Film noir and female anger

April 6

Ian, Will, Bill, Lynne, Jim, Big Jay McNeely, Steve L, Jeanette, Andy, Bob, Steve

A rare appearance from Big Jay McNeely who, as ever, sat there Sphinx-like surveying the regular chatter and lending an air of mystery and distinction to the evening.
Most of us had been to the first weekend of the current Film Noir season at the Egyptian, so plenty of opinions bounced around the table. Everyone seemed to enjoy the offerings but no one was overwhelmingly impressed. Jim wondered whether the organizers were beginning to scrape the bottom of the barrel after 11 years, reflecting an email debate involving Bill, Mary and Will over whether some of this season's films really are noir.
That of course depends on how you define the genre. The Foundation leaves it to Eddie Muller's "vivid co-mingling of lost innocence, doomed romanticism, hard-edged cynicism, desperate desire, and shadowy sexuality" to express its view. Whether the enjoyable Fly-By-Night, shown last Friday, fits all those requirements is doubtful. Will and Jim certainly didn't think that Ray Milland's devilish title role in Alias Nick Beal was more than an accomplished decoration to what was essentially a study of how a politician can be corrupted by the prospect of power, rather than true noir.
It would be interesting, though, so see whether contemporary audiences saw as many inconsistencies in plot and continuity as our group did, Maybe in the 1940s and 1950s they were more grateful and therefore more willing to make allowances. But Will pointed out that his parents thought when it was released that West Side Story went too far in straining credulity with its dancing, prancing gangsters. So they weren't all saps.
The assessment of the weekend was a little chippy, partly because of the relentless boosterising tone of the nightly introductions to the films - even the pair of B movies shown on Saturday. Maybe the noir season format needs rejuvenating - with regular injections of Angel's Flight, if Jim has any say in the matter.
Discussion of the devil took us through Lucifer and the Da Vinci Code to reincarnation, which Steve Lamb dismissed as pointless. That does assume that we know what the point could be, whether there is a God and whether that God ever goes in for pointless pursuits. I can think of plenty of pointless people, but then the poet William Cowper did ask us to accept that God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform, adding: 'His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour; The bud may have a better taste, But sweet will be the flower.' I suspect though that this is not the sort of sentiment that wins enthusiastic nods of approval in the Coffee Gallery, or even on an Altadena omnibus. What is the man on the Altadena omnibus thinking - now there's a subject.
In saying that, I did not of course intend to demean or disparage in any way the often vociferous views of Altadena's female population, who are nevertheless the living embodiment of Lynne's assertion that women are not allowed to get angry in the same way men are.
'Women's voices rise when they are angry,' said Lynne, 'then men call them hysterical or tell them to calm down. They don't often tell other men to calm down.'
But if homo Altadena has an ounce of sapiens in his head, he instantly falls silent when his mate is launching forth on the many injustices still meted out to women, even after the glorious flowering of no fewer than 77 sunrises under the bountiful and omniscient Obama.
Take snoring. It is a well-known fact, especially to anyone living north of Pasadena, that women simply do not snore. Men, however, do it all the time, particularly after a certain age or after ingesting a certain quantity of alcohol. Penalty: exile, possibly for life.
Then there's housework. Men simply don't do enough of it. However much they do. This is confirmed by the Financial Times, no less, as reported by the fragrant Lucy Kellaway should you be tempted to Google it. Penalty: too many to mention.
At that we left Javier and his male assistant to clear the table.

CAUGHT ON THE BREEZE
There was no jazz in The Jazz Age- I saw to that
A rattlesnake almost got me today
Standards? What standards?
It seems like the 70s were a forgotten decade
If writing isn't consistent, civilization goes
In a previous life I was a carpenter
Everything evens out - in the bed and at the dinner table