男人的争斗

"Film Noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood."
 -- Paul Schraeder

Noir is a style. It cuts across various art forms from movie genres to literary types. The content of a noir artwork could be anything, since any object or subject enveloped in the smog of noir is thereby noirish. As a smell, a tone, a mood, noir has so strong an impact on us that we sometimes almost forget about the content covered by the style. This impact, ubiquitous yet hard to be pinpointed, is achieved by novels and films in their own ways.

One similarity the film and the novel share when heading down their way of creating noir mood is the ability to bring the dead environment to life. In Chandler's Trouble is My Business, the private eye Marlowe has been constantly threatened- though not intimidated- by not only gangsters but also the environment surrounds him. After beaten by Grover, Marlowe wakes up in a hostile world, where the light from windows across the room was "hitting him square in the eyes", and the chair that bumped against his head has "clawlike legs," which hurt him "a lot more than young Jeeter's haymaker." Using these humanized verbs and demonized metaphors, Chandler creates an unwelcome feeling, like the feeling we get from the castle and the carnivorous plant in Nosferatu. For both of them, the external environment somehow parallels with the evil creature that hides in it. The difference is, Nosferatu as a horror film has vampire Count Orlok, the tangible devil figure; while in Trouble is My Business, the devil has no single representative. For instance in Marlowe's eyes, the room he is staying in apparently does not want him there; it is a sacred devil's realm that treats him as an interloper. While he is as vigilant as "a cat in a strange house." If there is enough sense left inside me, I would yell at Marlowe- clawlike leg? What are you, survival fanatic? Picturing yourself in a jungle? But that would be as annoying as picking up my phone during watching a film. So I let myself be drawn instead.

Then I found Marlowe's world more dangerous than a jungle. The jungle belongs to the realm of nature, while the environment Marlowe inhabits is closer to us and more lively- not in a natural way but a human way; intimate yet unpredictable, like the femme fatale Miss Harriet who owns it. To back up my point, here is an example from the novel: "the room was empty. It was full of silence and the memory of a nice perfume. One of those perfumes you don't notice until they are almost gone, like the last leaf on a tree." Chandler's environmental description generates a vivid mood. One of those moods that are empty but full, invisible but everywhere. It's a room that smells. One of those smells that are telling you a story, about a lady comes and goes. And us, like Marlowe, accept such smell as omnipresence in this jungle-like world. This is almost the essence of noir: it quietly covers our eyes, fills our noses without being noticed, implies us something while has more to hold in reserve. Only when the performance is over can we regain our sense stolen by the book/film, and realize what a nightmarish visit we've paid to the secret noir republic.

Coming back from Miss Harriet's noirsh apartment, we could also be threatened by the visually intimidating environment in films- yes, every form of art that shrouded in the noir mood is threatening for our bright glass heart. In a short musical sequence from Dassin's Rififi, the dead shadow comes alive just as the living character dies. The show begins with a long shot about the curtain goes up, a white screen appears with a male silhouette spinning in the middle of the stage. Simultaneously, a female singer comes into the frame from the left side down the stage. Although the singer is closer to the camera, the different ways she and the silhouette introduce themselves and their different locations in the frame demonstrate one thing: the lead role of tonight's show is not the charming woman who sings, but the mixture of light and shadow that dances on the stage. Having kept this in mind, the singer enters the frame not facing us but facing the silhouette. She bends over a little, opens her arms widely to the silhouette as if to ask his permission to perform with him. He responds politely with one arm opened, though it looks more like a powerful gesture for self-expression than a welcome.

The musical begins. It is nothing about the music, but the interaction between mankind and shadow. She constantly looks back at him, takes order from his gestures, while his dance movements resonate with her lyrics. The dialogue ends with the woman running towards the leaving silhouette. She couldn't catch him, like realities couldn't catch up with dreams. Thus after he left, she goes down the stage for substitutes- our sharp, skillful gangsters. But they are obviously not good enough for her, not better than that piece of living shadow. The shadow is our one and only protagonist, these so-called main characters cannot even get on the stage.

The woman's interaction with real men soon ends with a tracking shot of her going back on stage, disappearing behind curtains. It then cuts to a shot of the white screen with which a female silhouette enters from the same direction the singer has just disappeared. The female silhouette dances the the male silhouette until they leave the screen together; then comes a final long shot of the living woman comes back, lies on the stage alone, abandoned.

The above montage sequence generates an illusion that the singer has once became a silhouette during the show. Through cinematic artifices, we witness a transcendental bi-directional transformation between human being and the shadow- as to say, the living and the dead- that visualizes the typical noir mood even by a musical sequence. In film noir, there is always a sense of fatality within our spirited heroes (i.e. the internalized death of Bogart), and a smell of ominous vitality of environments around them (i.e. the dream-like countryside in Out of the Past). Characters in film noir walk on the edge between life and death, like the singer in Rififi expresses her adoration of the silhouette, interacts with it, and finally becomes a part of it. There she lies on the staircase in the last shot, smiles and sings; the silhouette behind her fires twice, then lights a cigarette by his smoking gun. With the last verse, the woman throws herself on the stage, as if the end of the show also ends her life, while the shadow is the real killer.

On the contrary of interacting with the environment, Marlowe in the scene we've previously discussed always maintain a distance with his surroundings by his Scotch. Scotch to Marlowe is like cigarette to Jeff from Out of the Past: having found out Eels is dead, Jeff goes to the manager’s office for the briefcase. Instead of leaving after he beats the manager and gets the briefcase, Jeff uses the manager’s lighter to light a cigarette. While in Trouble is My Business after Marlowe woke up at Miss Harriet's apartment, he warily "move around slowly", looks like he is going to investigate the environment and find a way out. But actually, no, Marlowe "got up on my knees and reached for the bottle of Scotch on the tabouret at the end of the davenport." Like what Jeff does with his cigarette, Marlowe, too, tries to build an illusion of standstill in a chaotic environment. He tries even harder by getting himself drunk in Miss Harriet's place.

This mood of alienation deliberately created by Marlowe reveals his wish to fight against his fate, which hides behind the fatal noir fog that Chandler created for him. However, the power of noir generated by writers and filmmakers is always stronger than that of the mood our heroes fantasize. We can hardly forget the ending sequence of Rififi, when Tony maniacally drives Tonio back home on a road directed by what Chandler might call "clawlike" trees. This is rather an extreme example, since the character is not trying to keep cool as Jeff and Marlowe did, but to simply keep himself alive. Or maybe worse- there is no way he can stay alive; he can only die more slowly. Hence, Tony isolates himself from the fatalistic environment, though unsuccessfully: he tries to focus on driving, but little Tonio excitedly asks him to look at those trees which seem to be originated from German expressionist films; Tony is not disturbed by the horrifying background music like we are, but Tonio laughs loudly behind him, shakes sleeves like a little devil waves his pitchfork; time is leaking like the blood on Tony's ankle, yet a red light comes, a cop approaches; Tony is already trying his best to speed up, but why the boy is not satisfied, urging him, pointing a gun at his head!

Compared with what a movie is capable of, it is more difficult for a novel to visualize noir elements such as light and shadow, vampiric woman and robotic man. However, the repetitive pattern of Chandler's first-person narrative drags us into the mood of fading away just as a film could do. Normally in a movie we don't see many repetitive shots- even similar ones- since we are told that every shot should have one distinguishable meaning, and repetition is considered lazy edit or just a lack of footages. In Trouble is My Business however, we see a deliberate use of repetitive pattern, for instance: "...I took a swig of the Scotch...felt my head again...took another drink...It was a nice room. Miss Harriet was a nice girl...took another drink...my head felt all right now. I felt fine...She was swell. I used some more of her Scotch...I made the elevator without hitting the walls on wither side of the corridor, floated downstairs, strolled out into the lobby...Everybody was swell."

In three short paragraphs, we follow Marlowe's psychological changes step by step. The repetitive description of "take a drink" doesn't annoy us at all. Instead, each repetition is honed to an edge that will produce a precise effect, and functions as a string that threads the jewels together, thus makes Marlowe's psychological progress as smooth as Miss Harriet's pearl necklace, thereby creates a mood of fading away. Everything in this scene is fading away: the smell of Miss Harriet's perfume, the pain in Marlowe's head, the traffic noise, the Scotch, and primarily, Marlowe's sense. Even Chandler is proud of the gradually washed-out color he paints, secretly compliments on himself by describing how swell the Scotch is: "the level in the bottle was a lot lower now. It was smooth and you hardly noticed it going down...I took some more." On the surface, Marlowe seems to be manipulated by Miss Harriet's Scotch, while it now comes clear that he is actually manipulated by the noir mood Chandler generates. Marlowe becomes oblivious to the hostility of the environment and his incongruity. As his sense fades away, the tension between this irresistible force (drunk Marlowe) and the immovable object (Miss Harriet's apartment) speeds up.

The mutual reference within the context is one weakness of cinematic works. When reading Chandler's novel, we can go back and forth to savor the mood he creates through the coherent way of storytelling. When watching a film however, the linear screening to some extent forbids us from actively building up a clear, step-by-step procedure of the emotional progression. Film does it for us by montage.

In the famous heist scene from Rififi, there is a fast-cutting sequence about the criminals destroying the safe from its back. It opens with a long take of the four characters with César in the middle operates a tool, then a medium shot of César and Tony's intense facial expressions- their eyes are blocked by César's movements from time to time (see pictures below), thus generates an anxious rhyme. Next comes a close-up of the tool. While we get closer to the tool, the constant noise created by its spins is subtly adjusted, becomes more screeching and irritating than it used to sound in any previous shot. From now on the montage starts to speed up, switching back and forth between close-ups: César's hand movements and flickering eyes; Tony's sweaty, dead serious face and eyes that roll to the direction of César then roll back on the safe; the spinning tool and jumping iron filings; eye contacts between Mado and Grutter that are full of expectations; quick cuts between their sweaty faces... As the cutting beat gets faster, the camera gradually approaches the tool, until we can only see the shimmering iron filings.

We can almost sense the anxiety by just describing this quick montage sequence in words. But why? Obviously it is not because of the suspenseful content- we know they are going to open the safe without getting caught; it's only a half way of the movie! When it comes to the mood of noir, the content doesn't matter. During watching this sequence we forget about the content, and solely focus on tricks that pull us into the anxious- not fearful, since we are not afraid of any particular subject such as them being caught- mood of noir.

Besides the montage and the corresponding sound effects, the change of camera angle is also capable of generating moods. Take the above sequence for example, it ends with a long take when César sets down the tool, takes out a hammer and begins to hit the safe. The camera is placed at eye level, gives us a chance to anticipate equally as the criminals do and thus, makes us the fifth criminal by a point-of-view shot. But the camera shakes: face it, we are inexperienced; our accomplice César's first strike makes us shivers as hard as the safe does- shame on us, Tony only blinks his eyes. The camera rapidly steadies itself, pretends to be calm through the second and the third strike. But as soon as the safe gets destroyed, the camera- in this case, us- eagerly leans toward the big hole on the safe. It rushes too fast, even faster than the other four gangs, and becomes shaky again. Affected by the excitedly anxious mood, we are greedier than our accomplices. The noirish mood Rififi displays gives a stronger impact on us than on the characters in it.

The novel and the film generate and enrich noir moods through enormously diverse and powerful artifices. A mood conveyed by any film image is a complex function of the visual qualities (camera angle, camera movement, lighting, etc.), the content, and the juxtaposition to surrounding images. While a novel enriches its moods by imaginative narration, precise psychological description and an innovative eye of the writer that we don't normally have.



都说红圈中入室盗珠宝那场戏很经典，殊不知这是梅尔维尔向朱尔.达辛这部杰作的致敬。

红圈那段戏中最惊艳的当属来复枪准确击中钥匙孔打开门那瞬间，其实过程也就从隔壁房间进入，爬到房顶翻到珠宝房门口，划开玻璃，放到警卫，在开门后就尽情享受金银财宝了。

相比之下，rififi的过程复杂许多，面临的困难也很棘手。最大的问题在于如何破坏报警器，这个已经在偷窃之前得到解决：用灭火器喷出的泡沫盖住铃声。至于其他的流程一概没有提及，这就吸引我们跟着这四个盗贼，看他们如何得逞。

就连一个地板钻洞都要拍好几分钟，用到了榔头、毛巾、凿子、钳子，甚至是雨伞（具体作用不便说明，看了就明白）；在放下保险柜的时候，居然用了两种三块不同的木块支撑；在某时某刻还要对着本子记录的内容看窗外发生的是否相符（如此时是否如往常一样有运送车开过，是否有巡逻经过），一切足以见得整个过程的计划周密。

imdb trivia 中有一段 说 达辛曾说 他把这个片子带到嘎纳 时候已经破产了。。。。在赌场玩，连最基本的赌码 都是向制片人借的，可以说他自己已经身无分文。。 他意思是自己很穷，拍这个片子很困难。他是想给自己拉拢有“同情心”的观众。并 把自己想象成了孤胆英雄。。。。

但是实际上 作为电影导演达辛之前的几个片子在商业上也算是中等成功

BRUTE FORCE
THE NAKED CITY
THIEVES HIGHWAY
NIGHT AND THE CITY

上述电影 的票房，在今天也相当于能排名30-50。。今天的年度排 这个名次相当于有多少票房？？ 大概4000W-8000W， 今天能导演这个级别电影的导演会是穷人？？ 况且达辛在法国还经营生意，有朋友，他的片子在法国，观众比例也更高。 这样一个达辛会身无分文吗？

解决这个问题只有2种可能。
1，他根本就是胡说。
2，他把钱都输了，他是个好赌博的人。

这第二种可能的另一个证据就是 他同时还夸耀说，正是那次借来的筹码让他赢了大笔钱。 可见赌徒本性不改。。


另外他的关于这部电影的成本之低，估计也是忽悠你的。，根据我自己的经验 ，这个电影在法国起码是中等成本。