One aspect I really enjoyed with In a Lonely Place was it's self-awareness as a film. It was sort of like a meta film, much like the Scream franchise. Employing Dix Steele as a screenwriter gave him the ability to make comments on how the film works and even comments on the film industry at the time. For example, there was one scene where Mildred said she always thought actors made up their own lines and Dix responds, "When they get to be big stars, usually they do." This line could be read as a stab at the stars of the time and how difficult they could be to the actual creators of a film. Or when Mildred comments on how wonderful it must be to be a writer and Dix responds with sarcasm.
But this self-awareness could be a comment on how the average Hollywood film was structured at the time and how the noir style wants to break it. One of the great meta-instances of the film is when Dix and Laurel are discussing the love scene in the new script he is writing. Dix says, "Well that's because they're not always telling each other how much in love they are. A good love scene should be about something else besides love. For instance, this one. Me fixing grapefruit. You sitting over there, dopey, half-asleep. Anyone looking at us could tell we're in love." Dix is describing exactly what is occurring in the film by talking about how this his script works, a very meta moment. He is taking the common scene structure of films and twisting it in a fresh, new way.
That all being said, I'm not quite sure if the use of self-awareness is common in all film noir. I suppose the argument could be made that a highly stylized film is always a self-aware film. This applies to noir in the way that the lighting always looks as if its a painting and the dialogue is so snappy it seems impossible anyone would speak that way in reality, therefore it is aware that it is a film. I don't know if that holds much water, but when watching In a Lonely Place I was struck by how aware it was. Any thoughts?
I do think noir lit/film does take stabs at the popular culture and things that the writers feel are wrong with culture (like anti-consumerism playing a role in a lot of the noir books we've read).
ReplyDeleteYou said that you think it could be a comment on the average Hollywood film of the time- and that noir style is attempting to break it... going off of that, do you think this film (or the filmmakers) reject the past noir styles? This seemed really different than the others- with Dix not being guilty of the murder whereas the other films we've seen had the bad guy being guilty of something. I'm not sure myself, just curious about your thoughts.