Re: RARA-AVIS: Getting Sentimental

dspurlock@humana.com
Thu, 21 May 1998 09:27:56 -0400 <<It's always seemed to me that the best hard-boiled voices are not just
cynical or amused by it all. They have an undertone of disappointment, of
a loss of something or someone that could modulate into sentimentalism if
they ever let up. I've always read the conclusive kiss-off of Brigid
O'Shaughnessy, for instance, as more self-denial than sadistic (regardless
of where Bogart took it). And I always liked Dick Powell's Marlowe in
_Murder, My Sweet_, in part because he manages to express a hurt behind the
wise cracks.>>

Right -- this requires a subtlety that many writers of the cynical- or
ironic-voiced characters never explore. Instead, they seek to dazzle us
with their wit or charm. Deeper human concerns are often lost. It's just
such a progression -- from wise-cracking and jaded good-time boy to wiser,
hurt and thwarted knight -- that Polanski and Nicholson give us with Jake
Gittes in "Chinatown." I can't think of many other such portrayals (so
effectively done) in hard-boiled films or novels since that movie's
release. -- Duane

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