RARA-AVIS: Dark City/Mildred Pierce?/Spillane
Victoria Esposito-Shea (vmes@sbt.infi.net)
Wed, 8 Jul 1998 11:38:46 -0500
> I just ran across a fun and informative, if not
entirely scholarly, book
on
> film noir--it's called _Dark City_ : The Lost World of
Film Noir, by
Eddie
> Muller, and it came out last month. I'd like to see
more backing up his
> assertion that noir began after WWII and ended with
_Psycho_, and he's
> reproduced a couple highly questionable anecdotes (e.g.
the Maltese
> Falcon-secretary-dialogue story), but it is,
nonetheless, a fun book if
you
> can stand the whimsical structure. (It's got all kinds
of stuff on the
> studio system and organized crime and HUAC and the
sordid lives of the
> actors, as well as stuff on the films
themselves.)
>
> Also, I finally got around to reading James Cain's
_Mildred Pierce_,
which
> I've seen referred to in multiple places as a noir
classic. I don't get
> it. Granted, I haven't seen the movie, but if it's in
any way faithful
to
> the book plotwise, it seems to me to have a lot more in
common with soap
> opera than anything else. Will I understand if I see
the movie? Is it
> just misclassified? Am I guilty of narrow vision?
(Well, probably. :)
> Anyone?
>
> And I still can't read Spillane. (The author of _Dark
City_ refers to
Mike
> Hammer as "Philip Marlowe's evil twin" which seems
about right to me.)
>
> Later,
> Vicky
> vmes@sbt.infi.net
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