In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

chapter 8 MULHOLLAND FALLS (1996): NUCLEAR NOIR AS NUMBSKULL NOIR The best film noirs take corruption as their starting—not ending—point. They assume the world is vile and then demonstrate just how vile. The people who made [Mulholland Falls] may not even be hip to all the rottenness on screen. I mean, what are we to make of the hearty sentimentality shown for a bunch of autonomous, head-bashing, pre-Miranda white L.A. cops? peter rainer, ‘‘Nothing under Its Hats,’’ Los Angeles Magazine Mulholland Falls (1996) fits into the postclassic noir canon as a nuclear noir. A retro-noir starring a number of big names, big men, and a beautiful woman whose death initiates a search for the nuclear secret, Mulholland Falls has not been well received by most critics in the popular press, who have classi fied it as ‘‘numbskull noir’’ or ‘‘Chinatown for chowderheads.’’1 Of course, the classic nuclear noir Kiss Me Deadly was not received well by critics either. As Naremore points out, when Kiss Me Deadly was first released, ‘‘The New York Times did not review it, the Legion of Decency condemned it, the British banned it altogether, and United Artists had difficulty advertising it in midwestern and southern towns.’’2 Naremore notes that the film, a ‘‘quintessential example of how a supposedly ‘cheap’ artifact can acquire aura . . . is universally regarded as a masterpiece of noir.’’3 Is it possible that Mulholland Falls might become the Kiss Me Deadly of the next generation? I doubt it. Yet Mulholland Falls works well as a quintessential retro-noir in my taxonomy . With its obvious yet efficient editing, its shiny and clean cinematography, 91 and its shallow yet beautiful characters, Mulholland Falls makes my arguments about retro-noir and serves them up in a narrative where an ideology of power, race, the middle class, masculinity, and femininity is rendered unambiguously. In Mulholland Falls, race is invisible; muscular white masculinity equates with power and violence. An alluring femme fatale appears, briefly engages in an act of agency, and is murdered. Here, femininity equates with physical beauty and powerlessness. Domestic life, presented ambiguously in classic noir, is in this film lovely and pastel, although threatened. In Mulholland Falls, as in L.A. Confidential , homosocial relationships matter most, but in Mulholland Falls homosexuality must be despised, punished, and violently eliminated. A few reviewers in the popular press sought to praise the film, but most seemed to enjoy the ample opportunities it supplies for witty criticisms, focused primarily on Mulholland Falls’s well-dressed, muscular masculinity. In his review for the New Statesman, Boyd Tonkin suggests that ‘‘Mulholland Falls . . . achieves neither depth of field nor breadth of understanding. The crater formed by an H-bomb test yields no more meaning than the cut of a double-breasted jacket.’’4 Tonkin refers here to the natty jackets worn by the ‘‘Hat Squad,’’ a supposedly elite group of tough-guy L.A. cops working together outside the law to keep crime in check (Figure 8.1). In More Than Night, Naremore devotes only half a paragraph to the film, noting that it draws heavily on Chinatown (1974) and that ‘‘aside from administering vigilante justice, the chief function of these four tough guys is to light cigarettes with Zippos and model a peacock collection of suits and accessories.’’5 The male protagonists played by the physically imposing actors Nick Nolte, Chris Penn, Michael Madsen, and Chazz Palminteri, do impose themselves physically on all sorts of characters, their highly valued hats signifying the tip of their phallic masculinity in no uncertain terms. But the sleek surface of the film causes Tonkin to complain that ‘‘feeling, even identity, atrophies as the wardrobe’s role expands to fill the void.’’6 John Wrathall, writing for Sight and Sound, appears to agree, noting that ‘‘having established the idea of a tight-knit four-man squad . . . and [having] cast four heavyweight actors in the roles, the film then gives [two of them] nothing to do.’’7 Interestingly, the two with nothing to do are Michael Madsen and Chris Penn, Mr. Blonde and Nice Guy Eddie from Reservoir Dogs (1992), actors who are capable of so much more. They actually have almost nothing to do in Mulholland Falls. As Wrathall notes, they do ‘‘fail to protect Jimmy Fields,’’ the gay character portrayed by Andrew McCarthy.8 Jimmy, the best friend of Allison Ponds (Jennifer Connelly), the voluptuous woman whose corpse sets the story in motion, seeks...

Share