Film noir: your favourites

Bogey gets beat up at least twice in The Big Sleep, that's a lot for a '40s movie "hero"

...and he pretends to be gay, but doesn't get beat up for that.

Don't know if someone mentioned it upthread, but Robert Siodmak's Phantom Lady is a total classic.

Here the famous jazz scene, with Elisha Cook Jr as the satyr-like drummer (the quick shot when he touches Ella Raines' neck is still one of the most disturbing things I ever saw):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vEgZM5x0ik

So, my digibox went on the fritz and I missed all of these. I've already seen Build My Gallows High, and I'm sure Farewell will be on again, but the others - Stranger on the Third Floor, Lady from Shanghai, Big Combo, Force of Evil - are relatively obscure. My film guide says they're all brilliant and strange, but did anyone here actually see them? Thoughts? Recommendations?

i just read "Film Noir" by Alan Silver & James Ursin. good book, beautiful pictures. i made notes of noirs i've yet to see, here's the list. (so this could be Alain Silver's recommendations in a way)

Criss-Cross
T-Men
They Drive By Night
They Live By Night
Human Desire
Phantom Lady (indeed)
D.O.A.
Detour
The Killers
Crossfiere
The Sniper
Brute Force
The Man I Love
The Reckless Moment
The Lady in the Lake
Gilda

---
also Hammett should be interesting a film Wim Wenders made about well Hammett the detective writer who was an alcoholic detective himself

<3 the reckless moment
human desire pretty good too

Lady From Shanghai is an Orson Welles containing at least a couple of extraordinary scenes (and a platinum Rita Hayworth).

I really like They Drive By Night (George Raft + Humphrey Bogart directed by Raoul Walsh),

Simply put, Detour is one of the absolute best low budget movies ever. Shot in 2 or 3 days, its impossibly grim, dark and cold and its a fine testament of Edgar Ulmer's huge talent; Lady in The Lake is another Chandler-inspired movie, this time all shot from the perspective of Philip Marlowe; Brute Force and The Killers have both Burt Lancaster in his early roles and they're stunning - I maybe prefer The Killers, another GREAT Siodmak movie with an impossibly beautiful Ava Gardner as the dark lady.

Check also Force of Evil (directed by a not yet blacklisted Abraham Polonsky) and, again if it not mentioned above, Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past.

Gilda and Brute Force are pretty great.

dorian: Yeah, Lady From Shanghai is totally worth it, a few brilliant scenes in it. And Orson Welles' terrible accent just adds to the bizarre atmosphere of it.

Big Combo isn't super well known, but I remember it being pretty good.

I skipped watching Farewell my Lovely as I'm reading it (for the first time) at the moment, and didn't want it spoiled. I couldn't get to grips with The Lady From Shanghai for some reason. I don't think it was just because of Welle's Oirish brougue. The Big Combo however was excellent, full of noirish signifiers: all smoke and shadows, bursts of gunfire, duplicitous dames, the lot.

Joseph H Lewis, who directed THE BIG COMBO, also made GUN CRAZY, which might not be strictly noir but is one of the greatest psychosexual girl/guy/gun flicks of all time

also love the two noirish thrillers that Fritz Lang made in the 1940s, WOMAN IN THE WINDOW and SCARLET STREET

Gun Crazy is plain great: always puzzled me why John Dall didn't really have a movie career.

Gun Crazy always looked mildly hokey to me. Worth a screening, then?

I loved Woman in the Window until the final five minutes, which seemed like a betrayal of the whole noir aesthetic.

Yeah, the ending of that movie is pretty disappointing, but apparently Lang (rather cinically) enjoyed performing this cheesy trick.

recently seen Classe tous risques (the big risk), the 2nd movie by claude sautet, and it's def. one of my favourite noirs ever.
it's actually a combination between noir and neo-realism. Melville was highly influenced by it, and it shows.

I need to watch more Tourneur. Recently saw I Walked With a Zombie, which isn't strictly noir but is amazingly atmospheric and features the spookiest calypso singer ever.

features the spookiest calypso singer ever.

Tying the whole thing together here...

http://lpcoverlover.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/042.jpg

Weird true fact--I bought the 'Phantom Lady' novel by Cornell Woolrich a couple of years ago, and the bookshop person is "Oh, that comes with an action figure, I think."

And it did: http://www.starstore.com/acatalog/dc_phantom_lady-01.jpg

Strangest thing I've ever got at a bookshop.

Gun Crazy always looked mildly hokey to me. Worth a screening, then?

Oh SHIT yes! Worth it for the one-take bank-robbing scene alone, but it's all great. Has this fascinating complicated sexual vibe all the way through--Lewis wanted Dall to play the 'hero' as though he was maybe gay.

oh hoos, plz, it's only "hokey" to those cretins who laugh their way thru Every Old Movie Ever.

John Dall didn't really have a movie career.

? He's in Spartacus, that's a dozen years later. Figured he was handicapped in later years by seeming so obviously gay.

Big Combo was photographed by this guy, who did tons of good/great stuff:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0023003/

"He's in Spartacus, that's a dozen years later. Figured he was handicapped in later years by seeming so obviously gay"

Quite probable. I remember seeing Rope when I was a kid and being struck by his sneer.

This Gun for Hire is great, really liking Alan Ladd

Drifted off with Maltese Falcon on last night, and ended up dreaming with Bogie popping up occasionally. Remember playing darts with him at one point, but he was throwing the darts from about 20 yards away and throwing them really hard. I had to ask him to be careful and watch my windows, to which he smiled "you're windows will be fine"

Just watched another Bogie effort, Dark Passage. Pretty good, some great shots of San Fran too. love how they don't show Humphrey's face for the first part of the movie, until he's had his plastic surgery.

Just ordered this, am hoping they're good!

http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/release_images/2293/NikkatsuNoir.jpg

1950s Japanese noir movies

I own that box but have only watched the first movie so far. Not conventional noir, not even in the way that, say, some of Kurosawa's stuff qualifies. Nikkatsu aimed for a teen market, so there's a lot of starcrossed lovers, theme songs sung by handsome lead actors, etc., though the movies do seem to be very dark and violent in a post-war poverty sort of way. But I think the noir categorization is mostly marketing on Criterion/Eclipse's part.

Wow this 1948 UK film Daughter of Darkness was just given dvd reissue by Redemption films. It's both British noir and femme fatale wrapped in one with plenty of chiaroscuro and gothic vibe. Definitely recommended.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/images/blogimages/2009/09/30/1254335093-daughterofdarkness.jpg

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.

Human Desire was finally released on DVD last week. Caught it yet? Not one of Lang's best noirs, and no pox on Renoir's version.

Just saw Deadline At Dawn, (mentioned 4 years ago) last night, and it's fascinating: bizarrely pseudopoetic dialogue by Clifford Odets, and a very Edward Hopper-ish visual design; Susan Hayward is beautiful.

Came to say that the 1998 sc-fi noir Dark City with Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly and William Hurt is grebt, but the 1950 not-quite-noir Dark City with Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Jack Webb, Harry Morgan, Dean Jagger, Ed Begley and Viveca Lindfors is fun but doesn't really satisfy.

The Carlton here (not a rep theatre; a little hard to classify) has a "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid Weekend" going on. I'd like to see a bunch of them, but the way the price structure's set up, I'll limit myself to a couple--maybe I Walk Alone and Deception.

Fri 11-Sun 13 - Toronto Film Society presents a festival of film noir classics. $10 rush tickets; Fri or Sat pass $65, Sun pass $50, full weekend pass $150.

Fri 11 - Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982) D: Carl Reiner. 9:15 am. Notorious (1946) D: Alfred Hitchcock. 11 am. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) D: Tay Garnett. 1:25 pm. Double Indemnity (1944) D: Billy Wilder. 3:35 pm. The Killers (1946) D: Robert Siodmak. 6:50 pm. The Lost Weekend (1945) D: Billy Wilder. 8:50 pm. Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) D: Anatole Litvak. 10:45 pm.

Sat 12 - The Big Sleep (1946) D: Howard Hawks. 9 am. This Gun For Hire (1941) D: Frank Tuttle. 11:10 am. Humoresque (1946) D: Jean Negulesco. 1:15 pm. White Heat (1949) D: Raoul Walsh. 3:35 pm. I Walk Alone (1948) D: Byron Haskin. 7 pm. In A Lonely Place (1950) D: Nicholas Ray. 8:50 pm. Suspicion (1941) D: Alfred Hitchcock. 10:40 pm.

Sun 13 - The Bribe (1949) D: Robert Z Leonard. 9:30 am. Deception (1946) D: Irving Rapper. 11:10 am. Johnny Eager (1941) D: Mervyn LeRoy. 2 pm. Dark Passage (1947) D: Delmer Daves. 4 pm. The Glass Key (1942) D: Stuart Heisler. 6 pm.

Wow.

Got out to I Walk Alone and Johnny Eager. The first reminded me a lot of The Strange Love of Martha Ivers--partly that Kirk Douglas and Elizabeth Scott are in both, but more for the structure. I find Liz Scott kind of annoying. First time I've seen Johnny Eager. Lana Turner as a sociologist is right up there with Jennifer Lopez, child psychologist in The Cell. I've never found Turner that beautiful in The Postman Always Rings Twice--don't like the way she's got her hair--but she sure is beautiful here. I don't recall any mention of Van Heflin's character in The Celluloid Closet, but Heflin's portrayal seems ahead of its time. Robert Taylor's fake niece has a great scene.

I have some problems with LS as well.

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)

Triggered by the name-that-still thread, I was looking at some images from Force of Evil last week; fantastic.

http://wondersinthedark.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/filmnotebook-forceofevil_b.jpg

David Thomson reviews a re-release today and says it's better than On the Waterfront:

http://www.tnr.com/article/film/105544/david-thomson-force-of-evil

I'd be surprised if I liked it that much, but I do need to see this.

It's really great.

But I don't think of it when I think of the most expressionistic cinematography. It's more about the script and characters.

I watched a neat one last night (actually 3AM, damn insomnia) -- Without Warning!

Quiet, unobtrusive LA citizen Carl Martin picks up look-alikes for his estranged blonde wife and murders them with garden shears.

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRrfv0k0yZi0l_c9ezLmJqMMTx5tcSScjX3cV8qSqgjWs2wg-y9qhO1srXVqw

Actually more police prodecural than straight noir, but what made it better than average for me was location footage of a long-gone Hollywood, including many scenes shot around Chavez Ravine, a ramshackle Latino neighborhood in the hills above the then-under-construction freeway system. I didn't know the story of this area until I researched this morning; I found it fascinating.

All bulldozed for Dodger Stadium. Still a contentious issue.

This is a nice piece; great pics and a salient quote:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2009/05/eric-avila-is-an-associate-professor-of-chicano-studies-history-and-urban-planning-at-ucla-his-book-popular-culture-in-the.html

the city reneged on its promise to build housing for poor people because government-subsidized housing was "socialistic," then turned around and subsidized (Walter) O'Malley's bid to build a stadium in the area... Many Angelenos saw that as pure hypocrisy (and it very much reminds me of current accusations of "socialism" in the U.S.)

Force of Evil is great, much less sentimental than Waterfront, no sop-to-the-audience finish.

think I can only catch one of two lesser-known Siodmaks at Film Forum tonight... probably Christmas Holiday, w/ Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly! Yes, it's a noir, apparently!

http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/the_dark_mirror_christmas_holi

Thanks for the alert!

This really turned out to be an excellent double feature by the way, both Christmas Holiday and The Dark Mirror, with Olivia de Havilland and Thomas Mitchell.

My wife, who's not much of a movie buff, is for some reason really interested in the Noir City festival. What should we see? Kiss Me Deadly is probably at the top of my list (I haven't seen any of them); The Window looks intriguing, but we've already got plans the night it's screening.

Besides KMD, I would recommend On Dangerous Ground, White Heat, Phantom Lady, Caught.

Yeah, those look good, thanks!

What Dr Morbius said, plus This Gun for Hire

glass orchid