Film noir: your favourites

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