Into Darkness
So, another Noir City has come and gone this year. Actually saw all 16 films this year, and there were a could of classics (The Third Man, Wages of Fear, Rififi) and a few obscure new revelations (Too Late for Tears was a blast, just for the dialoge, Brighton Rock was new to me, and Hardly a Criminal was the first Argentine noir I've ever seen), and I really wanted to see Drunken Angel because it was the first Kurosawa film with Toshiro Mifune.
The curator, Eddie Mueller, made this year's offerings international, to point out that "noir" was a worldwide phenomenon, mostly in reaction to the World War II. I can see his point, and it recalled what I thought of the excellent but horribly named Mob City, that half the country had some form of PTSD; World War II even shows up in the excellent video game L.A. Noire.
But for me, Noir really grows out the pulp magazines, the hardboiled fiction, and are a great response to the restrictions of the Hollywood production code, especially when telling dark stories. The French term is of course quite clever; the film is both physically and morally dark. Yet for me it reminds me (and going mash up the quote) of Raymond Chandler's valediction for Dashiel Hammett, that he was grateful for Hammett's taking murder out for the drawing room in the hands of real people who commit it for real reasons, and about the dark alley that the detective must walk down. Film Noir are the stories of the People, more than other of the output of Hollywood.
The curator, Eddie Mueller, made this year's offerings international, to point out that "noir" was a worldwide phenomenon, mostly in reaction to the World War II. I can see his point, and it recalled what I thought of the excellent but horribly named Mob City, that half the country had some form of PTSD; World War II even shows up in the excellent video game L.A. Noire.
But for me, Noir really grows out the pulp magazines, the hardboiled fiction, and are a great response to the restrictions of the Hollywood production code, especially when telling dark stories. The French term is of course quite clever; the film is both physically and morally dark. Yet for me it reminds me (and going mash up the quote) of Raymond Chandler's valediction for Dashiel Hammett, that he was grateful for Hammett's taking murder out for the drawing room in the hands of real people who commit it for real reasons, and about the dark alley that the detective must walk down. Film Noir are the stories of the People, more than other of the output of Hollywood.