Ikke av flesk wrote:
Did you mean to have public enemy twice? Anyway, do you mean the one with James Cagney? I watched that recently, is that really noir? It didnt feel very...noir. Compared to the noir film i'm watching now of which the name escapes me. Almost everything about it does. And i wont see the rest till friday!
Yes, I did
Public Enemy, with the great James Cagney ("I'm a Yankee Doodle Daannnndee...!") and, sorry, I didn't mean to mention the film twice. It IS considered a film noir, but I do consider his
White Heat and
Angels With Dirty Faces far more superior examples of "film noir" than
Public Enemy. The cinematography isn't has obvious in
Public Enemy, but it drips in atmosphere and ambiguity of "film noir" -- sex, greed, violence, etc. Certain key scenes are exceptional representations of "film noir", such as the shooting of the man at the piano ("BANG!") and the wonderful ending in the rain ("I ain't so tough!").
IceKeyHunter wrote:
Technically film noir is an era, not a genre.
Technically, it's really a "style", it's a "quality". I don't like calling it an "era".
Quote:
So as a rule, basically anything made before the 40's is not really considered classic film noir.
I don't consider that true because I consider
M to be a "film noir", which is Germany 1931.
t3cii wrote:
DogWithHeadSplitOpen wrote:
Se7en, Taxi Driver,
I wouldn't consider either of these noir. Personally, I kind of hate the genre.
[/quote]They're more considered "neo-noir", but they both have the essential qualities of "film noir", or perhaps even a parody of it, with the cinematography, the stylisation, the atmosphere, the subject matter, but what really heightens them up is the graphic violence. If you watch films like
Public Enemy,
Angels With Dirty Faces,
Maltese Falcon,
Babyface, the sex and violence is really surprising for that period of time, even for the Code Era.