Patrick,
Re your comments below:
> I don't really agree with you here, Jim. Noir
concerns
> the nature of the hero. Sam Spade and Philip
Marlow
> are hard boiled characters. They may not be 100%
in
> line with the police. They may be rebels in the
face
> of authority. But they are always on the side
of
> "good." They may be indiscreet, but they will
never
> fail to out a killer even if they love her.
Noir
> characters, on the other hand, are morally of
a
> different stripe. The characters in Jim Thompson
and
> James M. Cain's work are perfectly disposed to do
evil
> if they encounter the right woman or the
wrong
> opportunity. Amorality, not atmosphere, is the
heart
> and nature of noir. Amorality is a
socio/political
> problem. Noir always poses a question of the
right
> direction to take, and the fruits of the
easy
> decision.
Characters aren't noir, unless you're French-speaking and
you're talking about people of African descent.
Nor is hard-boiled a sign of some sort of moral or legal
superiority to noir. Richard Stark's Parker is as hard-boiled
as they come, and he's also as amoral as they come.
Hard-boiled's not about taking the difficult, but morally
righteous road. It's about attitude and style.
Noir, on the other hand, isn't about taking the easy but
morally questionable road. It's about tone and atmosphere.
That's what the books published by Gallimard under the SERIE
NOIR line, the line that associated the word "noir" with
crime fiction, had in common.
It certainly wasn't a line that EXCLUDED hard-boiled fiction
or hard- boiled characters. On the contrary, both Hammett and
Chandler, writers you specifically, and erroneously, exclude
from the "noir" label, were among the first writers to be
published under the SERIE NOIR logo.
So to say that "noir" means exclusive of hard-boiled is to
say that the people who coined the term were, in the very act
of coining it, using it incorrectly, which is a ludicrous
assertion on its face. I'll grant that it doesn't always mean
hard-boiled, and that hard- boiled doesn't always mean noir,
but they certainly aren't, and never have been, mutually
exclusive.
When the word was extended to refer to a specific type of
crime film, the films the word was used to describe were
invariably either based on books that had been published as
part of the SERIE NOIR line, or based on the same sort of
books, or had original screenplays that told the same sort of
stories that the SERIE NOIR books told.
Movies like THE MALTESE FALCON (based on a novel by Hammett)
and MURDER, MY SWEET (based on a novel by Chandler) are
widely regarded as seminal benchmarks in film noir, and were
cited as such by the film critics who coined the term.
Hard-boiled's about attitude and style. Noir's about tone and
atmosphere. And that's all they're about. And all they've
ever been about.
JIM DOHERTY
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 25 Nov 2006 EST