Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: S鲩e Noire

From: DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net
Date: 21 Dec 2006


Al wrote:

"As for the electric chair analogy, I was thinking of Marv from SIN CITY. Hardboiled, and then some.

John added:

"and certainly a noirish world"

I'd put the emphasis on the "-ish." Although Sin City adopts a noir style for its presentation, I find the characters to be far too hardboiled to be noir. Now I'm not one to say noir and hardboiled and noir are mutually exclusive, in fact, I see a large overlap, but I don't place this within it. Almost everyone in the world of Sin City is so hardboiled that the noirness that envelops them never actually touches them. There's never any possibility that the mean streets might turn the good man mean. Look at Hartigan. Corruption keeps him from doing his job. He rots in jail when he administers justice outside the law. And the woman he wanted to protect gets taken again when he gets out. But he is still a pure, noble hero to the end. And Nancy, the victim,
"never screams." And the evil characters are pure evil. That seems to be part of noir for me, characters confronting their own morality, what they will and will not do to get what they want. There is never any doubt at all how anyone will act in Sin City -- the good guys will be good, the bad guys will be bad -- and making its underworld denizens good and upright citizens bad does not change that.

Mark



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