Saw the excellent The Rules of Film Noir recently (thanks, Linda!) and thought I'd share their top five, plus a reason why The A-Men is at its heart a noir story.
The Rules of Noir
• Choose a dame with a past and a hero with no future.
Well, in the case of The A-Men we have Jack, definitely a man with no past and no future either. Plus two (count 'em) dames: Pure (the femme fatale) and Sister Midnight (the mother-figure).
• Use no fiction but pulp fiction.
Well, as Jack is tailored on a certain detective finding out about his forgotten and murky past, and with language straight outta the gutter, big tick here.
• See America through a stranger’s eyes.
The stories central setting is America through and through, a mix of San Francisco, Washington DC and New Orleans, with the stranger being Jack, after his mind is wiped.
• Make it any colour as long as it’s black.
Darkness pervades each and every corner of the Dead City, post-collpase setting.
• It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it.
Dialogue-wise, there's a lot in common with classic noir, theough with a futuristic twist...
And to finish: here's a review of a very old PC game I reviewed during my time with Dennis Publishing and the first time I attempted writing in the pulp style:
Noir
IBM PC or 100% compatible, Pentium 90 processor or higher, 12Mb Ram minimum, 12Mb of hard disk space, double-speed CD-Rom drive, accelerated SVGA card, 16-bit sound, Windows 95, mouse or keyboar
It was two minutes to four. The office was three floors up and there was no lift. The stairs were narrow with only a few stains to suggest the bare wood had once been painted. The PI’s office was no better. I’d call it art gecko. The desk held the usual files and papers, arranged in a hasty sprawl. Marjorie, Jack Slayton’s receptionist, leaned over the Rolodex, giving me a peachy view of her suitability for the position. Made me think of Jack and his fine taste in babes. Seems the guy’s disappearance had rattled a few people. Certainly rattled me. Marjorie too. Yep, things were certainly turning very strange around here. For a start, why was everything in black and white?
“What’s with the lack of colour?” I asked as I slid into the leather chair behind the desk.
The broad smiled. “Say, ain’t you John Trevillian, Jack’s life-long friend over from England on a jaunt in LA?”
“Got it in one. Don’t skip the question.”
Marjorie snapped shut the Rolodex and smoothed the creases in her tight blouse. Her front side was just as fine as her back side.
“The files are from Jack’s current cases. Maybe give you a lead, maybe not.”
I noticed Marjorie chewed gum. She didn’t do it nasty though like college girls. She did it slow and kept her mouth closed throughout. She did it classy.
There were six cases in all, each as bizarre as the other. As the receptionist had said, these could hold the clues that would solve the mystery – if I could stay alive long enough to find out. I picked up the first file and showed it to Marjorie.
“Who’s this Winthrop guy?”
“Charles Winthrop is that millionaire with the horses. He hired Jack to track down why his prized nag won the big race in Pasadena then wound up dead the next morning.”
“Sounds like a grudge match.”
“Whatever.”
The next file was all about a rare German book Jack’s good friend Max had acquired. It said he wanted to check up the book's value. Seems he went to a place called Mannie’s – some bookshop in town. Third file was about the kidnapping of Wo-Tan the Wonder Dog from some silent movie star’s Beverley Hills mansion. The next was about a club called Scheherazade and a missing heiress whose daddy made his fortune supplying gin during the Prohibition. The last two were just as sinister; a cryptography leak from a secret government lab and all the usual crazy goings-on in Chinatown.
“Looks like I’ve got my work cut out.” I said, gathering up the files.
“Yeah, I guess.” said Marjorie. “There’s not a one in all those files who I’d trust. Oh, except Max, of course.”
Yeah, Max, I thought. But say Jack was the wrong end of an inside job. No, at this stage I couldn’t rule out any one of these characters.
“Look,” I said to the still-chewing brunette, “I’m kind of new to this game. How’d I go about looking into these cases?”
“Well, that’s easy. Typical of this genre, each of the stories unfold at night in deserted streets and plush apartments. Use the pin map on the wall over there to plot your course and don’t leave any stone unturned. There are eighteen fully interactive locations, just use your hands and grub around. You never know when you’ll click on something useful. Phone Max if you need any help. You’ve got to keep sharp though, each case will lead you to places that are sure to give ya a real tough taster of 1940s Los Angeles and its harsh dramatisation of greed, lust, cruelty and the scrupulously ambiguous nature of humanity. Look out for the tell-tale signs of life in the devil’s playground; the motifs of fear, suspicion, steamy sex – oh yeah, and don’t forget double-crossing women.”
When the broad finally shut her mouth, I was left in a state of shock.
“So that’s all, huh? OK, I better get started.”
The receptionist clacked her way across the once-polished floor.
“Hey, Marjorie,” I called after her. “I told ya not to skip the question. Why no colour?”
She stopped in the doorway, looking back to accentuate the smallness of her waist. She was smiling again, and when she finally answered, her words hit me like a knuckle-duster in the solar plexus.
“You’re in Noir,” she said.
Had horses once - presumably little SOBs
Posted by: RandallLando62 | 06/04/2010 at 10:34 AM