Word: noire
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Scott is a past master of artifice. In Alien (1979) he devised a grungy spaceship through which a ravenous parasite moved and mutated. In Blade Runner (1982) he created a city that existed simultaneously in the 21st century ! and the film noir 1940s. Legend offers more of the hermetic same. Virtually all of the movie's "outdoor" sequences were shot in the caverns of England's Pinewood Studios. The fairy dust that caresses the heroine is borne on wind machines. Most of the actors play their roles (goblins, elves, trolls) inside elaborate masks. The whole idea is to turn image...
Maybe Alan Rudolph should just plunk himself down in front of a video console, electronically colorize some old film noir favorite of his and forget it. Instead, the writer-director keeps trying to revitalize that shadowy, romantic style of the '40s by putting a hip spin on it. This strategy worked pretty well for him two years ago in Choose Me, shot in a surreal light and featuring a script that had the giddy loquacity of a liars' convention...
...picture in focus. This technique--pioneered by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane--is known as "deep focus." The use of deep focus lends a strong sense of realism to the film, portraying simultaneously the characters and their environment. Kusturica also imports some techniques from the genre of film noir, especially the notion of the woman-as-temptress (in this case the mistress), and the practice of photographing her image in mirrors...
...GOOD NEWS IS: the genre melodrama in all its variety is making a comeback in American film. Yes, cop pictures, films-noir, and private eye sagas are back following the failure of a slew of teen comedies, westerns, and serious "Oscar-bait" dramas, all presumed more commercial by an industry that generally felt melodrama had become the province of TV. "Blood Simple," "Witness," "Prizzi's Honor," and "Jagged Edge" have all contributed to a feeling in Hollywood that audiences want better and more adult stories in their theatrical diet...
...Good answer, but desperation goes too far back and strays too far afield from New York. For all its Newest Wave, mod feel, Susan traces its anxious female motif back to the gangster melodrama films of the 30's, with one twist. Like the vapid blonds in film noir, our housewife seeks her thrills in a more happening world, but there the comparison must end. Her idol is not a man, but Susan; her goal not to grab her idol's pants, but to wear them...