Jeff,
Re your comments below:
"I've mentioned this before but noir is a style of presenting
a crime story on film. You seem to be overlooking this very
important aspect of noir. Certainly crime is committed in the
movie Casablanca and it has all the stylistic elements and
story elements of noir, but it is a story of international
intrigue and espionage, not a crime story."
Noir is not just a style of presenting a crime story on film.
It is a style of presenting a crime story in any medium. The
term, as I've mentioned several times before, derived from
the French mystery line SERIE NOIRE. The term "film noir" was
meant to evoke the publishing line precisely because the
films referred to were telling the same kind of stories that
the books published under that line were. Indeed, many of the
films were based on novels published by SERIE NOIRE.
As for CASABLANCA, the fact that it is "a story of
international intrigue" doesn't make it something oter than a
crime story, and therefore doesn't exclude it from the label
"noir." International intrigue and espionage have been
considered a sub-genre of crime ever since Poe wrote "The
Purloined Letter."
Films such as THE HOUSE ON 92ND STREET, BERLIN EXPRESS, CLOAK
AND DAGGER, I WAS A COMMUNIST FOR THE F.B.I., and DARK CITY
are all stories of international intrigue and espionage, and
all are commonly regarded as films noir.
I might add, to keep this on books, that novels such as Adam
Hall's THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM, Ken Follett's THE EYE OF THE
NEEDLE, William Hallahan's CATCH ME - KILL ME, and Warren
Kiefer's THE LINGALA CODE, stories of international intrigue
and espionage all, have all been awarded the MWA Edgar for
Best Mystery Novel. PASSAGE OF ARMS by Eric Ambler, NIGHT OF
WENCESLAS by Lionel Davidson, THE DEFECTION OF A.J. LEWINTER
by Robert Littell, and OTHER PATHS TO GLORY by Anthony Price,
hav all won the CWA Golden Dagger for Best Crime Novel. John
Le Carre's THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD is one of only
two novels that has won both awards for Best Novel. Certainly
the fact that all of those books were novels of international
intrigue and espionage didn't keep the two most prominent
organizations of mystery writers from considering them as
crime or mystery novels for the purposes of considering them
for awards.
Why should it keep us from considering whether or not a given
piece of fiction, whether on film or in prose, qualifies as
noir?
JIM DOHERTY
____________________________________________________________________________________
Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your
pocket: mail, news, photos & more. http://mobile.yahoo.com/go?refer=1GNXIC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 01 Aug 2007 EDT