![]() But the aesthetic of hard angles and a lot of window blinds is old school noir to a fault. If the noir films of the 1940s, mostly shot in black and white, clouded their characters and environments in cigarette smoke, Body Heat accomplishes this with the aid of steam and fog-a near constant element of precipitation in the air which is palpable. A moist picture if there ever was one, Body Heat-despite its unbridled sexuality-is almost classical to a fault, every bit in line with the style and structure of the noir films of the 1940s and perhaps an even more apt rendition of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) than that film’s own remake, also released in 1981 (and itself famous for a scene wherein Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange have sweaty sex on a kitchen table). Lawrence Kasdan’s lyrical, sweaty murder mystery Body Heat, set during a Florida heat wave, capitalized on the nascent erotic thriller trend following Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980). Yet, we can all point to films like Body Heat (1981) and Body Double (1984) as belonging to this sub-genre. ![]() Neo-noir doesn’t subscribe to any strict set of rules or signifiers-it’s a mood, an assemblage of iconography and tropes that viewers recognize as callbacks to an earlier era set in the context of narratives that exist on their own terms and in their own decades. ![]() The term “neo-noir” alludes to an amalgamation of the new and old, a classical structure giving way to shifting aesthetic approaches and cultural mores. ![]()
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