-=shikamaru=-

Anyone wanna talk about noir and neo-noir film? Anyone wanna define it? How 'bout some movie suggestions? I'm taking a class on this subject right now, and the whole genre is actually very deep. The Noir Genre has created a whole slew of extremely artistic and thoughtful movies, although some could have been better if everyone just let the director do what he wanted to do (Lady from Shanghai comes to my mind).

Then you have Neo-Noir, throwbacks of the old style of noir. Chinatown, Blade Runner, LA Confidential, Bound, and Fargo all fall into this catagory. These movies are great.

So what makes these movies noir? What is noir? And anyone have anything to share about their own experience with noir film?

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the_marq

I'm not a film student, but I have always considered "Memento" to be a noir film.

In my mind what made it 'noir' or dark if you will, was it's complete lack of redemption. Leonard Shelby who is niether good nor bad, he just is. Great movie, but I don't know it's really noir, you tell me.

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#3 in a series

sapiens

I love film noir. How about "The Big Sleep" or "Maltese Falcon"? Or "Double Indemnity"? All great films!

Defininf noir film? Dark, criminal underworld, interesting lighting, femme fatales, convoluted plots...If you're taking a class on the topic, you could probably define the genre better than me.

Mr.Deflok

I'm actually in pre-production of a Neo-Noir film called 'Versus Me', basically it's a Detective filmed set in a 30's style future where the protagonist is living a life in the real world and a dream world and can't tell the difference as they seem to co-exist. It's more complicated than it sounds but yeah, that's the gist of it.

Point of this post? Forgotten.

Kostya

Film noir is almost impossible to define really, it has a feel to it I guess. The Coen Brothers seem to make some great neo-noir, 'The Man Who Wasn't There' being one of my personal favourites.

Watched Chinatown the other day, absolutely brilliant movie.

Though I maintain that film noir is best done in black and white, with Humphrey Bogart...

Big Sleep rules.

Stare At The Sun

Don't forget "Dark City"

-=shikamaru=-

Dark City? Eh....

Well, one thing that shaped the genre (or movement, if you don't consider it a genre) was the idea of the B-movie. Movies made in the 40s and such were much different than the movies today. Since you walked into the movie theatre whenever you showed up, movies were shown in double features. There was the A movie, then newsreel and trailers, then the B movie. The whole point of the B movie was that you would walk into that first, watch that from the middle or wherever you were, then watch the entire A movie, properly, then watch the B movie up to the point where you walked in (or not watch the movie at all).

Whats the point? First, B-movies were cheaply made. No B-movie had a hollywood budget. So directors had to work with little lighting, cutting costs, and so on. This actually led to the necessity of the number of shadows you see in noir. Also, the philosophy of the movie was radically different in the B-Movie. Since people walked into the middle of it, things such as setting, characters, and so on had to remain fairly constant, and the world at the end of the movie can't be too different from the beggining. This lead to Noir attitude.

Holy shit this class teached me a lot. But after all that gibberish the thing to distinguish between noir and neo-noir is that neo-noir is not a B-movie: it is not bound by the limitations of the B-movie like old noir was. That's probably why so much of the old noir has some cliches that had to be done, just because it was a B-rated movie.

But whatever. I'll be seeing "Big Sleep" next Wednesday. Looking foward to it

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Kostya

The Big Sleep is a frickin classic...

I mean Bogart is great, Bacall is smoking, and the whole thing is so goddamn dark and gritty I can't get enough...

The dialogue is sharp as hell, and for the duration of the film you just remember how goddamn much you loved it last time, and how brilliant and cool Marlowe is, with his sly charm and his bullshit detector...

Fucking brilliant movie...

tropple

Yeah. I love Lauren Bacall.

I'd like to add Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I lust love it when Bogart starts the insane muttering.

Besides, it's the only time I've seen Tim Holt outside of a cowboy movie.

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