Film noir: your favourites

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.

Panic In The Streets has become quite timely.

yeah I admired how bleak and cruel it was, I just didn't find it as riveting on a plot/character level as some of the others I've been watching.

flappy, was there supposed to be a video in yr post? :)

xp

Yes and now I can’t find it 😭

I liked The Big Combo a lot (with that one particularly amazing moment about 3/4 of the way in) but found the lead a little too punchable.

This is a very good list I thought, a season of women's picture noirs. I'm very interested in this overlap and me and my boyfriend often talk about the large contiguities between these two genres and I wonder if anyone has written extensively about it?

Sorry, list is https://docfilms.uchicago.edu/dev/calendar/2019/winter/fridays.shtml

Particularly intrigued by the insane-sounding fuller picture from 1964 that I have never heard of

the naked kiss bangs. it went public domain for a while so there are free/shitty/direct from VHS copies floating around that are varying shades of watchable - i think it's worth paying to see a good/criterion version

sudden fear is also dope

Yah sudden fear is amazing. I watched it on YouTube once (mistitled 'who is the cast and who is the mouse' out something) and was so delighted when I realised Gloria Graham was in it!

Both ophuls films are amazing, my favourite bel geddes performance and my favourite Joan Bennett performance. The reckless moment is the classic of this genre for me fuck Mildred pierce

The Naked Kiss is awesome, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

THE STAR with Bette Davis & Sterling Hayden is the one that immediately springs to mind. Same year as Sudden Fear, Joan won over Bette I think

+ FLAMINGO ROAD !!!!!!

other great ones I can think of:

Leave Her to Heaven
Not Wanted
Don't Bother to Knock
Another Man's Poison (not as good as Now, Voyager but noir & lots of overlap/same crew)
Crime of Passion (minor Stanwyck, decent Hayden)
Daisy Kenyon
Lured
The Petrified Forest
Lured
Dead Ringer
Strait-Jacket
Black Widow [1954]
Thirst & Dreams by Bergman

thats a typo Lured isn't *that* good

Joan is the star of the genre for sure.

What is interesting i guess is how the women's noir sees the immediate post-war curtailment of women's social positions as a landscape of moral hazard. It is the moral ambiguity of this transitional moment of the late 40s that animates the peril of these films.

Joan was perfectly positioned for this, she was always playing a woman threatened to be cast back to wherever she came from (the bride wore red, the women, there are better examples from the 30s but I can't think of them this instant...). Her hardened stoicism in Mildred pierce and similar seems borne of something inherent in her earlier star image.

Marked woman is too early to be noir but feels like an early example of this.

On dangerous ground always feels like a very dark Sirk film to me

Ida lupino is Jane Wyman in magnificent obsession

IS Jane Wyman IN

daisy kenyon is one i had a very emotional connection/reaction to.

Just watched Phantom Lady for the first time. The jazz/drumming sequence, holy crap! I’m on a mission to watch everything Siodmak directed.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9e/38/47/9e38477364f486b9bf6bb1cf7d7f0b6b.gif

Elisha Cook gives it everything in that scene, the only way to go since he obv doesn't know how to play the drums.

He’s great in everything I’ve ever seen him in. Regis Rooney’s gum-chewing copper is a good bit part. And I don’t believe I’ve ever seen another film with Ella Raines, she was really lovely.

Toomey, damn spellcheck.

And I don’t believe I’ve ever seen another film with Ella Raines, she was really lovely.

My fave noir-era actress. Phantom Lady is the first in a terrific run from '44 to '49 - also includes Hail the Conquering Hero, Tall in the Saddle, The Suspect, The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, The Web, The Walking Hills

Thought for a LONG time that Phantom Lady was the first time I'd seen GENE TIERNEY, not Ella Raines. Such a great movie. Cry of the City and, to a lesser extent, Criss Cross are both very good noirs by Siodmak.

watched The Big Heat for the first time the other night, obviously great. First time I've liked Glenn Ford in anything--cruelty suits him more than something like, uh, Gilda (so overrated)

Murder by Contract is very good, a real American antecedent to New Wave gangster riffs and Tarantino w/ the surf rock. Austerity everywhere, bland cruelty, nothing to do but die.

idk, it starts off great and with shades and surf guitar but the plotting gets dafter and it sortof runs out of interest in itself. distinctive enough to be interesting tho.

idk who did the costumes for phantom lady but its peculiarly elegant for a '40s noir. was shocked it was '44, Tone's outfits and the black suit with collarless blouse worn by raines are gorgeous and the *tacky* outfit raines wears to woo the drummer is hilarious! the hat!

watched The Big Heat for the first time the other night, obviously great. First time I've liked Glenn Ford in anything--cruelty suits him more than something like, uh, Gilda (so overrated)

In my house we call Glenn Ford The World's Angriest Man, which is why it's so hilarious that he was cast as Pa Kent in the 1978 Superman. The Glenn Ford of the 1950s would have immediately attempted to murder that alien baby.

Murder by Contract is very good, a real American antecedent to New Wave gangster riffs and Tarantino w/ the surf rock. Austerity everywhere, bland cruelty, nothing to do but die.

Yeah, I like this one a lot, too.

Anyone watched The Chase on Criterion? Robert Cummings finds a wallet and ends up working for a thug (a brooding Steve Cochran) and his henchman (Peter Lorre.) Of course there's a dame, and complications ensue. Based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich, who's always good for a far-fetched plot contrivance or three. Fun.

Somewhere in the Night, currently on Criterion, is worth a watch. Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, with a cast of mostly B-listers (John Hodiak, Nancy Guild.) Super convoluted plot.

this was great! thanks. She was only fine, lol they clearly were looking for knockoff bacall but she was so nancy drew. He was weirdly hot though.

lol yeah Nancy Drew otm. So many great bit parts and scenes: Turkish baths! Fortune tellers! Chinese restaurant ("I never eat lunch!) Waterfront gospel mission! Sanitarium! that never coalesce, but ultimately it doesn't matter. I thought it was really fun.

The chinese restaurant was so good! The eating was unusually naturalistic, really felt like they were sitting around having lunch, very unusual. Little touches like that. Mankievic's chatty cosy insider stuff came across more realistic and charming than I often find it and the mystery really keeps you guessing all the way through! I only half guessed the ending.

Randomly I ended up watching Desert Fury last night without realising that my new dreamboat John Hodiak was also in it. So brilliant, maybe a perfect cast. Really bananas gay (not-very-)subtexts all over the place. Absolutely hands down Edith heads masterpiece as well. I was hypnotised by lizabeth scott's outfits. The only other technicolor noir I know is leave her to heaven. what else is there?

I've watched the two color "noir" films currently on Criterion, "Niagara" (which I had somehow only ever seen the first 30 minutes of before) and "Black Widow." Both are good. I'm sure others will come to mind. Thx for the Desert Fury tip.

I really like "Niagara" for various reasons.

Oh i love niagara, but only watched it recently and didn't think of it! Black widow I haven't seen though...

I once saw niagara presented by laura mulvey and jacqueline rose

Wow

I guess one obvious thing to like about it is Monroe not doing comedy. Not because her comedy is bad but...