Actually, I think you’ve won this round. I got to “Body Heat” first, but I completely forgot about “Chinatown” and it’s one of my very favorite films. :smack: :smack: :smack:
I don’t think any serious student of film theory could dismiss Chinatown or L.A. Confidential as something other than film noir, even if they were made in the '70s and the '90s, respectively, and in color. I fully understand Sin City was a heavy-handed homage to the genre, but those two are the real deal.
I’m not sure I buy later films--Chinatown, Body Heat–as any more “noir” than Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. THey’re post-noir, or faux noir, or something; they’re not pure noir. *Film Noir *is a term that came later, well after all the masterpieces were made. Billy Wilder had never heard of “noir” when he made Double Indemnity; none of the great noir masterpieces were made as noir films. So I have to separate them, as true noir. The ones that came later were pastiche, even if some of them were great films, but they weren’t noir; they were noir pastice.
I’m with lissener. The Blockbuster Bros - **Spielberg ** & Lucas - has spent almost 30 years re-making movies that inspired awe in them as kids. All their efforts are either pastiches or hommages or, invariably, extremely calculated to suit critics and audiences. The last time **Spielberg ** made a truly original movie, without pandering to box office or Oscar voters was Jaws. For Lucas it was American Graffiti. So they’re re-making movies and themes from their childhood.
Polanski and Di Palma were doing the same with Chinatown and Body Heat. They are probably the best “noir” films ever made (and I still enjoy them immensly), containing everything that should be in their, including a truly bent and dangerous blonde. But they are not Noir. If they were, I’d nominate, and this is a guilty pleasure - Wild Things (note Neve Campbell’s blonde dye job at the end) as well.
When I was a kid, well before you had American Movie Classics or Turner Classic Movies, you would only ever see parodies of film noir, or even of the detective movies that are so strongly associated with the genre. I found this endlessly frustrating, because the parodies made me curious about what the real thing was like. Sure, late night on WGN you could see some Cagney and Bogart films. I spent many nights watching Cagney’s body being delivered to his mother on her doorstep. Other than that, these old films were just not shown. Finally, cable made these films available, and I have hours and hours of the stuff on VHS. But I find it kind of funny that we’re talking about the genre being dead when it has never been more available.
And personally, I like the neo-noirs, though I see that some of you don’t. I mean, yes, the term ‘noir’ gets thrown around and generally conflated with ‘hard-boiled’ and ‘tough guy’ films and period pieces that involve fedoras in general. A lot of these films associated with the genre lack certain hallmarks – the play of light and shadow, the disconcerting camera angles apparently imported from German Expressionism, the unyielding doom. Some critics have suggested that there should be a term ‘film gris’ or ‘gray films’ for movies in which the light at the end of the tunnel does not turn out to be an oncoming train. We shouldn’t forget that the people who made the original noir were not self-conscious about doing so, but I wouldn’t then dismiss the work of people who do it intentionally.
Sin City is very good for what it is – an amalgamation of noir conventions and comic book conventions. I daresay it’s more noir than Eliot Gould’s The Long Goodbye, and that is sometimes lumped right in. And when you’ve got color to work with, a lot of tricks with shadows or the light slanting through blinds don’t quite work the same way. But darkness has been used to great advantage in, for example, Dark City (the 1998 sci-fi film, not the 1950 Charlton Heston noir, q.v., featuring Jack Web as a bad guy). And I can’t argue with people who want to lump Blade Runner in with noir.
The thing about film-noir is that, even for its day, it didn’t require much in the way of special effects. (We’ll conveniently ignore the low-budget sci-fi-ish Kiss Me Deadly.) A lot of the sensibility of film-noir came from undermining the Hays Code and/or and delivering bleak, uncompromising endings, like that of The Asphalt Jungle or Double Indemnity. These kinds of films are still made–see The Salton Sea, Presumed Innocent, The Grifters, Thief, and Red Rock West, among others, but they’re never big, popular blockbusters. (Heat might be considered neo-noir, but it’s a standout.) For that matter, neither were the original film noir picks, many of which were considered B-list or minor A-list flics in their day.
No, it was a deliberate satire of film-noir. A great movie, actually, but played for comedy
I’m glad somebody else enjoyed the film–apparently Warner Bros. hated it so much they’re refusing to release it on DVD–but it is again a deliberate satire of film noir and detective mysteries.
There are a lot of noir-ish influences out there, any many films that pay homage to or rip off the classics of film noir (read: nearly everything ever directed by Brian De Palma after The Untouchables), but classics like Out Of The Past and The Maltese Falcon were products of their day by audiences not yet jaded.
Stranger
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Wow. I always thought it was guys with guns and lotsa cool shadows.
What what WHAT? It was one of the best movies to come out last year, and if I wasn’t a movie geek, it would have sailed under my radar, completely undetected during its brief stint in theaters. I was really looking forward to a cool DVD presentation of *Kiss Kiss * (hopefully with commentary by Shane Black, Downey, and Kilmer). Do you have a cite for the non-release information?
I recant; I just checked on Amazon and they now list a release date for the DVD as June 16th. Although I can’t cite it, the word was that there were some legal battles between Black and Warner Bros. owning to Warner’s lack of marketing support and promotion for the film. As you note, there was virtually no marketing campaign for it and extremely limited distribution; it was obvious that someone had an agenda to junk the film; stupid, because as a Christmas-themed action film (harkening back to Lethal Weapon and Die Hard) it probably could have cleaned up had even a modest effort been made. Given that studios are releasing films on DVD two and three months after theatrical release, I don’t have any other explanation for why this one sits around for six months. Grr.
And I agree with your abbreviated review of the film; it’s a really fun take on buddy detective movies and film noir. (The titles of the"chapters" of the film are taken from Raymond Chandler novels and Black has great fun with the protagonist narration meme.) But it doesn’t qualify as they type of thing Quasimodem is looking for; it’s pure satire of film noir and Hollywood thrillers with a modest amount of action.
Stranger
The connection to noir is tenuous at best, but you might look into the Nero Wolfe TV series; originally on A&E, it now plays Saturday nights on Biography Channel. Archie Goodwin, Wolfe’s confidental assistant, frequent goad, and all around legman is unmistakably drawn from the ‘hard-boiled’ tradition, and he even provides smart-alecky first-person narration.
More “neo noir” - Blade Runner and Blue Velvet.
This was my never written thesis. Film Noir can be broken into two categories - classical film noir which reached its height in the 1950s, and neo or post-classical film noir - which starts with the release of Chinatown. Neo film noir is aware of its roots - its directors are all film school graduates who have heard of Raul Walsh - so yeah - paradoy or pastich e or homage (I think homage is the actual intent of something like Blood Simple). But after Cahiers du Cinema, I don’t think that anyone who directs can make a noir that isn’t self aware.
Well, from the beginning Archie was a satire on hard-boiled detectives, just as Wolfe was a satire on “armchair” detectives. The first Wolfe novels date from the early 30s, before Chandler had published a single novel and in fact only a few months after Chandler’s first published story. They were never truly hard-boiled, even at the time, preceded film noir by over a decade, and belong somewhere more in the tradition of the screwball comedy than either. The tv series is pure parody.
I’m also one of the few who saw and liked Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. I wish Black would give up the commentary on film clichés and write something real, but I loved everything he did in that film.
But for something much closer to noir and a real Christmas thriller, you have to go with The Ice Harvest, which received no more attention but was filled with good writing and better performances. The leaden skies of a Midwest Christmas eve worked as a substitute for b&w and the plot was straight out of an old movie.
Another poster pulling for Brick, the little movie that could. Just don’t go into it thinking it’ll be Bugsy Malone meets Dashiell Hammet.
What was it even about? I saw a few brief TV commercials that revealed nothing about the plot, or even what genre it was (slapstick comedy or gangster/crime movie?). I like John Cusack anyway, so if it’s a decent movie, I ought to rent it.
My take on Nero Wolfe is that it is a successful attempt to blend two mystery genres – the hardboiled dick and the armchair detective.
Speaking of film noir: http://www.salon.com/comics/boll/2003/07/03/boll/story.gif
Is there actually material indicating that Stout thought of it as satirical, or is that just your thought on it? I’ve never read anything from Stout to that effect, though if he thought so, that’s fine too; I’m hooked on the books and series anyway. Similarly, I dunno if Timothy Hutton thinks of the series as parody. I’m not trying to be confrontational, thoough I"m probably coming off that way–I’m just honestly curious if there’s anything indicating Stout thought of the books that way.
More than decent, less than great. This review gives a good summary.
Good take, Johnny. Could hardly have said it better myself. :rolleyes:
They’re my thoughts, although I didn’t think there was anything especially original about them. If you’ve read a lot of stuff from the 30s as I have, it just seems obvious. Both Wolfe and Archie are types rather than human beings, and the archetypes are clear. Stout wanted to be a great writer, found instead he was a great storyteller. And he had a wicked sense of humor. Take a look at his infamous Watson Was a Woman?.
As for the tv series: If you want to call it pastiche, I might go that far, but the shows were so stylized that they felt like they were playing with my expectations every minute rather than trying to immerse me in their reality.
By far my favorite Nero Wolfe movie is the 1979 tv movie adaptation of The Doorbell Rang with Thayer David as the best Wolfe ever. Sadly, David died before the movie was ever shown, preventing any sequels. It’s hardly ever rerun and not available in any format I’m aware of, so it’s mostly a curiosity now.
I’ve always thought The Big Lebowski was a brilliant take on noir.
It’s cool. I dig Wolfe, but they’re books/TV episodes/stories that I read for fun and escape, not to analyze much. I think I see where you’re at, I’m just not sure if I’d call it satire. No worries and thanks for the response. 