--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Patrick King
<abrasax93@...> wrote:
>
*****************************************************
> Not to be contentious, but when you have mimes
miming
> a tennis game at the end of a movie, that is
NOT
> subtle. I don't think there's anything subtle
about
> Blow-Up.
Well, I do. Let's not beat that one up.
> Again, when a movie is put together back to front,
and
> the camera angles are so unusual that you think
about
> them as you're watching the film, this is
the
> definition of Wellsian "heavy handed" directing.
The
> Killing is a brilliant film, but it is far
from
> subtle. Polanski, be it Knife in the Water
or
> Repulsion or Rosemary's Baby or Chinatown, is
very
> overt in the use of his techniques.
Knife in the Water is not Repulson or Rosemary's Baby,
nothing like them. Chinatown is subtle.
And I think The Killing uses (mostly, not exclusively) an
objective point of view: it is a thrilling but cold film, a
subtle film. It conveys the coming failure bit by bit,
without dramatizing it too much
(except for Wilmer and his moll, which don't jar too
much).
>Tony Richardson's Saturday Night and
Sunday
> Morning is a fairly subtle noir, as is his
Lonliness
> of a Longdistance Runner. Brilliant use of the black
&
> white medium, but it's not set up like a comic
book,
> the way most of the noir films we're talking
about
> are. Lindsey Anderson's This Sporting Life is
fairly
> subtle in its cinematic technique.
I don't think any these are noir films. The angry young men
cultivated a social-realistic type of film. The aspiration
was to make fiction that looked like a documentary. They were
quite successful. But thematically I don't see much noir in
them.
> I don't think subtlety is anything to strive for
in
> noir fiction.
As I said before, I don't think there are any rules. A theme
can be approached in countless ways and yet with success. It
can be approached subtly or flamboyantly or even pushed
towards the grotesque. The results can be great whatever the
approach.
Best,
mrt
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