 "A
Girl And A Gun"
by David N. Meyer
Avon Books, 1998
Golden rule number one:
bachelors love noir. And anything that helps a bachelor enjoy his noir
even more is just swell in our book. David N. Meyer does a great job not
only of listing the greats in the genre, but his introduction is one of
the best primers on noir film ever. Meyer approaches noir as an intelligent
movie fan. He is able to talk about the wonders of the genre without getting
too scholarly or sentimental. Here he is trying to define the indefinable
style of noir: "While Westerns are simple--mix horses, open landscapes,
and violent heroics, and a Western will emerge--noir proves considerably
more slippery. Some private eye movies are noir, some aren't. Some women's
melodramas are noir. Certain films from the classical period feature rainy
streets, guys in dark suits, shadowy cinematography, carefully planned
capers, and unthinkable betrayals, but they aren't noir. Noir is not made
from a recipe; a film noir is always more than the sum of its parts. The
surface material must be there, but noir uses crime capers only as vehicles
to present other, deeper concerns." These concerns, Meyer explains, are
shown in the themes of noir. Some of the examples he cites are "No good
deed goes unpunished," "a detached ironic view is the only refuge," "crime
doesn't pay, but normal life is an experiential/existential straitjacket,"
"character determines fate," "though love might seem to be the only redeeming
aspect of human existence, it's not," "kicks count for something," and
"alienation rules." A Girl With A Gun has listing from the
best classic and modern noir films like Touch of Evil, Blade
Runner, Double Indemnity, and the Maltese Falcon.
All the movies are coded with a ingenious icon key for easy categorization.
(Like a knife as a sign for betrayal, lips for femme fatales, a tnt detonator
for willful self-destruction, and the like.)
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