Juri wrote:
"I didnt' think of "Memento" as a private eye film, even
though the Guy Pearce guy (sic) acts like a private eye most
of the time. But as for the insurance investigators - does
"Double Indemnity" count as a PI movie? Edward Robinson plays
an insurance investigator and yet I don't feel it's a PI
movie."
While I have come to agree that insurance investigators are
PIs, I have to agree with Juri. I didn't think of Memento as
a PI film, either. To me, it had more in common with Goodis
than Chandler. I feel it fits within the "blackout" subgenre
of noir, where a hero tries to figure out what he did during
a lost period of time. In fact, it had a lot in common with
Nightfall, with its amnesiac hero trying to figure out if he
was a killer. While he may not have been a suspected killer,
Leonard was trying to piece together what had happened during
his sequential
"blackouts" He was lucky to have the PI skills to help in his
search.
Similarly, Mitchum is a PI in Out of the Past, but I'm not
sure I would call it a PI film, either. Well, half of it is a
PI film, while he is searching for Jane Greer. However, the
film changes to something else when he goes against his
professional obligation and refuses to return her to Kirk
Douglas.
Mark
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 22 Aug 2001 EDT