Bruce Townley (btownley@sirius.com)
Sat, 27 Nov 1999 18:04:53 -0800 (PST)
Ok, so the flood of century's end lists has kind of gotten to
me. What follows is one of my own. Prepare yourself
for:
MY FAVORITE GENERIC FILM NOIR MOMENTS
A bunch of guys in hats chase another, lone guy (who could
also be in a hat but doesn't have to be), all splashing their
soggy, odoriferous, dramatically lit way through the sewers
beneath a large city.
Elisha Cook Jr. gets his in the second reel.
Meetings, usually between two guys in fedoras and overcoats,
inevitably take place in a shadowy office/hotel lobby/subway
or train station.
If the characters get to spend any time outside, it can't be,
by any means, in a picturesque forest glen. Nope, direct your
enormous sedan to, say, one of those "grasshopper" style
oil-pumps that dot vast stretches of L.A. County. If you
can't find one of those a railroad switching yard (or some
other potential EPA Superfund site) will do.
A car that looks big enough to stand up in pulls up to a
crisp looking gas station. A guy in a hat (a peaked uniform
one) hustles out and if he has any dialog it's to give
sketchy directions to the gang's hide-out, while he's wiping
off the windsreen with a vigorous circular motion.
Elisha Cook Jr. checks out right after the fifth commercial
break.
That smoldering cigarette butt stays pasted to Robert
Mitchum's lower lip
<through the whole scene>, even when he's uttering
deathless lines like:
"Baby, I don't care."
A slab faced guy in a snappy fedora and a sharp looking
chalk-striped, three piece suit strides into a cigarette
smoke choked room, faces down a bunch of other guys seated
around a table (probably killing time by playing poker or gin
rummy), some of who are, most likely, also wearing hats.
While the guys around the table squint up at him through the
smoke, the first guy grinds out, "Sa-a-a-a-y, what's the big
idea!?". His question is never adequately answered.
Lunch counter short-order cooks, guys who run newspaper or
shoe-shine stands and cabbies are all either omniscient or on
the take. Sometimes both.
A guy in a fedora and a trench-coat (probably Richard Widmark
if it isn't Alan Ladd or Victor Mature) lights up a cigarette
for a dame in an inadequately lit side street or alleyway. As
the kitchen match or Zippo lighter flares up we finally get
to see the dame's face. It's either Gloria Grahame, Marie
Windsor or Ida Lupino.
If you <must> be a cheap detective in L.A. it's
recommended that you rent office space in the Bradbury
Building. That big old air-shaft in the center of the
building is perfect for a squealer to plummet down after he's
been shot by a concealed gunsel, before he can tell his
story.
There's an ironic and laconic voice-over narration throughout
the entire film, probably done by a guy was betrayed and then
killed before the flick even started. The icing on the cake's
the voice-over by that good old unreliable narrator with
questionable motives.
If there's no voice-over there's <gotta> be flashbacks,
the more the better. They should totally side-track or derail
any rational attempt at plotting.
The director of photography has shot the entire film using
only the light from the odd 40 watt bulb or blinking neon
sign outside the window of a cold-water flat or some cheap
flophouse room. Given that, it's done rather artfully.
It sure rains a lot, downtown, for some reason. How else
would those sidewalks stay wet?
Cheap, two-bit grifters get to eat out a lot, for some
reason.
It's usually about 3 AM in most large cities, for some
reason.
A .38 holds a <lot> of bullets, for some reason. If you
run out, you know you can just throw the empty gun at the
other guy.
If two or more characters (most likely cigarette smoking guys
in fedoras and overcoats, natch) stage a late-night meeting
in a warehouse, inevitably fisticuffs will break out (if not
actual gun-play). Also inevitably no end of cardboard boxes
will tumble about as though they were filled with nothing but
air.
Capers and big knockovers always collapse, usually fatally.
Doesn't stop an apparently endless stream of gimlet-eyed
tough guys in fedoras and overcoats and sharp featured dames
from starting in on new ones. "This job's gonna be a cinch,
see..."
Elisha Cook Jr., after being enmeshed in a web of inexorable
betrayal
(mostly of his own making), is finally killed by his
so-called "friends" while you've either stepped away to go to
the snack bar out front or to check on what's in the
fridge.
Bruce T. = btownley@sirius.com
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
"Sure I live bad. But at least I don't have to work at
it."
-SLACKER
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Sat 27 Nov 1999 - 21:05:20 EST