Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and cultural splicing/time travelling…

  • Dead Men Dont Wear Plaid-Steve Martin-Rachel Ward-Carl Reiner-1982-film noir-Afterhours Sleaze and Dignity-4
    Well, I guess lightening the tone a little after a consideration or two of the noir-ish time travelling of James Ellroy a touch more imaginative/cultural time travelling…

    Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.

    Dead Men Dont Wear Plaid-Steve Martin-Rachel Ward-Carl Reiner-1982-film noir-Afterhours Sleaze and Dignity-2This is a 1982 film starring a kind of dashing Steve Martin, a rather appealing Rachel Ward… oh and amongst others Barbara Standwyck, Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Veronica Lake, Lana Turner, James Cagney and a slightly jarring and unsettling for some reason Vincent Price…

    Not a bad cast list…

    Dead Men Dont Wear Plaid-Steve Martin-Rachel Ward-Carl Reiner-1982-film noir-Afterhours Sleaze and DignityIt was made in the days pre computer jiggery pokery and splices contemporary action with archival footage from 1940s films into something that is both an homage and loving spoof of 1940s film noir, period pulp detective fiction, their iconography, style, lighting, tales, tropes and language; all femme fatales who are also dames who need his help and night driving gumshoe-ery.

    Dead Men Dont Wear Plaid-Steve Martin-Rachel Ward-Carl Reiner-1982-film noir-Afterhours Sleaze and Dignity-3Along the way the film wanders amongst and walks alongside amongst other films This Gun For Hire, Double Indemnity, The Killers, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, White Heat, The Postman Always Rings Twice… with Phillip Marlowe handing out advice in the form of the aforementioned Mr Bogart (oh and touch or two of needlepoint – this is a comedy after all).

    I suppose in a way the film could be to use a form of sampling – a technique that we have come to be used to in say music but that in mainstream cinematic and broadcast storytelling we don’t expect to see… and I suppose sampling is also a form of (cultural) time travelling…

    Further information on precisely which pieces of cinematic history are spliced in the film can be found here. Peruse the film here.

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