Film noir: your favourites

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"M" is probably one of my favourite movies - I hadn't thought of it as a noir film. I've only seen the remake of "Night and the City", but really liked that, especially for the dialogue (which'll be totally different from the original) and Alan King. And the senselessness of "Father Time"'s heart attack.

― jazz odysseus, Friday, 9 April 2004 20:45 (9 years ago) Permalink

American - The Man with the Golden Arm

French - Bob le Flambeur
Band of Outsiders

― webcrack (music=crack), Friday, 9 April 2004 20:58 (9 years ago) Permalink

The Man with the Golden Arm is great. I love that the main character's name was "Frankie Machine" - i'll say this again - his real name was "Frankie Machine" - and he wanted to change it to "Jack Duvall" for a stage name.

― jazz odysseus, Friday, 9 April 2004 21:02 (9 years ago) Permalink

I have a think for french noir/gangster films...Touchez Pas au Grisbi, Rififi, Bob Le Flambour, Le Samurai, Le Cercle Rouge...there's a book on french noir I've been meaning to get, any recommendations, much appreciated. I've definately been meaning to check out Pepe le Moko.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 9 April 2004 21:27 (9 years ago) Permalink

If 'M' is considered noir, wouldn't it be the earliest?

― oops (Oops), Saturday, 10 April 2004 06:34 (9 years ago) Permalink

My faves are "Scarlet Street" (Lang); "In a Lonely Place"; and of course "Double Indemnity."

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

― eddie hurt (ddduncan), Saturday, 10 April 2004 17:59 (9 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...

Double Indemnity it being re-released on DVD in August. Looks barebones, though, as my price is only $9.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Monday, 10 May 2004 02:37 (9 years ago) Permalink

I think the low price is because you only get one indemnity.

― jazz odysseus (jazz odysseus), Monday, 10 May 2004 02:44 (9 years ago) Permalink

shut your yap, bo' or i squirt lead!

― Dave Amos, Monday, 10 May 2004 07:59 (9 years ago) Permalink

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.

― Japanese Giraffe (Japanese Giraffe), Monday, 10 May 2004 11:16 (9 years ago) Permalink

1 year passes...

Any neo-noir recommendation, then?

― Le Baaderonixx de Benedict Canyon (baaderonixx), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 08:50 (7 years ago) Permalink

'devil in a blue dress'

― the Enrique who acts like some kind of good taste gestapo (Enrique), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 09:02 (7 years ago) Permalink

"Romeo is Bleeding," "The Last Seduction," "Blow Out."

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 09:39 (7 years ago) Permalink

Brick

― LOL Thomas (Chris Barrus), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 13:53 (7 years ago) Permalink

No mention (unless I'm missing it) of Laura, a personal favourite.

― frankiemachine, Tuesday, 2 May 2006 14:16 (7 years ago) Permalink

Brick was amazing, and is as noir as noir gets.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 14:35 (7 years ago) Permalink

From today, actually:
http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/features/bnoir.asp

― C0L1N B... (C0L1N B...), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 16:27 (7 years ago) Permalink

No mention (unless I'm missing it) of Laura, a personal favourite.
I think lauren put it on her list. It should also be mentioned that someone once referred to Dr. Morbius the Waldo Lydecker of ILX.

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.

― Redd Temple Player (Two Headed Dogg) (Ken L), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 17:36 (7 years ago) Permalink

post-noir:Blood Simple - Cohen bros.

― dont stop go, Tuesday, 2 May 2006 17:40 (7 years ago) Permalink

4 weeks pass...

I've been going to a bunch of those Bs Colin linked to, and highly recommend He Walked by Night -- John Alton-photographed, great LA sewer chase finale (year before Third Man), and the closeup on Richard Basehart as he removes a bullet from his side is an all-time masochistic moneyshot.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 13:54 (7 years ago) Permalink

Man, I missed the whole thing, and was this close to going to see He Walked By Night.

― Sons Of The Redd Desert (Ken L), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 14:03 (7 years ago) Permalink

Now that it's finally on DVD, Otto Preminger's Fallen Angel should be recognized as good if not better than Laura.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 14:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

Oh yeah, I saw that on TCM last year during the Mitchum festival.

― Sons Of The Redd Desert (Ken L), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 14:30 (7 years ago) Permalink

There are another few weeks, Ken! (DeForest Kelley -- unrecognizably young -- was in Canon City last night, and is in one of the Fuller pair I'm going to June 14.)

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

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 14:32 (7 years ago) Permalink

I haven't seen it yet, admittedly, but I want to pistol-whip whoever wrote Brick upthread.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 17:09 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'll be at Heather's bar tonight from 8 till 1am, 13th off of A if you happen to be in NYC and have your pistol handy.

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.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 17:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

Has anyone seen Naked City yet? I have just read that a film was made (after the Weegee book?). I'm intrigued to say the least.

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

― Nathalie (stevie nixed), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 17:35 (7 years ago) Permalink

The Big Combo is my favourite. It has all you need: tough-talking hoods, no-good, dime-store molls, flashes of machine-gun fire, cigarette smoke curling in the blinking neon light of a burlesque sign, and inky blackness.

― David Orton (scarlet), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 18:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

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.

How? Be specific. Give examples.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 18:28 (7 years ago) Permalink

(Bearing in mind that my favorite Chandler adaptation I've seen is the least "faithful": Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye.)

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 18:28 (7 years ago) Permalink

army of shadows, though it stretches the definition of "noir" just a tad

― gear (gear), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 18:30 (7 years ago) Permalink

up until the very last scene, Altman's Long Goodbye is pretty damn faithful to Chandler, or at least the character of Marlowe.

(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.

― p@reene (Pareene), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 18:39 (7 years ago) Permalink

1. Deadline at Dawn
2. A Bout de Souffle

― JTS (JTS), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 19:36 (7 years ago) Permalink

Now that it's finally on DVD, Otto Preminger's Fallen Angel should be recognized as good if not better than Laura.
-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn

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.

― Sons Of The Redd Desert (Ken L), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 19:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

I've mentioned it on both the Mitchum and Robert Wise threads, but I'm going to third my recommendation for Blood On The Moon - a straight-up hard boiled noir, only it's a western.

― LOL Thomas (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 19:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

Other obscure faves...

- 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)

― LOL Thomas (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 20:01 (7 years ago) Permalink

I wasn't that into the Naked City...and Night and the City is my favorite movie ever pretty much, so I wanted to love it. (both Dassin).

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.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 20:01 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm glad someone mentioned Nightmare Alley, it's one of my favorite movies.

― Bluebell Madonna (Ex Leon), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 20:02 (7 years ago) Permalink

I've mentioned it on both the Mitchum and Robert Wise threads, but I'm going to third my recommendation for Blood On The Moon
Chris, you also plugged it on this thread

― Sons Of The Redd Desert (Ken L), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 20:14 (7 years ago) Permalink

One of the things I love most about noir is the black humour. Have just remembered D. Indemnity and some of the lines, like Neff's double entendre about insurance coverage when Phyllis is barely ‘covered’ by clothing:

"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.

― salexander (salexander), Thursday, 1 June 2006 02:10 (7 years ago) Permalink

Murder, My Sweat is one vintage noir that does this...

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.

― nickn (nickn), Thursday, 1 June 2006 17:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

I think "The Thin Man" is considered to be the first noir?

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?

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Thursday, 1 June 2006 21:15 (7 years ago) Permalink

I haven't seen the gangster sets, but I have vol. 1 of those noir sets and it is single-source-lighting-tastic.

― Keywords: revenge, knife, granddaughter, demonic-possession, rock-star, eel (Aus, Thursday, 1 June 2006 21:19 (7 years ago) Permalink

Is there a good website out there with a concise list (and/or blurbing) of the best of noir?

― pleased to mitya (mitya), Thursday, 1 June 2006 23:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

http://noiroftheweek.blogspot.com

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

― Keywords: revenge, knife, granddaughter, demonic-possession, rock-star, eel (Aus, Thursday, 1 June 2006 23:56 (7 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, that's a good site.

― Sons Of The Redd Desert (Ken L), Friday, 2 June 2006 00:00 (7 years ago) Permalink

The gangster box set is absolutley essential - it's basically a Cagney's Greatest Hits, with some Bogart and Edward G. Robinson thrown in. Also, has a newsreel, a cartoon and a short film before each feature (I think the abscense of this is what disappointed me about the noir sets, at first.)

check it out

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Friday, 2 June 2006 11:13 (7 years ago) Permalink

I haven't read a whole lot of the pulp that led to noir -- one each by Cain, Hammett, Chandler -- but I prefer the bonus of chiaroscuro lighting in the films, and the ability of some actors to make the dialogue seem less ass.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 2 June 2006 12:18 (7 years ago) Permalink

all three of them are well worth reading. Which Hammett have you read?

― p@reene (Pareene), Friday, 2 June 2006 13:02 (7 years ago) Permalink

Maltese Falcon ... Big Sleep and Postman Always Rings Twice for the others. (I'm eager to read Mildred Pierce before long, which sure isn't likely to come up as a film noir favorite despite the murder linchpin.)

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 2 June 2006 13:19 (7 years ago) Permalink

Skipping 219 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

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.

― Rocking Disco Santa (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 20 December 2012 15:43 (5 months ago) Permalink

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

― Peacock, Friday, 21 December 2012 01:50 (5 months ago) Permalink

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!

― Rocking Disco Santa (Dan Peterson), Wednesday, 2 January 2013 16:12 (5 months ago) Permalink

4 weeks pass...

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

― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 30 January 2013 16:37 (4 months ago) Permalink

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

― Leopard Skin POLL-Box Hat (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 30 January 2013 18:25 (4 months ago) Permalink

I have not

― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 30 January 2013 18:28 (4 months ago) Permalink

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

― Leopard Skin POLL-Box Hat (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 30 January 2013 18:35 (4 months ago) Permalink

2 months pass...

holy shit at the final scene of Kiss Me Deadly

― four Marxes plus four Obamas plus four Bin Ladens (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 17 April 2013 19:31 (2 months ago) Permalink

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.

― Damo Suzuki's Parrot, Wednesday, 17 April 2013 20:37 (2 months ago) Permalink

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