To me noir is more a sense of doom than tragedy. More times
than not the protagonist creates their own fate, either by
being born broken, as in some of the great Jim Thompson
novels (Killer Inside Me, A Swell-Looking Babe, Pop. 1280,
etc) or by crossing a moral line, for committing murder for a
woman, money, just to see if you can get away with it, etc.,
such as Double Indemnity, Postman Always Rings Twice, The
name of the Game is Death. Great noir novels, such as Mr.
Arkadin and How Like a God are outside the realm of the
working- class. And then you've got Charles Willeford, who
created some brillian tnoir novels based on artists refusing
to compromise their artistic vision. Yeah, there are some
examples of people who are screwed more by fate than their
own actions, such as the film Detour, but in my opinion the
best examples (and most prevalent) of noir involve the
protagonist's bad decisions, moral weaknesses, or simply
broken psyches than the whims of fate. Tragedy is one thing,
noir is something completely different.
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Marc Seals"
<mseals@t...> wrote:
> I think it does work for a great many films
noirs.... Relatively
few films noirs feature a detective. (I'm speaking here of
the films from the so-called classic era of noir, roughly
1941 to 1958.) The more common protagonists are the common
losers being destroyed by the random whims of fate (and often
aided by a femme fatale). I remember a theatre professor
years ago telling me that classic tragedy is "a great soul
suffering greatly" (or words to that effect); film noir is
often the tale of a common schmo suffering greatly. In both
kinds of stories, we witness a person's downfall....
>
> ~Marc
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Dave Zeltserman
>
>
> I'd have to say "working-class tragedy" doesn't make
a hell of a
lot
> of sense as a definition for noir. I also don't see
the
connection for
> film noir either - how does that definition fit film
noir
classics
> like Body Heat, Angel Heart, Chinatown, Double
Indemnity, Blade
> Runner, Godfather 2?
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
removed]
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