If this isn’t my favorite line of dialogue in a film, it’s at least in the top five. Fans of the modern-day film-noir classic Body Heat will recognize this oft-quoted line from the scene in which femme fatale Matty Walker first meets the clueless protagonist, Ned Racine. The line is not only witty but also reveals Matty’s opinion of Ned and serves as a warning of her intentions to use him. That Ned ignores the subtext of her joke proves her opinion of him to be true. The line becomes richer upon repeated viewings of Body Heat because we know how Matty and Ned’s story plays out. Clever viewers familiar with the film noir genre may not need repeated viewings to predict the end game. As soon as Matty strolls across the screen in her deceptively white dress, we know that she is the predatory femme fatale, and Ned’s days are numbered. Her provocative line of dialogue merely clinches it. I recently watched Body Heat again, and it made me long for those days of well-crafted Hollywood films with appealing adult characters, particularly strong women—even if they were bad to the bone.

Unbelievably, this year marks the 30^th anniversary of Body Heat, which introduced a new generation to film noir, launched the careers of stars William Hurt and Kathleen Turner, and marked the directorial debut of Lawrence Kasdan. With its brazen sex scenes, cynical tone, and rich atmosphere, Body Heat became a hit with modern audiences who had lost touch with the original noir cycle of the 1940s and 1950s. Kasdan, who had mined the serials and adventure films of the 1930s and 1940s to cowrite Raiders of the Lost Ark, similarly borrowed from the original cycle of film noir to construct Body Heat. The film’s story of small-time lawyer Ned Racine who is seduced by Matty Walker into killing her husband for the money is classic noir wrapped in a new package.

Years ago, scholars and critics used to debate whether film noir was a genre, a movement, or a style. I always considered it a genre because of its consistent, recognizable visual and narrative conventions. The dark visual style with its low-key lighting, rich, black shadows, and high-contrast shadow patterns is striking and romantic; many directors borrow from it for their dramas, thrillers, or mysteries. However, every crime drama with low-key lighting is not necessarily a film noir. It must follow specific narrative conventions in addition to visual ones.

HALF OF MATTY'S FACE IS IN SHADOW AND HALF IS LIGHTED--THE TELL-TALE SIGN OF SOMEONE WHO HAS TWO SIDES TO THEIR CHARACTER.

Body Heat revels in these well-known visual and narrative conventions. In noir, the story involves a crime and the solving of the crime by a detective figure who is flawed. Though the initial crime may be solved, the detective figure uncovers in the course of his investigation an ever-widening web of deceit and mendacity that he is powerless to stop. At the end of most noir films, things are much worse than they were at the beginning, suggesting the world is a quagmire of corruption, and the lone individual can do little about it. The agent of the deceit and destruction in film noir is the femme fatale—the spider woman who sets a trap for the protagonist, tempting him with her sensuality and sexuality. And he succumbs to her temptations, because he is weak or flawed. The femme fatale is not interested in love, which makes her different from most leading female characters in Hollywood genres; instead, she seeks money and power, and the detective is either the quickest path to getting what she wants, or a minor obstacle that she easily removes.

So, in Body Heat, when Matty Walter purrs to Ned Racine, “You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man,” she not only reveals her predatory nature, but she also picks up where past “film fatales” left off—Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Jane Greer in Out of the Past, Claire Trevor in Murder, My Sweet.

NED SEES MATTY FOR THE FIRST TIME: DON'T LET THE WHITE DRESS FOOL YOU.

During the Golden Age, noir films were often set in Los Angeles, like the hard-boiled novels on which they are based. Fast-growing and corrupt, L.A. was the latest city on the make in the era between the World Wars. Body Heat relocates the setting to modern-day Florida, where the shady real estate deals mentioned in the storyline reflect the state’s too-rapid land development of the last few decades. Matty’s husband, Edmund, is wealthy because of his nefarious business associates who engage in real estate speculation. The fact that this type of “business” can be violent is suggested when Edmund explains that he is a very wealthy, powerful man because he is willing “to do what’s necessary.”

"BODY HEAT" MARKED MICKEY ROURKE'S FEATURE DEBUT, AND HE ENERGIZED THE FILM WITH HIS FIRST APPEARANCE IN HIS FIRST SCENE, LIP-SYNCING TO BOB SEGER'S "FEEL LIKE A NUMBER."

The tropical paradise of Florida makes a perfect setting for the genre, and during the 1980s and 1990s, a slew of noir films were set in the Sunshine State, including A Flash of Green, China Moon, Palmetto, Wild Things, and Out of Time. Body Heat was shot in Delray Beach, Lake Worth, and Hollywood, Florida, located in the southern part of the state along the Atlantic coast. The three locales stand in for the fictional communities of Miranda Beach and Pine Haven, where, in the storyline, a summer heat wave is provoking the passions of some of the residents. The heat wave is a metaphor for Ned and Matty’s sexual escapades as well as for a crime wave that seems related to real estate speculation. The beginning of the film opens with Ned and his one-night stand looking into the distance as a restaurant he fondly remembers from childhood burns to the ground. As Oscar, the local police chief observes, the heat wave creates a “crisis time,” in which people gradually forfeit the rules of proper behavior that normally keep compulsions and obsessions in check. Oscar is a secondary character but an important one because he—not Ned—is the moral center of the film. Matty leads Ned around by his . . . nose . . . and seduces him into committing adultery and murder, so his already shaky morality and his judgment are compromised. Because the story unfolds from Ned’s perspective, we sympathize with him, but we are not supposed to become so attached to him that we excuse his lapses in moral judgment. The character of Oscar, an honest and dedicated cop who tracks down Ned despite their relationship, prevents that because we see that Ned clearly lacks his friend’s integrity and honesty.

NED AND MATTY ARE SHOWN IN A HIGH ANGLE ONCE THEY DECIDE TO COMMIT MURDER. A HIGH ANGLE SUGGESTS FATE IS LOOKING DOWN ON THEM.

The depiction of “tropical” in Body Heat is so rich that it has a sultry, erotic connotation. Each of the primary locations offers something “Floridian” that adds to the exotic flavor, so that the environment, the characters, and their motivations are all intertwined. Hollywood, Florida, provides the locale for Ned’s introduction to Matty. The two meet along the Hollywood Beach Boardwalk after listening to big-band music at the Beach Theater band shell. The 1940s-style music recalls the time frame of the original noir films, while the hot, breezy evening along the boardwalk fuels the sexually charged conversation between Matty and Ned. “Don’t you want to lick it?” Matty coos, after Ned offers to wipe off spilled snow cone from her dress.

The piers in the Lake Worth area provided the setting for several key scenes. Ned likes to jog along beaches and piers, giving the illusion that he is healthy and fit. However, he usually stops at some point to smoke a cigarette, suggesting the weaker, self-destructive side to his character. One night while jogging, Ned meets a friend along an empty pier that extends far out into the water. As the friend warns Ned about Matty’s treachery, the idea that Ned is out on a limb is suggested by the long pier that disappears into an empty, black night. And, Matty’s huge Florida mansion is surrounded by palm trees and tropical foliage. It features a second-floor balcony where hundreds of chimes hang, with their clanging sound breaking the heavy night atmosphere and luring Ned to his fate. Surprisingly, the story was originally set in New Jersey. Given the impressive use of locales—from the empty piers to the tropical mansions—it is inconceivable that Body Heat could take place anywhere but Florida.

THE COLOR RED BECOMES A MOTIF IN THE FILM AS WITH MATTY'S SKIRT.

In addition to the Florida setting, color updated the material but did not overwhelm the low-key lighting or rich shadows in key scenes in the film. Bar shadows and web patterns were still used to effectively suggest Ned’s entrapment in a situation, while the climactic scene in which Matty walks away from Ned to become engulfed in complete darkness made for a memorable exit for her character. Color did give Kasdan an opportunity to use red as a symbol for the heat, passion, and danger that Matty represents.

In its explicit sex scenes, brazen nudity, and overt sexual references, the R-rated Body Heat took full advantage of the demise of the Production Code of the Golden Age, when films could only hint at the potent sexuality of the femme fatale. I don’t think this film would be made in today’s Hollywood, which seeks the PG-13 rating to court its preferred audience of young adolescent males who are not allowed into R-rated movies. Besides, I doubt that this audience would enjoy seeing a character like Matty Walker, who may be morally bankrupt but is nonetheless a strong female character. In the words of Ned Racine, she “can do what is necessary” when the male characters around her cannot—something adolescent boys do not want or expect to see in a female character.

THE SEX SCENES ARE EXPLICIT AND RACY.

If you have not seen Body Heat, you might not want to read any further, though the line of dialogue I dissected in the opening paragraph telegraphs the ending. Matty gets away with her part in her husband’s murder—something that would never have occurred in the classic noir of the Golden Age. She also manages to get away with all of his insurance money in order to fulfill her lifelong goal “to be rich and live in an exotic land.” When Ned finally figures out Matty’s machinations, it’s too late, and he winds up in jail for murdering Edmund Walker. Matty gets the last shot of the film, and it reveals her living in another tropical paradise, sunning herself on an exotic beach with a young stud by her side. Whenever I show this film in class to my young students, I always ask them, “Does Matty get away with it?” Interestingly, the students tend to be divided along gender lines: Many of the young men are quick to point out that because Ned figures out Matty’s scheme and tells Oscar about it, then Matty will surely be caught; or they occasionally interpret the enigmatic expression on her face in the final shot as unhappiness because she really loved Ned. On the other side of the fence, the young women always assume that she got away clean, and Ned was a means to an end. While a handful of male students may side with the girls and believe that Matty did escape with the money, I have never had a female student think she did not.