This film technically qualifies as a "Neo Noir," however it is the Coen's black and white and set as a period piece, I think it would not be pushing it to call it an actual Film Noir. I know that purists will insist that real films noir were made through the 1940's through to the late 1950's; but I ask, why put a time frame on them. If this wasn't set in 1949, if it were, say set in the 1970's and still in black and white, that would be a good example of a Neo Noir. This just happens to have been made in 2001, but it is a solid film noir nonetheless.
Still the Coen's can't help themselves with quirky plot twists. It's not enough to have the central story revolve around unfaithful spouses, con men, blackmail and murder; they have to throw in an obsession with a young girl's musical ability, a gluttonous attorney and a woman who insists she's been abducted by aliens!! Ed Crane, a barber, (Billy Bob Thorton) is the pillar of the story; it is he that is mixed up in every aspect of the story. It is his wife Doris (Frances McDormand) that is cheating with her boss, it is him that blackmails said boss "Big Dave" (James Gandolfini) for 10 grand to hand it off to a homosexual shady character selling hair pieces (played by Coen favorite John Polito), it is his wife that is in need of the lawyer, one Freddy Riedenschneider (Tony Shalhoub), and it is Ed that becomes obsessed not with a young girl, but with her piano playing to the point of scheming ways to get her expensive music lessons (the young girl is the daughter of a customer played by Scarlett Johansson in a very convincing performance). Finally it is to Ed that Big Dave's wife Ann comes to when she feels the need to open up about her alien encounter. All of this doesn't sound like a convincing group of elements to put in one screenplay....but this is the Coen Brothers, and they have been known to start scripts just based on cans of stuff, or random things they see hanging on walls, or how something looks when it floating in water.
Trivia:
The Coen's first started to develop this story while working on the Hudsucker Proxy.
The movie was actually filmed in color and "turned" black and white by a new special processing technique. Due to an error at the lab, one print was accidentally released in color for the first reel.
The voice of the sobbing prisoner's visitor, mumbling, was voiced by Coen favorite Jennifer Jason Leigh.
The scene that takes place at the French piano teacher's studio, Jacques Carcanogues', the actor playing the teacher Adam Alexi-Malle spontaneously started playing the first lines of Franz Liszt's "Piano Concerto No. 1." This was completely unplanned and totally Alexi-Malle's idea.
Although the title of the film comes from a Hughes Mearns poem, it also suggests nod to Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (both of them!)
Specs:
Runtime: 116 min
Rated: R
Black and White (Arriflex camera, with Cooke S4 lenses)
DTS
Language: English, Italian, French
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