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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Noir, neo-Noir and David Lynch

00:19 / 08.06.07

This thread kind of spins out of a recommendations thread in the comics forum wherein a poster requested recommendations for comics Neo noir lynchian bent.

This request left me slightly puzzled since to my mind Lynch and noir are quite far apart.

So this thread is for a discussion of Noir, neo-Noir and the works of David Lynch...

Secret Bat-Fairies
(prev. Smith & Papers)

03:25 / 11.06.07

For reference, the thread in the comics is here.

A workable (but wikied) explanation of Film Noir. It's a quick and dirty option, as I've lended my film studies textbooks to a friend.

Wiki refers to the quote by Raymond Borde and Etinne Chaumeton with regard to defining the genre: "We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel..."

Interested me, because those are all words that can used to describe the average Lynch film. Lynch also tends to favour certain plot structures and character types -- the femme fatale definitely recurs, along with the good girl, for example. In Lost Highway, I'd argue that the two become emmeshed in Renee/Alice's misremembered personalities.

The hallmarks of Lynch's narratives are dream-like ambience (which often infringes on causality and story structure, certainly, more than one might expect from traditional noir) and the darkly sexual underpinnings of seemingly "normal" spaces (The mafia-ridden sex worms breeding underneath the soil in a small town, as in Blue Velvet). He employs a lot of mystery elements as well.

In terms of breaking the genre and reworking with it - well, the dream is usually strong enough to deform reality (Lost Highway, for example) and I've always felt that while a lot of the first half of Mulholland Drive explodes with saturated colour and Naomi Watts's "good girl" happy vibe, the brightness is used to make a new kind of noir, bright noir, where even colour has menace (Watts's character, walking through her aunt's bright orange apartment, is unsettled - there's something about the paint on the walls that meshes with the creepy music so well).

That's not very well written and off the top of my head, having not seen the movies in a while, how do you feel about that, sleaze? Want to talk about why you don't feel Lynch is a noirist? I'm not sure I'd call him neo-noir so much as pomo-noir or the like. I like Decadent's phrase in the Comics thread about Lynch's working being dark and glossy and consequently neo-noir.

00:37 / 14.06.07

Well, for me classic Noir was more about crime. It didn't matter if our focus was with the criminals, the cops or the PIs inbetween. Crime and material concerns - money and sex all in glorious black and white. The Big Sleep, the Maltese Falcon...

Oddly, I never really thought of "A Touch of Evil" as noir though, maybe because it was set on the Mexican border rather in the city...

Wikipedia's article on neo-noir suggests that elements of noir were blended with other genres, Unlike classic noirs, neo-noir films are aware of modern circumstances and technology. Modern themes employed in these films include identity crises, memory issues and subjectivity, and technological problems and their social ramifications. Similarly, the term can be applied to other works of fiction that incorporate these elements.

This description strikes me as being so broad as to be almost worthless. Use just one of the many signifiers associated with film noir to use the noir lable with impunity. But at this point 'noir' becomes a meaningless term that can be used to mean whatever you want it to.

I've talked previously about how I find the surrealist elements of Lynch's work to be almost antithetical to film noir, which I previously described as being more prosaic, but would perhaps do better to describe as being concerned with mundane material concerns. Having said which I'd still consider Alan Parker's AngelHeart, which bears a lot in common with Lynch's work, to be a whole lot more noir...

Tuna Ghost will work for dope

05:34 / 14.06.07

Well, for me classic Noir was more about crime. It didn't matter if our focus was with the criminals, the cops or the PIs inbetween. Crime and material concerns - money and sex all in glorious black and white. The Big Sleep, the Maltese Falcon...

Agreed on this point, which makes me wonder if I'd label a film like Brick neo-noir or just plain noir. The broad description provided by Wikipedia (which places Brick in a list of examples of neo-noir, along with Blade Runner, Reservoir Dogs, The Man Who Wasn't There, Sin City, Fight Club, Dark City and others) makes me want to place it firmly in noir as the plot centers around crime and mystery and deception, plus it stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt being about as hard-boiled as he'll ever get to play.

It's a contemporary setting however (some LA highschool), which is probably why it's labeled neo-noir. Not many musings on technology, identity or so-called "modern circumstances" though. When I compare Brick to something like Fight Club or Blade Runner or other movies on the list of neo-noir, about the only thing in common I can spot is some kind of "mood" that I can't describe very well beyond "dark" or "shady".

What's weird to me, or maybe just annoying, is that Wikipedia has a lot to say about the structure, narrational devices, plots, characters, settings, worldview, morality and tone of noir films but nothing to say about the music. I'd think that film noir has a very specific type of music to it, but further thought makes me wonder if I could describe the music any better than the "mood" of noir. Probably, but not by very much.

Tuna Ghost will work for dope

05:34 / 14.06.07

Actually, maybe "mood" isn't the best word. "Tone" is probably better.