洛杉矶是黑色电影之都 | 经济学人文化
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“Middle of a drought and the water commissioner drowns,” the mortician remarks drily to Jake Gittes, a private investigator played by Jack Nicholson (pictured): “Only in la.” Indeed. June 20th marks the 50th anniversary of the release of “Chinatown”, the film truest to the Los Angeles of the countless noirs set in America’s second-most-populous city. Other films revolve around Hollywood—or at least its dark, gritty edges—where every millionaire, wannabe actor and insurance agent has a secret worth killing for. But Gittes was fixated on water, or the lack thereof, a perennial problem in a city that is otherwise constantly changing.
Film noir was so named by French critics after the second world war. It is a style of film-making that often features a cynical anti-hero who either sleuths for a living or finds himself accidentally drawn into an investigation. Think of Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe in “The Big Sleep” (1946), a film based on Raymond Chandler’s novel. Or of Barton Keyes, an insurance claims investigator, hellbent on sniffing out fraud in “Double Indemnity” (1944). There is a good chance that crooked cops, cover-ups, pretty blondes and business tycoons will turn up at some point in the story. The closest thing to a happy ending is that not everyone will end up dead.
“Chinatown” was released several decades after the genre’s heyday in the 1940s-50s. The film, and the “neo noirs” that followed it, tried to strike a balance between paying homage to the classics and turning the genre on its head. In 1982 “Blade Runner” transported viewers to the futuristic Los Angeles of 2019. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) searches for bioengineered humans who are not supposed to be on Earth, let alone in the City of Angels.
Crime flicks can be made about any city. But Los Angeles cornered the market back when Chandler was writing screenplays. Many great crime novelists have lived there, including Chandler and, later, James Ellroy. But their novels need not be adapted faithfully. “Double Indemnity”, after all, was based on a murder in Queens.
Why does Los Angeles continue to play a leading role in film noir? Its status as America’s long-reigning film capital is part of it. The city also lends itself to film noir because it is such a study in contrasts. The relentless sunshine and skinny palm trees jar with the genre’s violence and corruption. la is where people come to make it, and only a few succeed.
What happens to those who are disappointed? Wannabe starlets become call girls. Men who cannot pay their mortgage become muscle for mobsters. Danny DeVito, who plays a smarmy tabloid journalist in the neo-noir “la Confidential” (1997), based on a novel by Mr Ellroy, gives an oleaginous monologue that encapsulates the duality of la noir. “You’d think this place was the garden of Eden,” he says, “but there’s trouble in paradise.”
A newer spate of la noirs fetishise the genre even while challenging its conventions. In the television series “Lucifer”, the lord of Hell solves murders alongside a city detective. There are sometimes musical numbers to offset all the killing. In “Sugar”, which premiered on Apple tv in April, John Sugar, a private investigator, is a cinephile. He wears a suit and drives an old Corvette in the mould of Marlowe or Gittes. A girl goes missing, and as Sugar investigates, he finds each member of her family to be corrupt in their own way. Sugar, too, loses sight of himself the more he obsesses over the case. The series even begins in black and white and features old film clips throughout.
But unlike the classics, Mr Sugar is no sarcastic anti-hero. In fact, he is nice. He does not sneer, antagonise police or hit women. He does not like guns. He helps the homeless and even adopts a dog. It is a far cry from the blood-soaked impunity of “la Confidential”, in which almost everyone is unlikeable and gets shot. He solves his case and saves the girl.
Gittes is not so lucky. His efforts, like many a private investigator in film noir, prove futile. “Forget it, Jake,” his partner says when the woman he wants to protect is killed. “It’s Chinatown.”
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