Re: RARA-AVIS: the city and the country

Ned Fleming (ned@cjnetworks.com)
Wed, 25 Nov 1998 03:04:43 GMT Mbdlevin@aol.com wrote:

>I'd be interested in taking up this topic and hearing what other people have
>to say. One might ask the question of flim noir too--where the urban
>landscape (slick streets, concrete buildings, etc.) makes a big visual
>difference. A few random thoughts. The city has more chance for
>anonymity--for the loner to get lost, disappear (think how Woolrich's stuff
>depends on this factor). Capital accumulates to a more grandiose degree in the
>city, which allows more easily for people like the Sternwoods et al. Country/
>small town crime novels frequently seem to have a different ethos (e.g., Mario
>Balzac knows everyone); perhaps they are a sort on anti-bucolic--things are
>corrupt, not lovely, in the country. Finally, the more traditional hard-
>boiled seems to be about the violence of society/social forces/individuals.
>Something like _Deliverance_ is also about nature--perhaps that is more in the
>gothic tradition too. Thoughts?

"Out of the Past," the Mitchum movie, provides perhaps the prototypical
example of the tension between myth-city and myth-country life. The mute
(quiet country living, order) with a fishing lure on the gun-hand of the
citified killer (chaos) is a turning point of the film.

Dickey turned "Deliverance" inside out in "To the White Sea," the story
of a downed American bombardier(?) during the fire-bombing of Tokyo.
Instead of civilized man invading chaotic nature, psychotic country man
invades the environs of city man.

-- 
Ned Fleming
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