Hey Richard, that was a great summary! Somebody once described noir plots to me as: 'A man without a future meets a woman with a past.' This obviously doesn't cover everything, but I thought it was a pretty neat line. Cheers, Neil
--- On Fri, 11/6/10, Richard Halegua Comic Art <[email protected]> wrote: From: Richard Halegua Comic Art <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [MOPO] film noir posters To: [email protected] Date: Friday, 11 June, 2010, 0:25 but i believe noir involves so much of dark, dark camera angles, images & shadows and shadows and shadows. that is really just a small portion of what Noir is Michael. But seeing as it is the visual portion, it is what people most often get from watching noir. the basic subject matter that was present in all of the seminal noir is this:\ a subject, generally innocent but not always, who is caught in a situation that creates a downward spiral from which there is usually no escape and results in the death or destruction of the individual for instance Detour, DOA, Double Indemnity, Caged, Nightmare Alley are the premier noir themes. In each the subject caught in a death spiral is an innocent Detour: hitch hiking Tom Neal in a car with a guy who dies. That wasn't his fault, but he makes all the bad decisions from this point on eventually leading to his presumed arrest & execution or jailing DOA: innocent accountant signed a bill of sale and is going to die because of it (how much more innocent can you be?) Double Indemnity: Salesman gets drawn into murder plot and leads to destruction/death (gas house) Caged: innocent young wife in car when hubby tries to rob a store and is killed. she is convicted of being an accomplice which she apparently was not and during the course of the film slowly becomes a criminal herself aka this has led to her degradation Nightmare Alley: reporter doing a story on carny workers gets taken in by the carnys and eventually self degrades into that which he sees as the most vile of all carnys - the chicken head eating drunk called "the geek" which is the total degradation of a human being these are seminal themes of all noirs and are the top of the class. There are very many "so called" noirs whose only attribution to the field is camera work and thusly, incomplete - and there are also hordes of crime films incorrectly called noirs simply because they are crime films. In almost every "pure" noir, nearly the entire cast is dead by the climax as in Murder My Sweet (only Marlowe survives), Postman Always Rings Twice, the Killing. The other main aspect of noir is that it almost entirely deals with the underbelly of humanity - excepting for the innocent victim whom the story revolves around, the rest of the cast are the lowliest of the low. if camera work is the signature of noir, then we may as well say much of German cinema of the teens and twenties are film noir (they aren't) or that the early Universal horrors are. Can there be anything with darker camera work than Frankenstein or the Mummy?? the base of film noir starts with the theme of the story and it is from there that the branches grow Rich Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content. Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
