Some of my opinions on the subjet:
"Pulp Fiction" was as noir as they get in my opinion. As was
"Reservoir Dogs." I don't think there was a dark scene in
"Dogs," but the subjects and their fate definitely put it in
the noir category.
"Chinatown" is both hardboiled and noir.
"Devil in a Blue Dress," both book and movie are noir and
hardboiled.
Pelecanos, for the most part, writes hardboiled fiction,
sometimes with a noir twist.
Dennis Lahane's "Mystic River" both book and movie,
noir.
If we get into this "it can't be film noir" because it's in
color argument, we are defining staging, shading, and to a
lesser degree, budget.
If we use the argument that it can't be film noir if produced
after a certain date, we are probably talking about budgets
as well.
Noir, whether book or film, is dark and sinister, and most
often one or more of the main character is on a downward
slide with the fates greasing the ride that started with a
weakness of character.
I still say noir=screwed and hardboiled=tough for
siplification purposes. I think the goes for books as well as
movies.
It's fun to kick it around though. Among we at rara-avis, it
sometimes seems to get as heated as religion or
politics.
Jack Bludis
===== Now: "The Big Switch," and "The Deal Killer" Coming
this summer: "Shadow of the Dahlia" http://jackbludis.com/
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 15 May 2004 EDT