Film noir: your favourites

Raymond Chandler, who scripted it and changed the story a great deal, wrote to Cain that the dialogue in the book wouldn't play onscreen as written, putting his finger, in my opinion, on why "Postman" had been somewhat two-dimensional: the film had been too faithful.

I was amused to find out that the 1946 Postman was already the third adaptation, one of them being a foundation-stone of Italian Neo-realism.

Fred MacMurray playing SATAN in 'the Apartment' is even weirder.

'Gilda' to thread!

I got Sam Fuller's Pickup on South Street today. Looks noiry.

the big sleep
the third man
strangers on a train

outside of the definition i have to include

rififi
le cercle rouge
chinatown (my favorite noir, period.)
the long goodbye

I especially recommend the Anthony Mann triple-threat of T-Men, Raw Deal, and He Walked By Night

French - Bob le Flambeur
Band of Outsiders

I think the first noir was "Stranger on the Third Floor," 1940, RKO.

In any case, frankiemachine, I would have thought you would have mentioned The Man With The Golden Arm, although I guess that's not a noir per se.

common '50s noir police descrip: "white American male"

Brick was a more accurate translation of just about every Raymond Chandler book I've read then any Film Noir I've seen, including say, The Big Sleep or Murder, My Sweet.

I'm such a dumbass for only now realizing it refers to the shadows in the film.

How? Be specific. Give examples.

(though similarly, my favorite Hammett adaptation is Miller's Crossing)

Anyone seen The Girl in Lover's Lane? I watched it as an MST3K episode, but it seemed like a really successful small town noir.

Oh yeah, I saw that on TCM last year during the Mitchum festival.
-- Sons Of The Redd Desert

Actually, I haven't seen that one, but it looks pretty good. I was talking about Angel Face, which is mentioned in the very first post of this thread.

- House Of Bamboo (Robert Stack & Robert Ryan in post-WWII gangster Tokyo. Sam Fuller directs)
- Scandal Sheet
- Nightmare Alley (Tyrone Power as a carny mentalist)

I found the dialogue in Brick, like Millers Crossing, totally stylized in a way similar to the books, they also shared the protaganist as punching bag cliche so common in the books. There was just something about the way the lead in Brick kept being knocked out, then seeing just a hint of light, then passing out again, then waking up somewhere else, then getting beat up, that to me represented the feeling I get from the Chandler books. Murder, My Sweat is one vintage noir that does this, of course, with it's expressionistic passing out sequence. The complicated plot that really doesn't matter so much, crime lords and their henchmen, the playing of sides against each other. All classic pulp fiction/film noir things.

"I’d hate to think of your having a smashed fender or something while you’re not, uh, fully covered."

It's still amazing that they could get away with some of this stuff considering the times.

Neo-noir can also be fab.

Is this the one about the athelete with really stinky perspiration?

I second the recs for Detour and Long Goodbye because they seem to not get as much respect as they deserve.

This is madness, surely? "The Thin Man" may be a Hammet adaptation, but it's still basically a screwball comedy where the main characters solve crimes!

Are these as good as that warner bros gangster box set that they resemble?

Not exactly what you're asking for, but it's in my bookmarks.

check it out

if you've read The Big Sleep you've read Chandler, basically -- but Farewell, My Lovely is my personal favorite Marlowe book.

I've also had the novel Out of the Past is based on -- Build My Gallows High -- forever, but haven't read it (tho I've read that Daniel Mainwaring's adaptation of his own book is judged an improvement).

HA, "loathsome." Yeah, Chandler was pretty irredeemably sour, but you know, Marlowe as chivalrous Arthurian knight in morally bankrupt world and all that; he's the most interesting character in pulp fiction, 'cause he's entirely self-loathing, never shoots or fucks anything, really a sort of pathetic repressed moralist masochist, he's as painful to watch as an early Woody Allen protagonist (impotent but for his cleverness, which just gets him beat up repeatedly), except he gets less satisfaction from this terrible modern society, 'cause Allen protagonists always get laid.

Cornell Woolrich is fun too.

The novels are distinguished by a combination of the hard fiction style of the late forties and a pervasive and morbid sense of psychology, in most cases pathological (psychiatrists and general discussions of insanity pervade the works). The protagonists are subject to extraordinary situations which provoke intense feelings of distress and mental agony, communicated to the reader with a lucidity that makes his storytelling logic surrealistic, fantastic, persuasive and disturbing at once.

Border Incident is in a new Noir box.

!!!

Of course, the only pre-"Space Seed" Ricardo I've seen is Cheyenne Autumn.

Anyone seen Cry Terror!... At Film Forum tonight, intriguing pairing of Mason and Steiger?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051501/

How come we discussed Red Harvest and Enrique didn't come along to mention that Goldoni play?

The Farmer's Daughter is in that movie, Morbs?

I haven't seen it, no. I don't think I ever really watched the other feature either.

Has anyone got the recut of Touch Of Evil? Is it worth paying more for over the original?

Absolutely.

Redd, I don't believe Loretta Young is in it.

Touch of Evil is great if you can stand charlton heston.

it's tough to beat Out of the Past, although the faulkner-penned Big Sleep is classic, too (although the plot literally does not make any sense). I'm also a huge fan of Night and the City and Asphalt Jungle.

An interesting but unsuccessful noir is Dark Passage with Bogey and Bacall, which features a lot of 1st-person shots. Agnes Moorhead is great in it, however.

noirs i dislike: Force of Evil, The Postman Always Rings Twice (both John Garfield vehicles), Cat People (despite its alleged influence), Angel Heart (neo-noir).

Curse of the Cat People is better than plain old Cat People.

noirs i dislike: Force of Evil

!!!!

Yar, The Big Sleep film is tough to follow, but that's down to the production code.

The I Love Film noir thread is pretty good; here's the link if it's not already upthread: film noir

Morbius, have you seen that Danish movie that's at FF now?

no.

boo Force of Evil. yay Touch of Evil.

another borderline noir is Kurosawa's High and Low, although a proper noir has to end more pessimistically.

No mention here of D.O.A., which I saw last night. Man walks into police station, claims he's been murdered, then in classic noir fashion the whole movie is in flashback. It's not quite up there with the best noirs (Double Indemnity, Laura, etc.), but it's pretty terrific and almost an A-Z of noir tropes - flashback structure, protagonist doomed from the start, femme fatale/wholesome girl binary, urban paranoia...

Double Indemnity and Touch of Evil are my shit. All-time.

hells yeah, BIG HOOS.

Time to rep for Preminger's Fallen Angel and Where the Sidewalk Ends.

'the big heat' ftw

Naked City was better than I'd expected.

Just saw Murder, My Sweet. Pretty great. I'm still trying to work out the plot.

So awesome that Netflix has its own section for this. Just watched "Woman in the Window", which was okay.

Now have "The Asphalt Jungle" running.

Asphalt Jungle
Le Doulos
The Second Breath
hell - basically just about all Melville that involves a raincoat or gun somewhere
Double Indemnity
T-Men
let's see...

Too many to mention but it's my fave genre

Gotta be The Third Man.

IIRC, Scarlet Street is basically the same movie as Woman in the Window but better. Maybe it's the other way around though. Another Lang/Lorre american noir with a similar plot.

Is Woman in the Window the one where he wakes up at the end and it's all been a dream? Cos that's a shitty shitty ending.

yes, that's the one.

It's a shitty ending, but the rest of the movie is really good.

Joan Bennett is excellent.

'Out of the Past' anyone?

one of the best.

I think I quoted about half the dialogue of OOTP on the other thread.

in the french noir department: elevator to the gallows

Preminger made several goodies: Laura, Angel Face, Where The Sidewalk Ends, Fallen Angel.

xpost:
Yup. With the grebt Miles soundtrack with the grebt Pierre Michelot on bass. Speaking of gallows, the original title of Out Of The Past was Built My Gallows High. Well, title of the novel it was adapted from.

in the french noir department: elevator to the gallows

If only for the soundtrack...

re crap ending of Woman In The Window, Wikipedia says: "Director Fritz Lang substituted the film's dream ending in place of the originally scripted suicide ending, to conform with the moralistic Production Code of the time." So blame it on the Hays Code.

third man, big sleep, point blank, chinatown, all the obvious stuff.

Not to derail totally, but speaking of 'Elevator to the Gallows' (and Maurice Ronet), has anybody ever seen 'Le Feu Follet'?

I'm glad detour was rated by a couple people, but can't believe no one's mentioned gun crazy so far.

Scarlet Street is basically the same movie as Woman in the Window but better. Maybe it's the other way around though. Another Lang/Lorre american noir

no, SS is better (and it's Eddie G, not Lorre).

I picked up Le Feu Follet on video for a couple bucks awhile back, but haven't watched it yet. Criterion's doing a DVD in May

Sweet! I haven't seen it in eons.

love the cover on the old vhs

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/guncrazy.jpg

Also, 'The Maltese Falcon'. There's actually a reproduction of 'the stuff dreams are made of' leering down from the top of a bookcase in my house.

'Maltese Falcon' is my favourite film.

I was reading about Flitcraft just the other day in the intro to The Continental Op.

Auteur Noir from Italy:

Chronicle of A Love Affair-Antonioni's take on The Postman Always... Lucia Bosé is the femme fatale.

Il Bidone-Fellini's noir about three conmen (Broderick Crawford, Richard Basehart, & Franco Fabrizi) who prey on Italy's poor. The final act, wherein Crawford attempts a last score without the aid of his comrades, is relentlessly brutal.

This is going on in LA for the next couple of weeks:
http://www.americancinematheque.com/archive1999/2008/Egyptian/Film_Noir-2008.htm

What's the one with Edward Robinson as a guy who drops out of his day job to paint and murder?

Seen recently and loved: Detour, DOA, The Killing, Thieves' Highway, Gun Crazy, Panic in the Streets (a couple of these probably not usually considered noir, but they're so full of NIGHT and GUNS and BARS and JAZZ that I don't care).

Thieves' Highway is weird--one of the few SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER Hollyowwod/Hays code era movies which ends with the hero ditching his 'good' WASP girlfriend and ending up with the foreign hooker.

What's the one with Edward Robinson as a guy who drops out of his day job to paint and murder?

That's Scarlet Street.

Tonight is Shadow of a Doubt.

Awesome shots in the opening bits, all the dutch tilts of the buildings & vacant lots, with men criss-crossing around.

And starring Joseph Cotten!

Thanks, TYK.

Out of the Past
Glass Key
Blue Dahlia
Murder My Sweet (aka Farewell my Lovely)
Kiss Me Deadly
Gilda
Dark Passage
Key Largo
In A Lonely Place
Where The Sidewalk Ends

watching blast of silence this weekend, will report back.

after dark, my sweet

"Double Indemnity" is incredible.

The Maltese Falcon is one of my favorite movies of all time.

naked city

stray dog

un flic

breathless

d.o.a.

touch of evil

la confidential

double indemnity is basically the best movie ever made imo

Unmentioned To Have and Have Not is my favorite film of all time.

glad Scarlet Street was mentioned.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XUWgyi9favs/SkJ4nNGCnPI/AAAAAAAABgQ/FVEMdeQwJBI/s1600-h/act+of+violence.jpg
Act of Violence wasn't and has some pretty cool stuff going on too.

For no reason I can think of, I've been getting into noir of late. Last week I rented The Big Sleep, which was excellent if incomprehensible. I've since added In A Lonely Place and The Maltese Falcon to my Lovefilm list.
And on friday I bought this Chandler novel:
http://www.detective-fiction.com/4salepix/chandlerfarewell.jpg

me too, but i bought the film noir collection! all great films. love alan ladd in these.

The Maltese Falcon, which I could watch on a loop forever

It's nearly perfect.

I got to see most of the Noir City festival earlier this year - looks like they are playing Chicago later this week. Opening night was a double-bill of 2 newspaper noir classics: Deadline USA and Scandal Sheet. The Big Sleep is the best ever though.

I think Night and the City is my favorite movie, noir or otherwise. Picked up a Chandler collection from the library and so far it's fantastic. Never read him before.

Chandler is probably my favorite writer ever. Everyone needs to get to The Long Goodbye eventually.

btw just watched Red Rock West last night, it was a fun little western noir with nick cage and jt walsh and dennis hopper all hamming it up. it felt like a showtime adaptation of a jim thompson novel.

Oh yeah, I got to see In A Lonely Place last Friday. Not quite the film I was expecting it to be, but a good film nontheless. What an ending!

Movie Madness's film noir collection was like crack to me when I was studying in Portland, OR. The bulk of the most choice noirs have been mentioned already.

A few which haven't that immediately come to mind:

Ride the Pink Horse (massively underrated because it hasn't got a DVD release - would make a great double bill w/ Touch of Evil)
Sunset Blvd (obviously not at all underrated but nobody's listed it yet - do you guys not consider it noir?)
Touchez pas au grisbi (Jean Gabin classic, also see Pépé le Moko)
On Dangerous Ground (Robert Ryan was never better)

Also very good:

His Kind of Woman (Mitchum and Russell reunited!)
Kiss of Death (Widmark pushes infirm down stairs)
Sweet Smell of Success (badass Burt Lancaster)
Criss Cross (probably Siodmak's best)

The Narrow Margin is highly rated by some, but it's not in the top tier for me.

Sui generis but essential and noirish in their own ways:

Johnny Guitar
Vertigo

FYI, my absolute top four:

Out of the Past
Touch of Evil
The Killing
Kiss Me Deadly

with noirs i always get mixed up with titles, all the noirs blend into one for me.

for example, what is the noir with a guy half-dead and dying at the beginning, relating his story in some kind of office, maybe even a tape-recorder (nah?) a typewriter hmm. i am sure it's famous.

Ludo, sounds like it might be the previously mentioned awesome classic Double Indemnity, but there are a lot of noirs that have that sort of structure.

anyone seen Detour? I think its a great one that doesn't seem to get mentioned often.

oops, i just ctrl+Fed Detour and i see its already been mentioned a few times...

Ludo, sounds like it might be the previously mentioned awesome classic Double Indemnity, but there are a lot of noirs that have that sort of structure.

exactly. i think that's the one though. it was one of the first noirs i saw. (ah it's a dictaphone!)

for example, what is the noir with a guy half-dead and dying at the beginning, relating his story in some kind of office, maybe even a tape-recorder (nah?) a typewriter hmm. i am sure it's famous.

DOA has the dying guy sitting in an office with a police officer explaining how he came to be dying.

for example, what is the noir with a guy half-dead and dying at the beginning, relating his story in some kind of office, maybe even a tape-recorder (nah?) a typewriter hmm. i am sure it's famous.

Double Indemnity?

Absolutely it is. Double Indemnity is one of the top five noirs ever. Probably my #1.

Sorry, "films noir."

Ebert is very good on it: "Standing back from the film and what it expects us to think, I see them engaged not in romance or theft, but in behavior. They're intoxicated by their personal styles. Styles learned in the movies, and from radio and the detective magazines. It's as if they were invented by Ben Hecht through his crime dialogue. Walter and Phyllis are pulp characters with little psychological depth, and that's the way Billy Wilder wants it. His best films are sardonic comedies, and in this one, Phyllis and Walter play a bad joke on themselves."

anyone know if Key Largo features the song 'Moanin' Low' in full or just a brief extract?

Just watched Sudden Fear. Worth it for Joan Crawfords facial expressions and Jack Palances acting.

Young Jack Palance in that and 'Panic in the Streets' looks like an Easter Island statue come to life.

Double Indemnity, sure as ten dimes will buy a dollar

totally just watched Rififi...it's great! i wondered how they'd sustain it after the heist sequence...the second half of the film is even better, even more engrossing. the bit where the money was delivered and Tony clearly didn't give a fuck about it any longer = noirest of noir

Carl Mohner dedicated a painting to me once.

Am watching Kurosawa's Stray Dog tonight.

Will be watching Le Cercle Rouge tomorrow. Saw Un Flic a few weeks back, and absolutely adored it. The stylish brilliance of the crooks. The mechanical, self-denying inexorability of the cop. Crime glorified in a way that only serves to heighten its tragedy, only serves to emphasise its ultimate folly. Morality plays, as they should be told.

I need to get Un Flic next week. Have you watched Le Samourai yet?

not yet but it is in the offing

All time fave tbh

Am slightly annoyed that said friend watched it the other night with a mutual friend. Will have to borrow it. He's generally not averse to re-watching films, mind.

I love Double Indemnity, but it's too glossy and clean to be as purely noir as, eg, Out of the Past.

xpost

Even though I watched it on a beat-up VHS copy, IMO the most perfectly realized noir-ish Melville is Le Deuxieme Souffle.

Morbs - there's one line of yours concerning film that I really dig - the one about a film's greatness being assured if it still works well with the dialogue removed. This kind of film strikes me as the sort for which this might actually be truer than in other cases. Would you say that the best films noir stand up without their dialogue, in practice?

(cheers mr goethe)

Forgot to mention, but I watched The Big Heat a couple days ago. That was some gritty shit. I don't remember Bogie ever dealing with a dead wife, a mob moll with disfiguring facial burns, dead hookers, etc etc.

Panic in the Streets is really great.

Un Flic I found not as good as the others, but still fun and stylish. But that train sequence...get one budget!

the helicopter model attached to visible wires represents the impossibility of crime except as an artificial fantasy, dude

in all srsnss, scene is carried off by the acting and the in-train filming

*impossibility of SUCH a crime, even

This is such a boy genre.

ilx's own Lauren P would beg to differ.

cm, especially with the chiaroscuro lighting effects usually featured, sure.

Great, now I have to use Google! ;)

the starkly separated pools of light & shadow

Jane Greer, oh brother!

http://voiceover.blogdiario.com/img/outofthepast.jpeg

Yep, got it! When done well (Night Of The Hunter, anyone?) that technique can be dazzlingly tense.

Forgot to mention, but I watched The Big Heat a couple days ago. That was some gritty shit. I don't remember Bogie ever dealing with a dead wife, a mob moll with disfiguring facial burns, dead hookers, etc etc.

The protaganist in this movie is the like the angel of death. Every woman he comes in contact with dies.

mob moll with disfiguring facial burns

Wasn't Jane Greer married to Rudy Vallee for a while? She was young, Vallee told her mom he would bring her out to Hollywood "under my auspices." He liked to have her dress up like a Marilyn Manson girlfriend. She eventually balked, although not before her marriage had got her into trouble with Howard Hughes, who was obsessed with her. She had a similar facial palsey to Sylvester Stallone, which gave her that intriguing expression.

Fans of OOTP should also see the "sequel" with Mitchum and Greer, The Big Steal. Here is an informative obit http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/jane-greer-729365.html

Janey Janey, what a gal

a friend of mine used Greer for a radio narration job not long before her death. Apparently she turned down the Gloria Stuart role in Titanic.

xpost

I just saw "Laura" for the first time the other night. Oh my god, how could I have waited so long to see this movie? Gene Tierney and Clifton Webb are amazing, and it is so weird to see Vincent Price try to play a "Southern hunky gigolo" character. Plus the sets and clothes and lighting are scrumptious in every detail.

Oh man, don't get me started on Gene Tierney

No, you can't get started. Have you seen Leave Her to Heaven?

And how about that haunting David Raksin theme?

Yeah, I then watched that Biography documentary "Gene Tierney: A Shattered Portrait" about her life- really amazing/awful life story that makes you think again about what's going on with her performances, what was bottled up in there.

I've always known the Raskin theme, but the first version I ever heard was the Spike Jones parody version, perversely enough . . .

Gorblimey!

http://alabasterbrow.blogsome.com/images/gene7.jpg

I've always known the Raskin theme
Not to be a pain, I just learned how to spell it five minutes ago, but it's Raksin.

I wonder how Dadaismus feels about Linda Darnell.

Not that much of a fan of hers, anyway I'm turning this into one of those dead people you fancy threads, apologies

Oh yeah, UKers there is a film noir night on BBC4 tonight.
An hour long documentary, The Rules of Film Noir, and four films: Farewell My Lovely, The Lady From Shanghi, The Big Combo, and Force of Evil. And tommorrow they are showing Build My Gallows High.

Schizerkoff, I missed this. Now, if only they'd repeat it as often as 'Blues at the BBC'.

No wait, it's Saturday today. Yays!

aargh no my digibox is broken!

Orson Welles' Irish accent is unbelievable!

It really is!

That doc was predictably disappointing BBC four - I only liked the guy that explained how noir scores differed from the norm for that time.

btw Build My Gallows High was incredible. Robert Mitchum was some serious laconic but lethal motherfucker throughout.
"I don't want to die"
"Neither do I, but if I have to I'm gonna die last"

Mitchum took laconic to an entirely new dimension. He had to be high on grass.

For anyone who doesn't already know, Build My Gallows High = Out of the Past. Mitchum was such a badass.

I've been reading back-to-back Raymond Chandler novels all summer.
Trying to figure out a contemporary actor who could play Marlowe...

and I don't think Gould was that far out a choice for The Long Goodbye, I think he hit the mark even better than Bogart.

what happened to those planned Clive Owen / Marlowe movies? in turnaround I guess.

I guess Owen looks the part, but can he be funny? I'm thinking more Seth Rogan, Robert Downey Jr...

Robert Downey Jr would be great ... probably the most realistic choice (in terms of films that would make money) would be George Clooney.

Clooney's funny, charming and tall enough ... but maybe not luckless enough? this is a guy who gets beat up every other chapter. That's what Bogey got wrong.

Clooney does tend to have a bit of a smug look a lot of the time.

I think Chevy Chase could have pulled it off in the 80s.
Fletch is basically Marlowe with "gags."

I could see Clooney getting his ass kicked and wisecrack all the way through it. Very Marlowe.

wisecrackING

Bogey gets beat up at least twice in The Big Sleep, that's a lot for a '40s movie "hero"

...and he pretends to be gay, but doesn't get beat up for that.

Don't know if someone mentioned it upthread, but Robert Siodmak's Phantom Lady is a total classic.

Here the famous jazz scene, with Elisha Cook Jr as the satyr-like drummer (the quick shot when he touches Ella Raines' neck is still one of the most disturbing things I ever saw):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vEgZM5x0ik

So, my digibox went on the fritz and I missed all of these. I've already seen Build My Gallows High, and I'm sure Farewell will be on again, but the others - Stranger on the Third Floor, Lady from Shanghai, Big Combo, Force of Evil - are relatively obscure. My film guide says they're all brilliant and strange, but did anyone here actually see them? Thoughts? Recommendations?

i just read "Film Noir" by Alan Silver & James Ursin. good book, beautiful pictures. i made notes of noirs i've yet to see, here's the list. (so this could be Alain Silver's recommendations in a way)

Criss-Cross
T-Men
They Drive By Night
They Live By Night
Human Desire
Phantom Lady (indeed)
D.O.A.
Detour
The Killers
Crossfiere
The Sniper
Brute Force
The Man I Love
The Reckless Moment
The Lady in the Lake
Gilda

---
also Hammett should be interesting a film Wim Wenders made about well Hammett the detective writer who was an alcoholic detective himself

<3 the reckless moment
human desire pretty good too

Lady From Shanghai is an Orson Welles containing at least a couple of extraordinary scenes (and a platinum Rita Hayworth).

I really like They Drive By Night (George Raft + Humphrey Bogart directed by Raoul Walsh),

Simply put, Detour is one of the absolute best low budget movies ever. Shot in 2 or 3 days, its impossibly grim, dark and cold and its a fine testament of Edgar Ulmer's huge talent; Lady in The Lake is another Chandler-inspired movie, this time all shot from the perspective of Philip Marlowe; Brute Force and The Killers have both Burt Lancaster in his early roles and they're stunning - I maybe prefer The Killers, another GREAT Siodmak movie with an impossibly beautiful Ava Gardner as the dark lady.

Check also Force of Evil (directed by a not yet blacklisted Abraham Polonsky) and, again if it not mentioned above, Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past.

Gilda and Brute Force are pretty great.

dorian: Yeah, Lady From Shanghai is totally worth it, a few brilliant scenes in it. And Orson Welles' terrible accent just adds to the bizarre atmosphere of it.

Big Combo isn't super well known, but I remember it being pretty good.

I skipped watching Farewell my Lovely as I'm reading it (for the first time) at the moment, and didn't want it spoiled. I couldn't get to grips with The Lady From Shanghai for some reason. I don't think it was just because of Welle's Oirish brougue. The Big Combo however was excellent, full of noirish signifiers: all smoke and shadows, bursts of gunfire, duplicitous dames, the lot.

Joseph H Lewis, who directed THE BIG COMBO, also made GUN CRAZY, which might not be strictly noir but is one of the greatest psychosexual girl/guy/gun flicks of all time

also love the two noirish thrillers that Fritz Lang made in the 1940s, WOMAN IN THE WINDOW and SCARLET STREET

Gun Crazy is plain great: always puzzled me why John Dall didn't really have a movie career.

Gun Crazy always looked mildly hokey to me. Worth a screening, then?

I loved Woman in the Window until the final five minutes, which seemed like a betrayal of the whole noir aesthetic.

Yeah, the ending of that movie is pretty disappointing, but apparently Lang (rather cinically) enjoyed performing this cheesy trick.

recently seen Classe tous risques (the big risk), the 2nd movie by claude sautet, and it's def. one of my favourite noirs ever.
it's actually a combination between noir and neo-realism. Melville was highly influenced by it, and it shows.

I need to watch more Tourneur. Recently saw I Walked With a Zombie, which isn't strictly noir but is amazingly atmospheric and features the spookiest calypso singer ever.

features the spookiest calypso singer ever.

Tying the whole thing together here...

http://lpcoverlover.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/042.jpg

Weird true fact--I bought the 'Phantom Lady' novel by Cornell Woolrich a couple of years ago, and the bookshop person is "Oh, that comes with an action figure, I think."

And it did: http://www.starstore.com/acatalog/dc_phantom_lady-01.jpg

Strangest thing I've ever got at a bookshop.

Gun Crazy always looked mildly hokey to me. Worth a screening, then?

Oh SHIT yes! Worth it for the one-take bank-robbing scene alone, but it's all great. Has this fascinating complicated sexual vibe all the way through--Lewis wanted Dall to play the 'hero' as though he was maybe gay.

oh hoos, plz, it's only "hokey" to those cretins who laugh their way thru Every Old Movie Ever.

John Dall didn't really have a movie career.

? He's in Spartacus, that's a dozen years later. Figured he was handicapped in later years by seeming so obviously gay.

Big Combo was photographed by this guy, who did tons of good/great stuff:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0023003/

"He's in Spartacus, that's a dozen years later. Figured he was handicapped in later years by seeming so obviously gay"

Quite probable. I remember seeing Rope when I was a kid and being struck by his sneer.

This Gun for Hire is great, really liking Alan Ladd

Drifted off with Maltese Falcon on last night, and ended up dreaming with Bogie popping up occasionally. Remember playing darts with him at one point, but he was throwing the darts from about 20 yards away and throwing them really hard. I had to ask him to be careful and watch my windows, to which he smiled "you're windows will be fine"

Just watched another Bogie effort, Dark Passage. Pretty good, some great shots of San Fran too. love how they don't show Humphrey's face for the first part of the movie, until he's had his plastic surgery.

Just ordered this, am hoping they're good!

http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/release_images/2293/NikkatsuNoir.jpg

1950s Japanese noir movies

I own that box but have only watched the first movie so far. Not conventional noir, not even in the way that, say, some of Kurosawa's stuff qualifies. Nikkatsu aimed for a teen market, so there's a lot of starcrossed lovers, theme songs sung by handsome lead actors, etc., though the movies do seem to be very dark and violent in a post-war poverty sort of way. But I think the noir categorization is mostly marketing on Criterion/Eclipse's part.

Wow this 1948 UK film Daughter of Darkness was just given dvd reissue by Redemption films. It's both British noir and femme fatale wrapped in one with plenty of chiaroscuro and gothic vibe. Definitely recommended.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/images/blogimages/2009/09/30/1254335093-daughterofdarkness.jpg

Anthony Mann's Side Street makes really amazing use of NYC locations and a great cast of supporting players. MGM was clearly trying to cash in on Naked City's success of the preceding year, but I think this one's better.

Human Desire was finally released on DVD last week. Caught it yet? Not one of Lang's best noirs, and no pox on Renoir's version.

Just saw Deadline At Dawn, (mentioned 4 years ago) last night, and it's fascinating: bizarrely pseudopoetic dialogue by Clifford Odets, and a very Edward Hopper-ish visual design; Susan Hayward is beautiful.

Came to say that the 1998 sc-fi noir Dark City with Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly and William Hurt is grebt, but the 1950 not-quite-noir Dark City with Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Jack Webb, Harry Morgan, Dean Jagger, Ed Begley and Viveca Lindfors is fun but doesn't really satisfy.

The Carlton here (not a rep theatre; a little hard to classify) has a "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid Weekend" going on. I'd like to see a bunch of them, but the way the price structure's set up, I'll limit myself to a couple--maybe I Walk Alone and Deception.

Fri 11-Sun 13 - Toronto Film Society presents a festival of film noir classics. $10 rush tickets; Fri or Sat pass $65, Sun pass $50, full weekend pass $150.

Fri 11 - Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982) D: Carl Reiner. 9:15 am. Notorious (1946) D: Alfred Hitchcock. 11 am. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) D: Tay Garnett. 1:25 pm. Double Indemnity (1944) D: Billy Wilder. 3:35 pm. The Killers (1946) D: Robert Siodmak. 6:50 pm. The Lost Weekend (1945) D: Billy Wilder. 8:50 pm. Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) D: Anatole Litvak. 10:45 pm.

Sat 12 - The Big Sleep (1946) D: Howard Hawks. 9 am. This Gun For Hire (1941) D: Frank Tuttle. 11:10 am. Humoresque (1946) D: Jean Negulesco. 1:15 pm. White Heat (1949) D: Raoul Walsh. 3:35 pm. I Walk Alone (1948) D: Byron Haskin. 7 pm. In A Lonely Place (1950) D: Nicholas Ray. 8:50 pm. Suspicion (1941) D: Alfred Hitchcock. 10:40 pm.

Sun 13 - The Bribe (1949) D: Robert Z Leonard. 9:30 am. Deception (1946) D: Irving Rapper. 11:10 am. Johnny Eager (1941) D: Mervyn LeRoy. 2 pm. Dark Passage (1947) D: Delmer Daves. 4 pm. The Glass Key (1942) D: Stuart Heisler. 6 pm.

Wow.

Got out to I Walk Alone and Johnny Eager. The first reminded me a lot of The Strange Love of Martha Ivers--partly that Kirk Douglas and Elizabeth Scott are in both, but more for the structure. I find Liz Scott kind of annoying. First time I've seen Johnny Eager. Lana Turner as a sociologist is right up there with Jennifer Lopez, child psychologist in The Cell. I've never found Turner that beautiful in The Postman Always Rings Twice--don't like the way she's got her hair--but she sure is beautiful here. I don't recall any mention of Van Heflin's character in The Celluloid Closet, but Heflin's portrayal seems ahead of its time. Robert Taylor's fake niece has a great scene.

I have some problems with LS as well.

Anthony Mann's Side Street makes really amazing use of NYC locations and a great cast of supporting players. MGM was clearly trying to cash in on Naked City's success of the preceding year, but I think this one's better.

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, July 14, 2010 11:34 PM (1 year ago)

Triggered by the name-that-still thread, I was looking at some images from Force of Evil last week; fantastic.

http://wondersinthedark.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/filmnotebook-forceofevil_b.jpg

David Thomson reviews a re-release today and says it's better than On the Waterfront:

http://www.tnr.com/article/film/105544/david-thomson-force-of-evil

I'd be surprised if I liked it that much, but I do need to see this.

It's really great.

But I don't think of it when I think of the most expressionistic cinematography. It's more about the script and characters.

I watched a neat one last night (actually 3AM, damn insomnia) -- Without Warning!

Quiet, unobtrusive LA citizen Carl Martin picks up look-alikes for his estranged blonde wife and murders them with garden shears.

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRrfv0k0yZi0l_c9ezLmJqMMTx5tcSScjX3cV8qSqgjWs2wg-y9qhO1srXVqw

Actually more police prodecural than straight noir, but what made it better than average for me was location footage of a long-gone Hollywood, including many scenes shot around Chavez Ravine, a ramshackle Latino neighborhood in the hills above the then-under-construction freeway system. I didn't know the story of this area until I researched this morning; I found it fascinating.

All bulldozed for Dodger Stadium. Still a contentious issue.

This is a nice piece; great pics and a salient quote:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2009/05/eric-avila-is-an-associate-professor-of-chicano-studies-history-and-urban-planning-at-ucla-his-book-popular-culture-in-the.html

the city reneged on its promise to build housing for poor people because government-subsidized housing was "socialistic," then turned around and subsidized (Walter) O'Malley's bid to build a stadium in the area... Many Angelenos saw that as pure hypocrisy (and it very much reminds me of current accusations of "socialism" in the U.S.)

Force of Evil is great, much less sentimental than Waterfront, no sop-to-the-audience finish.

think I can only catch one of two lesser-known Siodmaks at Film Forum tonight... probably Christmas Holiday, w/ Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly! Yes, it's a noir, apparently!

http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/the_dark_mirror_christmas_holi

Thanks for the alert!

This really turned out to be an excellent double feature by the way, both Christmas Holiday and The Dark Mirror, with Olivia de Havilland and Thomas Mitchell.

My wife, who's not much of a movie buff, is for some reason really interested in the Noir City festival. What should we see? Kiss Me Deadly is probably at the top of my list (I haven't seen any of them); The Window looks intriguing, but we've already got plans the night it's screening.

Besides KMD, I would recommend On Dangerous Ground, White Heat, Phantom Lady, Caught.

Yeah, those look good, thanks!

What Dr Morbius said, plus This Gun for Hire

glass orchid

sorry, conflated glass key and no orchid for miss blandish

Is No Orchid any good? Never seen it. Glass Key was cool.

no, it's not any good, that's what it's famous for.

Ha, right--I knew the book had that rep, didn't know about the film.

video essay on Chandler adaptations:

http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.de/2012/10/hard-boiled-studies-of-raymond.html

Just watched Blast of Silence, partly for its Christmas setting. When it was done, one of my friends said, "Well that was a fuckin' gangster movie." Pretty amazing film. So much in it that could be ridiculous and kind of is -- especially the sneering narration -- but it's so uncompromising and flinty straight to the end that you can't laugh it off.

Anthony Mann's Side Street makes really amazing use of NYC locations and a great cast of supporting players. MGM was clearly trying to cash in on Naked City's success of the preceding year, but I think this one's better.

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, July 14, 2010 11:34 PM (1 year ago)

I forgot to second this two years ago.

― The Unbassful Serpent (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 14 May 2012 00:50 (7 months ago) Permalink

Thirded. I just stumbled across this one last night, it's really great.

It seems I rated Blast of Silence five stars on Netflix, but I don't remember watching it. Will have to re-screen.

I had never seen Dark Passage before last night. The POV camera gimmick, Bogey's dream sequence, nonsensical plot, odd supporting characters, beuatiful San Fran location shooting... even if this isn't maybe a great movie, it's great fun!

Michael Atkinson:

Auteurism has encouraged us to think of a director’s filmography as a whole, but within it each film is measured by how beautifully or not it expresses that director’s aesthetic personality.

Noir isn’t like that. It often doesn’t matter who directs which film, what studio made it, or even how “good” each individually is. If we’ve learned anything from catching up with the genre—and I expect to still be seeing “new” noirs made between 1945 and 1962 into my dotage—it’s that each noir is not an individual piece of work, and shouldn’t be diminished by being seen that way. Rather, it’s a zone you enter into, a gallery of bastards and luckless fools, of urban lostness and night streets. It’s bigger than both of us, bigger, certainly, than the often-too-precious romance between a director and his auteurist fan. You go there and find what you can. Simply, noirs are best considered as a whole, as a hive-mind bum’s rush, America whiskey-talking to itself after an innocence-torching war and during a social moment that was supposed to be bliss and was instead empty and scarred. Each noir itself is not equivalent to a painting or a symphony, but all of them together are a cathedral, the massive and chastening temple of the mid-century American Dream betting the Devil its heart, and losing.

This is why noir-based fiction, like David Thomson’s novel “Suspects” and Martin Rowson’s outrageous Eliot-meets-Chandler graphic novel lark “The Waste Land,” come at this particular cultural eruption folding scores of films and characters and references into their narratives. It may be the one page in cinema history where it’s not only permissible but desirable to mix the films and storylines and character arcs together, commingling the experiences of Robert Ryan’s various bigots and Charles McGraw’s various trenchcoated badasses and Yvonne DeCarlo’s various vampire-tramps into one midnight stumble into the shadowlands. Still, that doesn’t mean that noirs are or can be homogenized, or that their use of familiar genre tropes are what’s interesting about them. Each noir has a layer, a dose of beleaguered humanity, to add to the larger story.

http://blog.sundancenow.com/weekly-columns/viva-mabuse-22-noiristan

Wow. Well put. Have you ever read that one book by Geoffrey O'Brien where each chapter is the retelling of a dreamlike uber-film based on one particular genre? The Phantom Empire: Movies in the Mind of the 20th Century

I have not

I remember it being an evocation of something like what Atkinson is describing.

holy shit at the final scene of Kiss Me Deadly

Just skimming through this thread I noticed Devil In A Blue Dress gets mentioned but no One False Move?? Surely not. Like the look of Side Street.

Where is the love for Phil Karlson and Kansas City Confidential?

Thanks for all the compliments about Gene Tierney, my great aunt!

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz3wmmSvHn1qbsbnoo1_500.png

she was great!

Kudos to you and your gene pool.

I tend to forget she's in Advise and Consent; I wish she'd lived long enough to play these tart roles.

sexy auntie

Watched The Big Sleep again this week, and can say that it is definitely *not* one of my fave noirs, though I don't really have any very interesting reason for not liking it all that much. The story is, as many have noted, a muddle, and watching it is mostly a case of killing time between the handful of classic scenes or lines.

The guy who intro'd it on TCM (forget name) actually dismissed its status as one of the great noirs, opting to think of it as a particularly atmospheric screwball comedy instead. That works.

Kudos to you and your gene pool.
― Pastel City Slang (James Redd and the Blecchs)

Ha! Good one, Pastel, and thanks everyone for the nice words. I really only got to know her when I was a kid and some as a teenager before she passed away, but she was a terrific person, very funny and nice as can be. She had some rough times in her life (her memoir "Self-Portrait" is pretty good and tells all about it) but was very happy in her final years.

Will have to read that.

After watching Kansas City Confidential and various Allan Dwan films this weekend have to say John Payne as ambiguous hero is really growing on me.

That's fantastic, Iago.

that is such a great photo of your great aunt, iago. is that from a film still or is it a promo shot?

production still

Continued thanks, all. Treeship, that is a 1947(?) portrait by George Hurrell...pretty stunning picture!

I am scanning some family albums this summer and there are a few very cool snapshots of her that I will post soon if you all are interested

Risking overkill but wishing I posted the Hurrell above in color...OK, no more!

http://25.media.tumblr.com/5effbd945acdb479e812355d05143a05/tumblr_mp1gggArKW1rkh6xoo1_1280.jpg

Caught a 35mm screening of The Blue Dahlia tonight. Raymond Chandler script. Alan Ladd & Veronica Lake. HUGH BEAUMONT. William Bendix was a creepy looking dude. Finally came to dvd last year. Film only mentioned once in this thread.

That's the one where William Bendix forgets stuff, right? I've seen it a couple of times, but many years ago.

Yeah, he's got a plate in his head making him mad every time he hears that "Monkey Music", cursing the day Michael Nesmith was born.

Watched Pushover (1954) last night (Fred MacMurray and "introducing Kim Novak.") Really good, if somewhat derivative of Double Indemnity, and also sharing the spying-across-the apartment-courtyard motif of Rear Window which was released the same year. It has enough twists and turns and double-crosses to satisfy.

yeah, that one's OK.

Series of Columbia crime films at MoMA... of COURSE i haven't gotten to any yet, but planning on Dmytryk's The Sniper tonight.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1488

The Sniper is very unsettling, and apparently a direct influence on Psycho and possibly Vertigo. Some pretty good San Francisco location shots too, if that floats your boat... Dave Kehr talks about it, and the series he co-curated, here (some spoilers in the first piece):

http://www.davekehr.com/?p=21

http://www.screenslate.com/interviews/dave-kehr

This looks neat

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00MUNSV3S/ref=redir_mdp_mobile?keywords=film%20noir&qid=undefined&ref_=sr_1_1&s=movies-tv&sr=1-1

Ha! Just finished watching The Big Clock. Lighter than most noirs in that its foregrounded with a lot more humour than most (the film even fades out on a gag), but ridiculously entertaining. Plus, Charles Laughton being awesome.

If I were ever to go to San Francisco in January, it might be for the Noir City fest. This year's theme: Unholy Matrimony!

http://noircity.com/nc13p1.html

anyone checked out the Criterion of Robert Montgomery's Ride the Pink Horse? Very good, weirdly plotted and cast (the principal heavy is Mr Sheldrake from Sunset Blvd, wearing a big hearing aid), and as at least one critic (labuza, below) has pointed out, RM's antihero is kind of an idiot. Also an essential Thomas Gomez performance (first Oscar nomination for a Hispanic actor).

http://thefilmstage.com/features/ride-the-pink-horse-hits-criterion-edges-of-the-frame/

Only major film performance by Zozobra as well, I believe.

i saw the name, but i don't know em

oh the big fiesta puppet

I'm stoked, a friend who is deeply into noir made a VHS of this quite a while back so it'd be nice to see a good print

Montgomery did it right after his Lady in the Lake, which i still haven't seen.

(first Oscar nomination for a Hispanic actor)

Thomas Gomez, Ride the Pink Horse
Robert Ryan, Crossfire
Richard Widmark, Kiss of Death

Man, no wonder they gave it to Santa Claus that year.

Love everything about the film minus the crappy "Anglo-girl-does-Mezzcan" performance by Wanda Hendrix. Takes me out of it every time.

In New Mexico, culture designed-for-tourists has a way of becoming authentic, & vice versa.

On the other hand, I could never deal with Charlton Heston as a Mexican in Touch of Evil, for what it's worth.

Yeah, Heston takes me out of "TOE" as well. Akim Tamiroff doesn't , though. Go figure.

Heston likely got OW hired to direct, so deal with it eh.

is Wanda Hendrix's character Mayan?

CH also cried after doing Edward G. Robinson's last scene ever, death scene in Soylent Green, but perhaps I embellish.

Xp. She's all yours, Morbs. Take her. (Ba-dum)

crappy "Anglo-girl-does-Mezzcan" performance by Wanda Hendrix. Takes me out of it every time.

I find this hard to believe, Jay Vee, as you've seen a lot of Hollywood films of the era and, for substantial nonwhite roles, this was pretty much done EVERY. TIME. Through the '60s.

Yes, true, but she doesn't convince me in her part. Why is that a big concern? I find some actors inhabit their parts better than others. It's simple as that.

And as far as Heston in TOE goes it's really only when he speaks any Spanish ( see bar scene in search of his wife ) that the illusion is shattered. A poor accent by a "native" speaker is something I pick up on right away. A film like Mann's "Border Incident" for example really delivers the goods for me because Montalban was perfect casting.

Michael Almereyda's essay on Pink Horse:

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3490-ride-the-pink-horse-bad-luck-all-around

Same source novelist as In a Lonely Place, Dorothy B Hughes. (IaLP just can't stay in print long enough for me to find it.)

“Wally Cassell, a film-noir favorite who played Cotton Valletti, one of Jimmy Cagney’s gang, in the electric 1949 crime thriller White Heat, has died. He was 103.” The Hollywood Reporter‘s Mike Barnes: “Cassell stood out in such film-noir movies as Cornell Woolrich’s The Guilty (1947); Quicksand (1950), which starred [Mickey] Rooney and Peter Lorre; the crime-doesn’t-pay drama Highway 301 (1950), opposite Steve Cochran; Breakdown (1952), a boxing saga with Ann Richards and Sheldon Leonard; and City That Never Sleeps (1953), starring Gig Young.”

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wally-cassell-dead-white-heat-798730

wow. 103!

Kiss Me Deadly is just ridiculously good. favorite line: the casual reply given when Wesley Addy's police lieutenant is asked what to do about Hammer: "Let him go to hell."

Last GREAT fn I saw was Nightmare Alley, which doesn't seem to have been mentioned on this thread. It's so singular and weird that at times it feels almost like Fritz Lang's lost post-war American horror movie; highly recommended:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Alley_(film)

ILF:

Nightmare Alley

TY, will read. It's genuinely haunted me since I saw it a little while ago, and I can't say that about a lot of 'better' movies. The conclusion that we'll all end up as the geek is p devastating.

Every scene with Addy is so great. His delivery of "I catch you snooping around with a gun in your hand, I'll throw you in jail!" kills me.

def read the novel.. more merciless

It is. Though at least with the film you don't have to be inside Hammer's horrible head.

Or did you mean the Nightmare Alley novel, which is also bloody good, and has the advantage of non-Spillane prose.

yes, Nightmare Alley... i do think i read that Spillane alone

My favorites.

Nicely done. But why did you leave out The Big Sleep?

And Kiss Me Deadly?

And Gun Crazy?

(Alfred tells us all to shut up)

at least Devil in a Blue Dress is in the mix, I'd take out The Limey and add One False Move instead.

Big Sleep raised my eyebrow the most but maybe it's not fully noir. if that's the rationale then maybe In a Lonely Place raises my eyebrow the most.

It's Night AND the City, not in the city.

too many color films

Ossessione is much more of a noir than Maltese Falcon, ditto many Melvilles.

Huston's most blatant noir was Asphalt Jungle, and as Orson Welles pointed out, Kubrick then left him in the dust with The Killing.

Force of Evil is not #17 fer chrissakes

No "Sunset Boulevard" because you dont think its a noir or just dont rate it?

I love The Late Show.

Positive reinforcement, people.

Good point. But feel like whatever I might have had to say probably already said upthread somewhere.

Alfred is sentenced to ten hours of Robert Ryan noirs for leaving all of them out

Eddie Muller shakes his head

Gloria Grahame season at BFI Southbank

Running concurrently alongside BFI Thriller, BFI Southbank will also present a season of films celebrating the irresistible and alluring Gloria Grahame. The season will tie in with the release of Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (Paul McGuigan, 2017), about the passionate relationship between British actor Peter Turner and the Academy Award-winning actress, starring Annette Bening and Jamie Bell. Graham was most famous for her femmes fatales roles in films such as In a Lonely Place (1950), The Big Heat (1953), Sudden Fear (1952) and Human Desire (1954), all of which will be screened alongside non-thriller titles she starred in, shining a spotlight on her formidable talent

Big Sleep raised my eyebrow the most but maybe it's not fully noir. if that's the rationale then maybe In a Lonely Place raises my eyebrow the most.

Saw In a Lonely Place for the first time just this week. Was pretty disappointed tbh, maybe because I loved the book so much. But the Dix character's hate and rage wasn't explained v well I think, so it was just lots of him being a dick to his girlfriend. A shame.

The book is being reissued on NYRB classics.

was reprinted in the Femme Fatales series almost 15 yrs ago, which is the copy I have. much more nuance than the film.

not read the book. Dix's hatefulness isn't explained in the film - he's just presented as a dick and i think that's enough in that context. he is the film's villain, whatever else happens, dunno that i'd want there to be "mitigating" circumstances

Fuckin villains.

i think his nature adds a layer of irony to the title :)

I will take "The Asphalt Jungle" over "The Killing" any day.

Alfred, I applaud the fact you put the great "Devil In A Blue Dress" on your list. I watch that about 2-3 times a year.

List needs Melville, though.

Think one has to disallow French, otherwise...

Oh, but he included Diabolique so...

ian, he's a desperate middle-aged screenwriter. 'nuff said

The book is a whole diff story, also excellent; read it for the first time last year.

Gloria Grahame's marriage to Nick Ray was falling apart at the time, wasn't it

Yes, I think she took up w/ his teenage son around then...?

Bogart's Dix is an antihero, not a villain. one pities him.

Alfred is sentenced to ten hours of Robert Ryan noirs for leaving all of them out

I wish I could be sentenced to this, and have the time to carry it out

maybe yer supposed to pity dix but... nah, he's... a dick.

People often cite it as Bogart's deepest performance. You can see the pain and self-hatred.

Think it was Last (x) Movies where I had a good conversation about Nightmare Alley, but might be too spoiler-y for some---but from the same thread (didn't know about this one, it's great):

Act of Violence---1948, dir. Fred Zinneman, starring Robert Ryan, Van Heflin, Janet Leigh, Phyllis Thaxter, and Mary Astor ( In her autobiography, A Life on Film, Astor recalled filming her scenes for Act of Violence while simultaneously shooting Little Women: "For two weeks or so I was with the Zinneman company playing a sleazy, aging whore, with Van Heflin and Robert Ryan. It was such a contrast that it was stimulating - and reviving....---thanks TCM!). Shit you can't take back, no matter how much you pay, in a star-spangled suburban way or otherwise---crisis of the intractable, locked gears, film fucking noir. (I got a bit tired of the earnest running around that Leigh, Astor, and Thaxter have to do, but the guys do it too, in a grimmer way, all in the maze.)

― dow, Thursday, July 6, 2017 5:11 PM
Also liked the three versions of Postman I've seen, was disappointed by Double Indemnity, despite being a Stanwyck stan.

Agree about Bogart, and reminds me I still need to read this, which I got when it first came out:

Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s (Sarah Weinman ed., Library of America)
Laura, Vera Caspary | The Horizontal Man, Helen Eustis | In a Lonely Place, Dorothy B. Hughes | The Blank Wall, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding | Mischief, Charlotte Armstrong | The Blunderer, Patricia Highsmith | Beast in View, Margaret Millar | Fools’ Gold, Dolores Hitchens

Laura the book is camp as hell. In a Lonely Place, The Blank Wall, The Blunderer and Beast in View are all great.

People often cite it as Bogart's deepest performance. You can see the pain and self-hatred.

totally agree. antihero, villain, that's just semantics, i wan't really trying to put an easy label on the character. but the film draws the conclusion that he's probably capable of murder, and in the end Laurel has to escape him. it's not an accident that the murderer himself is so tangential to the story.

anyway before ian repped for the book yesterday i was already thinking i'd like to read it, will have to get round to that.

Forgetting The Big Sleep was an oversight. I should've had Melville too, maybe Ossessione. As for Ryan, I hope y'all don't have Crossfire in mind (The Set-Up and On Dangerous Ground, however).

Ophuls' Caught too

Clearly I need to check out more Ophuls. Clash By Night seems spiritually noir, kind of a sun-and-moonlight, healthy sea air Nightmare Alley: Stanwyck finally comes back because she has nowhere else to go, and when Ryan sees her again, neither does he, not that he was all healthy before. Her husband is delusional, Uncle Billy is silly with demented malice, on a spree.

I'll take The Reckless Moment over Caught in this context.

me too

no one (since alfred's revive) has mentioned Night Moves -- I think that's a great movie. nice to see it on your list, alfred.

Alfred's list needs more Sam Fuller on it. House Of Bamboo at least.

that's true!

I may write a sequel tbh

That's more like it!

Night Moves is coming out on blu-ray at the end of this month

I just need to call anything as '70s as Night Noves neo-noir.

btw i don't think i've ever seen the R Ryan-starring Act of Violence:

http://www.eddiemuller.com/top25noir.html

Caught that one on TCM a couple of years ago, it's good.

Actually saw Eddie Muller once at Film Forum. He was introducing The Prowler, which he said he often watched with James Ellroy.

Act of Violence and The Set-Up are top-notch Ryan. Would also include Odds Against Tomorrow.

Very well. I've expanded the list.

Please fix the director credit for The Big Sleep ASAP

I would have preferred Huston's The Big Sleep tbh

Watch it, Buster, or you'll end up like your friend Joe Brody.

has Alfred really seen any of these?

Think maybe we just guilt-tripped him into listing them, sight unseen

has Alfred really seen any of these?

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius),

oh come now

Big Sleep still has RONG DUDE in the director's chair

Also, wish I could post video of George Sanders as King Charles II in Forever Amber saying "Come, children!" to his dogs.

http://filmfanatic.org/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Forever-Amber-Sanders.png

You might as well have posted The Maltese Falcon, dir. Roy Del Ruth

Appealing review of the NYRB edition of In A Lonely Place:
http://www.npr.org/2017/08/22/545261350/if-you-want-groundbreaking-noir-try-looking-in-a-lonely-place

Saw Gun Crazy for the second time tonight. I can appreciate why it's famous, and for sure some of it is visually striking (including especially the first robbery). Tempering that for me is 10- or 15-minute escape at the end, which drags a bit (redeemed somewhat by some poetic cinematography right at the end--reminded me of Night of the Hunter), and John Dall, who isn't much of an actor and gets the film's worst lines ("Why do you kill people? Why can't you let them live?"). Peggy Cummins feels original. I knew I knew the name Morris Carnovsky, but I had to look him up to figure out from where: he plays James Caan's grandfather in The Gambler. Possible allusions in other films: "He'd kill us if he had the chance" in The Conversation (Cummins has almost an identical line), and the overhead shot inside the Library of Congress in All the President's Men (very similar to a shot of Dall and Cummins planning their final robbery).

http://criminalbackgroundrobertodiernasmoviereviewblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/gun-crazy-swamp-robert-odierna-sheriff.jpg?w=700

pretty incredible film, i think. and when Peggy Cummins spins around to give this look of glee as they make their escape, it raises the hair on your arms.

https://thehannibal8.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/gun-crazy-direction1.png?w=500

Don't sleep on the '47 Technicolor Desert Fury starring Lizabeth Scott, John Hodiak and Burt Lancaster but stolen by Mary Astor and Wendell Corey. Queer as hell. On a Kino Lorber DVD release from February.

Because of an ILX POLL, recently learned that Burt Bacharach had a thing for and then with Lizabeth Scott.

I'm squeezing in the last few Columbia Noirs from the package leaving CC tomorrow, and watched Experiment in Terror this morning, really enjoyed it. I had a vague childhood memory of a creepy movie where Ross Martin made a woman undress...now I know which one it was.

Somebody posted on the Criterion thread what’s going away in future months but not what’s going away this month so I don’t really know what to binge watch:(

https://www.criterionchannel.com/leaving-june-30

Thanks!

man, Robert Siodmak's Cry of the City is something else, just fantastic. Wasn't that hot on Detour but figured it was minor given the runtime. don't know if COTC is a new restoration but it looked great. Looking forward to Criss Cross.

def recommend the traumatized WWII vet noir of Act of Violence -- Ryan, Heflin, Zinnemann (best?), Mary Astor as a worn skid row lush.

Seeing Fuller’s Underworld USA tonight.

Anyone who works in insurance should watch Double Indemnity and book it to their CPD.
(Um, that may be an insurance-specific reference)

Finally got around to The Maltese Falcon. Passé maybe but absolutely terrific. I also enjoyed The Big Sleep and Cape Fear, no real misses yet in the selections from here.

I've also enjoyed basically everything Dashiell Hammett wrote although a bit inconsistent. I tried some other more pulp writers but wasn't so impressed. James Ellroy is apparently kind of horrible though, he seems to think the way to get the most authentic mood for California noir is to slip in a lot of racial slurs. I was surprised to find out Hammett had radical left sympathies.

Noir Alley on TCM has been a pretty fun time for us (if DVR clogging).

yes! i love it but i forget to check in regularly. he has some real gems though.

seems to think the way to get the most authentic mood for California noir is to slip in a lot of racial slurs

racism in the 20th century LAPD? surely an outrageous slur

d’oh: slur smear

I was surprised to find out Hammett had radical left sympathies

well, he was Lillian Hellman's paramour for awhile

Hammett seems to have been radicalized by his experiences as a Pinkerton strikebreaker:

http://socialismtoday.org/archive/151/hammett.html

anyone seen Ride the Pink Horse?

I've seen Play The Pink Oboe

I have. Solid, essential Montgomery.

Unfortunately Hammett, like many CP members, loyally followed the ‘party line’, dictated by the Stalinist bureaucracy that had removed all vestiges of workers’ democracy in Russia. He publicly supported the Moscow purge trials that were used by the Stalinists to attack Leon Trotsky and other opponents of Stalinism...

[Under McCarthy,] the court sentenced him to six months in jail. Hammett offered no defence. After his release, he was blacklisted. His books that had sold in their hundreds of thousands were removed from public libraries. Screenings of film versions stopped. He became a non-person, dependent on the support of a few loyal friends for accommodation and food in his final years, finally dying from lung cancer in January 1961.

Interesting stuff, Brad C. I wish he would have written more directly about his experiences with the Anaconda strike but maybe he felt that had zero chance of publication. Apparently early in his career he had aspirations to more literary fiction.

racism in the 20th century LAPD? surely an outrageous slur

Touché but with Ellroy the impression is that he was actually expressing his own prejudices. He's a pretty right wing guy, whatever you make of that. Imo any kind of 'true crime' fiction that adheres to the lies of conservative American white supremacist leanings is deeply misguided and not really worth much consideration otherwise. But I did enjoy LA Confidential if I'm honest.

As for watching I don't DVR, I t0rrent tbh.

Ellroy definitely revels in inhabiting and creating voices for pieces of shit in the 1950s novels, but Rampart shows he's aware of the endemic racist problems in the LAPD, and that the earlier books are not simply a reflection of good times for white men that he wishes were still around

(I tapped out on the books after The Kelley Deal Cold 6000 so this is the only thing I've encountered by him set less than 38 years ago)

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is a weird one -- that bifurcated structure, with Stanwyck taking a back seat to Van Heflin (never better) in screen time -- but I liked it a lot. Weird to see Kirk Douglas playing such a weak character (in his debut), but he's good.

(and wow, that girl playing young Stanwyck is indeed creepy and unforgettable)

Yeah, it rocks.

Watched I Wake Up Screaming (1941) this morning, which doesn't appear to be terribly well known for reasons I can sort of understand: it feels like its still figuring out the rules of the genre, so there are plenty of detours into comedy and romance, but the uncertainty ultimately works in the picture's favour. Great supporting work, especially from a menacing Laird Cregar (who I didn't know before), and a genuinely puzzling use of the an instrumental version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" throughout, acting as a sort of ironic counterpoint to the story.

Not a favorite--too slight, ending goes soft--but watching André De Toth's Crime Wave this morning, I got a fair bit of amusement out of how much Ted de Corsia (as the main heavy) resembles Ted Cruz:

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w600_and_h900_bestv2/koshCsy9aAqgwH5E15CyNS4J3VZ.jpg

I love Crime Wave because it was filmed in my old neighborhood in Glendale. I used to live a couple doors away from the pet hospital that Charles Bronson walks into here:
http://tropicostation.blogspot.com/2008/09/glendale-on-film-crime-wave-1952.html

I like those kind of discoveries. I watched Kubrick’s The Killing a few days ago, hadn’t seen it before and didn’t realize that part of it was filmed at the former Bay Meadows racetrack in San Mateo

I urge folks with the Criterion Channel to check out So Dark The Night. Part of the Columbia noir series, although its French village setting is not very noir to me. Directed by Joseph Lewis (Gun Crazy) it features beautiful cinematography for a B film, charming acting by a mostly unknown cast, and a plot that gets weirder than the leisurely first half would lead you to believe.

dave kehr's summary: https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/so-dark-the-night/Film?oid=2800203

I watched that one last year on the first go-round for Columbia Noir, it's good.

Just watched So Dark The Night (it's on YouTube): enjoyable but minor. For most of it I was thinking this isn't noir, it's murder mystery... but then the twisty end gets pretty noir.

One aspect that struck me is that it's set in France, and everyone's presumably speaking French all the time although it's English in the movie, and they signal this by everyone speaking in outrageous comedy French accents. This used to be standard cinema practice, but fell out of favour at some point, quite a bit later on, maybe the 70s or 80s? Are there examples beyond that? I think what took that place is instead of foreign accents signifying foreign languages, English accents (as opposed to American) became signifiers of foreign language. But I'm not sure that's done so much now, the suspension of disbelief is not so possible any more. You have to go with subtitles, or you have to forego any attempt to signify "foreign" and just go with a naturalistic American accent

Finally saw the Scorsese favorite Murder by Contract… lean and mean, just like Vince Edwards.

Detour is a wild ride. The Vera character is just nuts. In some scenes, Ann Savage looks glamorously sexy, and in others she looks like a rat that just crawled out of its hole. She's a two-face!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Ann_Savage_in_Detour.jpg
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/--BZFf_JP3w4/XHp-djxGK7I/AAAAAAAARVc/sNi5Pge5mkkxuSE95jPZ1kpwCE-D4jL0ACLcBGAs/s1600/Detour.jpg

i didn't think much of detour (and i was excited to watch); it seemed like more of an experiment/accomplishment in economy than a "great" film

I'd advise catching Ann Savage's performance from a Guy Maddin film about 60 years later

Ann Savage in Detour is amazing!!

Ride the Pink Horse would make a good pair with Flamingo Road

Detour is one of my favorite films of all time. It perfectly captures the vibe of a “racy” paperback purchased at a seedy small town bus station sometime in the Great Depression.

watched So Dark the Night last night based on this thread - came close to switching it off a few times in the first half, but the second half does indeed pay off as advertised itt, some great expressionist touches, particularly loved the shot where Steven Geray is at his desk & suddenly the foreground light disappears except for horror-movie underlighting on his face. Fun discovery.

SPOILER so Dark the night SPOILER is really the dumb film that the twin brother in adaptation is writing

yup. also, it is oedipus rex.

I'm reading James Harvey's Movie Love in the Fifties, and in advance of the Big Heat chapter, I watched it for the first time in ages. Great film. You have to put up with the domestic scenes between Ford and his wife for a few minutes--I realize their importance, but they're the Susie-Dallas scenes in Sweet Smell of Success, the anachronistic wholesomeness that belongs to some other movie. Lots of great lines otherwise--I'd forgotten Gloria Grahame's famous line when she walks into Ford's hotel room for the first time--and Dave Bannion very much belongs to the Ethan/Scottie line of '50s male obsessives who are borderline psychotic.

The Underworld Story is sorta misleadingly titled, in that its basically a proto-Ace in the Hole with a gangster character who plays a pivotal supporting role. It's a good one, though, thanks mostly to a solid supporting cast, including Herbert Marshall as a conflicted rich patriarch, Gar Miller as his creepy son, and the great Howard Da Silva as the aforementioned gangster. Dan Duryea is typically scuzzy as in the lead, and the credits assure me that Alan Hale Jr. is in there somewhere as a hired goon, but I didn't catch him. There is some awkward racial stuff that Eddie Muller explains was the product of director Cy Endfield (who also made the equally terrific noir The Sound of Fury the same year) wanting to inject some social commentary into the piece, only to have the studio intervene and demand the casting of a white actress as the "negro" maid charged with murder so the film would play in the south. It's...distracting, to say the least.

How in the world had I never seen The Big Combo before last night. Dark, brutal, and perfectly cast.

Love that movie. John Hoyt as the world weary Swedish antiques dealer is a highlight.

My favourite half of a film noir is the first half of Dark Passage

Yeah, that blew my mind when I caught it on afternoon tv as a kid.

thanks for the big combo rec. had never heard of it and was amazed by how good it was! Was really surprised at how little standing it has, seemed a lot better than a lot of much more canonical stuff from the period, great performances and some really artful sequences. Helene Stanton as Rita was wonderful and I looked her up on imdb and she basically didn't appear in anything else?

Yeah watched the big combo after reading this thread and really loved it. Gun crazy next I guess

I watched Preminger's Whirlpool and Where the Sidewalk Ends recently, I was surprised to find out the former is more well known/well regarded. WTSE could use much more Gene Tierney but it kind of got me at the end with the turn in Dana Andrews' character.

The extras in the Eureka disc of The Big Combo (in the Film Noir box) spend a lot of time bickering about whether the movie has an auteurist vision or whether ppl trying to say that are evidence of auteurism gone wrong and that it's actually more of a triumph of a lot of different players. The story of how it got rediscovered - UK repertory cinema got a hold of a copy in the 1970's and played the hell out of it - also entertaining.

been patching up my noir blind spots. The Big Heat! amazing! Kiss Me Deadly! slightly overrated beyond the ending!

also, Gun Crazy benefits tremendously from knowing nothing about it when you start in.

I thought the same about Kiss Me Deadly at first, but check out this video about how much Robert Aldrich fucking HATED Mickey Spillane... besides the Cold War horror that runs thru the movie and explodes at the end, Aldrich and his co-writer saw Mike Hammer (who was in a bunch of Spillane novels iirc) as a fascist thug, and Meeker's performance shows that. jamming the guy's fingers in the drawer, I mean his cynicism and cruelty are emphasized over his values (if any) and his mission and his effectiveness in it, which is basically none, the bomb goes off... the most obvious nod towards this is the backwards opening credits. also how Cloris Leachman catching her breath eventually just sounds like aroused moaning.

One of the great things about KMD is just how amped up it is pushing against both the production code and Spillane/Hammer fan service expectations.