Very thorough and large. Instructive and interesting.
Thanks Dave
Montois
On 7/25/08 12:05 PM, "davezeltserman" <davezelt@rcn.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com <mailto:rara-avis-l%40yahoogroups.com> ,
> JIM DOHERTY <jimdohertyjr@...> wrote:
>> >
>
> Jim, I don't have the time right now to go through each of your
> points, but I'll go through a few...
>
> --Dave
>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > In it, a homicide cop, investigating a murder, comes to be more and
> more convinced that his own daughter is the killer, and he begins
> supressing evidence, and even tries to frame an innocent man, all to
> save his daughter.
>> >
>> > By your definition, or by Jack's, in order to be noir, he'd have to
> be successful in framing the innocent man, only to find that his
> daughter was innocent all along, and that if he'd only investigated
> the case honestly, he'd have nailed the real killer before
> deliberately sending the wrong man to gallows.
>
> The scenario about would be noir since it has the required fatalistic
> element.
>
>> > In fact he learns of his daughter's innocence just in time's
> proverbial nick, and sets right the wrong he's done in order to nail
> the real killer.
>
> Correct, this would not be noir since it lacks the required fatalism.
>
>> > You could, I suppose, describe the murderess in THE BRIDE WORE BLACK
> as "damned" because she actually does what Endicott manages to avoid
> in the short story mentioned above, kills a series of innocent men in
> revenge only to find that they're all of them are, in fact, innocent
> of the offense she's wreaking vengeance for, thus damning herself.
>> >
>> > But she's the killer, for crying out loud! She's supposed to be
> damned in the eyes of the reader. And the fact that we see about a
> third of the book through her POV doesn't make her any less the
> villainess of the piece. You might as well say that seeing the
> murders committed by the special guest killer at begininng of each
> episode of COLUMBO, then seeing much of the rest of the episode from
> that character's POV as s/he matches wits with the titular detective
> are noir, because one of the two main characters is damned.
>> >
>> >
>
> It's all a matter of perspective. In the following two examples of
> literary noir, Double Indemnity by Cain and Hell of a Woman by
> Thompson, we have characters who we're rooting for not to cross the
> line and commit murder, and once they do they're damned. Would I think
> of these books as noir if written from other perspectives? Probably
> not. Again, this is part of what Mario was talking about--we each know
> noir when we see it. To me it's a matter getting inside the
> character's head, and feeling their sense of inevitability and doom.
> So yes, Monk is not noir since it's not from the killer's perspective,
> but I could probably rewrite every Monk episode and make it noir.
>
>> > What you offer, Dave, isn't a definition. It's a personal preference.
>> >
>
> Fair enough--I wasn't being precise with my word choice of
> "definition". More accurate would have been to state "my view of noir".
>
> --Dave
>
>
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