*** RED ROCK WEST
Like poor relations, films noirs have never gotten much respect. Eyed with suspicion by the studios that produced them and dismissed as a guilty pleasure by the public that viewed them, the films were only identified as a genre in the 50s by the French critics of Cahiers du Cinema who loved them. Given this mark of approval, films by American directors like Sam Fuller and Nicholas Ray became venerated abroad as they never had been on these shores.
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Its distinguishing physical characteristics, however, remain constant. Many of these qualities–decaying sets, high-contrast lighting, oblique and inventive camera angles–evolved not only by design but through necessity. Shot on the flimsy backlots of major studios or at smaller studios like Republic and Eagle, these films were achieved, as director Anthony Mann commented in reference to the ingenuity of his great cameraman John Alton, by “maximum performance with minimum means.” Alton himself admitted that the dramatic lighting schemes he devised were born of a need to hide the shabbiness of the sets. The highly expressionistic manner that developed was an inexpensive but effective form for depicting a dark and psychologically complex worldview through complicated and often criminal characters.
Dahl’s film more than anything is an engrossing tale well-told. But like its noir antecedents, it is more than just a good crime film. What Dahl has been able to do–something that eluded the Coen brothers in Blood Simple and Lawrence Kasdan in Body Heat–is execute a story with all the noir accoutrements and at the same time create a convincing, sympathetic central character.
The one false note in the casting is Lara Flynn Boyle. The success of some of the great noir femme fatales–Jane Greer in Out of the Past, Rita Hayworth in The Lady From Shanghai–hinged on the style and sophistication that seemed inextricably bound to their darker elements. Arch and preppy, Boyle possesses neither the slinkiness nor the venality her character requires.
