The Big Lebowski: 6 Film Noir Tropes (& How The Coens Put A Comedic Twist On Them)
The Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski is often described as a “stoner noir,” because it drops a pot-smoking bowler into the middle of a classic hard-boiled film noir about kidnapping, blackmail, and mistaken identity. Swapping out Humphrey Bogart’s sharp-witted private eyes for a bumbling, unemployed slacker who goes by “The Dude” is just one of many ways that the Coens put a hilariously subversive spin on noir tropes in The Big Lebowski.
From the voiceover narration to the pulpy crime story to the femme fatale who can’t be trusted, The Big Lebowski has all the familiar hallmarks of a traditional noir – but the Coens don’t play any of those tropes straight. They updated the femme fatale with a ‘90s attitude, filled the rogues’ gallery with eccentric scene-stealing personalities, and switched out the antihero’s cigarettes for joints.
6 Femme Fatale (With A ‘90s Attitude)
The character of Maude Lebowski subverted the familiar traits of 1940s-era femme fatales by updating the archetype with a ‘90s sensibility. Julianne Moore brings hysterically deadpan line deliveries to the blunt speech patterns of the “big” Lebowski’s feminist artist daughter.
Maude doesn’t double-cross the Dude like classical femme fatales, and she only seduces him to conceive a child with someone who won’t ask for father’s rights. Rather than using the power of seduction for money-grubbing betrayal, Maude simply makes men uncomfortable with her sexual liberation.
5 Episodic Storytelling (With Increasingly Ridiculous Episodes)
As the central detective follows a trail of clues from location to location, the film noir is a great genre to introduce scene-stealing supporting characters. This is one of the reasons why the Coens make such great noirs – Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and of course, The Big Lebowski – because scene-stealing supporting characters are the brothers’ bread and butter. The episodic structure of The Big Lebowski paved the way for such iconic creations as Jesus Quintana, Da Fino, and Jackie Treehorn.
The episodes in The Big Lebowski’s meandering storyline get increasingly ridiculous as the film goes on. At first, the Dude is ambushed in his house by some hired goons who think he’s someone else. By the end, Walter has smashed up a sports car to send a message to a teenager and the Dude has fallen into a psychedelic hallucination at a porn mogul’s house.
4 A Lone Wolf Antihero (Who Just Wants To Go Bowling)
Almost every film noir revolves around a non-traditional protagonist who works alone and doesn’t embody any of the usual traits of Hollywood heroes. The Dude isn’t the kind of antihero defined by shaky morals or a harrowing backstory; he’s the kind of antihero who rejects heroism simply because he can’t be bothered.
He’s a perfect example of a passive protagonist. The Dude isn’t a brooding private eye desperate to get to the bottom of a case like the Bogart antiheroes he subverts; he’s dragged into the hard-boiled criminal antics against his will and can’t wait to leave it all behind. Ultimately, the Dude is just an avid bowler looking for the first chance to abandon the kidnapping plot and rent a lane.
3 Lots Of Smoking (Weed)
The curious subgenre pioneered by The Big Lebowski has been dubbed a “stoner noir.” Classic noir antiheroes like Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade would chain-smoke cigarettes as they investigated clues and interrogated suspects. The Dude regularly sparks up and puffs out plumes of smoke in The Big Lebowski, but he’s not smoking tobacco. The Coens put a fun twist on the Bogart chain-smoking trope by swapping out cigarettes for joints. Instead of smoking tobacco, the Dude smokes weed.
While the “big” Lebowski is explaining key exposition, the Dude politely asks, “Mind if I do a J?” The Dude’s marijuana use adds a hilarious layer of confusion to the convoluted, already-hard-to-follow, ultimately meaningless noir plot.
2 Voiceover Narration (In A Western Style)
Like most film noirs, The Big Lebowski is punctuated by voiceover narration. But the hero doesn’t deliver the voiceover narration like most film noir protagonists. Instead, Sam Elliott provides the voiceover with his rich Southern drawl as “The Stranger.”
With “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” by the Sons of the Pioneers on the soundtrack and an image of an actual tumbling tumbleweed in the hills of Los Angeles on-screen, this voiceover evokes an entirely different genre: the western. Elliott’s western-style voiceover is yet another zany juxtaposition that makes this movie wholly unique.
1 A Hard-Boiled Crime Plot (That Goes Nowhere)
The first act of The Big Lebowski sets up a complicated Chandleresque mystery plot harking back to old-school film noirs adapted from pulp fiction. This storyline has all the signifiers of a hard-boiled noir: a case of mistaken identity, a briefcase full of money, and a kidnapping that might have been faked. Ultimately, in the Raymond Chandler tradition, most of the breadcrumbs and MacGuffins and external conflicts turn out to be redundant.
As the Dude tries to get to the bottom of it, he realizes there’s no point in pursuing the case further because there was never any ransom money for him to get away with: “We threw out a ringer for a ringer!” After the plot leads nowhere, the Dude is left with one option: “F*** it, let’s go bowling.”