Neo-noir isn't a genre only for the 2000's. They made neo-noir films already back in the 1980's, films that were knowingly full of neon lights, femme fatales, crooks with guns, heroes with raincoats, set in the fifties or the sixties, with the soundtrack blasting jazz or old rock'n'roll. Heck, someone might say that
Chinatown and Dick Richards's Chandler film
Farewell My Lovely with Mitchum as Philip Marlowe were neo-noir films.
One of the neo-noir films from the late eighties is now pretty forgotten
The Big Town (1987). It seems forgotten even though it boasts a stellar line-up of actors: Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Tommy Lee Jones, Tom Skerritt, Bruce Dern... I watched this just now, since I bought it very cheap on VHS. I'd seen the film when it was new, and I'm pretty sure I wrote a review of it for a local newspaper (I was 15 at the time, so the review might not have been very good). I remember thinking that it was a mediocre film even at the time, but for some reason it has stuck with me. I liked going back to it, even though I think the film is still mediocre. Matt Dillon and Diane Lane are very attractive and the theme of a young rookie invading the dice scene of a big town - here Chicago - is always alluring. But some of the motives behind the people's actions in the film remain unclear and the film drags in the middle. TV director Ben Bolt doesn't get everything out of the events and the scenes just keep on following each other. He also doesn't get the best out of the actors and lets some rule the scene, especially Bruce Dern, who just shouts and yells. (Incidentally, I also saw
Silent Running with Dern and the same thing there, too. He almost ruined the whole film.)
The Big Town is based on a novel by
Clark Howard, called
The Arm from 1967. I haven't read the novel, but I'm sure his style and voice bring more depth to the story that otherwise remains pretty bland, as his short stories are very,
very good. I wish someone who's read the book would comment on how it differs from the film.
I mention this book in my Pulpografia in the entry for Clark Howard, but I've actually never read it - until now. Dirt Rich (1986) is a long, sweeping epic on Texas, oil, fatherless sons, tyrant fathers, absent sisters, treacherous wives and hard-working men. The story starts from 1918 and ends just after World War II, and there are also some backflashes to the days of Wild West. Lots of things happen in the 800 pages of the book.
