Q&A with Eddie Muller:
The 'Czar of Noir' Talks Music and Film with SFJAZZ
The co-curator of the Jazz/Noir
Film Festival, taking place May 19-21 at the Balboa Theater,
author Eddie Muller is the man behind the annual San Francisco
NOIR CITY film festival, as well as the founder of the Film Noir
Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to "rescuing and restoring
America's noir heritage." In May, he'll be hosting the Jazz/Noir
evening screenings, and also presenting "A
Night in Noir City," featuring Charlie Haden's Quartet
West in a benefit concert for the Film Noir Foundation. (Note:
Tickets to "A Night in Noir City" are not available
through SFJAZZ—please click
here for full concert and ticket details.)
SFJAZZ conducted the following interview with Eddie Muller earlier
this spring.
Q: As the title of this festival lets on, all six of
these Noir classicsfrom the late '50s have something to do with
the jazz of the day.What does film noir have in common with jazz?
A: It's fascinating that jazz and noir have become synonymous,
because there are no movies from the classic noir era (roughly
1944-1952) that have a jazz score. Orchestral scores in the classical
European tradition are predominant. Jazz appeared within the films,
however, typically in nightclubs, a setting that's vital to these
movies -- it's where the players in the urban American demimonde
intersect, and jazz is the sound they swing to. In the forties,
jazz in films was representative of two things: sex and the underworld.
And both, of course, are essential to film noir.
Q: Are there any threads you see connecting this particular
half-dozenfilms and their soundtracks?
A: They're all from the 1950s, when cultural changes and studio
economics led to jazz being accepted, on a somewhat experimental
basis, as viable for film scores. Jazz is an essential component
of the films in this series, rather than being used to define
one aspect of the mise en scene. As a group, these films disprove
that jazz is ill-suited for film scores because of its improvisational
nature. Miles Davis's score for Elevator to the Gallows
is largely improvised, but Ellington's score for Anatomy of
a Murder and John Lewis's "third stream" score
for Odds Against Tomorrow are tightly-composed. In general,
and in these films specifically, jazz is used to evoke a mood
rather than to manipulate the audience to feel a certain emotion.
It takes confident directors to do that.
Q: And now, a true 21st-century question: Why should I
go to the Balboa Theater to see these films instead of staying
at home to watch them on DVD?
A: Movies are society's communal subconscious. We sit together,
the lights go down, we share a common dream-state. We may all
interpret the dream differently, but seeing a movie in a public
venue is as close as we can get to a temporarily shared consciousness.
It's an experience. When was the last time you heard somebody
say they had an "experience" watching a DVD? Also, I'll
be introducing the evening shows, and providing some context.
So I guess I'm like the "special feature" on the DVD.
Q: This festival is focusing on jazz in the cinema, but
your own Film NoirFoundation is about to present a concert of
live jazz—specifically,Charlie Haden's Quartet West—called
"A Night
in Noir City." How does Charlie Haden's music relate
to filmnoir?
A: Mainly through his love for the films and style of the original
era. It's only one aspect of Charlie's immense repertoire, but
it's one he feels deeply. The Quartet West albums, particularly
Haunted Heart, were designed as the soundtracks to noir films
that existed only in Charlie's head. Its partly homage, and partly
a re-imagining of period film scores through piano, sax, bass,
and drums -- saying, in effect, this is what it should have sounded
like. The concert is a benefit, to support the Foundation's effort
to rescue and restore vintage noir films in danger of being lost.
It's a mission that Charlie relates to on a musical level. He,
however, can interpret the originals; once a film is lost, it's
gone forever.
Q: On the topic of "Noir City," what do you
see as San Francisco's two orthree greatest contributions to the
Film Noir legacy?
A: It's where Dashiell Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon,
one of the building blocks of crime fiction, and by extension,
film noir. Thematically, it's a city people escape to, in order
to reinvent themselves -- a major noir theme. It's the setting
of many great noir films: Dark Passage, Lady From Shanghai,
Sudden Fear, Thieves' Highway, Born to Kill, Nora Prentiss, The
Lineup, as well as Woman on the Run, a brilliant
film that I'm proud to say was resurrected at the first Noir City
film festival in 2002.
Q: In your opinion, are there any particular films, or
genres of film, in recent years that mix drama and soundtrack
music as effectively as the classic films noirs?
A: I'd like to see filmmakers get away from the ingrained notion
that the saxophone is the be-all and end-all of the noir sound.
I like the scores that Terence Blanchard has done for Spike Lee's
crime dramas, Joe Hisaishi's scores for Beat Takeshi, the great
moody pieces that Angelo Badalamenti does with David Lynch. He
wrote songs for Nina Simone, did you know that? There's much more
freedom today in the way a film can be scored, and I appreciate
filmmakers who explore that, rather than just filling the soundtrack
with pop songs.
