Jim,
"Leaving aside the fact that, given the subject of this list,
"crime film" is implicit, in my very first post on this
thread I said film noir was a ". . . crime film marked by
particular visual stylistics." So I'm not adding
anything."
Leaving aside that it may reasonably be assumed on this list
or even that you may have previously stated it, being a crime
film is a second condition, which means noir is not defined
exclusively (as you repeated ad infinitum) by its visual
style.
"The same script can be used for a film that is either noir
or non-noir depending on the visual approach. In fact, I can
give you an example. .
. ."
Just because it can be filmed as a noir or not does not mean
that a crime plot is not a necessary condition for noir, it's
just not sufficient. So even within your own testimony, noir
sems to grow from the interplay of two conditions: plot and
visual style.
"Self-consciousness manifests itself in the realization that
there is such a thing AS film noir. . . . But the deliberate
intention to make a film that reproduces the visual effects
of another era that defined a particular style has the effect
of making those visual flourishes seem less like an organic
part of the work (as they were in the '40s, '50s, and early
'60s), and more like mimicry. Which is another way
self-consciousness manifests itself."
So let me get this straight, once a genre is defined, it no
longer exists? Once its practitioners consider themselves as
part of a tradition, that tradition is no more? Taking it
back to literature: Pelecanos, Lehane, Parker, etc, are not
writing hardboiled novels because they have read Hammett and
Chandler? Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, you cannot write
police procedurals, because you are aware of McBain? And
historicals like Collins's, Ellroy's and yours are
particularly suspect because they not only know the literary
style, but are also striving to recreate settings of the
masters?
Hallelujah! We no longer need to worry about definitions
because there is no longer anything to define.
(By the way, in Chinatown and Generic Transformation, John G
Cawelti names four types of generic transformation: humorous
burlesque, evocation of nostalgia, demythologization of
generic myth and the affirmation of myth as myth.)
Mark
ps -- for the record, The Man Who Wasn't Tehere is a B &
W film.
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