I recently finished reading Farewell, My Lovely, the second Philip Marlowe novel. (The second one to be written, at least – there’s nothing in it that requires a reader to have any familiarity with The Big Sleep, the prior book.) I enjoy Chandler a lot, even if I’m a Hammett girl in my heart of hearts.
But one thing I think Chandler handles really skillfully is the nuance of first person narration. Sam Spade is described from without, but Marlowe unfolds slowly, subtly from within. “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.” It sums up the classic private eye succinctly and vividly.
And his dry, self-deprecating narration is conversational, as if he’s telling you the story over drinks in a dark bar. Even in action scenes the tone remains: “He bent me. I can be bent. I’m not the City Hall. He bent me.”
This style became iconic, and I’ve seen its influence in Mickey Spillane’s Dead Street and Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels, for two examples off the top of my head. The narrator who’s not untrustworthy, per se, but whose perspective you learn to allow for is a clever device in thrillers that allows the reader to root for a protagonist who can vary from jerk with a heart of gold to anti-hero.
Between this tendency and the prevalence of private eye radio dramas in the early 20th century, it was perhaps inevitable that voiceover would become an iconic component of film noir. But I have a confession.
I’m not a fan of the voiceover, 9 times out of 10. Especially in private eye movies.
It can be done well, of course, and certain films are so perfect with it that it’s hard to imagine them without (Sunset Boulevard springs to mind). And when the narration occurs because the character is describing something to another within the film, I almost never object (Double Indemnity and Out of the Past, for a couple examples).
But I think Howard Hawks made an excellent decision not to use voiceover in The Big Sleep, tempting as it might have been. Marlowe’s voice is distinctive, but films aren’t about voice. Though sound is important, film remains a visual medium. We don’t need to learn about Marlowe through his own descriptions and asides. We can see what he does in front of us, without a filter. Adding his take is redundant.
This is not to say there’s no place for voiceover, ever. With a film like Detour, that seems to be checking off every box on the film noir checklist, the structure rests on the narration, and the accusatory “you” creates distance rather than complicity. (In a more complex film like Sunset Boulevard, it serves multiple purposes, and rises above being a narrative buttress of sorts.) It’s a tool, but it’s a tool that works better with context, most of the time.
And, for a modern viewer, a certain layer of self-awareness is necessary. Sin City could use voiceover, and in fact required it, because of its nature as a pastiche; it deliberately evoked the hardboiled crime stories of the past. Blade Runner, in its theatrical release, just felt a little clunky in tipping its hat to noir using the voiceover, without accomplishing much by doing so. (Though this is hardly the only reason most people seem to prefer the director’s cut.)
It feels a little pat to say “I don’t object to voiceover if you do it well.” But I think that the device undermines itself, in some ways, by trying to marry the devices of classic crime fiction to crime cinema. Now, of course, there’s a whole history of narration in film to riff on and play with (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, anyone?), and it can be clever.
But with your Marlowes and your Spades, they don’t have to tell us the story. They’re too busy living it. And the pleasure of watching them is more than enough.
The Exploding Macguffin 