Film noir: your favourites

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.