Film Noir Love: Someone Always Gets Derailed

chicago el
"Young mothers love me even ghosts of
Girlfriends call from Cleveland
They will meet me anytime and anywhere"
- Day I Die by The National

In any great film noir, there's a love story. 

Double Indemnity.
Mildred Pierce.
Blade Runner.

The commonality they all share is that is in each tale of passion, heat and killer dialog, one party loves the other more. In some cases, they're not loved back in return. At all. Worse off? The man or woman to whom they give heir hearts and give up everything have simply used them as a means to an end. Once the desired outcome is achieved those fallen into the swoon of it all are left with nothing. Sometimes sent to jail. And in the most tragic noir? They die.

There is no riding into the sunset together.

When it comes to showing the pain of heartbreak, visually and viscerally film noir works stronger than any other genre. 

Recent studies have shown that in bad break ups, the heart has the same physical reaction as it does as though it was physically damaged. Like it's about to have a heart attack.

When on the other end of the relationship stick, you feel run over. You feel derailed.

And that then changes everything. It shifts the direction and dynamics of your life. Some get over it. Some get gone with it. And some are just gone.

In my screenplay Cleveland City, we meet Detective Dušan. Back in the 1970s he was a rising star on the Cleveland Police Force. A by the book officer who crawled his way out of a public housing and a crime infested neighborhood, he then committed his life to putting bad guys behind bars and to cleaning up his community.

He was on path. He was on duty. He was on track.

But then he was blinded by the light of love. She was his everything. By the time she was done with him? He was left with nothing.

He spent the next twenty years a barfly at The Theatrical on Short Vincent Street, keeping on pulse with the city's back alley and board room dealings. But he never regained his momentum. He never got married. He remained loyal to the bottle.

And on that June 14, 2007, that night of Game 4 between the Cavs and the Spurs in downtown Cleveland, well that night he got called in to examine a fire in an old Downtown building.

That fire reignites his career. And brings him right back to his Sliding Doors moment.

Will he make the train this time? 


photo: a. sukhoy


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