred before in a Hollywood film. Ever. While his writing is not on the level of “Grapes of Wrath” or any of Shakespeare’s or for that matter, any work by Arthur Miller, it has its own distinctions. Many distinctions, of which, I will list three that evoke the spirit of noir and that I will put up against any classic filmed prior.
1. Marv walks down an alley- Not only his poise, the lighting and costuming, listen to the voice over: “So, you were scared, weren’t you Goldie? Somebody wanted you dead and you knew it. Well, I’m gonna find that son of a bitch that killed you, and I’m gonna give him the hard goodbye. Walk down the right back alley in Sin City, and you can find anything.” It reminds me of how Bogart did it in several of his films and, they say, imitation is flattery.
2. All of the scenes inside of Katie’s- every great noir has at least one scene in a bar. Using the central character as a focal point is important, something for the eye and mind to pinpoint. Like “Titanic” the real story is always what is in the peripherals, that is to say, what is pooling out from that center. To me, when it is done effectively as it was in “Sin City” you can easily see the main characters in such scenes. But what is occurring around them seems to be out of focus or even washed out. It’s as if they are phantoms or shadows, apart from the reality that the central characters find themselves involved in. Even the bar scene in “Star Wars” is a noir copy. None of the characters are truly visible until they are center front and thus brought into focus.
3. Hartigan kills Yellow Bastard- Not only the grim, determined, maniacal look on Hartigan’s face as he works Junior over like a rib bone, it’s the matter-of-fact fury his body displays he punches into the face of his well placed anger. Over and over you see his fists pile-drive straight down until (as we hear in another excellent voice over concludes) “all I’m doing is punching wet chips of bone into the floorboards. So I stop.” It reminds me of when Cody Jarrett finally lets loose on a victim. The difference is that Cody is insane and enjoys inflicting pain on a victim. Hartigan is all business because he is bringing a killer to justice, since Justice had been turning a blind on this cat way too long.
Every one of these scenes has been filmed countless times and many of them done better. On its own merits, we might call “Sin City” a new breed of film noir and I admit that there is plenty of FX involved in the completed work. But it is still noir, still the style that has, over the last 100 years, invoked a sense of mystery and intrigue in the mind’s eye. The smoke, the gloom and rain, the ever present trench coat and suave yet slimy villains are all found in its 124 minute running time. So to dismiss it as “little more than a vacuous PULP FICTION wannabe aimed at fourteen year-olds, with pretty pictures substituting for real vision and wit.” is an insult to the genre. Moreover, anyone stating it as such with conviction should be consigned to the 5th concentric circle of Dante’s Easybake and force fed a steady diet of the crap that Aptow is trying to pass off as film entertainment. He’s an idiot, too.
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