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If he was going to make it work, Kasdan needed to demonstrate a thorough knowledge and understanding of the material a firm grasp of the “essence” of noir, not just its surface. However, while selecting a genre that many consider to be long-deceased may be a bold move for any filmmaker, doing so for your debut picture is practically suicidal. Flying in the face of this conventional wisdom, Lawrence Kasdan attempted to prove that film noir was not only alive, it could actually be more relevant than ever. It was great while it lasted, but it wasn’t coming back. Like the screwball comedy, noir was only a temporal manifestation in motion pictures a fond memory of a bygone era. Thus, outside of that particular period of history, film noir didn’t (and couldn’t) exist. Film noir, as the intellectual elite elucidated, was the kind of movie that resulted from a very specific economic, cultural and socio-political climate: namely post-WWII. This prompted many film scholars and historians to declare, as many still do today, that film noir was essentially a dead genre. Several directors had attempted to recreate this much beloved and time-honored type of film but, aside from a few notable exceptions, with little success unfortunately. I am talking, of course, about Body Heat.īy the late 70’s/early 80’s, film noir had become virtually non-existent.
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Before creating the enthusiastically optimistic Western Silverado, before almost singlehandedly starting the “oldie-scored nostalgia” film genre (thank you very much, Cameron Crowe) with The Big Chill and before interweaving multiple stories into a deep and richly textured study of racial prejudice and urban living in modern day Los Angeles (pre-dating Crash by a good 14 years) in Grand Canyon, Lawrence Kasdan-then known primarily as the co-writer of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back (movies that, for my money, represent the best of their trilogies) brought to theatre audiences in 1981 one of the sexiest, most stylish and most thoroughly engaging pieces of neo-noir to grace the silver screen in a long time.