Tag: film noir

A repressed woman is pushed into the abyss of schizophrenia by unrequited love
(1947 Warner Bros. Directed by Curtis Bernhardt 108 mins)

A tour-de-force performance from an aging Joan Crawford impresses, but the gestalt of this movie rarely strays beyond melodrama – more a soap-opera on steroids than film noir.

The use of flash-back and dark moody lighting make it look noirish, but the deranged protagonist is not responsible for the consequences of her delusions, and there is no redemption, only the hope of recovery.

Visually the opening scenes on the streets of LA and in the corridors of a hospital are stunning, but this virtuosity is not sustained, and the only visual interest in the rest of the film is the brutal and visceral murder at the end.

The Director’s cut of Dark City (1998) has been released on DVD this week.  A sci-fi noir from director Alex Proyas, it explores the nature of consciousness and memory in a classic stylised noir city, which is the closest a contemporay color movie has ever come to evoking the look of a 40’s film noir.

It is a visually stunning and enigmatic dream-scape where true identity doesn’t exist, but is the construct of a biochemist in the employ of dark soul-less aliens, who inhabit cadavers, collectively employed in attempting to stave off extinction by reconstructing physical reality and manipulating the brain’s chemistry.  The noir motif of an amnesiac protagonist on the run after he is implicated in the serial killing of b-girls is the arc on which the story is woven.  It is an amalgam of Al Hartley’s Amateur (1994), which preceded it, and The Matrix (1999), of the following year: a brave new world with a ghost in the machine…

References:
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Ghost in the Machine – Arthur Koestler

In the 1940’s the Breen Office rejected initial scripts (amongst many other films) for The Maltese Falcon (1941), Laura (1944), and Murder, My Sweet (aka Farewell, My Lovely 1944):

The Maltese Falcon… required the… following revisions: Joel Cairo should not be characterized as a ‘pansy type’; the ‘suggestion of illicit sex between Spade and Brigid’ should be eliminated; there should be less drinking; there should be no physical contact between Iva and Spade ‘other than that of decent sympathy’; Gutman should say ‘By Gad!’ less often; and ‘Spade’s speech about District Attorneys should be rewritten to get away from characterizing [them] as men who will do anything to further their careers.’ A similar pattern of objections can be seen in the Breen Office reports on other celebrated films noirs. A… review of Laura insisted that Waldo Lydecker must be portrayed as a ‘wit and debonair man-about-town’ and that ‘there can never be any suggestion that [he] and Laura have been more than friends’; meanwhile, scenes of police brutality had to be downplayed, along with the drinking at Laura’s apartment… [A] report on Farewell, My Lovely informed the producers that ‘there must, of course, be nothing of the ‘pansy’ characterization about Marriott’; by the same token, Mr. Grayle could not ‘escape punishment’ by committing suicide, and the scenes of pistol-whipping, drinking, and illicit sex would have to be reduced or treated indirectly.

– James Naremore, More Than Night – Film Noir In Its Contexts (UCLA Press 1998)

The Dark Knight is worth seeing for Heath Ledger’s bravura study in psychopathology, but as a movie it rarely strays from the confines of its comic-book origins.

Many are waxing lyrical on the “dark vision” and the portrayal of a flawed Batman, and this is true, but to say that the picture “is a straight-up gritty, dirty, soul-rending film noir crime drama” *, is pure hyperbole.  In the film noir universe, there are no super-heros.

As a film it has also major flaws: confused editing with dis-jointed dialog, and an obsession with the minutiae of violence.

* Review by Movie Blawger at SportingNews.com.