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 The neo-noir films of the 1970s worked to revise one of the staples of American cinema- the dingy detective stories of 1940s noir. In displaying the success of a determined, morally upstanding detective in the dark underbelly of the city, classical noir showed how a strong will and good intent was a force against evil in of itself. Neo- noir, while still recognisable as a member of the genre and taking some of the ‘old trappings’ of the ‘detectives, the labyrinths, and the femme fatales’ (Abrams, 2007: 7), reconsidered these themes and their mode of representation.

Neo-noir films were influenced by the environment they were produced in. The late 1960s and early 70s brought cultural turmoil in the USA, the Watergate crisis, the initiation of war in Vietnam and the assassination of key human rights figures lead to a pessimism and confusion surrounding the direction in which modern society was going. In contrast to the resolute, unified stand against a common enemy characterising the era that birthed noir, the 1940s, the social genesis of neo-noir was one where ‘community and consensus lay in tatters’ (History.com, 2010). It is under this context that filmmakers began to interrogate noir values and their mode of representation.

Two films that do this clearest are The Long Goodbye (1973) and Night Moves (1975), both feature the classic noir staple of the private investigator, working in Los Angeles who takes on a job that becomes more than it first appeared, both also place this character in the modern day. Directors Robert Altman and Arthur Penn use the recognisable structure to consider the noir genre and the classical Hollywood system it came from and criticise its themes and ideas.

One of the clearest ways in which they do this is through the staple figure in film noir of the detective, who, using their self-reliance, quick thinking and strict moral code to defeat the evil at hand, became the ‘myth of heroic individualism’ (Fitzmaurice, 1998: 153).  The heroes at the centre of these films, Philip Marlowe (Elliot Gould) and Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) personify and exaggerate these core values.

Altman’s portrayal of Marlowe does this clearest, not only creating a character with the same principles as the noir hero but referencing the generic imagery used in these films to make this point abundantly clear. Altman does this through the character’s 1940’s Sudan car, his old-fashioned suit and his constant smoking to the extent that Marlowe’s image becomes a caricature of what he represents. Placed in a modern Los Angeles and surrounded by characters that represent the time, Marlowe appears ridiculous. Altman clearly shows through the characters image that he is a man of another time, as are the values that this image represents.

The exaggeration of Marlowe’s image also questions the reality behind his beliefs. Placing so much emphasis on the imagery suggests an emptiness behind it, that the values so consistently stressed in Hollywood and the noir genre are falsified or disconnected with reality. Karp writes that the suggestion is not only that Marlowe and image portray ‘out of date’ moral code, but ‘that its successful application in real life was never anything more than a carefully constructed illusion’ (Karp, 1981:94).

The film itself openly mocks the detective both by making it plain and obvious how ridiculous he seems in 1970s Los Angeles, and outwardly in the diegesis. As the only character in the film who consistently follows a moral code and is set on finding the truth of what happened to his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton), Marlowe is consistently bullied by the ‘devious “realists”’ (Karp, 1981: 97) that surround him. He is teased by the man he saved from a mental institution for his ‘J.C. Penney tie’ and his poor lifestyle is berated by Marty Augustine when we first meet the character. The classic American myth is here ‘stripped of his fake hero attributes,’ Brackett describes, ‘instead of a tough guy, Marlow became the patsy’ (Brackett, 1974), or, as Altman put it: ‘a real loser’ (Altman and Rudolph, 1976). The use of the noir genre’s imagery and the mockery of it, then reflects not only that someone who follows such values is an outsider but is seen as inferior by those around them. In conjunction with Marlowe’s exaggerated appearance, this emphasises the disconnection between image that classical noir so often portrayed and reality. While Marlowe’s appearance evokes the classical detective hero, his reality as a loser undermines this and displayed that the themes 1940s noir advocated were simply illusion.

Moseby again is a bleak representation of the hero and his values in a way that is more grounded in a modern society. He doesn’t dress like he’s from another era, he has an answering machine and watches football on the TV. Not only this, but in a clear divergence from Marlowe, he is played by Gene Hackman, who had at this time starred in a number of successful films as the action hero. As a result, Moseby appears to be more of his time, but it becomes clear he is a man out of place, his modern image only making his personal struggles feel more real and grounded. 

It becomes clear that Moseby is also incongruous to his environment. This is shown through his inability to keep up with modern society, symbolised in the way he clings to his job as an old-fashioned personal investigator. He sees himself as a ‘1940s gumshoe’ (Jackson, 2010) with the associated values (‘simple faith, honesty, trust and complete integrity’ (Brackett, 1974)) in tow and is criticised for this failure to adapt. This is clearest when he finds out about his wife’s affair and, on confronting her, the way she berates him for his refusal to join his friends ‘computerised detective agency’ (Jackson, 2010). The affair itself emasculates and belittles Moseby, completely reversing what Garrett Stewart refers to as the ‘”private dick” screen stereotype’ (Stewart, 1974: 27) who is sexually assured and dominant. Not only this, but his wife’s lover mocks him, saying: “Take a swing at me, Harry, the way Sam Spade would.” It appears that his job and the values it suggests connect Moseby to the classical noir heroes, while being the reason that he too is a ‘loser’.  In presenting a hero that outwardly belongs in the period but who again suffers because of his outdated values, Penn displays what someone of such moral code would look like in 1970s America in a grounded way. Moseby unsentimentally embodies this, meeting clients with big sweat marks under his armpits and eating ice cream alone to deal with his wife’s affair.

While working within a framework of genre, neo-noir was also effective in using formal technique to both reference and criticise classical ideologies and the ways in which Hollywood translated them.

The Long Goodbye uses a visual style that clearly deviates from classical Hollywood. In the ‘freewheeling ironic distance’ (Stewart, 1974: 26) created through continuous camera movement, an excess of zooms and obstructive framing, Altman portrays an unconventional interpretation of a staple of Hollywood source materials- a Raymond Chandler novel. While films like The Big Sleep (1949) smoothly presented stories that championed the success of the individual and the power of righteousness, Altman uses his camera to criticise these ideas in his character.

This is seen, for example in the camera movement Altman and his cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond, use throughout that ‘often appears to have no functional relationship to the action at hand’ (Karp, 1981: 98). This functions firstly to reflect the character himself, who is lost in this modern setting and, in trying to solve the problem at hand, wonders through Los Angeles often on a whim and acting on a misleading morale compass.

It also reflects the surroundings of the character, of which he is unable to get a grip of. The narrative’s shifting nature and numerous turns that eventually lead to the truth are translated simultaneously through the cinematography. The continued and unsettled movement demonstrates the illusiveness of the Marlowe’s environment, defining the situation, but also Los Angeles in a wider sense as something that can not be understood. Altman suggests that this is but one example of twisted events that happen in the modern city, emphasised further by over exposing shots to ‘drain the atmosphere of a certain vitality’ and ‘accentuate the smog-blanched haze of his landscape’ (Stewart, 1974: 26). The ultimate effect of this constant camera movement is that it highlights the foreboding and malevolent image people had of society after the events of the 60s and showing, therefore just how misplaced a character such as Marlowe and the values that he represents are in this context.

There is also an unmissable consistent use of zooms in the film that, along with a motif of filming through windows, again adds reference to Hollywood filmmaking as it brings attention to the sense of watching someone without being seen. This references the way in which classical filmmaking created pleasurable viewing through spectators’ ‘voyeuristic phantasy’ that itself was formed in watching the revealing of an ‘hermetically sealed world… indifferent to the presence of the audience’ (Mulvey, 19 :835-6). In order to achieve this, however, an ‘invisible’ style of filmmaking would be employed, while in The Long Goodbye, Altman’s zooms, use of reflection and foreground all clearly bring attention to the directors’ presence. The methods Altman employs are so extravagant that they seem to mock this idea of ‘looking in’, pointing at the irony of the audience spying on a private detective. One of the clearest examples of this is when Marlowe goes to question the Mexican authorities about Lennox. This interaction is filmed almost entirely through a window on a zoomed lens giving the impression that the audience is looking in on the scene in secrecy. In exaggerating such ideas of voyeurism, Altman distinctly references and opposes the way in which Hollywood would treat similar subject matter, instead bringing attention to the audience’s expectations of ‘voyeuristic phantasy’.

Lastly the way in which this style of filmmaking contrasts such ‘unmotivated characters’ works to highlight the film’s themes and ‘maintain audience participation’ (Karp, 1981: 98).  The way this is done alongside the symbolic Marlowe, who remains a sympathetic figure to the audience, displays Altman’s interest in the interaction between illusion and reality. Using genre conventions alongside filmmaking that breaks these conventions questions Hollywood’s classical style of filmmaking and the relevance of the ideologies it translated.

This is best demonstrated in the ending of the film that seems forced and ironic, tying up a story in which Marlowe was constantly in the dark. The last scene in which Marlowe solves the mystery and gets his moral victory is a ‘self-confessed Hollywood ending,’ belonging to a text that suddenly and ‘unabashedly admits to being no more than a film’ (Stewart, 1974:30). Despite the triumphant subject matter of this scene in which moral justice is enforced by Marlowe, the ending is ‘superficially cathartic’ (Karp, 1981: 98) not only because it doesn’t fit the rest of the narrative, but also in the filmmaking. The moment Marlowe shoots Lennox is plagued by unmotivated zooms and camera movement that exaggerate the climax to a point of parody, introspectively criticising the fantasy of the scene. This is confirmed in the way the final shot of Marlowe passing Eileen (Nina van Pallandt) recalls The Third Man (1949), another staple of the noir genre. In this paradoxical ending that uses ‘the apparatus of genre’ (Fitzmaurice, 1998:158) while simultaneously breaking from it, Altman comments on the illusionary nature of Hollywood and the falsified idea that the moral hero always wins.

Night Moves uses the genre framework in a different sense in order to portray how a modern noir film should look in 1970’s America. Taking a bleaker perspective and revising noir conventions allowed Penn to give clear critique of modern America. In doing so, Penn suggests where classical cinema lacked. Deeply affected by recent social events, Penn has described the film’s atmosphere as being a consequence of this environment, saying how he ‘felt like we were wandering around in a kind of blindness unaware of what we were doing to ourselves’ (Penn, et al. 2008).

This ‘wandering’ is demonstrated obviously through the film’s clueless protagonist but emphasised clearly in the filmmaking techniques that visualise this sense of cluttered misdirection. Dede Allen, who’s work had a great influence on many films of the period, employs a style of editing that gives little breathing room, connecting scenes through overlap of sound and establishing new spaces very little. As Jackson says: ‘scenes don’t end so much as they are displaced by the scene that follows’ (Jackson, 2010). Not only this, but despite Moseby’s constant travelling, we see him in an airport once and are never shown a plane, he just appears in new locations. This gives the impression of his jumping around impulsively and leaves moments for the audience to question his whereabouts. This feeds into the ‘convulsive editing’ Penn wanted for the film, using it to create a text that was ‘a kind of mosaic’ (Penn, et al. 2008). This editing is used to translate the notion of unpredictability, of being behind the narrative, the way Moseby is throughout the film, until the truth reveals itself in the final scene. It’s clear through this filmmaking that the individualism of the hero is lost in an environment that is as capricious and hard to grasp as the editing suggests. This is especially true of someone driven not by fact, but moral code and who stumbles on to new information almost entirely by coincidence following a wrong hunch. In this choppy, ‘mosaic’ style, even the clear, quick thinking of a classical noir hero would feel redundant. This reflects both Penn’s interpretation the world of the time and how inadequate classical Hollywood techniques would be in portraying it.

Penn also demonstrates the way in which themes of morality, that classical filmmaking would translate in noir, become misplaced and skewed in a modern setting. We see this in the revision of the point of view shot that is used throughout the film to demonstrate Harry’s perspective. Penn often presents point of view shots through frames that obstruct or distort vison. This is seen, for example, in the glass viewing point on the boat that reveals key plot points in a distorted way through the water, and the screen on his cabin balcony in Florida, through which the motif of chess is revisited as Harry explains a move to Paula (Jennifer Warren). In consistently skewing the view of Moseby, events become contorted to the film’s only force of ‘good’. In this sense, Penn complicates the simplicity of acting through integrity, as Moseby can only act based on his unclear perspective. This complicates the nature of ‘good’ intentions in an environment that consistently affects the perspective of the symbol for morality- the detective hero.

This is demonstrated narratively in Moseby’s misdirected good intentions that lead to the deaths of numerous people. If he hadn’t returned Delly to California, she would not have died in a stunt; had he not berated Quentin, the character would not have gone to Florida to be killed; the list goes on.

In conclusion, it is through these techniques that Night Moves and The Long Goodbye employ recognisable conventions of classical noir to reconsider the genre’s main themes that champion individualism and acting based on a conventional moral code of ‘simple faith, honesty, trust and complete integrity’ (Brackett, 1974).

The films do this through their protagonists, both of whom fit into the guidelines of the noir genre’s ‘detective hero’ (Fitzmaurice, 1998:153). In The Long Goodbye, Altman presents a version of Philip Marlowe who’s appearance reflects that of the 1940s detective in a way that he becomes a caricature of his values. Wandering around 1970s Los Angeles in his old-fashioned suit and 1940s era car, Marlowe and the ‘moral code’ symbolised by his ‘antiquated style’ (Karp, 1981:94) seem absurd.

Taken further, the extent to which Marlowe’s appearance is exaggerated, coupled with the fact he is a ‘real loser’ (Altman and Rudolph, 1976) questions the nature of this image and how illusionary it is. Through this emphasise on image, Altman suggests that the way in which characters of noir films were able to use only the strength of their values to defeat evil was nothing more than an illusionary construct, just as Marlowe’s appearance is.

Night Moves, on the other hand, provides a protagonist in Harry Moseby that appears to fit into his modern landscape. However, his old-fashioned values, displayed in his resistance to leave his job as a private investigator and join his friend’s modernised firm, make him unable to fit in. Moseby is, like Marlowe, a loser who is unable to change in order to keep up with those around him. His problems remain grounded in the modern world, this demonstrated in his wife, who cheats on him and precedes to criticise his outdated job- highlighting the fact that his direct ties to the noir genre are what make him a loser. Penn’s hero, then, is one that palpably presents what a man of such ‘classical’ values would look like in 1970s America.

The films also rework the methods through which Hollywood filmmaking would present such themes in order to provide an introspective critique of their illusive and outdated nature.

Altman uses cinematography in a way that directly contrasts the ‘invisible style’ used in the noir films of the 1940s. Used in a way that suggests the misplaced nature of Marlowe in his surroundings, the filmmaking emphasises the characters outdated nature. Paired also with the flamboyant use of zooms, Altman makes clear that this is a film made in his creative vision. The ironic contrast this creates with his character brings into question the classical way in which a noir detective would be presented and highlights the falsity with which stories of moral justice would be told.

Penn presents the world of the story in a much more realistic way. However, through the editing of Dede Allen that connects scenes in a way that feels impulsive, the uncertainty of the era is translated. This echoes Moseby’s ignorance regarding the narrative events and displays how futile a sense of individualism and morality becomes in such an ambiguous time. Not only this, but Penn also complicates the notion of good intentions by distorting many of Moseby’s point of view shots. In doing this, the perspective of the morally upright detective becomes warped and Penn uses this motif to question the effectiveness that acts of integrity have in such an unreadable environment- as shown in the events of the narrative. This serves as a criticism of the classical message that champions individualism and moral code as the only instruments needed for success.

References

Abrams, J., 2007. Space, Time, and Subjectivity in Neo-Noir Cinema. In: M. Conard, ed., The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. University Press of Kentucky.

Brackett, L., 1974. From 'The Big Sleep' and 'The Long Goodbye' and More or Less How We Got There. Take One, 4.

Fitzmaurice, T., 1998. Chinatown and the End of Classical Hollywood. Irish Journal of American Studies, [online] 7. Available at: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/30002411> [Accessed 19 April 2020].

History.com. 2010. The 1960S History. [online] Available at: <https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/1960s-history> [Accessed 19 April 2020].

Jackson, B., 2010. Loose Ends In Night Moves. [online] Senses of Cinema. Available at: <http://sensesofcinema.com/2010/feature-articles/loose-ends-in-night-moves-2/> [Accessed 19 April 2020].

Karp, A., 1981. The Films Of Robert Altman. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International.

Mulvey, L., 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen, 16(3).

Penn, A., Chaiken, M. and Cronin, P., 2008. Interviews. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.

Rudolph, A. and Altman, R., 1976. Buffalo Bill And The Indians. New York: United Artists.

Stewart, G., 1974. "The Long Goodbye" from "Chinatown." Film Quarterly, 28(2), pp.25-32.

Filmography

The Long Goodbye. 1973. [film] Directed by R. Altman. United States: United Artists.

The Big Sleep. 1946. [film] Directed by H. Hawks. United States: Warner Bros.

Night Moves. 1975. [film] Directed by A. Penn. United States: Warner Bros.

The Third Man. 1949. [film] Directed by C. Reed. United Kingdom: British Lion Film Corporation.

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