NOIRVEMBER: ‘Sin City’ Takes Noir to the Next Level
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Like most genre fiction staples, noir is largely defined by archetypes. Femme fatales, hard-boiled detectives, and the like have long been the hallmarks of a great noir story, even if they aren’t necessarily the essence of the genre (which we explored last week through The Nice Guys).
Archetypes are one of the hinges on which the perception of a genre piece depends. Like a series of knobs on a stove, adjusting their varied intensities in one direction or another can create parody or subversion. In most cases, the harder a story leans into the tropes associated with its genre, the closer it skews to reading as spoof or satire. But what happens when it passes that point? What happens when the tropes of a genre are pushed beyond parody and into extremity?
Sin City happens, baby.
Robert Rodriguez’s 2005 adaptation of comic legend Frank Miller’s series of graphic novels is many things. It’s a bold experiment in digital filmmaking, a decent anthology film, and a prime example of a revelatory film aging poorly. But above all, it’s a noir film – aggressively so. The extent to which Sin City is noir is nearly overwhelming, especially if you’re seeing it for the first time. It functions so tightly within the confines of the genre and then cranks every conceivable noir trait in each and every frame to its natural limits (and then breaks those limits when possible). The result is something that reaches beyond homage, satire, and parody alike, seeming to create something entirely new along the way.
Photo Credit: Dimension Video / Buena Vista Pictures
Some background: Sin City is a 2005 anthology film directed by Rodriguez that adapts the graphic novels (from the series of the same name) The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill, and That Yellow Bastard, as well as snippets from other Sin City stories. The graphic novels, which have been published sporadically since the nineties, are Miller’s most famous work outside of mainstream superhero publishers. Taking place in the fictional Basin City, the stories follow a variety of characters ripped straight from every noir movie or novel you’ve ever encountered and see them face off against the forces that run the city from the shadows.
Those characters are likely going to feel somewhat familiar to you if you’re even the most casual of noir fans. From Bruce Willis’ Detective Hartigan, a cop who was left for dead by his dirty partner while hunting a well-connected pedophile, to Clive Owen’s Dwight, who’s recently shown back up in Basin City with a literal new face, they’re all characters you’ve probably met before, albeit not quite like this. They’re taken to their logical extremes, from the grit in their dialogue to the violence they inflict on the people who get in their way. Each is morally dubious in that classic noir protagonist fashion, though the ways said dubiousness manifests itself is sometimes more palatable than others (the Hartigan-Nancy relationship will make you wanna puke).
Photo Credit: Dimension Video / Buena Vista Pictures
But the real draw is the visuals. Rodriguez took on a fascinating task when he set out to adapt the Miller graphic novels. Rather than make an effort to reshape the stories and their accompanying visuals for the screen, he utilized cutting-edge technology in ways it hadn’t been used in the mid-aughts in order to create the most literal page-to-screen translation possible (there is no credited screenwriter for the film, the credits instead read “Based on the graphic novels by Frank Miller”).
The film was shot almost entirely against green screen sets with few pieces of set dressing in place. This allowed Rodriguez to build the world of Basin City to spec via digital effects, and as close to Miller’s original work as possible. Miller’s art in the graphic novels utilizes heavy inking, contrast, and manipulation of lighting to create a world caked in shadow and silhouette. It’s the sort of comic work that seems impossible to translate to the screen, perhaps the challenge itself being what drew Rodriguez to the work.
Photo Credit: Dimension Video / Buena Vista Pictures
It’s not all for aesthetics, though. Chiaroscuro is a hallmark of the noir genre. It only makes sense that for a series of noir stories that max out the genre’s hallmarks that the visuals would follow in suit. Replicating the original blank-and-white contrast of Miller’s art is impossible in a live-action film, but Rodriguez gets just about as close as you can. Sin City is shot in digital black-and-white with the contrast cranked way up. It’s a souped-up take on the cinematography of noir classics like Double Indemnity and Kiss Me Deadly.
Rodriguez’s digital cinematography and utilization of green screen allows him to create pools of pure blacks and sheen whites on the screen, a control over visuals that allows him to create live-action shots that look nearly identical to the comic panels that inspire them.
Photo Credit: Dimension Video / Buena Vista Pictures
So what does it all add up to? What does the accumulation of Sin City’s noir excess create? Well, for better or worse, it’s an experience impossible to forget. There’s nothing quite like the sight of Mickey Rourke’s granite form laying his fists into a bunch of hitmen, pure white blood splatters flying across the screen with every punch. The way trench coat tails catch artificial wind, floating perfectly behind the troubled men and women wearing them as they march down grime-laden alleys, it’s a visual splendor like no other. It’s noir as an acid trip, overused an expression as that may be.
If there’s a point at which it works to its detriment, it’s in narrative and dialogue. Later-stage Frank Miller is uh, imperfect to say the least and much of the more problematic elements, from poor dialogue choices to the aforementioned Hartigan-Nancy romance, didn’t need to be translated directly from the page to the screen. They can’t help but mar an otherwise compelling cinematic experience.
While those elements may not have aged well and may ultimately affect the film’s rewatchability negatively almost 15 years after its original release, Sin City remains a thrilling exercise in genre experimentation. It’s what happens when tropes are not subverted or avoided, but instead leaned into like a foot on the gas pedal of a hardtop with a good engine and a dead cop in the passenger’s seat.
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