Debunking the Myth: Film Noirs, The Long Goodbye, Chinatown and Blue Velvet

By Guy Kortsarz

This book provides a brief overview of the history of Films Noir. Many times these films reflect the historical events of the period. The book discusses several films such as “The Long Goodbye”, “Chinatown”, and “Blue Velvet”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guy Kortsarz
• Release date: Jul 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463123980

Book preview

Debunking the myth:

Film noirs, The Long Goodbye, Chinatown and Blue Velvet

Guy Kortsarz

Copyright @ 2019 Guy Kortsarz

Cover Design: Michal Kortsarts

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Contents

1. Introduction to the book

1.1. Dark cinema

1.2. Myths and films that debunk them

1.3. The legend on Paul Revere

1.4. What is the book about?

2. Film Noir from an historic prospective

2.1. The golden age of Hollywood as seen by the French critics

2.2. And then they found darkness

2.3. German expressionism: an exposition

2.4. Another influential film

2.5. How did they direct before Citizen Kane

2.6. Light and shadows in noirs

2.7. Film noirs and the narrator

2.8. Paranoia

2.9. Smoking

2.10. The city as a maze

2.11. Books and private eyes

2.12. The fatal woman

2.13. Camera angles and tilted shots and more

2.14. Example: using mirrors in The Lady from Shanghai

2.15. A short discussion of The Maltese Falcon

2.16. A short discussion of The big Sleep

2.17. A more detailed description: Kiss me deadly

2.18. A detailed description of Sunset Boulevard

2.19. Why did Film Noirs fade?

3. The long goodbye: A film about a cat?

3.1. What does Robert Altman want?

3.2. A different Philip Marlowe

3.3. Smoking by Marlowe

3.4. A modernistic look at the characters

3.5. What’s with the cat?

3.6. How was light used?

3.7. The location of the camera

3.8. Failure of love in the song

3.9. Failure of love in the film

3.10. Playing The long goodbye

3.11. Screenplay: unclear

3.12. Redemption. But a true one?

3.13. The third man

3.14. The essence of The long goodbye

3.15. The endings

3.16. Ignorance is no solution

4. Chinatown: The right time and the right place

4.1. The other films of Polanski: fatalism and evil

4.2. Chinatown as a modernistic neo-noir

4.3. Chinatown: Destiny and Fatalism

4.4. What is the big deal with the San-Fernando Valley?

4.5. How will the scheme work?

4.6. Nobody declares himself evil

4.7. Jake: funny smart and brave

4.8. Resourceful Jake

4.9. The meaning of the names

4.10. Cinematic Tools in Chinatown

4.11. Two horrendous Events in the USA in the Seventies

4.12. The Watergate Scandal

4.13. Conspiracy films in the seventies

4.14. The true water wars

4.15. Water mythology in the film

4.16. The Vietnam War depicted in the film

4.17. The horror. The horror

4.18. As little as possible

4.19. Anti-redemption: the last scene

4.20. The essence: The right time and the right place

4.21. The Oscars

4.22. Appendix 1: The Script that Got the Oscar: Who Deserves Credit?

4.23. Epilogue 2: Polanski the Auteur

4.24. Epilogue 3: The life of Polanski

5. Blue Velvet: and I still can see blue velvet, through my tears

5.1 Post modernism

5.2 Fast forward: Blue Velvet as a dubious landmark in cinema history

5.3. Other films by the director

5.4. Who influenced David Lynch?

5.5. An analysis of the beginning of Blue Velvet

5.6 The use of colors

5.7. A warning

5.8. Finding the ear

5.9. The films of Frank Capra

5.10. How to Show dissent: the opposite of Its a wonderful life

5.11. The man who shot Liberty Valence

5.12. Another film that is cited by Blue Velvet: The wizard of Oz

5.13. Grease

5.14. The meaning of the names

5.15. Citing "The wizard of Oz

5.16. Blue Velvet and dreams

5.17. The theory of Freud

5.18. Mother figures and father figures

5.19. A primal scene

5.20. The ego, the super ego and the Id

5.21. The second meeting of Jeffrey and Dorothy

5.22. The descent to hell

5.23. The Sandman

5.24. In dreams

5.25. What does the song mean?

5.26. Crossing the line of overly depraved scenes

5.27. Is Williams clean?

5.28. The song of love of Jeffrey and Sandy

5.29. Is this your mother?

5.30. The super grotesque Lynch world

5.31. Killing your father

5.32. What does the film say on hope?

1. Introduction to the book

1.1. Dark cinema

Films, many times, reflect the political situation of the era. Two years after the Cuban missiles crisis, the parody Dr. Strangelove presented an insane word, which at the end is destroyed by a nuclear war. This film condemned the mutual assured destruction policy, as a Nazi policy. In the fifties, at the height of the fear of the bomb, many anti-Soviet paranoia films were produced. In the seventies, after the public stopped trusting the government, due to the Vietnam War and the Watergate affair, a string of conspiracy films were produced.

The films discussed here focus on the dark side of the American society. Focus, at times, on paranoia and fear. The films we analyze in length debunk false myth prevailing in the American society. And they also debunk the myth which cinema itself invented. Our films draw secrets to plain sight as the sunlight is the best disinfector.

1.2. Myth in American history and films which debunk them

A teacher once told my daughter in class that the pilgrims and Natives were friends. Alarmed, I told her that the pilgrims committed genocide against the natives. My daughter proudly said in class: My father said that the pilgrims killed the natives.

At first the teacher told her: your father is wrong! I told her that the teacher is lying. The next day, after the teacher had time to think, he finally said: Your father is right and saved his skin. But what happens in schools without parents like me?

Here are some myth and films which debunk them:

1. The myth: The Spanish-American war at the start of the 20th century was just. The truth: the Spanish-American war was not necessary and was started by the news mogul Randolph Hearst. Just so he could sell more newspapers. The false myth about this war is discussed and debunked in the film Citizen Kane (1941). In fact, one reporter told Hearst that Cuba is quiet and there is no need for him to stay there. Hearst answered proudly You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war. While Welles insisted that Citizen Kane is not about Hearst, he put the above dialogue in the movie.

Hearst was true to his word. He wrote fiercely negative critic about the weakness of the government, forcing the government to start a war with Spain.

2. The myth: The USA had no relations with the Nazi. The truth: almost all the Nazi weapons were built by American steal. USA traded with the Nazi enabling them to build an army. This particular myth is debunked in the film Judgment at Nuremberg (1961).

3. The myth: The Vietnam war was a necessary war. In reality, the Vietnam War was both evil and based on lies. Many films such as Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Platoon (1986), Full Metal Jacket (1987), and Apocalypse Now (1979) showed the truth.

4. The myth: Thanksgiving celebrates the friendship between the pilgrims and the natives. The truth, the pilgrims committed genocide against the natives. Many of the deaths were caused by the pilgrim invasion. Germs the pilgrims were immune to, where fatal to natives. But there was organized genocide. Millions of natives were murdered. See the film "Little Big Man" (1970) by Arthur Penn that debunks some of the myth on the relationships between pilgrims and natives.

5. The myth: The Jim Crow laws were fair to blacks since it stated equal but separate. The truth: only in 1965, after the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, the situation started to change. But even today, the Republican Party tries to block black people from voting. The films "Gone with the Wind" (1939) and "Song of the West" (1930) are vile films which promoted the myth above. Films like "The Defiant Ones" (2017), "Killer of Sheep" (1978), and "Malcolm X" (1992) debunked these myths.

1.3. The legend on Paul Revere

According to the myth, Paul Revere run from Boston to Lexington all nights to warn that the British are coming. The truth is that most of the running was done by Israel Bissell.

The lie on Paul Revere was cemented by the poem by Longfellow who gave all the credit to Paul Revere.

Why did the poet have to lie? The name Israel Bissell sounds Jewish. You could not base a myth on a Jewish name. Thus, the lie stuck. Even though, in fact, Bissell was not Jewish.

1.4. What is this book about?

We discuss film noirs in an historic perspective. We discuss some details of four important film noir, but not beyond.

Modernism means innovation. These films change the genre. We discuss in vast details two modernistic neo-noirs (film noirs done in colors): "The Long Goodbye" by Robert Altman from 1973 and "Chinatown" by Roman Polanski from 1974. We also study in great detail "Blue Velvet" by David Lynch from 1986, a post modernistic neo-noir. We show that these films have rich sub-text.

2. Film Noir from a historic perspective

2.1. The golden age of Hollywood as seen by the French critics

Film noir is a name coined by French critics, covering some very specific collection of American films. Films whose subject was paranoia, betrayal, murders, and corruption.

The "Cahiers du Cinéma" was a magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin. The critics who worked there eventually became directors. Some of them were Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut.

It was the World War II that made the French critics takes a deeper historical perspective of American cinema. During World War II, almost 6 years, American films were forbidden in France. Hundreds and hundreds of films arrived in France after the war - a product of 6 years.

The French critics of "Cahiers du Cinéma" tried to find order in the vast amount of films. The American production was divided into departments: the directing department, the editing department, and the screenplay department. Each task was done by different people. There were powerful studios, such as MGM and Paramount who controlled actors and actresses under binding contracts. The mood was escapist. It was an industry. You make films for fun. A person comes to cinema to forget that the recession is still at large. The great depression started with the market collapse in 1929 was still influential in the forties and fifties.

As always Hollywood provided the Americans with films they wanted to see. In "The Purple Rose of Cairo" (1985), Woody Allen depicts a woman who escapes her abusive husband by going several times in the same week to watch the exotic film "The Purple Rose of Cairo". A silly escapist film. Films were designed to make money, not to change the political situation. Certainly not to make you ponder on philosophical issues. They never pretended to be making art. Cinema was not considered art back then anyway. Films started talking in 1927 because the audience requested films that look like the shows on Broadway, with all the singing and dancing. This resulted in the new genre: musicals. The technical problem was synchronization of sight and the sound. After this was solved, they started to produce musicals. For example, "Top Hat", with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire from 1932. A classical musical "Singing in the Rain" from 1952 exposed the major difficulty the films encountered when they started to speak. The camera could not move since it was inside a glass room, because it made too much noise. This was solved when quiet cameras were invented.

The actor’s voice sounded loud at times, and at times was hardly heard, because the actors had attached microphones to their bodies. To be loudly heard, the actor needed to speak to the microphone. The invention of the boom microphone that was hanging of the ceiling, but did not enter the frame, solved this problem. The actors could talk to any direction and sounded loud.

Genre was born according to which films made money. If a formula succeeds, we will make more films of this sort. The French classified American movies into genres. For example, war films, such as "All Quiet in the Western Front" by Lewis Milestone from 1930; gangster films, such as "Little Caesar" by Mervin LeRoy from 1931, with Edward G. Robinson and "Scarface" by Hawks from 1932 with Paul Muni that changed the history of cinema to a certain extent, because it was too daring; horror films, such as "Frankenstein" by James Whale from 1931 with Boris Karloff playing the monster; westerns, such as "Stagecoach" by John Ford from 1939. Comedies were a genre that consists of several types. In 1934, in "It Happened One Night", Frank Capra invented the screwball (namely crazy) comedies. These comedies contained fast line exchanges, usually between men and women, in the battle of the sexes. This was combined with social critic.

These films from all these genres were moral as morality was perceived then in the USA. The French critics disliked the stereotypes that filled American films. They disliked these films being predictable. When they became directors, they never did genre films.

2.2. And then they found darkness

The French critics were surprised to find a collection of films that did not belong to any genre. Films filled with immoral characters. These films always had murders. That treated the back-yard of the American dream. The