Country Noir?

[moira finnie]

Please pardon my attempt to put into words one of the knottier themes of film noir that interests me:

As a country mouse, one of the areas of film noir that's always interested me are the ambivalent attitudes of these movies toward the City versus the Country. I may not be expressing this perfectly, but there often seems to be a fear on the part of characters who are afraid of being swallowed up by the vastness of nature alongside a sometimes unrealistic view of country life there--primarily harbored by city folk looking back.

Sometimes characters find redemption in the rural world, as Robert Ryan seems to in On Desperate Ground, Mitchum tries to in Out of the Past, and Brian Donlevy enjoys briefly in Impact (1948). Other times, as in Sterling Hayden's desperate, hopeless flight back to horse country in The Asphalt Jungle and in Edward G. Robinson's futile attempt to avoid facing reality in The Red House, the natural world offers no safe harbor from life, the law, or ourselves. I feel that there's always a tension present toward the country in movies that take place there, and this is particularly noticeable to me in two favorite and somewhat disturbing movies with strong noir elements, Deep Valley (1947), directed by Jean Negulesco, and Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night (1948).

Do you think there's a nostalgic streak in film noir, and almost a reactionary conservatism--that rejects progress and longs for an imagined past and spiritual wholeness?

What other films would you like to see in an imaginary country noir festival and why would you include them? Thanks for any responses.

[klondike]

How about Brother Orchid?
Granted, the formula is really more classic WB gangster epic than noir, but it features many of the same plot talismen, not to mention a nice, broad palette of acting hues for Eddie Robinson, hiding-out as a green-thumbed friar, and some dandy supporting work from Donald Crisp as the Abbot, Ralph Bellamy as a cornpone Texan millionaire (and for once, getting "the girl" - if only by default), and Bogie, in his snakiest role since The Roaring Twenties!
And, hey - what about The Strange Love of Martha Ivers? Is "small town noir" rural enough to qualify?

[mrsl]

I'm not sure I understand your request completely but to give it a go, I'll try. Although it's not a noir film, I do think it should have been. In the Heat of the Night is a place where a lot of people have old values re-discovered. Those who don't find new values, at least have their way of thinking challenged, including the rich man in town, his butler, and the sheriff, not to mention a few others. On the other hand the star, the black, boy detective finds that his badge does not immediately command respect and admiration, even from lesser educated/intelligent folk than himself.

Although ITHOTN is over loaded with oppression, I think if it had been done in B&W it would have been even more so as in Orsons' Touch of Evil, another fine example of film noir.

Anne

[klondike]

Following up on Anne's mention of the masterful Touch of Evil, what about the often overlooked & underappreciated Ride the Pink Horse? It takes place for the most part on the rural outskirts of a medium-small Mexican resort town . . as does that dark little Mitchum thriller Second Chance.
Speaking of Bob M., there's also his iconic ode to moonshiners & Appalachian malcontents everywhere: Thunder Road.
And as long as we've strayed, briefly, outside U.S. borders, what about tales of fugitives who go fleeing across the English countryside? Such films would include The Clouded Yellow, and Fritz Lang's Man Hunt.

[ChiO]

To deal with generalities, The City usually is corrupt, claustrophobic, and the source of all problems. Rural areas, on the other hand, seem to be dealt with ambiguously; as pointed out, sometimes The Country is where there is hope for redemption, and other times life there is just as bad as in The City.

The world outside The City in GUN CRAZY, for example, is no better than life inside The City. Redemption may have been possible for John Dall, but it seems more a function of being with one's community of the past than the site of that community. Perhaps Peggy Cummins would have had some hope of redemption if the action had occurred in Great Britain; it certainly didn't -- and couldn't -- happen in the forest or swamp.

The ambiguity in how the rural area is treated in film noir may be most pronounced in THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. The Country is forbidding and nightmarish, and The Country is the source of salvation. Love and Hate.

[Mr. Arkadin]

Day of The Outlaw (1959) which TCM is finally showing again in April is very much a western noir that borrows from On Dangerous Ground (1952) and Key Largo (1947). You will not see the lighting of these earlier films (although you will see the vast snow landscape). The emphasis instead is on the claustophobic feel of entrapment by the elements (trapped in houses with criminals or out in the snow) which--although they seem to promote wide open spaces--hold only death for those foolhardy enough to venture into them.

[Jezebel38]

The "evil city" "redemptive country" theme can be found in all sorts of film genres, over many era's - Sunrise, and They Made Me a Criminal come quickly to mind. One Noir film favorite of mine that takes place soley in the wilderness is Roadhouse (1948) sometimes refered to as "bowling noir". Ida Lupino's character has travelled from the big city of Chicago to sing in Richard Widmark's club which is somewhere out in the boonies on the border of Wisconsin - Canada I believe.

[MikeBSG]

I finally saw "Red Rock West" on DVD. I liked it. A little slow to get started, and the ending was rather routine "treasure in a cemetery" stuff, BUT the bulk of the film was very clever, and I loved how Mike (Nick Cage) kept returning to Red Rock despite every effort to leave and how he kept getting more deeply invovled in the plot.

Whatever happened to John Dahl? he was supposed to be the king of neo-noir based on "Red Rock West" and "The Last Seduction." He seems to have fallen off the map.

"Fargo" kept coming to mind as I watched "Red Rock West." While that movie has better humor, I liked "Red Rock West" better as a more consistent film.

Also, this reminded me of a number of rural neo-noirs from the 80s that I mostly disliked: "The Hot Spot" with Don Johnson, "After Dark My Sweet" and "At Close Range." "Red Rock West" was better than all of them.

[MikeBSG]

I just watched "The Last Seduction" the other day. Like "Red Rock West," it was directed by John Dahl in the early 90s and was seen as part of the neo-noir wave. It was seen as the ultimate femme fatale film.

I didn't like it as much as "Red Rock West." That film was very focused. "Last Seduction" unwinds over several months. Basically, my problem was that the movie never seemed to resolve what it wanted to be. Was it going to be suspense? Was it going to be satire? If satire, then satire of small town America or satire of the new sensitive man?

apart from Bill Pullman, who had a small part as the femme fatale's abandoned husband, the cast was pretty lackluster. As the ultimate femme fatale, Linda Fiorentino suffered from an inherent unlikeability that made me suspect that the only way men fell for her was because the script said that men fell for her. Sometimes her character in "Last Seduction" is compared to the Kathleen Turner character in "Body Heat," but where Turner projected a sense of adventure and fun, Fiorentino radiates an arrogance and sense of superiority that I think would discourage men from getting close to her so she could victimize them.

"The Last Seduction" was clever, but it could have been better.