Chapter 13: Noir'nt You Glad Movies Are In Color

The other night I was watching one of my favorite Noir films, Double Indemnity. I love this genre's landscape. Everyone is continually chain-smoking. The actors are obfuscated or highlighted by exaggerated cinematography techniques and placed within lavish set designs. These films always contain at least one male character tough-talking while downing highballs of bourbon (again, smoking), going to a nightclub or seedy bar (smoking), firing a shiny pistol, or over-acting a death scene-all while smoking. The women slink around in elaborately tailored clothing complete with two story shoulder pads, fur accessories, gravity-defying hairdos, and mile-high heels, while displaying a surprising amount of moxie and straight-up devious deception (did I mention they're smoking?) But most importantly, the dialogue is pure genius.

Walter Neff, played by Fred MacMurray, says this about Barbara Stanwyck's character Phyllis..."So I let her have it, straight between the eyes. She didn't fool me for a minute, not this time. I knew I had ahold of a red hot poker, and the time to drop it was before it burned my hand off. I was all twisted up inside and I was still holding on to that red-hot poker. And right then it came over me that I hadn't walked out on anything at all, that the hope was too strong, that this wasn't the end between her and me. It was only the beginning." He also says, "Shut up and kiss me." Who doesn't want to use that line?

Apart from the smoking ban, Manhattan seems an ideal Noir environment. The city has plenty of perfect backdrops: Seedy bars, suits, crime, shifty dames, and cheesy dialogue. I decided to test my theory while shopping at the corner bodega. I picked up a loaf of bread and some milk. When I got to the cashier, he tried to charge me fifty cents more than advertised for the bread, so I said, "Why'd you have to do it to me like that Charlie?" The clerk looked at me in confusion so I quoted from the movie This Gun For Hire, "What's the matter? You look like you've been on a hayride with Dracula." 

But without missing a beat, the clerk ignored me and said, "So you want this stuff or not?" 


"Um...yeah. Do you take Visa?'