SCREEN-L Archives

January 1996, Week 2

SCREEN-L@LISTSERV.UA.EDU

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Evan Cameron <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 10 Jan 1996 20:01:56 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (52 lines)
Peter:
 
The only useful specification of 'film noir' I know was offered by James
Damico in FILM READER, Vol. #2 (February 1978, issue #3), mimicking the
example set by Northrup Frye on other dramatic genres.  As given, it reads:
 
"Either because he is fated to do so by chance, or because he has been
hired for a job specifically associated with her, a man whose experience
of life has left him sanguine and often bitter meets a not-innocent woman
of similar outlook to whom he is sexually and fatally attracted.  Through
this attraction, either because the woman induces him to it or because it
is the natural result of their relationship, the man comes to cheat,
attempt to murder, or actually murder a second man to whom the woman is
unhappily or unwillingly attached (generally he is her husband or lover),
an act which often leads to the woman's betrayal of the protagonist, but
which in any event brings about the sometimes metaphoric, but usually
literal destruction of the woman, the man to whom she is attached, and
frequently the protagonist himself."
 
Unlike Frye, Damico is seemingly tone-deaf with respect to sentence
structure, and uses 'sanguine' where he obviously means its opposite,
'cynical'.  But if you take the time to restructure his clauses into
intelligible discourse, eliminating the gender specifications along the
way (thus retaining the form without arbitrarily restricting it to its
engendered paradigm), you will come close to catching the core composition
of the 'film noir' tale, even in its present mismanifestations.
 
Evan William Cameron                            Telephone: 416-736-5149
York University - CFT 216 (Film)                Fax:       416-736-5710
4700 Keele Street                               E-mail:    [log in to unmask]
North York, Ontario
Canada  M3J 1P3
On Tue, 9 Jan 1996, Peter S. Latham wrote:
 
> I have been looking for a simple and quotable definition of "film noir."
> Unlike most film terms which have fairly standard meanings, the definitions
> of "film noir" that I have seen vary widely, e.g. "any crime movie depicitng
> a fatalistic universe made between 1941 and 1960" or "any crime movie made in
> black and white with odd camera angles and low-key, high contrast lighting"
> etc. etc. Any thoughts?
>
> Peter
>
> ----
> To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L
> in the message.  Problems?  Contact [log in to unmask]
>
 
----
To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L
in the message.  Problems?  Contact [log in to unmask]

ATOM RSS1 RSS2