Film Noir...in Color?

[Seb Lucas]

I'm personally opposed to colorizing classic film noir movies... However, I have been amazed by modern colored noir movies. One of my favorite films in recent years was Brick by Rian Johnson (director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi). Trailer below:

I highly recommend checking this movie out.

It's a cute film but it's not so much noir as a parody of noir, complete with "hard boiled " dialogue all set in a high school. Highly watchable.

 

[blueAZNmonkey]

It's a cute film but it's not so much noir as a parody of noir, complete with "hard boiled " dialogue all set in a high school. Highly watchable.

I'm not sure I would classify Brick as a parody, per se. It takes itself too seriously overall. Perhaps insofar as it is a commentary on noir, it's a parody. But I would certainly still consider it a noir film. It's taken the elements and in a very serious way, applied them to modern cinema.

 

[Seb Lucas]

A parody doesn't have to be played for laughs. Doing it seriously is really the only good way to play satire. The po-faced, laconic seriousness of Brick is part of the film's satirical approach, giving us all a complete set of hard boiled, noir attributes (characters, tropes, cinematography, 1940's dialogue) set ultra-incongruously in a modern, semi-rural high school. That's pretty funny right there. I must say my friends and I laughed all the way through Brick, in appreciation of the amusing contradictions and juxtapositions. It's not a broad spoof, it's a deeply ironic parody that plays it straight and is all the more infectious because of this.

 

[blueAZNmonkey]

A parody doesn't have to be played for laughs. Doing it seriously is really the only good way to play satire. The po-faced, laconic seriousness of Brick is part of the film's satirical approach, giving us all a complete set of hard boiled, noir attributes (characters, tropes, cinematography, 1940's dialogue) set ultra-incongruously in a modern, semi-rural high school. That's pretty funny right there. I must say my friends and I laughed all the way through Brick, in appreciation of the amusing contradictions and juxtapositions. It's not a broad spoof, it's a deeply ironic parody that plays it straight and is all the more infectious because of this.

True that -- placing the archetypes of a genre into an unusual setting is certainly a parody move. Glad you enjoyed it -- I love this movie.