"What is your beloved more than another beloved, O fairest among women? What is your beloved more than another beloved, that you so charge us? ...Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave; its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame."
- Song of Solomon 5:9, 8:6

I've always found the term "neo-noir" to be stupid. Most neo-noirs are nothing more than postmodern deconstructions of noirs; they don't bring anything essentially "new" to the genre, all they do is subvert the reflected motifs and themes of the classics. I love plenty of neo-noirs, and I love my postmodern subversion, but it's hyperbolic to call these things original, in my opinion. Logically speaking, the inverse is implied already in the original statement, so to say the inverse is "new" is to grant the subversion too much credit.

Which is why Miller's Crossing is truly one of the few films I'd call a neo-noir. It is literally a "new noir" film; if The Maltese Falcon or The Third Man were made in 1990, it would be identical to Miller's Crossing, and vice versa if Miller's Crossing had been made in the '40s. Besides the fact that it's in color, everything from the dialogue to the confusing/incomprehensible plot beats to the McGuffin symbols to the femme fatale to the flashy cinematography tricks - they're all genre.

What most people would label as the "new" elements this film brings with it are all Coen staples. The nihilism of actions in the face of fate; Jewish identity and faith in a Christian world; Kafkaesque humor beyond bureaucracy; duality not as conflict but balance; historically accurate sound bits as examples of the fleeting ephemera of existence that still holds weight to characters, and therefore us. All these things are signatures of style, and had the Coens made films during the noir era, they would've made noirs with these exact themes. It has nothing to do with intentionally adding these elements to the film, and has everything to do with style. The Coens bring a level of complexity to everything they do, and that's why the vast majority of their filmography allows cinema to rival some of the greatest novels and poems ever written. I'm particularly a sucker for this era of Coen films, because they lack the awareness of their latter films while still preserving their modernist influences. They are some of the greatest directors in history not because of when they lived, and that's exactly why Miller's Crossing works. It is, in a word, timeless, as are the Coen Brothers themselves, and it makes this movie feel classic and modern all at once, and gives it all its energy.

Some may find that this is exactly why they dislike Miller's Crossing. If you're not a fan of the classic noir style, then this film isn't going to sway you. It doesn't update the genre for modern audiences, and it doesn't subvert tropes to spark engagement. While other Coen films are postmodern subversions of the noir genre, this isn't it. It is, through-and-through, a noir film, just one made 50 years too late.

But it's also one of the best pure noirs ever made as a result.

Film Club #11