Matthew Yglesias » SoCal High School Noir?

Jun 10th, 2009 at 4:44 pm

SoCal High School Noir?

Ezra Klein justly praises the excellent 2005 film Brick. But he also describes it as “the best hard-boiled noir ever set in a Southern California high school.”

I remember thinking when I saw Brick how strange it was that this film came out at the very same time when Veronica Mars was on television. Suddenly the world was full of Southern California high school noir. And then just like that, the genre vanished. At any rate, I think I liked VM slightly better than Brick, although arguably the TV show doesn’t qualify as “hard-boiled” so we could draw the distinction there.

Comments
37

Filed under: Brick, Culture, Film

37 Responses to “SoCal High School Noir?”

Mo Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Loved Veronica Mars, but the fabulous 21st century hard-boiled patter of Brick wins the contest for me. Brick manages the sort of hyper-reality that David Lynch is known for, but without the artsy overreach.
JD Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
I never saw Veronica Mars, but man is Brick awesome. Glad to see it getting more praise and I felt it didn’t get nearly enough when it came out, though it did make a few best 10 movies of the year lists.
Mo Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Looked over the novella/treatment of the film. Interesting to note that the first season of Veronica Mars was based on an unpublished young adult novel by creator Rob Thomas.
Seth Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Matt, do yourself a favor and see The Brothers Bloom! It’s Rian Johnson’s new movie, and it’s fun as hell.
John DE Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Really? Brick seemed like an okay student film to me, and completely derivative. I guess if you’re young enough it would seem new and interesting.
Rob Mac Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
I enjoyed The Lookout, also starring Joseph Gordon-Levit, which came out around the same time, a lot more. Really an excellent movie that probably hardly anyone has seen.

Brick is kind of cool, but it so self-consciously stylized that it’s actually fairly ridiculous. It’s probably no less realistic than the classic noir films it pays homage to, but at a certain point the snappy dialogue just becomes impossible to follow.
Elio García Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
I’ve caught the film a couple of times, and I have to echo John DE and Rob Mac a bit. I wouldn’t call it student film level, and I don’t mind it being derivative since it recasts the tropes of the hard-boiled detective film to a unique setting. But it does get ridiculous as it progresses, and not in a now-we’re-parodying way but in a we’ve-lost-sight-of-what-we’re-doing way.
hmm@contrib Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
@5
Really? John DE’s contribution seemed like an ok obnoxiously superior Internet know-it-all comment to me, and completely derivative. I guess if you’re young enough it would seem new and interesting.

One of my favorite things about Brick: As soon as I saw the title of this post, I thought of the movie and had to click. Great film. And (@6) following the dialogue was the best part of the movie for me, even if it required effort.
The Selfridge Merrys Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Cake and Pie, oh my. I like Brick a lot, and am glad it didn’t play the genre for parody (a bit like Miller’s Crossing in that regard).

The Lookout was good too, but not as memorable as Brick, IMO. Mysterious Skin (another J-G-L effort) was perhaps best of the three.
Medrawt Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Veronica Mars played its concept fairly straight; if there were going to be a kid who tried to play private eye in high school, VM looks like a reasonable guess at trying to imagine how that would realistically work out, given that it was a TV show running on the WB/CW. For all that VM drew comparisons to Buffy, the high school stuff was taken at face value, and Brick is more Buffy-like in that the subjective experience of being in high school is literalized. Something like The Pin – the “really old, like 26″ drug dealer who lives with mom and conducts business meetings over a cookie and glass of milk – wouldn’t play in Veronica Mars, either for laughs or for seriousness. FWIW, I loved both, but loved Season 1 of VM the most.

(And yeah, VM isn’t really hard-boiled, per se, but it is pretty heavy and dark, especially the first season, especially the pilot episode, which if it weren’t so skilfully done would’ve tried my patience with how much life had dumped on this one plucky girl.)
James Gary Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Really? John DE’s contribution seemed like an ok obnoxiously superior Internet know-it-all comment to me, and completely derivative. I guess if you’re young enough it would seem new and interesting.

Is there some word for people who instantly go the full ad hominem on those who don’t share their worshipful admiration of a particular work? There’s already “immature fanboy,” but I feel the possibility exists for something much more clever.
Jasper Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Got it from Netflix a few months ago based on trailers. Sat on my coffee table for several weeks and mailed it back without watching it. Should have watched it. Anyway, I think you outta give your readers an open movie thread, Matt.
Seth Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
@9: I haven’t seen a movie more haunting than Mysterious Skin since it came out in theaters.

@11: John DE’s original didn’t contain the kernal of anything resembling an actual thought or argument other than “Me good, you bad.” Such ad hominemity wouldn’t and shouldn’t have ensued in response, perhaps.

In response to your substantive point, I can think of one term that covers both overheated exclamations that affect an air of intellect without saying anything AND resorts to ad hominem attacks in response to empty rhetorical wankery. And that term is “Congress.”
Seth Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Kernal, Seth? Really? Kernal?

I’m firing myself from the internets.
Marlowe Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
I’ve never seen Brick, though I’ve heard good things abut it. The first season of Veronica Mars, with the season-long mystery concerning her best friend’s murder, was pretty good, the second season was OK, the third season was just dreadful and I gave up halfway through.

By the way, since Matt seems pretty ignorant on cultural matters predating 1990 or so (I suspect Ezra as well, though I have less evidence), I wonder if he has seen any real noir. Most of the great noirs were made from about 1941-50 though there some late classics into the ’50s. The last real great noir is likely Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil in 1957, everything after that is really neo-noir (even the great Chinatown) since they are self-consciously using noir elements. The original noir films, though they clearly influenced each other, were not made as part of a self aware genre. It was only in the ’50s, pretty much after the fact, that the term film noir was applied to these movies by French film critics.

I have my doubts that I can improve Matt’s generally dreadful cultural taste; like many IMDB commenters of his age and younger, he’ll probably watch watch these movies and go eeeeew, they’re in B&W, they’re dated, they’re boring, and there’s no CGI! But here is a quick primer of real noir. I’d start with the two best noirs ever made: Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (an eye opener for those who associate Fred MacMurray with Disney flicks and My Three Sons) and Out of the Past with Robert Mitchum (loosely, and dreadfully, remade in the ’80s as Against All Odds). If you like these at all, a very short list of other classics includes The Maltese Falcon (Bogart as Sam Spade), Laura, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Strret, Murder My Sweet, The Killers (Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner, not Don Siegel’s ’60s remake with Angie Dickinson and Ronald Reagan in his final role), The Big Sleep (perhaps more a star vehicle for Bogart and Lauren Bacall than pure noir, but still great), They Live By Night, Hitchcock’s Notorious (with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman), In a Lonely Place (Bogart again). If you simply must have color, Niagra is one of the few original color noirs, with Marilyn Monroe. And there were a surprising number of Western noirs made n the ’50s; I’d recommend Winchester ‘73 (Jimmy Stewart and a non-plump Shelly Winters) and 3:10 to Yuma (the original, not the recent so-so remake).
Marshall Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Funny that you mention this…. I just saw Brick a few weeks ago. A very strange film, but enjoyable. I never realized Southern California was so cold, or empty. I always thought it was hot and had lots of smoggy traffic.
brandon Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Hey, it’s totally possible to venerate The Maltese Falcon et al (yeah, I gotta see Double Indemnity sometime) and also enjoy Brick. Brick is a gimmick, true, but it’s a good gimmick and it helps that all the other elements are legitimately good in their own right.
bob mcmanus Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Noir definitely and absolutely requires an anti-hero/heroine.
Someone one step outside the law and very morally ambiguous at best. There ain’t no melodrama allowed in noir.

Brick qualifies, not so sure about VM.

There have also been too many interpretations of Red Harvest. Tired now.
eric k Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Marlowe’s list of Noir is pretty good. I’d recommend the Lee Marvin version of the Killers also though, it isn’t pure noir in the way that the Burt Lancaster version is, but is interesting in it’s own right. Reagan playing against type as a villain works very well, he should have done it more often and then maybe he waould have had a longer film career and never gotten into politics and spared us all:-) Also catch Lee Marvin in Prime Cut and the original version of Payback, a home run trilogy of 60s crime movies from him.

If you really want to get into noir you need to get the french movies, start by looking for anything directed by Melville and anything starring Jean Gabin (he made a ton of movies of course so many aren’t noir, but you can’t go wrong with any of them!), and especially get Bob Le Flambeur which has both of them and is very good, there is also a pretty good remake with Nick Nolte called the Good Thief.

I’d rank the JGL movies 1) Mysterious Skin, one of the most haunting movies I’ve ever seen. 2) The Look-out 3) Brick – good but somewhat overrated I think.
bob mcmanus Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
And I don’t know why we have to let the French define noir as silver-nitrate cinematography with great depth-of-field or sumpin.

Film noir is a crime film with no good guys and a bad ending. It’s about the nihilism.

OOTP, Asphalt Jungle, Gun Crazy. Not Maltese Falcon or Big Sleep. And because of Robinson, I am not sure about Double Indemnity
Taker Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
“The first season of Veronica Mars, with the season-long mystery concerning her best friend’s murder, was pretty good, the second season was OK, the third season was just dreadful and I gave up halfway through.”

A lot of quirky or unique TV series go through this. The creator has a good idea for one series, which plays like a mini-series, and then has a tough time keeping the thrill up in the following seasons. I tried watching an episode of Veronica Mars but didn’t get it. Maybe I needed to watch it from the beginning.
JD Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Taker,

I totally agree. Lots of good series go through that first season great, everything else dross pattern. I have taken to calling this the Heroes effect.
Medrawt Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
The “I had a specific story premise that sold the show” series tend to have the “started on a high note, went downhill” career path, but I’d say just as common, if not more so, is the “we didn’t hit our stride until the end of season 1, if not season 2, and those early episodes look embarrassing by comparison.” (Buffy, Seinfeld, The X-Files…) Shows in this category tend to peak somewhere between the 3rd and 5th year. In general, I just hope American TV can eventually approach something like the British model. I’m sure there are tonnes of crap on British TV that never make it to the US, but the excellent shows that do all seem to benefit from the production model – 6 to 12 episodes per season (”series” in their terminology), no reason why the next season needs to happen a year later, or at all. US cable, of course, has been doing this for a while, especially HBO’s prestige programming from the early part of the decade, but The Shield worked like this, and so do the shows on USA.

(OT rant: Here’s what I don’t get – nothing on USA is high art on the level of the best television shows, nor is it aspiring to be. But Burn Notice, Psych, and In Plain Sight are all well-made, entertaining, engaging shows that I enjoy watching as a regular viewer, which is more than I can say for anything on NBC. And NBC owns USA. So USA has managed to develop a slate of shows that are successful by their own standards – Burn Notice and In Plain Sight at least have done pretty well in the cable ratings, I think – but NBC can’t replicate this success, and has apparently given up on trying. And here’s what I really don’t get – why doesn’t NBC just develop shows like that for NBC? The real point is to turn a profit, not to have the biggest gross, right? So even if you assume that even with NBC’s marketing behind it Burn Notice will never get as many viewers, and never generate as much in gross ad revenues, as the latest season of Heroes or whatever, Burn Notice probably also costs much, much, much less to produce. So what’s the damn problem?)
Marlow Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Film noir is a crime film with no good guys and a bad ending. It’s about the nihilism.

OOTP, Asphalt Jungle, Gun Crazy. Not Maltese Falcon or Big Sleep. And because of Robinson, I am not sure about Double Indemnity

I couldn’t disagree with this more, both generally and specifically. Generally, I hate it when people have a checklist of elements that noir “must” have. Noir is as much, or more, a style as it is a genre and, like Justice Stewart and pornography, I know it when I see it. Whether a film is or is not noir does not depend on whether it does or does not have some supposedly required element. For example, In a Lonely Place only tangentially involves crime at all (and its a MacGuffin) and has no femme fatale, but its a great noir. Specifically, I find your comment somewhat bizarre, frankly. I agree that you can quibble about whether or not The Big Sleep is a true noir and I would have preferred the much bleaker ending of the Chandler novel (although the film is surprisingly faithful to the novel to the extent permitted by the Production Code, except for the Bogart/Bacall romance). But The Maltese Falcon and Double Indeminity? The two films that practically defined film noir? If those films ain’t noir, there is no such thing.

eric K–I agree that the ’60s remake of The Killers had some interesting elements. Lee Marvin was good as always and, though I hate to admit it, so was Reagan. But despite the presence of Don Siegal, the overall movie is medicore at best and the lurid pushed for TV color is just ugly (the film was intended to be the first made for TV movie, but was released theatrically instead because of the violence). I agree with you on Melville, who loved Hollywood gangster films and noirs and created his own with a distinctly Gallic touch. In addition to Bob le flambeur (and The Good Thief, although not as good, is one of the few remakes I actually like), I’d mention Le samourai and Le cercle rouge.

BTW, while my earlier list of classic noirs was necessarily incomplete, I should mention some of the films of Jules Dassin, who died only last year at 96 and provided entertaining DVD commentaries on his work well into his 90s: Brute Force, The Naked City, Night and the City (made in England while he awaited his certain blacklisting) and Rififi (made after he went into permanent French exile).
eric k Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
While not a noir, the recently re-released Army of Shadows is worth seeing. Melville was in the resistence in WW 2 and supposedly the movie is somewhat autobiographical. Un Flic is very good as well, but then Catherine Deneavue in a public service announcement is worth watching:-)

And I made a mistake in my earleir post, Gabin wasn’t in Bob le Flambeur, but he has several other noirs worth catching, Grisbi is probably the most clearly a noir.

For off the wall remakes look for Ghost Dog: Way of the Samourai, a remake of Le Samourai with Forest Whitaker
bob mcmanus Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
24:What you’re the genre theorist, with the claim that Winchester ‘73 and 3:10 to Yuma are noir? Good grief, they’re giggling together on the train at the end. Pointing as classification? “I know it when I see it.” There’s an expert.

Robert Porﬁrio (1996, 89) argues that ﬁlm noir shares the same “sense of meaninglessness” as existentialism and that ﬁlms such as The Maltese Falcon eﬂect “existentialism’s emphasis on individual consciousness with their denial of any sort of cosmic design or moral purpose.” Yet this is not accurate as both the 1931 and 1941 ﬁ lm versions delete the Flitcraft parable and end with Spade leaving Brigid in jail (1931) or under arrest (1941). Neither ﬁlm ends by replicating the novel’s nihilism, whereby Hammett concludes his story by suggesting that Spade is about to resume his affair with Iva Archer, the wife of his dead partner. On the other hand, both ﬁlms conclude with Spade’s torment at having to hand the woman he loves over to the police.These differences—between the 1931 ﬁlm and the 1941 version on the one hand, and between the ﬁlms and the novel on the other—are clariﬁ ed when the ﬁnal confrontation between Spade and Brigid is compared in each version.

The most obvious difference is the degree of Spade’s inner torment and emotional vulnerability that is most evident in the 1941 ﬁlm compared to the novel or the 1931 version. While the novel emphasizes Spade’s self-interest, his desire to survive, as the prime reason for handing Brigid over to the police, Huston’s film depicts a tormented detective trying to stay within the bounds of conventional morality by rejecting the temptations offered by an attractive, but ruthless, woman.

Hammett, on the other hand, emphasizes Spade’s determination to survive when he writes, “One of us has got to take it, after the talking those birds [Cairo and Gutman] will do. They’d hang me for sure. You’re likely to get a better break”

Houston’s MF barely qualifies. If he had shot his original script, which followed the novel, it would have been noir.

Geoff Mayer, Encyclopedia of Film Noir, ed Mayer & McDonnell, 2007
bob mcmanus Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
I’ll grant In a Lonely Place is very close. But you have to able to distinguish noir from other crime or detective or gangster films, and from other psychological thrillers, or other films that use chiascuro, and the nihilism works best.
Marlowe Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
“I know it when I see it.” There’s an expert.

No, I guess I have to bloodlessly pontificate like you and the “expert’ (a film school professor, I’d guess) you quote at length. He certainly waxes professorial about Sam Spade, but he betrays not a jot of love or affection for what Bogart, Huston, Astor, Lorre and company created. And where’s his discussion of Warren William and Satan Met a Lady? Though we can probably agree that that version is not noir.
DaveinHackensack Says:
June 11th, 2009 at 12:22 am
It may be before Ezra’s time (2003), but Better Luck Tomorrow was a good flick that I think might qualify as SoCal high school noir.
KLS Says:
June 11th, 2009 at 1:31 am
I’m surprised there’s been no mention of L.A. Confidential.
One of my favorites and Russel Crowe was terrific. Having grown up in LA in the 50’s and 60’s I thought the cinematography was uncanny. Oh well, I’ll keep my eye out for Brick.
Ginger Yellow Says:
June 11th, 2009 at 6:35 am
I don’t think VM’s problems in the later series were down to the “interesting premise, no new ideas” issue. From what I gather, it was mainly studio pressure. They didn’t really understand the first season and pushed Thomas to make it a more conventional high school drama – hence the foregrounding of the Logan/Veronica stuff and the toning down of the noir elements. A crying shame, but even so, the second season was still better than the vast majority of comparable television at the time, and the first season is utterly superb – much better than Brick in my opinion.

It didn’t hurt that the show was full of Lebowski references, either.
bob h Says:
June 11th, 2009 at 7:37 am
I’m disinclined to see “Brick” after two hours of sheer torment watching “The Brothers Bloom”.
MBunge Says:
June 11th, 2009 at 10:47 am
“In general, I just hope American TV can eventually approach something like the British model.”

You might want to ask British TV actors, writers and directors about that, since so many of them seem to flock to America as soon as they can because they can actually make some real money over here. There is an element of economics that needs to be factored in.

Mike
msumari Says:
June 11th, 2009 at 11:21 am
I just want to add a word of caution here. I rented Brick last year based on the many rave reviews I had seen. I found it largely unwatchable. In my view, it isn’t, as Ezra suggests, a hard-boiled noir set in a high school. It’s more like a slightly cute student film about tough guys — a bit interesting for about 15 minutes, and boring and annoying after that. Maybe it’s a generational thing that I’m not getting.
Marcusthefish Says:
June 11th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
2007’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is another good neo-neo-noir. Even with the silly ending.
The Pop View Says:
June 11th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Veronica Mars was more like a typical high school show on the WB (say, Dawson’s Creek) mixed with the private eye genre. Brick took the conceit of a traditional Forties noir, but set in a modern high school. All of the language is straight from the Forties. In that sense, it’s like the musical Bugsy Malone (1976).

Brick (like VM) is a Love-It-or-Hate-It work. I love it. I would also compare it to the film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), which came out around the same time and also mirrors the old detective movies.

Like Chandler wrote: “…down these mean streets a man must go…”
Rian Johnson Blooms « 24 Percent Says:
June 11th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
[...] Johnson Blooms Jump to Comments Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias both posted yesterday about one of my favorite movies, Rian Johnson’s writer-director debut [...]

Matt Yglesias

SoCal High School Noir?

37 Responses to “SoCal High School Noir?”

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