--- jacquesdebierue <
jacquesdebierue@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Coppola's _The Conversation_, Antonioni's _Blow
Up_,
> Hellman's _The
> Shooting_, Boorman's _Point Blank_, Saura's
_La
> Caza_ (his best film,
> too little known outside of Spain), Leconte's
_The
> Man on the Train_,
> Polanski's _Knife in the Water_, Kubrick's
_The
> Killing_, among many
> others. Some noirs are very cold, whereas others
are
> superhot (like
> the great _White Heat_, which I mentioned
jokingly
> earlier).
***************************************************** Not to
be contentious, but when you have mimes miming a tennis game
at the end of a movie, that is NOT subtle. I don't think
there's anything subtle about Blow-Up.
Again, when a movie is put together back to front, and the
camera angles are so unusual that you think about them as
you're watching the film, this is the definition of Wellsian
"heavy handed" directing. The Killing is a brilliant film,
but it is far from subtle. Polanski, be it Knife in the Water
or Repulsion or Rosemary's Baby or Chinatown, is very overt
in the use of his techniques.
To my mind a subtle noirish movie might be Woody Allen's
Match Pointe. The dead talking to their killer is a bit heavy
handed but he doesn't over do it and it's an effective method
of showing what the protagonist is going through. His camera
work, in this movie anyway, does not call attention to
itself. It's subtle. Tony Richardson's Saturday Night and
Sunday Morning is a fairly subtle noir, as is his Lonliness
of a Longdistance Runner. Brilliant use of the black &
white medium, but it's not set up like a comic book, the way
most of the noir films we're talking about are. Lindsey
Anderson's This Sporting Life is fairly subtle in its
cinematic technique.
I don't think subtlety is anything to strive for in noir
fiction. It is related to melodrama and its purpose is to
invoke excitement and emotions. Certianly I wouldn't say
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a "better" film than
Touch of Evil or The Killing by a long shot. But it is more
subtlely crafted in terms of plot turns, shot set up, and
characters. Its a different type of film making yet still
"noir."
Patrick King
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