“In the Pull of Memory”

Noir’s Legacy of Amnesia in Tough Guys Don’t Dance

Abstract

It is in a noir pattern that Norman Mailer draws the character of Tim Madden in Tough Guys Don’t Dance. The plethora of the film’s critical pans, some of which were justified, often focuses on the difficulty of fixing the film’s purpose and genre. It is darkly humorous in parts and Mailer has called the film above all a horror film, and noir’s influence on both his writing and directing were unmistakable. As Mailer proclaimed, “every dream is a film noir. If you think about it. Because every dream is utterly unsentimental. A film like any of Bergman’s films . . . They’re not film noir, but they have that implacable, impervious edge of the dream. No mercy in the dream.” From the film’s opening sequence, the viewer experiences the first of many instances of defied expectations that contribute to the film’s dreamlike surrealism. In a consideration of where Tough Guys Don’t Dance finds its place in the history of noir amnesia narratives, attention is deserved for its parallel place in postmodern neo-noir trends.