Miker,
Re your response to my comment below:
> > Miker, for crying out loud, listen to
yourself!
> The
> > same story, maintaining the same atmosphere
of
> gloom
> > and evil and darkness, telling about the
same
> > character, moving through the same events,
in
> > virtually the same way and the same order, is
noir
> in
> > one medium but not in the other?
>
> ***********************************
> An excellent example of this would be THE
MALTESE
> FALCON. I'm not an
> expert on any kind of noir, and in film noir I am
on
> very shaky grounds, but
> I
> believe that it's considered a noir film, isn't
it?
> I have also heard it
> said that
> nothing Hammett wrote was noir, that his
characters
> were simply too tough
> to be noir.
That presupposes that tough and noir are mutually exclusive,
and my whole point has been that they're not. Again I return
to Hammer in ONE LONELY NIGHT, tough as they come and noir as
they come. Hammett not noir? Read the temple sequence in THE
DAIN CURSE, or the moody chase through the underground
tunnels of SF's Chinatown in"Dead Yellow Women."
> I think the implication was that his
> writing lacked the sweat,
> fear,
> and desperation that the dark and
sinister
> atmosphere is supposed to gen-
> erate.
And again, this presupposes that someone who's tough and
capable never gets fearful in a desperate situation, and
that's simply not true, whether in fiction or in real life.
Check out the tough NYPD detectives in Cornell Woolrich's
many cop stories. Check out the Op believing he's slugging it
out with a ghost in THE DAIN CURSE. And check out the
comments of almost any decorated cop, soldier, firefighter,
etc. Brave people aren't brave because they feel no fear;
they're brave because they do courageous acts in SPITE of
their fear.
> And yes, I am suggesting (as I sink into
quicksand)
> that noir in film is not
> the equivalent to written noir. I see film noir
as
> a style, and written
> noir as
> an extension of the pessimistic determinism of
the
> American Naturalists.
Noir is a dark and sinister atmosphere, conveyed by visual
imagery in film and by the author's use of language in prose.
It doesn't change meanings when it changes mediums.
The phrase that properly describes the pessimistic
determinism of American Naturalists isn't "noir," it's
"The Pressimistic Determinism of American Naturalists."
JIM DOHERTY
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