Current Forum: Session 10: Film Noir and Sexuality	Read 8 times 	
Date: 25-Mar-2001 23:40:23	
Author: DRAKE-BOYT, ELIZABETH D. <edd1290@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>	
Subject: A little plastic surgery? 	
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       I had not previously seen LA Confidential (Hansen: 1997) so could bring to the table no preconceived notions about it. I am also still working my way through what "film noir" really is, and learning to identify it when I see it even if I don't exactly understand what makes one film "noir-ish" and another film not. Certainly Aaron and Jeneen's beautiful and thorough presentation on powerpoint presents some interesting arguments promoting the idea that LA Confidential exemplifies the "film noir" tradition. 
       Even so, I find myself unconvinced, feeling rather more inclined to support David's position that LA Confidential is not a film noir, but just something trying to look like one. It is, in my opinion, much like Lyn and others of Patchet's elaborately reconstructed prostitutes, simply made up to look like a film noir, but unable to carry through the illusion into a true "noir" ending. Though David calls this film "neo-noir", I propose that LA Confidential is not even that, but more a "psudo-noir". At first, I thought the difference might lie in the fact that it was shot in color instead of black and white but, as David has pointed out, it is too highly lit to qualify as noir. 
       A real authentic film noir takes itself seriously as an existential expression, or point of view about life as a deeply personal experience; one in which the hero never quite finds the answer to "life's persistent questions" (as in Garrison Keelor's radio serial which parodies the noir tradition with the lost hero, "Guy Noir"). The uneasiness of noir, as Belton has pointed out, reflects a "post-war despair and alienation as a disoriented America readjusts to a new social and political reality." But LA Confidential seems to spoof that kind if disorientation and alienation without really believing in it. 
       While current film may be able to evoke some nostalgia for the 1950's through costuming, mise-en-scene attention to detail, and standard noir shots such as through the shadows of venetian blinds, it seems there is no turning back the clock psychologically. Neither Ed nor Bud retain a quest for the deeper meanings of life that would mark an existentialist self-reflectiveness essential for a noir hero. Even the voice over, supposedly of the journalist who is killed somewhere in the middle of the film does not completely satisfy the convention of a narrator. His words and tone of voice are somewhat sarcastic, especially at the start of the film. Just telling the audience that there is a dark side to the paradise of Los Angeles is not only superfluous (the nasty side will appear all too quickly to us anyway), it is self-conscious in a way that could not be self-questioning. And to add that it is "hush-hush", "on the quiet" and so on almost mocks the tension of that darkness in a way that eliminates it almost entirely. The words sound light and 
almost silly rather than mysterious and strange. 
       One of the film's running jokes, all too often thrown carelessly over the shoulder are the words, "just the facts." This is a catch phrase from a "noir" sort of black and white TV series that ran in the 1950's called "Dragnet" (Jack Webb). It was one of my favorite shows, in part because although each episode had a definite conclusion, supporting society strictures and a rigid moral code, the resolution, often bought at great personal expense, left me uneasy. In the interest of accuracy, Joe Friday and his partner were above emotion as they pursued "the facts" of each case very professionally, very cool, and therefore unshakably reliable. But justice in these stories was often a "pyrric victory". 
       There is no feeling of personal angst and search for meaning in LA Confidential. The character of Ed almost approaches the mental acuity of a noir hero, especially when he agrees to snitch on the cop beatings of the Mexicans accused of killing a fellow officer. There is no question to which he does not have a fast and complex answer before the investigative committee. Even so, his quest is not for some ultimate moral meaning--his quest is to find who is at the bottom of the corruption in the department. There is a thriller element in the search until the end, when it is discovered that Smith is the real villain. But it is as if the noir elements of the film had been made to act as part of the "never-when, never-where" backdrop to a basic cop flick. 
       I also wish to make the observation that Lynn is a pretty miserable excuse for a "femme fatale". She really is not on a par with the character of Phyllis (Double Indemnity). In the first place, she does doesn't have the wit to banter with either Bud or Ed, coming off at the short end of the exchange instead of surpassing her male opponent the way Phyllis does.In comparing two verbal exchanges--one from LA Confidential and one from Double Indemnity, the difference in the wit and its conclusion is plain.
Lynn: There's blood on your shirt. Is that an integral part of your job?
Bud: Yeah.
Lynn: Do you enjoy it?
Bud: When they deserve it.
Lynn: Did they deserve it today?
Bud: I'm not sure.
Lynn: But you did it anyway.
Bud: Yeah, just like the half dozen guys you screwed today.
Lynn: Well, actually it was only two.
There is then a slight change of topic. All Lynn is able to do is correct Bud in the number of men she had entertained that morning. But she in no way meets or surpasses him verbally in 
this, or any other exchange. And if she can't beat him, she can't be a real threat. All she does is betray Bud with Ed sexually. But any woman--intelligent or not--could have done the same.
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Walter:        Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
Walter: Suppose it doesn't take.
Phyllis: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
Walter: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.
Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband's shoulder.
Walter: That tears it.

       Walter here has been coldly turned by Phyllis--she has not allowed him to gain the upper hand even if she has to play dirty and bring her husband into the picture to do it. She is his 
hard-boiled match in such a way that her end is the only possible result of her intelligence, which has made her monstrous.
        It is true Lynn looks like a noir woman", especially when we first see her from Ed's point of view in the black cape with white lining. We, the audience, are made as eager to see her face as he is, and the camera obligingly, teasingly reveals her, the curl of her blonde hair over one eye as if she has something to hide, and she wears gowns evocative of the era of the 1950's, giving her a tall, vertical look. The décor of her apartment imitates her gown in its draperies, but then there is this odd repetition of oval-shaped entryways between rooms that, in an acknowledged moment of freakish thought, reminded me of Tolkien's description of a hobbit house in his fantasy, The Hobbit. But Lynn's apartment, like the film in general, allows her few shadows to hide in. 
       Finally, no self-respecting femme fatale would EVER be seen crying--her face all screwed up the way Lynn's was when Bud leaves her in anger for having been photographed playing "pattycakes" with Ed. This noir gal is too human to be truly fetishized, despite the way in which the camera dwells on her Veronica Lake simulation. 
        This LA Confidential doesn't seem to know exactly what genre it is. Its heros adhere to a rigid code of conduct like they would if it had been a Western. The killings and shootings in
series and Ed's determined ambition make me think the movie might have been trying to appeal to gangster film fans. But its almost happy ending with the two good guys surviving (Ed to get his medal, and Bud to get his gal) disrobes any ambiguous conclusion necessary to qualify LA Confidential as a real "film noir" type.