Screenwriter Scott Frank emerged as a master of snappy gags in the '90s when he adapted crime novelist Elmore Leonard's witty stories “Get Shorty” and “Out of Sight.” So it seemed natural that Frank, after creating the Emmy-winning projects “Godless” and “The Queen's Gambit,” would want to tap into film noir’s rich tradition of intelligent conversation when he approached veteran writer-producer Tom Fontana (“Homicide”). , “Oz”) with a proposal.
Fontana recalls, “Scott took me out to lunch and literally said, 'Sam Spade, South of France, 20 years after 'The Maltese Falcon.'” I said, 'I'm in.'”
And so began the story of “Monsieur Spade.”
Spearheading a mini-renaissance of black television inspired by the black-and-white crime thrillers that captivated audiences in the 1940s and '50s, AMC's six-episode series stars Clive Owen as Dashiell Hammett's famed detective, forced to come out of retirement in 1963 when nuns at a nearby convent are murdered. Apple TV+ has “Sugar,” starring Colin Farrell as a film-loving private detective in contemporary Los Angeles hired to locate a missing woman. Two more, from Netflix, join the genre. “Ripley,” which uses noir-style light and shadow compositions to visualize the misadventures of a murderous con artist (Andrew Scott), and Guy Ritchie's “The Gentlemen,” which lends a British accent to the tough “lady” archetype in the person of Kaya Scodelario's deadpan crime boss, Susie Glass.
Each show reflects in its own way the influence of a gritty genre that placed world-weary protagonists in cold, uncaring worlds, armed only with their wits, fists, guns, and rat-a-tat dialogue.
In the case of “Monsieur Spade,” Fontana says he and Frank, who also directed the series, strove to create a concise main character worthy of the canon. “For us, the key to writing the dialogue was understanding Sam's attitude toward the people he had these exchanges with: when he had to be respectful and when he could be rude. [Sometimes] Spade throws out a smart line and it's like a defense mechanism: 'Don't get too close to me.'”
To avoid any appearance of a noir parody, Fontana says, “Scott made a conscious decision to shoot noir dialogue in the sun, which I think helps make it look fresher. There aren't all those strange angles and shadows found in the film noir manual. 'Monsieur Spade' is shot almost like a French film from the '60s, but the words are like Hammett's.”
Series star Owen, a longtime fan of film noir in general and “Maltese Falcon” star Humphrey Bogart in particular, was immediately enthusiastic about the “Monsieur Spade” script. “I remember having a meeting with Scott and saying, 'Don't be scared because I'm not going to do a bad impersonation, but I'm really looking into Bogart for this because I think it's useful to have him as a model.' ' and Scott said to me, 'That's so strange because when I wrote this, I had to listen to Bogart say the lines [in my head] to know that I had achieved it.'”
The actor, who keeps old posters of “Maltese Falcon” and “The Big Sleep” on the walls of his office, discovered Bogart in London repertory houses in the 1980s while studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. I saw 'Casablanca' and that's when I went down the Bogart rabbit hole,” Owen says. “Acting changed a little bit after the Bogart era because Brando came along and suddenly we're seeing people struggling to express themselves. “People think he's laconic, but Bogart was actually very snappy with his dialogue.”
Owen admires the enormous speed with which film noir characters delivered their lines. In keeping with that tradition, his Monsieur Spade never hesitates, never pauses, never says “um.”
“If you look back at those movies, you see that they are quick-minded people, and when you can do it [the scene] At high speed, that is when intelligence manifests itself. Black dialogue has restraint, wit and economy. I don't want big speeches about what I feel and what I think,” he says. “Noir is expressed through what people do. [The heroes] Don't tell you how they feel or think.”
Colin Farrell shows “sensitivity and wounds” in his character of John Sugar.
(Jason LaVeris/Apple TV+)
Apple TV+’s “Sugar,” like “Monsieur Spade,” forgoes the shadowy world of black-and-white film noir to surround private detective John Sugar in the warm light of Southern California. But director Fernando Meirelles, justified by the hero's passion for old films, interpolated the narrative with fragments of film noir classics such as “Kiss Me Deadly” (1955), “The Big Heat” (1953), “Double Indemnity” (1944) and Bogart. -Starring “Dead Reckoning” (1947).
“We were inspired by many noir characters and films, but it was Fernando Meirelles and his editor, Fernando Stutz, who experimented with the film clips during the director's cut,” says “Sugar” producer Audrey Chon. “We were excited to see the intercutting of scenes within the show. [as a way] play with time and place.”
“Sugar,” created by Mark Protosevich, uses a characteristic film noir device, the deadpan voice-over, to help define its protagonist as a suave detective who subverts the tough-guy persona by giving a homeless man $100 bills and accepting a stray dog who looks right at home in the passenger seat of Sugar's vintage Corvette. Chon notes: “There is an impenetrability with traditional detectives that makes them inaccessible. We loved this idea of a detective with sensitivity and wounds that he does not hide. Sugar talks openly about his feelings and fears. He feels very real and modern.”
While Hollywood's golden age of film noir peaked in a postwar America that welcomed cynical detectives and wise criminals, today's hard-boiled crime stories continue to find an audience. Owen thinks he knows why. “People assume that film noir is full of immoral characters, but I think that in good film noir, the main character is trying to do the right thing in a harsh, dark world. “When people have a decent moral compass, we like those characters.”
