[colker]

Originally Posted by fiamme red

One more comment about this article. Brooks writes: "Jazz influenced the film noir directors, and then carried cool over to France, where it was embraced by existentialists like Camus."

Not having read Dinerstein's book, I don't if Brooks is here giving an accurate abstract of his argument. But I don't agree with this at all. I've seen more than a few Hollywood "noirs" from the 40's and '50's, and I can't think of one that had a jazz soundtrack (unless perhaps you count The Man With the Golden Arm as noir, and Elmer Bernstein's score as jazz). The first true "noir" that I can think of with a jazz soundtrack was not from Hollywood but France, Malle's Elevator to the Gallows from 1958. The idea of "cool" did influence the French New Wave directors like Godard (e.g., Belmondo imitating Bogart in Breathless or Michel Piccoli imitating Dean Martin in Contempt), who were much more self-conscious than the Hollywood noir directors were.

I'm not sure how Camus embraced "cool." His work is not influenced by jazz or Hollywood film noir.

To quote Goonster, my reaction to the column is that "this guy is wrong, and kind of lazy."

Agree on the imprecision of his facts.