Some weeks ago I saw a clip of an old Bogart movie and it started me thinking about the type of film it represented. That old Raymond Chandler thing: dark streets, smoke filled rooms, double and triple crosses, collaborators shot in the night… I forgot about it until a few days ago when Kathryn Hepburn died. Her obituary mentioned the classic movie “African Queen”.
We are in a perfect age for the return of Film Noir. Imagine a Bogart-like character in Baghdad. Think of the plot possibilities! You’ve secret caches of billions in gold, diamonds and dollars. There are buried hordes of poison gas, anthrax and smallpox. We can stretch reality for Hollywood’s sake and toss in an operational nuke or two, soon to be sold to a high ranking al Qaeda.
The Russians didn’t hold a candle to the Nazi’s for pure evil. Films about them didn’t have that stark manichean good versus evil quality of the era surrounding WWII… or of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. You have perfect villains, with no redeeming human qualities, in the members of his inner circle.
The escaped Arch-Villain Saddam in his secret hideaways is the nearest thing to a Fu Manchu class villain we are ever likely to see in reality.
Here’s a starter for our Hollywood readers (and I know you are out there Brian).
Bogart, a grizzled US Army veteran working in civil reconstruction, becomes involved with a beautiful Iraqi woman. Her brother is under threat by the Saddam Fedaheen and she wants Bogie’s help in extricating him. Our hero gets drawn deeper and deeper into a dark plot that sees him wandering the streets of old parts of Baghdad at night, shots flashing in the night, the occasional dead bad guy….
We end up in a finale with Bogie trying to save the girl and stop the nasty utterly evil guys from doing their utterly dasterdly deed against total innocents.
This stuff would sell like hotcakes in the US right now.
Kickass. Too bad it’s too intelligent of a plot line for typical American movie-goer tastes (see Charlies Angels 2, any Adam Sandler Film, Legally Blonde).
I’d go see it, though. Then again, I actually go to movies that have *gasp* subtitles. Sometimes the movies I see are black and white, too.
Yeah. It’s a Bogart film. Americans could never come up with one of those.
To a modern movie you have to add a generous amount of explicit and graphic violence to make it a financial successs. The subtle, hinted violence of the film noir won’t earn you any bucks.
In a world where we watched 3000 fellow Americans die before our eyes, subtle, hinted violence may very well have the appeal it did after WWII.
Your description of film noir doesn’t seem to match my understanding of it. Noir’s central mood is one of moral ambiguity and compromise. If you think the current era lends itself to that sort of thing, fine. I might agree with you. But noir isn’t about sunlight, it’s about shadow.
Damn, now I want to go watch Touch of Evil again…
There was ambiguity in the character Bogart played in African Queen, but not in the Nazi’s he finally had to fight. The evil was also rather stark in Maltese Falcon and many others. The ambiguity is in the hero.
Seems more Graham-Greeneish to me, like “The Third Man.” Black-market penicillin, Curzon directs, Vienna at night, Orson vs Joseph Cotton, the zither theme.
Good call. See you at the pre-pro.
The biggest problem I can see with a noir revival is the distinct lack of actors capable of filling Bogie’s shoes. Blow-dried and brain dead doesn’t fill the bill.
Dale-
A minor quibble: the Germans Bogart fought in the African Queen were the WWI type. It wasn’t until the Casablanca/Lauren Bacall period that he dealt with nazis.
Reminds me-I heard a story that Ronald Reagan was the first choice for Rick in Casablanca. I have to say that would seem to lessen the moral ambiguity factor. Or so it seems in retrospect.
One other observation that bears on the Raymond Chandler approach to film noir is that it requires fairly clever dialogue. Groucho Marx might have been a successful movie detective, but never Marlon Brando. I have always suspected that Chandler, an American educated at Dulwich, developed his ear for dialogue there at about the same time as another illustrious alumni: P.G. Wodehouse. I have to wonder who was teaching creative writing there in those days.
Mea Culpa Maximus. You are absolutely right. It occurred in the African colonies Germany lost in WWI.
Perhaps the actors and writers are out there but times were not ready for them until now? We’ll have to see. Someone might just come from out of nowhere.
I agree there is no one famous who could do a decent job. But there is more to Hollywood than the famous old (and young) farts.
S. Weasel:I didn’t say that the Americans couldn’t come up with something like that. I’m saying that the current movie-going tastes of the average American aren’t up to such a flick. Which would limit it to a very limited distribution and failure. LA Confidential almost comes close in the “noir” category, now that I think about it.
Yes, I’m being snobbish. 🙂
this a great idea, i am so tired of crappy movies. and there are actors that could do it, tom hanks and Harrison Ford come to mind but there are many more. sign a hottie actress from bollywood and we have cash in the till. wake up hollywood.
Sadly, nobody will ever match Raymond Chandler for dialogue. Given the sheer genius of himself and Dashiell Hammet, (I guess you could include James M. Cain and Ross MacDonald) any attempt at a noir film will fall woefully short of the Bogart stuff. The Coen Brothers’ “The Man who wasn’t there” which came out last year was IMO a good attempt, but it was based on Cain’s “Double Indemnity” (the original screenplay of which was written by Chandler).
If I had just a tenth of the writing ability of Chandler or Hammett, I would die quite happily knowing that my life was a success.
Dale,
The post revolutionary purges in USSR killed millions. Some estimates put it at 20 million, mostly Russians. These purges were conducted by the most evil regime in history. There was a powerful racist component in this regime of which I am sure you already aware but I will not offend anyone by naming it – except to say that no honest script reflecting this unique evil would stand a cat in hell’s chance in Hollyood.
rammer – Tom Hanks! Barforama! That face is just about as unnuanced as you could get and it reeks of self-regard. Very bad choice for subtlety.
Humphrey Bogart was great in those movies, but no one has mentioned Robert Mitchum, who could convey ambiguity with unsettling effect. Of course, they were both intelligent, thoughtful men.
Dale, you are wrong about the Soviet Russia and how evil they were. They make Nazis look like fantasy crazed youngsters who learned how to be efficient at being very naughty. The communist evil is pervasive and reaches deeper, it’s darker. This is not to dismiss the nazi evil, just putting the communist one into perspective. The 20 mil estimate is the lowest I heard so far, Guessedwriter.
As for ‘film noir’ about totalitarianism of the communist kind, there is Repentance. It is certainly one of my favourite films. The first time I saw it was during deep communism in 1985 or 86… the effect was stupefying. Sometimes context is everything… 🙂
Nazis vs. Commies: I don’t think it’s that Nazis were more evil than Communists. Really, it’s pretty hard to choose between the two. But we’re talking movies, and the Nazis were definitely more flamboyantly and theatrically evil. And that’s what you need for a good movie villain.
As I blogged several months ago, if you’re like me and think of Bogey as the coolest guy who ever lived, you might not want to look at this picture…
Speaking of film noir I watched Alex Proyas’ Dark City again today.
Good God it’s good. For sheer sustained intensity of atmosphere it just can’t be beat.
Roger Ebert has a real hard on for it.
African Queen? Noir?
Robert Aldrich’s “Kiss Me Deadly” is the model you’re looking for. The perfect noir movie to remake for the post gulf war2 era.
What’s in the briefcase? Everyone is searching for it…