Serious brianstorming about Film Noir

'allo


Well, in an effort to tap into the deeply dark and creative minds that are disillusioned with Indy as of late I offer this thread. (I realize it has been touched on before, but I want this to become a deeply engrossing topic worthy of pulitzer accolades). Besides no thread has been dedicated to this topic exclusively.


I would appreciate some guidelines as we explore the potentially dark elements soon discussed. Here they are.

• If you are not familiar with noir, familiarize yourself with "its" tenets before you comment.
• Try to take what you learn and explore how some concept therein could relate to Indy, or the next movie.
• Learn from those who truely desire a dark Indy, and model your responses in the same fashion.
• After all of these, challenge yourself (at least in this thread) to see Indy IV as dark, and try to add a response that may make you struggle with your ideal Indy. this means you Canyon.

My hope is that we can get a good foundation of the possible, before nay-sayers and debaters poo-poo the concepts herein. If that may be you, I would respecfully request you use your talents in other threads.

Now: (getting off my soap-box) Here are some thoughts by others on what Film Noir is:

• The primary moods are melancholy, alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt and paranoia.
• The females are either of two types - dutiful, reliable, trustworthy and loving women; or femme fatales. (I personally hope to see some interesting responses concerning this aspect.)
• Film noir shows the dark and inhumane side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love, and they emphasize the brutal, unhealthy, seamy, shadowy, dark and sadistic sides of the human experience.
• The protagonists in film noir are normally driven by their past or by human weakness to repeat former mistakes.
• The French noticed with surprise after the war how a gloomy, pessimistic worldview had replaced much of the formerly sunny optimism of can-do U.S.A. America?s movies were growing darker in the 1940s - not just visually, but also in terms of theme and content.

There it is, there you have it. I anticipate this process will be slow but worthwhile. Come on Raveners, prove me right.

• Indy is an alcoholic...from drinking too much whiskey. Having failed to get anything more significant than the Cross of Coronado, he has been relieved of his job at the University, and he works in a warehouse at night, because he is good at cataloguing.

apalehorse said:

• Indy is an alcoholic...from drinking too much whiskey. Having failed to get anything more significant than the Cross of Coronado, he has been relieved of his job at the University, and he works in a warehouse at night, because he is good at cataloguing.

Click to expand...

Slight change(?): Change from "because he is good at cataloguing" to "because he is intent on doing nothing more than cataloguing."

Continuing: Leaving work one night, IJ staggers down a dark street -- emptying his small hip bottle along the way -- and settles on a park bench. The bum on the next bench, says 'cigarette?'

[As for the opening fade, it could be the Paramount logo that goes blurry for an instant and then re-focuses as the label of a bottle of Paramount Brand Whiskey, which IJ picks up off a shelf in the warehouse and then pockets. This was inspired by an Attilla The Professor post on the fade thread.]

This is a great exercise -- you need to stake out the extreme positions to get the middle ground and the best product/result (even though I really want IJ IV to start out with IJ high in the saddle, in gear, in the middle of an action sequence).

[Edited by Joe Brody on 11-11-2003 at 06:54 am]

This thread feels like a homework assignment... and I thought I left all that behind me long ago!

(I'm thinking what to add... will be back)


[Edited by Randy_Flagg on 11-11-2003 at 01:40 pm]

lol

I think Attila will give the best opinion on that kind of a look for indy 4, he is perhaps the most in favor of it, which is why I'm glad he's not writting Indy 4.

No Offense, but I don't want to see indy crying over his life or anything like that, I want to see him kick some BEHIND! I can guarentee that most of the people who will see this movie (commoners, not indianerds) are going to agree with me

the scene where is hits the bottle after marion 'dies' was okay, but that's not that the kind of thing I look forwards to in an indy film. I say make it big, make it fun, make it action-packed!

That's the trouble with enlightenment. No one appreciates the time or journey it takes to acheive it.

I never said anything against it, I will watch it in films that are ment to be like that, but I would hate indy 4 to be like that

Don't worry fellas...I'll put more than my fair share of two cents in soon enough...just not right now.

Not in an Indy movie though. That's way too gloomy for an Indy movie.

I think this is a great threat, but film noir would never go hand in hand with Indy. It's supposed to be like the serials, not like Othello.

Commoners would be a little turned off to hear that Marion died. Indy fans might find it interesting, but then I think the Indy fans might get a little turned off to hear that Marcus Brody died. The public would go along with it, but I think the fans would want it handled better.

LC was really light, now that I think about it. It was almost slapstick in some parts. An interesting perspective on an Indy movie, but for the last one? No. Let's go back to the way Raiders was.

Indy's Lost Weekend -- or -- Indiana Jones in Leaving Las Vegas

I don't think that's really what apalehorse had in mind. In a lot of these old movies, the main character's deviance is largely inferred. For example, in Casablanca we only really see Rick drunk once and then only briefly. There are other stories (none of which are coming to mind) where the lead sobers up quick and is just haunted by the temptation as the story progresses. For the concept pitched above, think of an IJ who did something wrong in the past and now gets the chance to make amends . . . . as he fights to make it right, he gets stronger and stronger as the story progresses.

Like I said, I think this is good exercise -- and maybe we need a disclaimer that posters could add that says: the content/opinions expressed herein do not reflect the poster's hopes and dreams for the actual IJ IV storyline. Now that the DVD's are out, there are a lot of idle hours to fill until IJ IV is released. Again, I think this is a fun exercise. The story doesn't have to be one big downward spiral . . .

I want to hear some story.

[We all know that Joe Brody is just an average grafter. I've already blatantly boosted an idea from Attila the Professor and a scene from 'Treasure of Sierra Madre', so I'd like to see what other people come up with.]

[Edited by Joe Brody on 11-14-2003 at 07:11 am]

I think the concept of Marion coming back as an embittered Femme Fatal could prove both insightful and interesting.

I just hope the fourth film remains true to the spirit of the last three-- humorous, exciting, and most importantly fun. I'm not sure how a film-noir approach would accomplish any of these characteristics that were so vital to the success of the series. I suppose if your argument is that you didn't like the last three films and you want Lucas to come up with something totally different, then I could see why you want film-noir, but otherwise, I say keep it as it was-- I happened to enjoy the previous films and would be happy to have more in that spirit.

EDIT: I just read Joe Brody's post and it makes sense. If we're just treating this an exercise in writing, fine. As long as we're not saying we hope Indy4 will actually use film-noir approach.


[Edited by Randy_Flagg on 11-14-2003 at 08:33 am]

this is an exercise. there are many like it. this one is mine. it is a challenge to those who want to exercise.

Great thread, i particularly like the 'allo!

I think that Indy IV should have some dark elements but not so much that it drags down the movie with it, but hypotheticaly here is my conception of Indy Noir as far as i could ever stomach pushing the idea.. (this is not what i want Indy IV to be like!)

My thoughts:

- Indy begins the movie in a Soviet prison in 1949, he is an incredibly bitter man, nothing more than a shell of what he had once been. He has been there since 1945 and the Soviets want his knowledge and expertise about x artifact.
- Indy escapes spectacularly taking back his fedora in the opening sequence and returns to USA
- However Indy is still a bitter man, he has become an alcholic and his dreams are skulked through dreams of the death of Marcus and feelings of betrayal as the US government allowed him to fall into Soviet hands, Indy is widely mistursted by a sinister and incompetant government that he must warn them of the impending threat.
- Indy falls in love (he is far more dependant now, an old man) with a young woman on his travels through a war ravaged Europe but only to emerge that she is in fact a Nazi agent working aganist him as well as the Soviets and to a certain extent the Americans who declare him an outlaw and arrest Henry.
- The movie ends with the woman commiting suicide.

Renderking Fisk said:

Joe's always right. We should close the thread and leave it at that.

Click to expand...

!?!?!

Mr. Fisk, the opening observation in my last post wasn't directed at you - take a look at my subject line. By referencing 'Lost Weekend' and 'Leaving Las Vegas' I was addressing the earlier posts by people who said they didn't want to see a drunken IJ. Here's the Amazon link for 'Lost Weekend':

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...ref=sr_1_1/102-8741902-2052947?v=glance&s=dvd

I'm not trying to be right about anything -- and I freely acknowledge that my contribution wasn't that original. I just want to have some fun kicking around what bob coolly dubbed "Indy Noir".

I'd like to think that we have each other's backs.

Joe...I like what you did with the Paramount fade...going out of focus like that...nice.

Now, my ideas:

-There should be a scene where Indy go sits on a park bench at night. It's a wonderful cliche that has appeared in quite a few classic films, Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Apartment among them. Also, we should see Indy in a trench coat, something that hasn't yet appeared in the films as I recall, except perhaps at the airport in LC. Trench coat and sitting on the bench, perhaps falling asleep on it, with the fedora blowing away in the middle of the night. When he wakes up, there should be an even larger sense of depression, not because of the fedora, but because of something else I'm not sure of that basically relates to Indy losing his sense of heroism and worth (symbolized by the fedora).

-It would be a nice, melancholy sort of gag if we see the warehouse at first and we see somebody grab the bottle of Paramount Liquor and then start pushing a crate so we think it is a reference to Raiders, and much of the film will be about the Ark. But then we discover that the "old man" pushing the crate is actually Indy.
-As to the "bad guys," there should definitely be some ambiguity in this regard. There should be, at the very least, Americans and Soviets, with one tragic type of villain on either side, either a military man or a politician. There should be a main villain though, that is neither American or Soviet. Perhaps this could be a former colleague sort of thing. I had some thoughts on this months ago, but I can't seem to find them, I'm afraid. Just so long as it is always hard to tell who is good and who is evil, or even if such concepts actually exist.

Attila the Professor said:

-It would be a nice, melancholy sort of gag if we see the warehouse at first and we see somebody grab the bottle of Paramount Liquor and then start pushing a crate so we think it is a reference to Raiders, and much of the film will be about the Ark. But then we discover that the "old man" pushing the crate is actually Indy.

Click to expand...

or the crate could really be a case of wine

FADE IN:

<- Indy begins the movie in a Soviet prison in 1949, he is an incredibly bitter man, nothing more than a shell of what he had once been. He has been there since 1945 and the Soviets want his knowledge and expertise about x artifact.> -Posted By Bob

MATCH DISSOLVE PARAMOUNT MOUNTAIN TO:

The peak of a mountain top.

PULL BACK TO REVEAL:

Prison bars. We see the peak of the Soviet Mountain range in the background.

PULL BACK FURTHER TO REVEAL:

INDIANA JONES holding the prison bars looking out pleadingly through the prison window.
He looks rough and beaten. His lips are cut and bloodied. His classic garb has been ripped and torn.

He?s hurting. Bad.

INT. SOVIET PRISON - DAY

Footsteps appear from down the hall, echoing through the prison.
Indy turns from the window.
Suddenly, his knees buckle and he slumps to the ground, groaning.
A soviet guard stops in front of the prison cell.

SOVIET GUARD
Comrade Jones. Stand up and come to the doorway.

Jones groans about his leg, wincing as he reaches down.

SOVIET GUARD
Comrade Jones. I said you must stand up! NOW!

Indy struggles to get up, but he tumbles back to the floor wincing in pain.
The guard forcefully unlocks the door, throws it open and then charges toward Indy. The guard swings and kicks Indy hard.

Indy is thrown over on his side. He collects himself, then abruptly all the wincing disappears from his face.

Indy turns around and clocks the guard with the full strength of his swing.

The guard tumbles over, knocked out.

Indy frantically searches the guard for keys, then darts down the corridor...

TO BE CONTINUED...

thegreatimposter said:

Indy frantically searches the guard for keys, then darts down the corridor...TO BE CONTINUED...

Click to expand...

He takes the guards gun to.

I am always partial to the bad guy coming face to face with the good guy. I understand that is a big part of noir. Something like the bar scene in Cario, and the diner scene in "Heat" with Pacino and Dinero. Would something like this occur in a truely noir-ish film?