---
BaxDeal@aol.com wrote:
>
> since my definition of noir is a philosophical
one
> rather than a stylistic
> one, similar to Jack Bludis' "screwed",
your
> description of both films places
> them solidly into that big, black abyss
>
I also do not subscribe to the stylistic fetish of noir (I
consider, for example, Pretty Poison and Last Tango In Paris
to be film noirs), and would place The Long Goodbye and Kiss
Me, Deadly outside of classic noir. But, who cares? The fact
that they're films worth seeing over and over again puts them
is a special place that leaves definition of genre as a
secondary consideration. That is what good film making is
about and why I like these particular films so much.
Splitting definition hairs in this particular case is fun in
that to delve into the content of these films is to explore
the genre in a different way and to see it rattled and shaken
and tossed out in a creative way is far more rewarding than
to say that it has A, B, and C and is ergo D. Out Of The Past
is a perfect example of American noir. The Killers is
another. Yet -- while both are excellent films -- neither
really becomes more than exercises in genre. And again, I
really like both films. But The Long Goodbye, Kiss me,
Deadly, Chinatown, Breathless, Le Samurai, The Conversation,
and others are more than exercises. They are almost jazz
instead of standards. And that is something that Dash Hammett
and Raymond Chandler understood or at least I see and hear
that in their work. There is a reason we remember the John
Huston version of The Maltese Falcon and not the two
predecessors and that's because Huston "got" the real gist of
the book. It's not about sex or who killed Archer or even if
there is a falcon crafted by some long dead crusaders. It's
about dreams and greed and need. And that's why The Long
Goodbye and Kiss Me, Deadly are special. Altman nailed what
Chandler meant. What Chandler couldn't say explicitly.
Frankly I'm surprised since Altman is such an erratic
director. Kiss Me, Deadly is brilliant in spite of itself and
that's an achievement all its own. As I see noir, they're not
in that definition but in some post noir time where the
boundaries are still seen in the rear view mirror while
crossing some other frontier.
I don't want to be comforted by genre. I want to be dazzled
and surprised. And the films that I mentioned here do just
that.
William
Essays and Ramblings
<http://www.williamahearn.com>
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