You... you imbecile. You bloated idiot. You stupid fat-head you.
August 1, 2015 1:05 PM Subscribe
Adam Frost and Melanie Patrick of the British Film Institute take a look at film noir and what makes a film noir-ish.
OK, so they made a list of tropes that they associated with this definition of noir, and then rated films on adherence to that formula. A formula that was established after the fact, based on the films themselves (as opposed to something like Dogme 95, where the constraints are established ahead of time.)
I am not against this list or this explanation. It's good, and those graphics do a good job of illustrating the film techniques they're talking about. And noir is a very fuzzy term, so you have to establish at least a nonce definition to discuss it.
So it's all cool, but it's also rigged.
posted by ernielundquist at 1:53 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
I am not against this list or this explanation. It's good, and those graphics do a good job of illustrating the film techniques they're talking about. And noir is a very fuzzy term, so you have to establish at least a nonce definition to discuss it.
So it's all cool, but it's also rigged.
posted by ernielundquist at 1:53 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Sunset Boulevard deserves a place near Double Indemnity, just sayin.
posted by The Whelk at 2:03 PM on August 1, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 2:03 PM on August 1, 2015 [5 favorites]
Saying "Script based on American pulp fiction" seems unfair to Hammet, Cain and Chandler who write a big chunk of the source material.
posted by octothorpe at 2:13 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 2:13 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
OK, so they made a list of tropes that they associated with this definition of noir, and then rated films on adherence to that formula.
Not sure how else you could do it-- noir is a genre that was only described after the fact.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:43 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Not sure how else you could do it-- noir is a genre that was only described after the fact.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:43 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Saying "Script based on American pulp fiction" seems unfair to Hammet, Cain and Chandler who write a big chunk of the source material.
I don't think they were using the term "pulp" pejoratively. And many of those writers' stories did first appear in cheap news-stand magazines such as Black Mask, didn't they?
posted by Paul Slade at 3:04 PM on August 1, 2015
I don't think they were using the term "pulp" pejoratively. And many of those writers' stories did first appear in cheap news-stand magazines such as Black Mask, didn't they?
posted by Paul Slade at 3:04 PM on August 1, 2015
I wasn't saying that "pulp" was a pejorative, just that it was a pretty small group of writers who inspired noir and it wouldn't have been that hard to name them explicitly.
posted by octothorpe at 4:00 PM on August 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 4:00 PM on August 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
Some of the greatest noir films lack one or several of the elements they list as essential (e.g. Act of Violence, which has no investigator and was scripted by a career screenwriter, and The Prowler, which lacks a single moral female character and was directed by an American. Theft also doesn't feature in either of them.)
This is a good-looking exercise, but what unifies the films that later came to be grouped as noir is a deeply cynical, deterministic view of the world and Expressionist aesthetics, and that's it. The attitude is something evident in a subset of Hollywood films going back to at least the 30s, though minus the lighting and cinematography that European exiles brought with them. Their visual style, plus the persistence of an increasingly marginalized, suppressed hardboiled ethos in the forcibly cheerful postwar Hollywood, is what really makes a noir a noir.
posted by ryanshepard at 4:34 PM on August 1, 2015 [4 favorites]
This is a good-looking exercise, but what unifies the films that later came to be grouped as noir is a deeply cynical, deterministic view of the world and Expressionist aesthetics, and that's it. The attitude is something evident in a subset of Hollywood films going back to at least the 30s, though minus the lighting and cinematography that European exiles brought with them. Their visual style, plus the persistence of an increasingly marginalized, suppressed hardboiled ethos in the forcibly cheerful postwar Hollywood, is what really makes a noir a noir.
posted by ryanshepard at 4:34 PM on August 1, 2015 [4 favorites]
How did that style of information presentation , a long graphical Jpeg, get started? Some of them are really cool and useful, it'd be nice to print them out and put them on my office wall.
posted by PHINC at 5:09 PM on August 1, 2015
posted by PHINC at 5:09 PM on August 1, 2015
it was a pretty small group of writers who inspired noir and it wouldn't have been that hard to name them explicitly.
Especially especially since they picked "Double Indemnity" as the noir-est, and the screenplay had Chandler as a co-writer from a book by Cain.
posted by Cookiebastard at 5:57 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Especially especially since they picked "Double Indemnity" as the noir-est, and the screenplay had Chandler as a co-writer from a book by Cain.
posted by Cookiebastard at 5:57 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Not sure how else you could do it-- noir is a genre that was only described after the fact.
Yes. That is what I said.
My point being that, they are defining the genre based on a body of work* and then judging that same body of work based on the definition they derived from it. It is a circular argument. It's still interesting and informative, but the part where they judge movies based on adherence to the tropes they've identified as common to the movies they're judging is circular.
* And it is a descriptive genre, not a prescriptive one, and theirs is one of many varying descriptions.
posted by ernielundquist at 6:01 PM on August 1, 2015
Yes. That is what I said.
My point being that, they are defining the genre based on a body of work* and then judging that same body of work based on the definition they derived from it. It is a circular argument. It's still interesting and informative, but the part where they judge movies based on adherence to the tropes they've identified as common to the movies they're judging is circular.
* And it is a descriptive genre, not a prescriptive one, and theirs is one of many varying descriptions.
posted by ernielundquist at 6:01 PM on August 1, 2015
Nice post title, a lungful of dragon. Makes me want to read every MeFi post in Peter Lorre's voice.
posted by thetortoise at 7:06 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by thetortoise at 7:06 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
« Older The Thousand Year Journey | Tarkovsky on Tarkovsky Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by clavdivs at 1:49 PM on August 1, 2015 [2 favorites]