-from "The Maltese Eagle" to "The Kiss of Death"
one. Black Origin
1941, John Houston filmed his directorial debut, "Malta Eagle". From this movie, a movie era full of crime, violence, suspense and shadows began. Beginning with "The Eagle of Malta", a batch of movies with similar characteristics, including "Big Dream", "Laura", and "Glass Key", have sprung up American screens like bamboo shoots after a rain. These dimly lit, complicated characters, and low mood movies, American filmmakers, in the era of the war, with extremely vulgar and suspicious eyes, carried out a belated reflection on the Great Depression. After summarizing by the French on the other side of the ocean, these dark films were given an appropriate name-Film Noir. From then on, a new movie genre was born.
Speaking of the source of film noir, in terms of image style, it is undoubtedly derived from German expressionism, which focuses on shadows and asymmetric oblique composition. But in terms of story structure and character setting, it was influenced by American gangster movies in the 1930s.
two. Dillinger is dead, and Spader lived in the
1920s and 1930s. Under Prohibition, gangs were rampant in the United States. Perhaps the most famous of them was John Dillinger. He robbed banks everywhere and sold bootleg alcohol. But at the same time as a thug, he also robbed the rich and helped the poor. He has a distinct love and hatred. After being legendary by newspapers and television, this most wanted criminal seems to have become the number one star in the United States of that era.
And on the Hollywood screen at that time, the most popular movie was such a gangster movie. Hollywood tough guy star represented by Edward G Robinson. In the gangster movies of the 1930s, like Dillinger, they were rampant. They are cruel, yet loyal, they love money, but they do not lose demeanor. However, these gangsters who use their own power to fight against society always have their own weaknesses in a hidden place in their hearts, and such weaknesses may be love, family affection, or even some indecent affection. . Like their prototype Dillinger, they can be made by daring to love and hate, but this kind of character will eventually lead them to the end of the tragedy. This is the requirement of the social environment, but also the weakness of the character itself.
So, in the end, the gangster movie, like Dillinger himself, slowly fell silent and died. The image of a tough guy has been preserved.
Sam Spade, the first complete tough guy detective in movie history. He retains the traits of the gangsters in the 1930s who are both righteous and evil, and also retains the status of a marginalized person, but the difference is that he is more passive and smarter. He understands his weaknesses and knows how to overcome him. At the same time, he has no purpose, only self. As a detective, although he has the courage to explore the truth dedicatedly, he dare not stand up to challenge the system and the society. Although lacking the heroic spirit of the gangsters, they are those who survived the black age.
In "The Eagle of Malta", Humphrey Bogart played the detective described by Dahir Hammet. But to a large extent, director Houston has added a deeper level and his own interpretation of this role. This also makes Spade the most standard image of a tough guy detective.
In Hammet’s novel, Spade is a brutal to cold-blooded detective, basically without emotion, acting calmly, and at the same time a slightly misogynistic (this image is actually closer to the detective in "Dead Kiss", which will be described in the article The second half of the article will be explained). Among them, in the last chapter, a line in the novel can explain the problem very well. When Spade applauded Bridged, there was such a sentence, "I love you, so what, maybe next month I No more".
But in the John Houston movie, these vulgar imprints belonging to the lower class were erased, and lines similar to the above were also deleted. Spade in the movie is witty, calm, and has a deep insight into things and society underneath his appearance. But at the same time, he is romantic and self-contradictory. On the one hand, he yearns for love and stability. On the other hand, he deeply sees the nature of family and love in this environment of this era. In his life, all people are intrigues. He must make painful choices that allow reason to overcome emotions. In fact, although Spade is romantic, he is still realistic after all. This also makes every tough detective, although there will be a partner and a lover, he is still lonely after all.
All of the above characteristics are in fact typical of a classic film noir detective. Like most noir films at that time, in the early stages of the development of this genre, all detectives were like this. Charming, trustworthy, and very anti-system and anti-social sentiment. And this character design is also the closest to the aesthetic needs of male audiences, making the early film noir closer to a male myth. Just like "The Maltese Eagle", everything in the film emphasizes the sharp contrast between Spade's masculinity and the "feminine" temperament of the contraptions.
And the masculine supremacy and anti-female temperament of film noir also makes this type of movie protagonist lack some romantic elements. Compared with gangster movies, which are extremely idealistic and can finally die for a simple idea, film noir is more of a pragmatism in characterizing.
The romantic temperament of gangster movies has mostly been transferred to westerns, which emerged almost at the same time as film noir. Western films are regarded as a kind of costume films. Naturally, it is more suitable for audiences and film authors to entrust their dreams. But unlike the detectives in film noir, there are not so many ambiguous characters in the western world, and most of them are just black and white opposition. Most of the solo travelers in westerns are those who dare to love and hate, know what they support and what they oppose, and have a personality similar to that of the gangsters, but at the same time, he also inherits the common problems of these three protagonists. That is, they are all marginalized people who wander outside the society or community. Western cowboys, too, long for family and warmth, but their loneliness and selflessness force them to choose to torture themselves for the sake of the community and others. When such a lone ranger saves the community, his loneliness and wandering nature will also allow him to slowly leave the community and disappear into the western desert. And the film noir protagonist who has nowhere to escape can only persevere in pain while torturing himself.
three. After the war madness
with the gradual end of the war, film noir has also experienced a number of significant changes and development. Among them, "Double Compensation" in 1944 exaggerated the noir temperament in the film and strengthened the scene transition of the film noir. This enables film noir to gradually change from an indoor melodrama that tends to dialogue to a genre with a more obvious style.
After the war, reflections on the war began to become more and more intense, and the war made the blackness of American movies worse. And this kind of black is beginning to grow more and more, with a certain desolation element. The reverse order of despair, the devouring of money, and the increasingly confused and powerless protagonist. The detached elegance of Spade and Marlowe is no longer there, more of those desperate protagonists who are struggling to make ends meet and unscrupulous. It even turned into a self-exiled road crazy journey in "Mad Gun".
With the increase in the types of noir films, the standard tough detective protagonists began to decrease, but this type of character itself also has a different development. For example, Fritz Lang’s "Big Heat" depicts an extremely arrogant tough guy detective who overestimated his abilities, reckless, impulsive, and compared with Spade, the protagonist of "Big Heat" is completely There is no sober analysis. Just rely on intuition, take one step and count one step. In the middle of the movie, this impulse cost him a heavy price, and his wife was brutally killed. But the death of his wife didn't make the reckless detective change his style, instead he got worse. Even this detective brought out the hidden, imperceptible and corrupted moral concepts. As a detective, his principles prevent him from using improper methods to revenge. Therefore, he chose to use a woman's hand to help him complete the final revenge. Of course, this sad woman did not even know about it. In the end, she Instead of this detective, he walked toward death. Unlike Spade, who can easily avenge his partner while joking, in such a dark post-war society, if you want to win a real victory, the tough guy detectives have to betray their little bit of morality. This leads to the double darkness of body and spirit.
From the beginning of this movie, the male mythology of film noir has begun to slowly come to an end.
In the end, in 1955, Robert Aldrich shot a truly subversive film noir-"Dead Kiss". The inner stability of the film noir is also here, ridiculed and suppressed. According to Paul Schrader, "The Dead Kiss is the grave of a private investigator."
This movie, adapted from Spillan’s novel of the same name, describes a detective investigating the death of a strange woman who appeared halfway, and thus involved in a crisis of competition for huge sums of money. It sounds exactly the same as the story of the fight for the Black Hawk in "The Maltese Eagle".
However, Aldrich’s film is not about telling such an ordinary story. From the beginning of the film, the beginning of the film is deliberately reversed, Aldrich tells us that he is here to make a real subversion. The protagonist of the film, Mark Hammer, is a violent detective with a vulgar taste. He is a misogynist, a racist, and a vengeful proletarian. He is vulgar and loves petty things. Even Aldrich himself said, "What I want is this messy feeling." Indeed, he is also in the film, criticizing from time to time, this male supreme, self-centered detective. He took advantage of the countless women in the film who were attracted to him to make a fair price for this proud detective (although these women fell in love with Hammer without exception).
Detective Hamer, starting from his working method, is a fraud that lacks principles. His main source of income is to let his secretary seduce the rich and blackmail him with photos. And this way of working is definitely something that Marlowe and Spade despise. But he was proud of it. Similarly, as a detective, he still retains the character of not admitting defeat and investigating the bottom line. But his tracing is more due to the damage to his male dignity. It seems that he is indeed a ridiculous detective.
This patriarch who wanders in the postmodern city has various modern symbols that can deconstruct the classics, such as an exaggerated answering machine, a secretary dancing in sexy tights, and a luxury sports car under consumerism. His best friend, turned out to be a noisy Italian car mechanic, seemed to be ruthlessly torn and deconstructed here about everything that was witty and classic about film noir.
And the final ending is more like an exaggerated joke. This is also Aldrich's most significant adaptation of the novel. Things that various forces are chasing. Not jewellery, not money, nor a casual McGuffin who doesn't need any meaning. It is an extremely unstable atomic bomb box that may explode at any time.
When the heroine opened the box like Pandora's box, a huge atomic explosion destroyed everything that was ridiculous.
It was not just the ridiculous world in the film that was burnt down. More importantly, that vigorous male myth, here, finally, got a complete subversion.
In the years before and after "Dead Kiss", film noir began to decline more and more. Although there are some masterpieces sporadic, it is nostalgia more than creation.
Such works include "Sunset Boulevard" which marks the twilight of femme fatale.
And finally, in 1958, the epitaph of the film noir, "Gone with the Tribulation".
After these nostalgias, a male myth was finally shattered.
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