Jim,
Re your comments below:
> I'm not trying to be argumentative, but a
definition
> of noir that
> categorizes things by time of day or
> interior/exterior doesn't serve me very
> well. There are scenes in the 1969 MARLOWE
film
> that are very dark and
> sinister, yet most of the film has a
brightly-lit
> daytime quality. Even the
> oft-proclaimed "quintessential" noir film OUT OF
THE
> PAST has plenty of
> bright, sunshine-y scenes. Semi-noir,
perhaps?
I don't think I've ever actually said that a film noir has no
daytime scenes. If I did I was being too emphatic. I may have
said (or should have said) that film noir tends to have a
nocturnal quality that contributes to a dark and sinister
atmosphere.
There are, after all, daytime scenes in such signature noir
films as MURDER, MY SWEET; CROSSFIRE; DOUBLE IMDEMNITY; HE
WALKED BY NIGHT; THE NAKED CITY; THE ASPHALT JUNGLE; and, as
you point out, OUT OF THE PAST, so I don't regard a daytime
scene as an absolute disqualifier.
That said, based on my own internal compass, neither MARLOWE
nor NIGHT MOVES qualifies as noir, but that's a judgment
call. Doesn't mean they aren't good films, just not noir.
Anyway, agreeing on a definition doesn't mean one can count
on agreeing about what FITS in that definition. Mileage may
vary with user.
JIM DOHERTY
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo!
- Internet access at a great low price. http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # 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 : 14 May 2004 EDT