Film noir: your favourites

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.