![\"sincity2\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/sincity2.jpg\")
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In his review of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For<\/a>, Armond White opens by declaring that \u201cNeo-noir must be the worst movie genre. It\u2019s an excuse for juvenile filmmakers to pretend cynicism while their imbecile audiences pretend sophistication.\u201d<\/p>\n I can certainly see where he\u2019s coming from. I haven\u2019t seen A Dame to Kill For<\/a> yet, but I have seen more than enough attempts at neo-noirs that think all there is to the genre is a femme fatale and an anti-hero in a trenchcoat. I\u2019m talking about mediocre, flailing films like Max Payne<\/a>\u2014or worse, the attempts to bring noir to hip, younger settings like Assassination of a High School President<\/a> and Lucky Number Slevin<\/a>. They\u2019re movies that look at the classics of the genre, fall in love with the aesthetic, but have no idea why or how that aesthetic works as it does. As Armond so aptly points out, Sin City<\/a> and its ilk are all \u201cpretending that it still means something to call a sexy woman \u2018dame.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Judging from the original Sin City, and the numerous clips I\u2019ve seen from A Dame to Kill For, Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller don\u2019t seem to have much of an understanding of what film noir actually is<\/i>. Noir, as it is defined, properly began in 1940 when America was still on the brink of entering World War II. It is as much a genre as it was a movement, much like Italian Neo-Realism or the French New Wave. They were grim films that dealt with the darker side of society, a counterpoint to the bright musicals that dominated the box office. But they weren\u2019t made with the intention of being anything bigger than crime films\u2014the term \u2018noir\u2019 wasn\u2019t even widely accepted until the 1970s, more than a decade after the last proper noir was made.<\/span><\/p>\n It isn\u2019t that Rodriguez and Miller don\u2019t know the elements of noir\u2014they invoke numerous tropes the genre birthed. It\u2019s that they don\u2019t understand that these films are time capsules. Sin City is more infatuated with the idea<\/i> of a noir film than it is with actually applying the surface elements towards anything meaningful or relevant.<\/p>\n Noir had its time, and that time is gone. It was born out of the Great Depression, and fed off homefront wartime fears. It evolved as the Red Scare did, and then it petered out and gave way, eventually, to something new\u2014neo-noir was born.<\/span><\/p>\n Like Armond White, I have no patience for poorly done neo-noir. But, I feel that he is going too far by calling it \u201cthe worst genre,\u201d because it is<\/i> possible to make relevant, effective neo-noirs\u2014they just need to speak to their own era.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Case in point: Robert Altman\u2019s The Long Goodbye<\/a> features Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe, the classic character pioneered by Humphrey Bogart. But Gould\u2019s Marlowe is transplanted to the 1970s\u2014he\u2019s the same apathetic, somewhat oafish smart aleck, but he\u2019s in a different world. He exists not in a nostalgic version of the 40s, but in the cynical Nixon years. It\u2019s a film for its own day and age.<\/span><\/p>\n Then you have one of Rodriguez\u2019s best friends, Quentin Tarantino: Pulp Fiction<\/a> created a shockwave, spawning countless knock-offs and wannabes. But Tarantino actually understands genre\u2014in each of the film\u2019s vignettes, he introduces a classic noir set-up, but twists it, modernizes it, chops and blends it. Take for instance, the middle section of the film, \u201cThe Gold Watch.\u201d Tarantino opens with a generic story about a boxer refusing to throw a fight, but he transitions that into a bedroom conversation straight out of Godard\u2019s Breathless<\/a>\u2014a film which was itself <\/i>an homage to American film noir. <\/i>He follows that scene with a moment ripped straight from Psycho<\/a>, where the boxer encounters the mob boss he\u2019s trying to escape from while driving (Psycho, of course, beginning as a noir before ripping the chair out from under the audience and becoming a horror movie). And once we\u2019ve made the transition into horror, Tarantino takes a scene out of the Deliverance<\/a> playbook\u2014but sets it in the type of grungy basement Silence of the Lambs<\/a>\u2019 Buffalo Bill would feel at home in. In this sense, The Gold Watch represents the story of film\u2014in forty-five minutes we have gone from 1940 right up to 1994, hitting almost every era in between. The genre evolves before our eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n Pulp Fiction does noir not by getting dressed up and calling women \u2018dames\u2019\u2014It puts on a modern suit and calls them \u2018bitches\u2019. It\u2019s the same type of demeaning, dehumanizing language, but it actually resonates with a modern audience.<\/span><\/p>\n Sin City, on the other hand, is the movie version of wearing a fedora with a Hawaiian shirt. It thinks that \u2018Femme Fatale\u2019 means a stripper with a gun, and boasts private dicks and serial killers and grubby crime bosses simply because they look cool. It paints over everything with computers to emulate a comic book, simply because it can. It\u2019s no surprise that Rodriguez\u2019s best film,\u00a0From Dusk Till Dawn,<\/b><\/a>\u00a0is the one written by Quentin Tarantino, because Rodriguez has no sense of restraint\u2014he doesn\u2019t know how to do homage, and ends up making parodies by mistake.<\/span><\/p>\n Neo-noir can be a fantastic, innovative genre\u2014just look at Chinatown<\/a> and Blade Runner<\/a>. But if your film doesn\u2019t have something relevant to add to the conversation, then it\u2019s all just posturing. I have faith that it can come back, but Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez will not be its savior.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In his review of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For<\/a>, Armond White opens by declaring that \u201cNeo-noir must be the worst movie genre. It\u2019s an excuse for juvenile filmmakers to pretend cynicism while their imbecile audiences pretend sophistication.\u201d<\/p>\n I can certainly see where he\u2019s coming from. I haven\u2019t seen A Dame to Kill For<\/a> yet, but I have seen more than enough attempts at neo-noirs that think all there is to the genre is a femme fatale and an anti-hero in a trenchcoat. I\u2019m talking about mediocre, flailing films like Max Payne<\/a>\u2014or worse, the attempts to bring noir to hip, younger settings like Assassination of a High School President<\/a> and Lucky Number Slevin<\/a>. They\u2019re movies that look at the classics of the genre, fall in love with the aesthetic, but have no idea why or how that aesthetic works as it does. As Armond so aptly points out, Sin City<\/a> and its ilk are all \u201cpretending that it still means something to call a sexy woman \u2018dame.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,4359],"tags":[4429,910,4426,4431,4336,4140,4441,1709,4438,4437,4434,4436,326,4398,4435,3242,4432,4430,4439,837,327,383,4433,1741,4428,4427,104,185,4440,4147],"class_list":["post-5554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-brads-essays","tag-a-dame-to-kill-for","tag-armond-white","tag-armond-white-sin-city","tag-assassination-of-a-high-school-president","tag-brad-avery","tag-breathless","tag-buffalo-bill","tag-deliverance","tag-elliot-gould","tag-film-noir","tag-frank-miller","tag-french-new-wave","tag-from-dusk-till-dawn","tag-humphrey-bogart","tag-italian-neo-realism","tag-jean-luc-godard","tag-lucky-number-slevin","tag-max-payne","tag-philip-marlowe","tag-psycho","tag-pulp-fiction","tag-quentin-tarantino","tag-robert-rodriguez","tag-silence-of-the-lambs","tag-sin-city-2","tag-sin-city-2-review","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-the-gold-watch","tag-the-long-goodbye"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5554"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5558,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5554\/revisions\/5558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n