Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Joe Schmoe
One of the arguements about "Sunset Boulevard" is whether it is a true "noir" film. The defining element of film noir, according to scholars, is how the main character has been chosen by fate for no particular reason to have bad things happen to them. What do you all think? Was Joe Gillis a victim of fate, or was he done in by his own choices? And did he make a good hero, or did he deserve his fate?
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8 comments:
I don't know enough about noir films to know whether "Sunset Boulevard" is a "true" one, but I don't think Joe Gillis was a victim of fate. He made his own choices all along the way, motivated by money and pity and selfishness. He got sucked in, perhaps, but I didn't see him as a victim.
I was thinking about this too while watching. There are more funny lines than I remember, but they also tend to be in keeping with the deadpan wisecracks of noir.
I was also thing about how Hollywood prefers happy endings, but noir films don’t have happy endings since they are a type of tragedy. The romance between Joe and Betty was developing very nicely, and they even got her awkward prior engagement out of the way. In a typical sort of film, the audience would expect Joe to escape from Norma and have a promising career married to Betty. The audience would howl to have him shot instead. But in this movie, you know that the romance is doomed before it even starts because you have already seen Joe floating in the pool. So does knowing the outcome up front make it easier to take the bleak ending?
You see that Joe could choose differently at various points, but you know that he won’t. Out of weakness, he refuses to face how awful his circumstance is and how he could really improve if he would commit. So perhaps he is a victim of fate only by being fatalistic.
I thought that the way he was a victim of fate was how he was a studio writer down on his luck because the studio system was in decline. So it kind of made him a victim of fate, but it wasn't just him who was a victim.
The rest of the way he did have choices to make, and he always took the easy way rather than making the tough choices until the end, which was too late.
I don't think he deserved to be killed, but I honestly didn't feel too bad that he died. It was really sort of fitting in the scheme of things. And yes, to answer DW's question, I think knowing the outcome made the ending less bleak.
I appreciated that there was no happy ending for Joe. Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake end up together in two of their three noir pairs. "Laura" gets the right man. I just watched "Kiss Me Deadly," and an especially wooden protagonist evidently cast for his good looks is spared his life and gets the girl. Part of me wants Joe to win Betty and sneak away because that's what I'm used to. It was better, both as true noir and gut-wrenching storytelling, for him to send Betty away and never get out of that house alive.
Ok George, can we believe Betty when she says that there was some real talent in Joe’s writing that just needed development? Or is her judgment unworthy because of her attraction to him?
If he has talent but just has failed to make the effort to apply it, then the failure is personal. But if he is just an average cog, then his failure is nothing but the bad luck of being in a shrinking instead of growing industry.
So it might depend on what you think of Betty.
DW, I believe Betty because she wasn't the only one to comment on his potential. Both his agent and Betty's fiance (or maybe it was the studio exec) commented on how talented he was but hadn't applied himself properly.
It was probably easier for Joe when he first got to Hollywood because studios hired writers under contract and gave them plenty of things to write (think Barton Fink); much of it didn't hit the screen, and while the writers didn't make a lot of money they still drew a steady paycheck. The end of the studio system meant writers had to come up with their own ideas and pitch them to the studios independently. This seem to be where Joe just couldn't put it together, since he had all the tools: friends and contacts in the industry, two credits with his name, and an agent.
Oh, I hadn’t thought about that angle. There is a huge difference between salary and free lance. Joe just isn’t the kind of guy with any gusto for pitching his talents—he’s not the salesman type.
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