"noir"

'Shades of Noir - film and novel' _{a
seminar at the International Federation of Teachers of
English, Melbourne 2003}

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Copyright © Carmel Bird 2002.
All rights reserved.
Cherry Black Velvet Thoughts
For me, noir is not really black, it’s that dark dark cherry red you get with black cherries. The terrible voluptuous black-red behind the eyelids. The colour you always hoped blood was not. My noir of noir is not jet black empty absence – it is textured, thick, promising – dark red.

One of my novels is called The White Garden – naturally the things that happen in that garden are very unwhite indeed. You’d have to say they are cherry-black – the rape and murder of heavily sedated female psychiatric patients by their doctor. I guess the only white things in the garden are the flowers – and to a certain extent the patients. It goes like this:

'A dead woman lies in a garden where all the flowers are white or silver or very pale. The death, in Melbourne Australia in 1967 was curiously dependent on events that happened long ago in Spain and France and England. It was a sudden death, the woman young and healthy, full of optimism and laughter and daring. For some time the death was seen as an accident, a freakish, random event, but as the connections with other people and other times became clear, a pattern emerged, and it was seen that something odd had taken place.

Time and tone and tense and significance flatten out, and an event in one century lies side by side with an event in another, and another and another until something resembling a design in a broad piece of lace is formed, thread by thread, knot by knot, loop by loop.

In the garden that morning the dewy light fell on the body of the woman, on her skin, shiny, transparent, white like wax; on her hair, a sinuous black fan that spread across her bloated face and out over the steps. Maggots at her mouth and eyes, but no sign of blood or violence.'

People sometimes ask me why I would choose to write about such shocking events. Well I am – and I imagine everybody is – but I will speak for myself – I am gripped by the horror and the fascination of the idea, the fact and the details – of un-natural death. Not natural death so much – of course that’s bad enough – but death outside the ordinary, death delivered by the evil intent of another human being – leaving aside for the time being monsters and airborne diseases and so forth. Death delivered by another version of the self, another human being.

Somewhere in me, in my unconscious, my consciousness, my heart perhaps – I do get confused with these things – somewhere or other I know for certain that because I live I must die – because there is the lilting light of life there must be the dreadful darkness of death. And the narratives I watch at the movies, and the narratives I read in books, and the narratives I invent and write myself – these are all leading in some way to a two-fold experience – the frisson of looking at death, of contemplating annihilation, while surviving.

As I write I feel the thrill of the menace – I imagine, I strongly imagine the fear, the tension, the nastiness, the helplessness – and like the reader of the novel, like the audience in the cinema, I get up close, fairly close, and I look and I feel – and then I escape – like the dreamer in the dream, I escape, I wake up, and I am still here – with the pen in my hand and the woman dead in the garden in the grounds of the psychiatric hospital. The relief of that.

Because of the way human beings are generally wired up, they seem to benefit from being transported – by narratives – whatever the medium – the storyteller by the fire in the darkened room, the novel, the film – the reader is shifted by the narratives into the realms of fear and panic and horror and death – and back again. The darkness has faded away – the mauve pink lights in the cinema have come up, as the credits, like a slowly or swiftly moving tombstone – roll.

I have a vivid early memory of the experience of this whole mechanism. I was a pre-school child who regularly accompanied my mother and aunt to matinees at the cinema. Nobody – nobody – thought of stopping these nice ladies in their felt hats and Persian lamb overcoats from dragging an innocent three year old into town to sit through endless war movies as well as Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon and Rebecca. But it was in fact The Spiral Staircase that made the most lasting impression on me. I must have been about six or seven.

Now if you want to talk noir – I think that with The Spiral Staircase – we have noir. And the more I think about it – and I should really think about it less – I think I am a child of noir – by which I mean the mood, the moody mood of certain black and white films made between 1940 and 1958.

I too was born in 1940 – so you see I am a sort of product of noir. I am the mood of war and post-war – I am The Spiral Staircase – night and panic and storm and claustrophobia – and free-floating fear and an amazing creeping seething perverse sexuality – a sexuality located in obsession and in physical deformity – and hiding in the deep dark wardrobe – the eye, the single eye of the lurking, predatory voyeur.

Perhaps I should tell you, in case you missed it, some more about The Spiral Staircase. Dorothy McGuire plays the part of the mute girl living in a spooky house in New England in 1906. Ethel Barrymore, with a big long twist of grey hair snaking out of the back of her head, lies in bed in the house, and outside there is this sumptuous thunderstorm – lights flash through the awful gloom and doors and windows bang bang bang. And somewhere Out There is a killer who hunts down and murders girls, deformed girls. Will the mute girl in the creepy house with Ethel Barrymore be his next victim? Is he really outside the house – or is he inside the house?

Like, in the wardrobe? For lasting terrible impressions you can’t go past the huge eye that looks out at you, into you, from between the folds of the silky dresses from the deep murky shadows of those whispering dresses and the squishy, squishy furs.

You want foreboding? You want suspense? I must not forget to tell you that behind all this lurks SCIENCE. Yes, good old science.

Ethel Barrymore got a nomination for an Academy Award as the old lady in the bed – I got an unhealthy fear – phobia I suppose – of wardrobes – can this be why I am so reluctant to hang up my clothes? I also got a life-long dedication to the memory of this particular film – to the thick and promising suspense of noir.

I don’t mean to blame The Spiral Staircase for everything. But it WAS a trip. It still is a trip. And when I write dark stories I invoke and re-enter the intensity of that trip, with a delicious thrill of recognition and perverse hope. And I offer the narrative to the reader – and maybe when I share the narrative – maybe I have an illusion that I have in the reader a kind of company, a friend, a helper. Maybe I have a sense that as I take my dark elastic trip into The White Garden – a reader is coming along too – and I am not alone – and everything is going to be OK. And we can talk.

For I have identified what scares and horrifies me most in The Spiral Staircase. It’s the same as the thing in Hans Anderson’s 'Little Mermaid' – the deep down scariest thing is the fact that the girl is MUTE. Not to be able to speak – that’s noir for you. The dead of course don’t speak either. And the child I was in the black cherry dark of The Spiral Staircase cinema hovers over my pen, lends it the grace of both fear and hope, and I write on through the darkness, and maybe, just maybe, everything is going to be OK.

But a little dark red voice says: oh yeah?

******************************************

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	'Shades of Noir - film and novel' _{a seminar at the International Federation of Teachers of English, Melbourne 2003}
Return to homepage Copyright © Carmel Bird 2002. All rights reserved.	Cherry Black Velvet Thoughts For me, noir is not really black, it’s that dark dark cherry red you get with black cherries. The terrible voluptuous black-red behind the eyelids. The colour you always hoped blood was not. My noir of noir is not jet black empty absence – it is textured, thick, promising – dark red. One of my novels is called The White Garden – naturally the things that happen in that garden are very unwhite indeed. You’d have to say they are cherry-black – the rape and murder of heavily sedated female psychiatric patients by their doctor. I guess the only white things in the garden are the flowers – and to a certain extent the patients. It goes like this: 'A dead woman lies in a garden where all the flowers are white or silver or very pale. The death, in Melbourne Australia in 1967 was curiously dependent on events that happened long ago in Spain and France and England. It was a sudden death, the woman young and healthy, full of optimism and laughter and daring. For some time the death was seen as an accident, a freakish, random event, but as the connections with other people and other times became clear, a pattern emerged, and it was seen that something odd had taken place. Time and tone and tense and significance flatten out, and an event in one century lies side by side with an event in another, and another and another until something resembling a design in a broad piece of lace is formed, thread by thread, knot by knot, loop by loop. In the garden that morning the dewy light fell on the body of the woman, on her skin, shiny, transparent, white like wax; on her hair, a sinuous black fan that spread across her bloated face and out over the steps. Maggots at her mouth and eyes, but no sign of blood or violence.' People sometimes ask me why I would choose to write about such shocking events. Well I am – and I imagine everybody is – but I will speak for myself – I am gripped by the horror and the fascination of the idea, the fact and the details – of un-natural death. Not natural death so much – of course that’s bad enough – but death outside the ordinary, death delivered by the evil intent of another human being – leaving aside for the time being monsters and airborne diseases and so forth. Death delivered by another version of the self, another human being. Somewhere in me, in my unconscious, my consciousness, my heart perhaps – I do get confused with these things – somewhere or other I know for certain that because I live I must die – because there is the lilting light of life there must be the dreadful darkness of death. And the narratives I watch at the movies, and the narratives I read in books, and the narratives I invent and write myself – these are all leading in some way to a two-fold experience – the frisson of looking at death, of contemplating annihilation, while surviving. As I write I feel the thrill of the menace – I imagine, I strongly imagine the fear, the tension, the nastiness, the helplessness – and like the reader of the novel, like the audience in the cinema, I get up close, fairly close, and I look and I feel – and then I escape – like the dreamer in the dream, I escape, I wake up, and I am still here – with the pen in my hand and the woman dead in the garden in the grounds of the psychiatric hospital. The relief of that. Because of the way human beings are generally wired up, they seem to benefit from being transported – by narratives – whatever the medium – the storyteller by the fire in the darkened room, the novel, the film – the reader is shifted by the narratives into the realms of fear and panic and horror and death – and back again. The darkness has faded away – the mauve pink lights in the cinema have come up, as the credits, like a slowly or swiftly moving tombstone – roll. I have a vivid early memory of the experience of this whole mechanism. I was a pre-school child who regularly accompanied my mother and aunt to matinees at the cinema. Nobody – nobody – thought of stopping these nice ladies in their felt hats and Persian lamb overcoats from dragging an innocent three year old into town to sit through endless war movies as well as Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon and Rebecca. But it was in fact The Spiral Staircase that made the most lasting impression on me. I must have been about six or seven. Now if you want to talk noir – I think that with The Spiral Staircase – we have noir. And the more I think about it – and I should really think about it less – I think I am a child of noir – by which I mean the mood, the moody mood of certain black and white films made between 1940 and 1958. I too was born in 1940 – so you see I am a sort of product of noir. I am the mood of war and post-war – I am The Spiral Staircase – night and panic and storm and claustrophobia – and free-floating fear and an amazing creeping seething perverse sexuality – a sexuality located in obsession and in physical deformity – and hiding in the deep dark wardrobe – the eye, the single eye of the lurking, predatory voyeur. Perhaps I should tell you, in case you missed it, some more about The Spiral Staircase. Dorothy McGuire plays the part of the mute girl living in a spooky house in New England in 1906. Ethel Barrymore, with a big long twist of grey hair snaking out of the back of her head, lies in bed in the house, and outside there is this sumptuous thunderstorm – lights flash through the awful gloom and doors and windows bang bang bang. And somewhere Out There is a killer who hunts down and murders girls, deformed girls. Will the mute girl in the creepy house with Ethel Barrymore be his next victim? Is he really outside the house – or is he inside the house? Like, in the wardrobe? For lasting terrible impressions you can’t go past the huge eye that looks out at you, into you, from between the folds of the silky dresses from the deep murky shadows of those whispering dresses and the squishy, squishy furs. You want foreboding? You want suspense? I must not forget to tell you that behind all this lurks SCIENCE. Yes, good old science. Ethel Barrymore got a nomination for an Academy Award as the old lady in the bed – I got an unhealthy fear – phobia I suppose – of wardrobes – can this be why I am so reluctant to hang up my clothes? I also got a life-long dedication to the memory of this particular film – to the thick and promising suspense of noir. I don’t mean to blame The Spiral Staircase for everything. But it WAS a trip. It still is a trip. And when I write dark stories I invoke and re-enter the intensity of that trip, with a delicious thrill of recognition and perverse hope. And I offer the narrative to the reader – and maybe when I share the narrative – maybe I have an illusion that I have in the reader a kind of company, a friend, a helper. Maybe I have a sense that as I take my dark elastic trip into The White Garden – a reader is coming along too – and I am not alone – and everything is going to be OK. And we can talk. For I have identified what scares and horrifies me most in The Spiral Staircase. It’s the same as the thing in Hans Anderson’s 'Little Mermaid' – the deep down scariest thing is the fact that the girl is MUTE. Not to be able to speak – that’s noir for you. The dead of course don’t speak either. And the child I was in the black cherry dark of The Spiral Staircase cinema hovers over my pen, lends it the grace of both fear and hope, and I write on through the darkness, and maybe, just maybe, everything is going to be OK. But a little dark red voice says: oh yeah? ******************************************
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ABOUT \| RED_SHOES \| DEAR_WRITER \| AUTOMATIC_TELLER \| THE_WHITE_GARDEN \| THE_BLUEBIRD_CAFE \| DAUGHTERS_&_FATHERS \| WORK_IN_PROGRESS \| STOLEN_GENERATION \| EMAIL \|