Film Noir and the Big Lebowski

What is film noir? Generally speaking it’s a movie wherein the main character is an antihero; with characters more grey than black or white.

“I couldn't be fonder of you if you were my own son. But, well, if you lose a son, it’s possible to get another. There's only one Maltese Falcon.”

A classic example is Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon. One of my all time favorite movies (also books! Dashiell Hammett writes them hard boiled, fast and angry), it stars Humphrey Bogart as a detective trying to track down his partners killer. He finds himself right in the middle of an exciting quest by some very bad people who are hot on the trail of the falcon. A dark movie with a dark ending, what makes this movie noir isn’t that the good guy dies (he doesn’t) or that the bad guys win (they don’t) or the amount of violence in it (surprisingly little) but the tone of the move; that dark, brooding life-will-wear-you-down mood. Going just by this movie, the Big Lebowski certainly isn’t noir, but there are films that prove a film can be both funny and dark in tone.

Rick: And remember, this gun is pointed right at your heart.
Captain Renault: That is my least vulnerable spot.

Casablanca. A romance classic; this movie is so misunderstood it shocks me that people don’t see how unromantic all of the characters in this movie really are. From Rick, a bad man who happens to still be in love with a woman who walked out on him, in fact, left him for her husband (!!), left him standing on a train platform in Paris just as the Germans rolled in (is there any doubt he should have died?). A dark movie, brilliantly acted by Humphrey Bogart (the king of noir, I should mention, he and Orson Welles made the best noir films of all time), Ingrid Bergman, Claude Raines (as the delightful Captain Renault) and Peter Lorre, one of the most prolific and memorable actors in noir, his “YOU BLITHERING IDIOT!” In the Maltese Falcon never fails to make me roar with laughter (his greatest role as the pedophile child murderer Hans Becket in M, is one of the most disturbing performances I have ever seen, it doesn’t make it onto my list of noir classics because it isn’t noir, but the first serial killer movie ever made).

Of course, there is murder, betrayal, gunplay and a crushing self defeat by Rick at the end of the movie, when he comes to the realization that he’s done it all for nothing, and if she doesn’t get on that plane se would regret it (maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of her life). It’s that kind of defeatist attitude that makes a noir for me.

“You were born to be murdered”

The Third Man, starring Orson Welles (before he got fat and turned into Captain Quinlan) as Harry Lime. Harry is dead, but how? Two men carried him across the street after the car accident that killed him, the day before his best friend (Martins) came to Vienna. Was there a third man there? Who left? What did Harry say? More detective story than noir mystery, what makes this movie great is the moral ambiguity of Martins, who starts off demanding to find out what happened to his friend and ends up as arbitrator of justice. What does it take to do what he did? Martins comes off as a nice guy, but by the end he’s harder than Spade in making tough choices concerning his friends. Also, the music in the movie is eeeeevil, it stays with you.

"That was the last killer that ever got out of my hands"

Orson Welles as Cpt. Quinalin and Charleston Heston as a Mexican detective (of all things) investigate a bombing. A young couple driving across the US/Mexico border is blown up with TNT, Charleston Heston is on vacation with his new wife and takes on the investigation, and on the US side is the corrupt Cpt. Quinlan, ready to frame, kill and deceive to close the case (then again, his wife was killed so now he drinks). Soon Heston’s wife is kidnapped and drugged, people are dying and everything happens too fast to make a great noir. Touch of Evil is a fantastic movie, a great detective story, plenty of action, but a dark, deliberate noir? Look elsewhere.

There are a slew of other great noir films, but those are the ones that make the genre for me. What then can we say about modern noir? Let’s take a look at a movie that came out in 2002: The Quiet American.

Based on an excellent book of the same name, The Quiet American is a great movie about the conflict and friendship between a passive observer of the Vietnam War (played by my favorite actor, Sir Michael Caine) and an American aid worker (played with surprising weight by Brendan Frasier) over a Vietnamese woman who left Caine for Fraser. An insightful period piece where Caine makes some very disturbing and hard to follow decisions at the expense of his young (if not as innocent as he appears) friend, this movie showed me that noir doesn’t have to be a slow deliberate mystery, but can be a political statement and a moral statement.

"I'll tell you what I'm blathering about... I've got information man! New shit has come to light! And shit... man, she kidnapped herself. Well sure, man. Look at it... a young trophy wife, in the parlance of our times, you know, and she, uh, uh, owes money all over town, including to known pornographers, and that's cool... that's, that's cool, I'm, I'm saying, she needs money, man. And of course they're going to say that they didn't get it, because... she wants more, man! She's got to feed the monkey, I mean uh... hasn't that ever occurred to you, man? Sir?"

So, the question before us is: is The Big Lebowski a classic style film noir?

Well, the answer is difficult. It is obviously meant to be one; it has all of the characteristics of a film noir: kidnapping (like in Touch of Evil), moral ambiguity (like in the Maltese Falcon), a treasure which turns out to be worthless when examined closely (Maltese Falcon again), evil Germans (as the Third Man, Casablanca and the Maltese Falcon pointed out, a German villain is the very best kind of villain), a woman who wants our protagonist but not enough to stay with him (Casablanca) and someone coming back from the dead (The Third Man).

Really, what it comes down to is this: what is the overall tone of the movie? The movie had many brilliantly funny moments and is considered a comedy classic. Overall the movie felt dark, disturbing, with hallucinations, forced ingestion of LSD, Germans threatening castration and the amputation of a woman’s toe. Certainly the movie ends on a down note (Donnie who loved bowling) but the mixed messages inherent in the expression “the Dude abides” certainly lead one to conclude that nothing so far out of the ordinary has occurred. The Dude is a sick man indeed if he can take the passing of his friend with such a blasé attitude, even going so far as to go bowling immediately after his funeral. Are we also to believe that Mr. Lebowksi (the younger) will care for his offspring? Obviously not, do not be fooled, for all his charm and witless stumbling over words more complicated than “man” he is a dark individual indeed; drunk, drugged and heartless.

Other favorite noir movies:

The Big Sleep

Once Upon a Time in America

Ronin

Sin City

The French Connection

The Long Goodbye