"Black Widow", directed by Bob Rafelson
I’ve re-watched “The Black Widow”, which is one of my favorite film noire flicks - mostly because of Theresa Russell. Then I found a 2006 interview with Bob Rafelson. Although he spoke there about directing fighting scenes he said something that resonates beyond a fight choreography: ”The audience doesn’t want reality.”
This given, what does an audience want? Escapism, visceral thrills and narcotic forgetting?
Or maybe the audience wants the reality beyond the everyday of banal, fast and superficial.
This beyond could be achieved either by giving them “more of the same”, usually with stepped up intensity, which camouflages for something different. Or the “beyond” is pointed to by intimating that there are ways to deconstruct (sometimes fancy and pretentious words are just right here when you need them) our matrix of learned behavior and perception. I prefer the latter.
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