Re: RARA-AVIS: Kiss Me Deadly

From: Patrick King ( abrasax93@yahoo.com)
Date: 10 Dec 2007


--- jacquesdebierue < jacquesdebierue@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Knife in the Water is not Repulson or Rosemary's
> Baby, nothing like
> them. Chinatown is subtle.
******************************************************* Any director's stamp is on every film he makes however he may try to break from his previous techniques. Knife in the Water is a prelude to Repulsion. He had a little more money when he made Repulsion. Polanski's use of camera is never subtle though his plots are less black and white than Huston's for example, leaving the audience with more to ponder. There is not a subtle character in Chinatown. The whole movie is painted in broad strokes. Even the problem of incest is melodramatic. But the actual mcguffin is ecological and the film itself poses questions about the morality of capitalism which, even when it was made, were controvercial.
******************************************************
> I don't think any these are noir films. The angry
> young men cultivated
> a social-realistic type of film. The aspiration was
> to make fiction
> that looked like a documentary. They were quite
> successful. But
> thematically I don't see much noir in them.
*******************************************************
"The angry young man" is the epitome of noir whether we're talking Cain, or Thompson, Chandler or Sillitoe, Bogart or Hayden. And the young men we're talking about are all totally fucked in the end of every one of these stories!
*******************************************************
> As I said before, I don't think there are any rules.
> A theme can be
> approached in countless ways and yet with success.
> It can be
> approached subtly or flamboyantly or even pushed
> towards the
> grotesque. The results can be great whatever the
> approach.
****************************************************** Well, if there are no rules to noir, why don't we call everything noir? It seems to me most of our conversation are specifically analyzing and trying to determine what the rules to "noir" are. Certainly all of us have different ideas of what fits into the genre and what does not. Personally, I think Sillitoe's novelas are every bit as noir as Jim Thompson's.

Patrick King

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