Honolulu, PI

There’s a movie genre that can never be too overused for me: a hardboiled noir. These genre is epitomized by the kind of Raymond Chandler’s detective story movie, stared by Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe the Private Detective, in movie such as ‘The Maltese Falcon’ (1941) and ‘The Big Sleep’ (1946). The movies typically use the Great Depression setting era during the late ‘20 or early ’30.

Beside the classic murder mystey plot, you can always expect these kind of things: (1) dramatic chiaroscuro black and white photography, accompanied by (2) a deep jazzy bass background music, accentuating (3) the somber voiceover narration from (4) a lone fedora-wearing and currently short-on-money, Private Investigator lead character, (5) whom pretty soon will meet a sexy femme fatale client, fat on cash, (6) which in turn will give him the opportunity to trade some cynical snappy banter, like these:

Vivian:
”I don't like your manners.”

Marlowe:
“I'm not crazy about yours. I didn't ask to see you.
I don't mind if you don't like my manners.
I don't like them myself. They're pretty bad.
I grieve over them long winter evenings.”

(The Big Sleep, Warner Bros, 1946)

The strong cast of typicality in this genre made them almost seems beg for a string of pastiche epigones. Some take on variation of different kind of more futuristic setting, like Harisson Ford's ‘Blade Runner’ (1982), while others take on a humorous parodies approach, like Steve Martin's ‘Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid’ (1982). A notable more recent release would be the cool ‘Payback’ (1996) movie played by Mel Gibson.

Even Neil Gaiman took his shot at this genre with his twist telling the murder of Humpty Dumpty, in his early short story: 'The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds'. And sampled bellow is how little Calvin's active imagination (from Calvin and Hobbes strip) take him as a Private Eye:



While this following Eisner Nominated, Hawaian Dick comic series is not really a hardboiled noir, the book still feature a bitter tongued Private Eye. And the sunny beach setting remind me to (anybody remember?) a TV series: One West Waikiki from the mid ‘90s.

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