Posted by WisconsinMark
on 11/7/2009, 7:26 pm, in reply to "Re: Surreal images in The Lineup and elsewhere"
75.141.208.135 | Message modified by user WisconsinMark 11/8/2009, 9:03 am
I love that word, "oneiric." The subject of oneiric imagery in noir is practically an infinite one, it seems to me, since movies are essentially oneiric to begin with, a form of dreaming in the dark with your eyes open, and noir as a night-based form is doubly so. Even a pseudo-documentary such as He Walked By Night becomes oneiric when you mix in John Alton cinematography and an underground sewer setting.
Don is right that many Forties noirs (and related films such as Portrait of Jennie) are flat-out dream-like -- Murder My Sweet and The Third Man come immediately to mind. But there are a number of later entrants that are no less so -- The Big Combo hits me that way, and Blast of Silence is dream-like from start to finish.
Paranoid films, with their inherent nightmarish qualities, are often oneiric. I'm thinking of fringe noirs such as Seconds and The Parallax View.
Patrick Murtha's Diary
http://patrickmurthasdiary.blogspot.com/
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