What do you make of the cigarettes that get smoked in any Noir movie?
David Lehman:
Goddamn, they’re sexy.
Suzanne Lummis:
Sure are, and it’s clear that cigarettes had to go—no question about that—but the cinema lost a language. Aside from the smoking, the lighting of the cigarette could be handled so many ways with such different effects. Richard Conte, Robert Mitchum, all those guys—in two smooth gestures they’ll slide out that silver lighter and make the flame leap up, and we get the message—this is what unflappable cool looks like, virile confidence.
Sometimes, men light each other’s cigarettes and that has meaning; often it’s about camaraderie. In Out of the Past, an easy-going ritualistic exchange occurs at the start of the first meeting between Mitchum’s Jeff Bailey and Kirk Douglas as the gangster Whit Sterling. Whit offers Jeff a cigarette almost before he’s got his foot in the door, but he already has one so he smoothly lights Whit’s who is reaching for his matches. It’s all quite friendly. Then, the camera cuts to Whit’s unsmiling gunman, Joe, whose eyes shift darkly between the two, sizing up this new guy, watching for unconscious indicators or one false move.
Those who don’t watch much noir, early or neo-, probably think a woman never has to light her own, a man’s always near-by and quick on the trigger, but, no, not always. For example, Faye Dunaway in Chinatown shakily lighting up, and Nicholson’s nasal drawl off-camera, “You’ve already got one going, Misses Mulray.” (The camera shows us her bejeweled hand rubbing out the live cigarette in the ashtray.) “Does my talking about your father make you nervous?”
Most often, and most memorably, men light women’s cigarettes. I like Clare Trevor everywhere I see her, and I like a moment in Murder, My Sweet, when Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) fires up his lighter and she puts her hand on his and moves it toward the tip of her cigarette, “You will help me, won’t you?” Marlowe: “Am I doing this for love, or will I get paid with money?”
But those moviemakers could achieve other affects outside of social interactions. I’ve never come across a mention of this in any writings about film noir, but I spot an eerie, ominous illusion near the end of Murder, My Sweet when, outdoors, Marlowe’s starting to make his way up to the luxurious piece of property perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. It’s night. He’s going to confront Helen, who is actually Velma, who is actually a killer. Inside the shadowy beach house, the camera focuses on the couch sunk in darkness. Heavy smoke rises from it and, all along, specks of light begin to glint like embers. Someone, something, set fire to the couch—this whole place is going to go up. Then Velma rises from the shadows with her cigarette, in her gown slashed with stripes of glinting sequins. It’s a premonition of danger embodied by this woman. Soon, characters will be lying all over the room, dying of bullets.
And me? I smoked for years then gave it up overnight. It was easy. It was nothing—I was never hooked on caffeine. I did love the play of hands, the motions, the waving away of smoke, that mysterious shared thing between myself and whomever I was talking to, man or woman, who, without fail—in those days—was also smoking, both of us reaching for the same ashtray. Nothing can replace that wordless, silent lexicon of gestures, and I will never stop missing it. It just wasn’t worth dying for.
David Lehman
I miss them. If I may quote myself, "Watching the stars / as they smoke in film noirs" makes me want to throw caution to the winds and light up an unfiltered Camel or Lucky. There’s an entire ritual involved: pulling the cigarette out of the pack, tapping it (if it’s unfiltered), lighting it with a match or lighter, taking the first satisfying long drag. I have considered writing an ironic “modest proposal” in the vein of Jonathan Swift advocating the return of cigarettes to movies, but people have dissuaded me on the grounds that the irony would not be grasped.
This is the tenth in a series of exchanges about noir. For previous posts, click here