On the problems
with heat captured by a classic film noir.
The plot of Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat (1981) couldn’t possibly
be more film noir: a sexy, sleazy lawyer (William Hurt) and a sexy, wealthy
housewife (Kathleen Turner) begin a dangerous love affair,
one that leads to financial scheming, murder, investigations by cynical police
detectives, double-crossings upon double-crossings, secret identities, and
shocking plot twists (none of which I’ll overtly spoil here, I promise). But to
my mind, at least as emblematic as all those plot elements is the film’s sultry
setting of Florida during an intense summer heatwave; noir is (obviously) known
for its dark, night-time settings, but I would say that just as important as
the time of day is the season, and the way it amplifies the heat that comes
from passion and jealousy, from lust and hatred, from greed and suspicion, from
all the emotions that comprise the genre’s beating heart. There’s a reason why so many recent film noirs
have been set in the
Sunshine State.
Moreover, if
film noir works can be read as cautionary tales—and given how much fun they are
to watch, that’s not necessarily the case, but for the sake of argument I’ll go
with it—the message often seems to be a simple and crucial one, one certainly
repeated in Body Heat: don’t give in
to the heat. Without getting into all the spoiler-y details, it’s fair to say
that Hurt’s Ned Racine would have been better off resisting the appeal of the
titular body heat, should have denied his passionate attraction to Turner’s
Matty Walker. And it’s equally fair to say, as the film’s famous ice scene
suggests, that the summer heat and body heat are intimately connected, that the
season and setting seem at least as responsible for what happens to Ned as are
his libido and the woman who draws it out. Moreover, the film noir characters
who tend to come out in the best shape are, I would argue, those who can
maintain their cool, not because they aren’t affected by all these forms of
heat but rather because they can resist enough to think and act coolly
nonetheless (a description that, MAJOR SPOILERS in this clip, ultimately does
seem to apply to Matty
far more than to Ned).
Don’t give in to
the heat, find a way to stay cool—seem like simple and logical enough lessons,
and certainly applicable ones in these dog days of summer. But I think they’re
problematic, and not just because no heterosexual male could be expected to
resist or even think clearly around Kathleen
Turner in her prime. No, the deeper problem with film noir is that, much of
the time, it seems to take a prudish and puritanical attitude toward sex, if
not indeed all passions—to portray them as innately dangerous and destructive,
temptations that will inevitably lead us to our doom if we are unable to resist
them. Again, this argument would be complicated by how much fun it generally is
to watch characters give in to their passions—but of course doing so can
provide a vicarious thrill while still instructing us in the need to resist
similar fates. Yet the truth is that we can’t and shouldn’t resist our
passions, not only because they’re what make us human, but also because without
such heat, uncomfortable and even overwhelming as it can be, life would be far
too cold.
Next dog days
film tomorrow,
Ben
PS.
What do you think? Summertime movies you’d highlight?
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