Neo noir: Body Heat Pt1
For my money, this is the first real neo noir film. Yes, there were films such as Chinatown but they were too busy being homages to something. This is the first neo noir where the people making it were willing to get a little Gothic about it. They got right inside the conventions and had fun with them. I'll say more about why I think it works so well tomorrow.
(General note: This movie also comes with a heavydoes dose* of eroticism. If you really don't like that sort of thing, you really won't like this movie. Your loss.)
* I hate auto-correct.
The manliness lesson
Ned Racine is a familiar type. Here he is:
And here is his car:
This is a guy we all dream of being and all feel some shame at the thought that we might become him. He was an undistinguished student who became an undistinguished lawyer. He just floats through life vaguely hoping that some big break will just land in his lap.
Ned's friend Lowenstein sums him up nicely when Ned asks why a judge he and Lowenstein have just argued a case before dislikes him.
In this movie it is Ned's willingness to overcome what he sees as weakness in himself that brings disaster on him.
I don't want to say more because I don't want to spoil what is a a perfect little movie. And I do mean perfect in the same way that The Third Man is perfect. Someone, I can't remember who, once said that that The Third Man is perfect because it doesn't aim too high. That is true here too. But such perfection.
One teaser for those who haven't seen it, there is a magnificent scene where the murder victim inadvertently inspires his murderer into killing him.
The aesthetics of manliness
The movie comes with the same heavy dose of nostalgia for the recent technological past I noted in Palmetto. Note the car above. That is the Corvette Sting Ray from the mid 1960s and not the 1970s model (simply called the "Corvette" because "Sting Ray" was no longer cool) that was apparently designed to resemble a penis. That earlier (non penis-like) Sting Ray used in the film is something only a man, and probably only a certain kind of man, would get but those of us who do get it instantly. The Sting Rays weren't painted but had a gel coat on the fiberglass body that faded in the sun just the way this one has. That is a dream car not a museum piece.
(Lawrence Kasdan brings this motif back in The Big Chill where William Hurt's character shows up in a bondo-grey coloured Porsche. As Ned might say, "It was just, perfect".)
The thing about all this technology is that it was all still around when this movie was made in 1981. None of it was collectable yet but there was a nostalgie de la boue that attached to this stuff for men.
Some of it was quite simple. If you went to a rundown movie theatre in 1981, you would have quite likely seen this popcorn machine.
That is perhaps confusing for some now because if you go to the very newest movie theatres, you will quite likely see a machine that is modeled on that one. In 1981, however, this machine was a sign of a world fast disappearing.
And if you go to a hip lunch place where all the trendy types go to today, it just might look like this.
But in 1981, this sort of place was rapidly disappearing. To find one, you had to go the parts of town trendy people wouldn't get caught dead in.
Again, some hip young executive would probably spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to recreate this office today. In 1981, you'd find an office like this upstairs from a hardware store downtown where no one wanted to have their business located.
People forget how utterly horrible the 1970s were. Here is a simple background shot from the movie and nothing in it was meant to have special significance.
But note that car. That ugly red piece of crap was what the Ford Mustang had become by 1980. And ugly is as ugly does, no matter how appalling it may look, that is nothing compared to driving one of them. No wonder men rebelled. And movies like this embodied that feeling of rebellion.
Part 2.
For my money, this is the first real neo noir film. Yes, there were films such as Chinatown but they were too busy being homages to something. This is the first neo noir where the people making it were willing to get a little Gothic about it. They got right inside the conventions and had fun with them. I'll say more about why I think it works so well tomorrow.
(General note: This movie also comes with a heavy
* I hate auto-correct.
The manliness lesson
Ned Racine is a familiar type. Here he is:
And here is his car:
This is a guy we all dream of being and all feel some shame at the thought that we might become him. He was an undistinguished student who became an undistinguished lawyer. He just floats through life vaguely hoping that some big break will just land in his lap.
Ned's friend Lowenstein sums him up nicely when Ned asks why a judge he and Lowenstein have just argued a case before dislikes him.
He's an unhappy man, Thinks he should be Circuit Court by now. Here he is in a state with really top-notch corruption and he's stuck with the county toilets.Except he doesn't really want the big score because he doesn't do anything to get it; he simple feels he deserves it. And this attitude prevails in his approach to women. When he first meets with Matty he has this conversation.
I'm surprised you weren't in on that toilet caper. Could have been that quick score you've always been searching for.
Ned: Me? I need tending. I need someone to take care of me. Rub my tired muscles. Smooth out my sheets.And here is where Body Heat does something that is really profound and perverse at the same time. Matty is the woman who inspires Ned to marry. And she inspires him to give up on feeling entitled and to work to really earn that big break he has always wanted. She also inspires him to be discreet about his love life and to really respect a woman for the first time in his life. And, in doing so, she lures him straight into an unholy travesty of everything that love and life are supposed to be.
Matty: Get married.
Ned: I just need it for tonight.
In this movie it is Ned's willingness to overcome what he sees as weakness in himself that brings disaster on him.
I don't want to say more because I don't want to spoil what is a a perfect little movie. And I do mean perfect in the same way that The Third Man is perfect. Someone, I can't remember who, once said that that The Third Man is perfect because it doesn't aim too high. That is true here too. But such perfection.
One teaser for those who haven't seen it, there is a magnificent scene where the murder victim inadvertently inspires his murderer into killing him.
The aesthetics of manliness
The movie comes with the same heavy dose of nostalgia for the recent technological past I noted in Palmetto. Note the car above. That is the Corvette Sting Ray from the mid 1960s and not the 1970s model (simply called the "Corvette" because "Sting Ray" was no longer cool) that was apparently designed to resemble a penis. That earlier (non penis-like) Sting Ray used in the film is something only a man, and probably only a certain kind of man, would get but those of us who do get it instantly. The Sting Rays weren't painted but had a gel coat on the fiberglass body that faded in the sun just the way this one has. That is a dream car not a museum piece.
(Lawrence Kasdan brings this motif back in The Big Chill where William Hurt's character shows up in a bondo-grey coloured Porsche. As Ned might say, "It was just, perfect".)
The thing about all this technology is that it was all still around when this movie was made in 1981. None of it was collectable yet but there was a nostalgie de la boue that attached to this stuff for men.
Some of it was quite simple. If you went to a rundown movie theatre in 1981, you would have quite likely seen this popcorn machine.
That is perhaps confusing for some now because if you go to the very newest movie theatres, you will quite likely see a machine that is modeled on that one. In 1981, however, this machine was a sign of a world fast disappearing.
And if you go to a hip lunch place where all the trendy types go to today, it just might look like this.
But in 1981, this sort of place was rapidly disappearing. To find one, you had to go the parts of town trendy people wouldn't get caught dead in.
Again, some hip young executive would probably spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to recreate this office today. In 1981, you'd find an office like this upstairs from a hardware store downtown where no one wanted to have their business located.
People forget how utterly horrible the 1970s were. Here is a simple background shot from the movie and nothing in it was meant to have special significance.
But note that car. That ugly red piece of crap was what the Ford Mustang had become by 1980. And ugly is as ugly does, no matter how appalling it may look, that is nothing compared to driving one of them. No wonder men rebelled. And movies like this embodied that feeling of rebellion.
Part 2.
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