Rudolph Maté’s D.O.A. (1950)

Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, in their book Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, call Rudolph Maté’s D.O.A., which stands for “dead on arrival,” an “unusually cynical film.” That’s quite an eye-opening statement considering that one of the defining characteristics of classic film noir is its cynicism. That’s like saying SPA is an unusually educational place to go to school. It seems to us that when you tell stories about characters who are either obsessed or, more likely, alienated and thrown into a fatalistic, irrational world where the primary protagonist is not so much another person as the malevolent force of a corrupt society, and they end up dead, then cynicism is a natural result.

D.O.A. has a great plot. It’s about a certified public accountant named Frank Bigelow who goes on vacation to San Francisco. Feeling sick, he consults a doctor and learns that he has been poisoned (radiation!) and has only a day or two to live. He begins to search for his killers.

So here we have another film noir protagonist who will be destroyed by forces outside his control, joining doomed men such as Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) in Double Indemnity, Frank Chambers (John Garfield) in The Postman Always Rings Twice, Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden) in Asphalt Jungle, and Jeff (Robert Mitchum) in Out of the Past. Each reaches a point in the story when he accepts what will happen, embraces the inevitably of his destruction. Silver and Ward suggest “this resignation to being annihilated by a relentless, deterministic abstraction, is the only, bitter solace that the noir vision permits.” If that’s not cynical, then we don’t know what is.

But here’s the point. Cynicism is not a pleasant or respected outlook on life. It involves pessimism, disdain, disparagement, distrust, contempt, and a whole host of other rather ugly words that fly in the face of what we believe to be the American spirit. Yet film noir was and is again a relatively popular genre. (Heck, D.O.A. itself was remade in 1988 starring film’s paragon of pert perkiness, Meg Ryan.) So what’s our obsession with film noir?

Perhaps it is because Americans see themselves as an optimistic, Fate beating, can-do people that we are fascinated by the seamy underbelly of it all, like children, grossed-out but drawn to and fascinated enough to gather around and poke at fresh roadkill. Maybe film noir is another form of thriller, where the audience can sit for a couple hours, watch a life transformed by horror, feel the frisson of “there but for the grace of god…” and then walk blithely out of the theater, into the sun and home to dinner.

Film noir says we are all corrupt in some way, all vulnerable to Fate, all out of sync with society, all at sea in an existential world, all involved with people whose motives we don’t really understand and really shouldn’t trust. Do we believe it? Maybe the only thing that protects us from such a reality, and the cynicism that would result, is that we don’t, that we trust in good, in hope, in honesty, and the benevolence of our fellow men. Maybe, if we believe that hard enough, it’ll be true. And maybe Frank Bigelow will find his killer, convince him to reveal some unexpected antidote, and survive his personal nightmare. Check yourself; see how many times you think such a thing will happen as you watch D.O.A. Then you’ll know if you’re a cynic.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Francis Veber’s La Chèvre (1981)

Americans don’t think about foreign films very much. Or perhaps they don’t think very much of foreign films. Yes, we give an Academy Award for best foreign language film, and you can pay $8.50 to see a few at the Lagoon. But in general going to the movies and spending a couple hours reading subtitles ranks up there with throwing a party and inviting friends to work on your math homework with you. But after you’ve seen a lot of movies, and we have, watching only movies made in Hollywood is like getting a box of assorted chocolates – coconut cream, butter rum, maple cream, peanut cluster, dark chocolate truffle, strawberry cream – and only eating the caramels. (And our momma always said: life was like a box of chocolates…).

Most of the negative perception about foreign films is pure horse-pucky and unsubstantiated prejudice. Are foreign films too long? What’s too long? Forrest Gump is 142 minutes. Spider-man 3 is 139 minutes. Troy is 163 ... oh, wait … 201 minutes in the director’s cut. And really, length is a matter of perception. Bad movies seem slow; great movies seem brief. One supposes that if you have to work at a film, like maybe reading subtitles, it might seem longer, but foreign language films compensate in a number of ways.

One important one is narrative variety. We love film because we love stories. The movie theater is just a modern version of the campfire we sat around after the hunt thousands of years ago. One of the frustrating things about Hollywood is how frequently it seems to repackage the same story over and over. A French or Chinese or Spanish or Korean – wow, seen a Korean film lately?! – is going to tell a somewhat different story, with different textures, different pacing, different approaches to narrative.

Would an American film-maker have ended Pan’s Labyrinth, the way Guillermo Del Toro did? (Well, maybe Martin Scorsese.)

Would an American film-maker have rounded off The Lives of Others with multiple dénouments, giving the audience a deeper sense of perspective the way von Donnersmarck did? Nah. Roll the credits.

Would an American film-maker have lingered on the dead face of a usurping emperor, allowing you to realize fully the consequences of his death, the way Feng Xiaogang did in The Banquet. Probably not. Heck, even Zeffirelli didn’t linger long on Mel Gibson’s dead mug in Hamlet. Bring in Fortinbras, and let’s get this thing over with! This is not to say that foreign films are slow (and most of those that are make you love their pace). Most are not. Tonight we’re showing Francis Veber’s La Chevre, a light comedy about two bumbling detectives on a missing persons case, which clocks in at a brisk 91 minutes.

Finally, one of the biggest jokes about the reticence to see foreign film is the hypocrisy. Right now some of the most interesting film-makers in the US making Hollywood films are foreign born: the aforementioned Del Toro (Hellboy), Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain), Alfonso Cuaron (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), Richard Rodriguez (Sin City), Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted), John Woo (Face/Off), etc. According to the Christian Science Monitor, Hollywood frequently turns to foreign talent in order to “bring a fresh eye to shop-worn formula pictures.” So, we ask, why wait for that talent to come here. Why not see it in the original, not only for its “fresh eye” but for its approach to non-shop-worn narratives.

Francis Veber is just such a talent. He’s been writing top-drawer French comedies since 1972 (many of which, including La Cage Aux Folles, have been made in to American films) and directing them since 1976, including The Dinner Game, The Closet and, recently, The Valet. So sit back, and read, and enjoy. Think of it as a rare raspberry cream in a box of otherwise dull caramels.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser