--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, JIM DOHERTY
<jimdohertyjr@...> wrote:
>
> Kat,
>
> Re your comment below:
>
> "It didn't have the feel of traditional noir
or
> hardboiled-- very much more a melodrama."
>
> OIf course it didn't have the feel of
traditional
> noir. Traditional noir isn't in color, and LEAVE
HER
> TO HEAVEN was.
>
> By the same token, where did you get the idea
that
> hard-boiled and noir is somehow incompatible
with
> melodrama? I've read few that were NOT
melodramatic.
>
> JIM DOHERTY
Well, let me start with two points of clarification: By
"traditional noir" I meant "not modern, neo-noir."
And the film is listed as "noir" in most guides and it's
described by most critics as noir and it was brought up here
as "noir." So, my comment, which boils down to "doesn't seem
like noir to me" is in agreement with your general statement,
but I'm NOT in agreement that noir has to be in B&W. But
given that it falls in the time period of original films noir
and is generally tagged "noir," I addressed that, since it
was obviously the context of the OP.
Maybe we settle on "mistagged as noir" then?
In addition, while the original films are B&W, later
films in the same genre are not, yet the emotional feel is
the same. Kazan's Body Heat is still claustrophobic and
inevitably damned even though it's in technicolor, as are a
lot of other films (yes, I know it's a remake of Double
Indemnity.) I'm not a purist in terms of color/B&W.
It's emotional feel, circumstance, outcome, and inevitability
with a dash of existentialist angst that makes "noir" for
me--and for a lot of others, from observing this list. That's
why I don't mind applying the term to books, which can't
really be said to be "noir" for the same reason a film was
(back in the minimal set, minimal lighting, Dutch angle,
B&W days.)
An ELEMENT of melodrama does not make a story strictly
melodramatic. Melodrama turns on the inversion of sentiment
that leads to tragic results (films like Mildred Pierce, for
instance.) Melodrama also plays to a presumption that the
world contains true "good" and "bad" and lowers the breadth
of moral ambiguity that is part of the core of noir. The
assumption of moral direction and the inversion of sentiment
that derails this direction is the crux of the plot and
character development in melodrama, as it was in LEAVE HER TO
HEAVEN.
Hard boiled fiction and noir rarely play strictly on an
inversion of sentiment and even less rarely acknowledge a
strong moral definition of "good" and "bad." Inversion of
ORDER, yes, but not sentiment. Most hard boiled and noir is
not sentimental. Melodrama is.
So, yeah, I find LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN to be melodrama and not
noir--the inverted social elements are insufficient, there's
a lack of the ambiguous world of gray choices where no one is
quite "good" or "bad", the sense of damnation and
inevitability aren't strong enough to the central thrust of
the film and the pay out at the end doesn't really balance
the actions of the protagonist with appropriate consequences
for a noir set-up. Instead, she is abandoned and "left to
heaven," an ending which would never be used if the
protagonist were male or if the film were really a
noir--regardless of being shot in color. The crux of the
story is that she's an unnatural woman who reaps... not
death, imprisonment, madness, or endless torment, but censure
and loneliness--weights in the balance against her assault on
sentiment and moral direction, but insufficient to pay out in
noir.
-- Kat Richardson http://www.katrichardson.com/
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