― Dave Amos, Thursday, 8 April 2004 11:46 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Thursday, 8 April 2004 13:50 (twenty years ago) link
― Jonathan Z. (Joanthan Z.), Thursday, 8 April 2004 13:56 (twenty years ago) link
― lucas (lucas), Thursday, 8 April 2004 14:01 (twenty years ago) link
Fred MacMurray playing SATAN in 'the Apartment' is even weirder.
'Gilda' to thread!
― Clubber Langston (Adrian Langston), Thursday, 8 April 2004 14:10 (twenty years ago) link
― oops (Oops), Thursday, 8 April 2004 21:44 (twenty years ago) link
I got Sam Fuller's Pickup on South Street today. Looks noiry.
― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Thursday, 8 April 2004 21:46 (twenty years ago) link
― jazz odysseus, Thursday, 8 April 2004 21:55 (twenty years ago) link
― oops (Oops), Thursday, 8 April 2004 21:59 (twenty years ago) link
the big sleepthe third manstrangers on a train
outside of the definition i have to include
rififile cercle rougechinatown (my favorite noir, period.)the long goodbye
― todd swiss (eliti), Thursday, 8 April 2004 22:42 (twenty years ago) link
― Lara (Lara), Thursday, 8 April 2004 22:46 (twenty years ago) link
― oops (Oops), Thursday, 8 April 2004 22:47 (twenty years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 8 April 2004 22:48 (twenty years ago) link
― oops (Oops), Thursday, 8 April 2004 22:49 (twenty years ago) link
― oops (Oops), Thursday, 8 April 2004 22:50 (twenty years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 8 April 2004 22:52 (twenty years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 8 April 2004 22:57 (twenty years ago) link
― jazz odysseus, Thursday, 8 April 2004 23:00 (twenty years ago) link
― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 8 April 2004 23:26 (twenty years ago) link
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 8 April 2004 23:36 (twenty years ago) link
― udu wudu (udu wudu), Thursday, 8 April 2004 23:43 (twenty years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 8 April 2004 23:51 (twenty years ago) link
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Thursday, 8 April 2004 23:57 (twenty years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 8 April 2004 23:59 (twenty years ago) link
I especially recommend the Anthony Mann triple-threat of T-Men, Raw Deal, and He Walked By Night
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Friday, 9 April 2004 00:24 (twenty years ago) link
― g--ff (gcannon), Friday, 9 April 2004 00:26 (twenty years ago) link
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 9 April 2004 00:43 (twenty years ago) link
― claudja, Friday, 9 April 2004 19:46 (twenty years ago) link
― fcussen (Burger), Friday, 9 April 2004 20:02 (twenty years ago) link
― metfigga (metfigga), Friday, 9 April 2004 20:41 (twenty years ago) link
― jazz odysseus, Friday, 9 April 2004 20:45 (twenty years ago) link
French - Bob le Flambeur Band of Outsiders
― webcrack (music=crack), Friday, 9 April 2004 20:58 (twenty years ago) link
― jazz odysseus, Friday, 9 April 2004 21:02 (twenty years ago) link
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 9 April 2004 21:27 (twenty years ago) link
― oops (Oops), Saturday, 10 April 2004 06:34 (twenty years ago) link
I think the first noir was "Stranger on the Third Floor," 1940, RKO.
― eddie hurt (ddduncan), Saturday, 10 April 2004 17:59 (twenty years ago) link
― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Monday, 10 May 2004 02:37 (nineteen years ago) link
― jazz odysseus (jazz odysseus), Monday, 10 May 2004 02:44 (nineteen years ago) link
― Dave Amos, Monday, 10 May 2004 07:59 (nineteen years ago) link
― Japanese Giraffe (Japanese Giraffe), Monday, 10 May 2004 11:16 (nineteen years ago) link
― Le Baaderonixx de Benedict Canyon (baaderonixx), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 08:50 (seventeen years ago) link
― the Enrique who acts like some kind of good taste gestapo (Enrique), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 09:02 (seventeen years ago) link
― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 09:39 (seventeen years ago) link
― LOL Thomas (Chris Barrus), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 13:53 (seventeen years ago) link
― frankiemachine, Tuesday, 2 May 2006 14:16 (seventeen years ago) link
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 14:35 (seventeen years ago) link
― C0L1N B... (C0L1N B...), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 16:27 (seventeen years ago) link
In any case, frankiemachine, I would have thought you would have mentioned The Man With The Golden Arm, although I guess that's not a noir per se.
― Redd Temple Player (Two Headed Dogg) (Ken L), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 17:36 (seventeen years ago) link
Whenever I go searching for old films on YouTube, it seems that Warner Bros Inc still closely guard their back catalogue - other studios/rights holders, not so much. Boutique physical media labels like Indicator also tend to protect their remastered scans, for understandable reasons. When you go deep diving in places like YT or Vimeo you realise just how many films there are, and how quickly it became impossible to see everything in one lifetime.
Last noir I enjoyed on YT - Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends.
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 27 October 2023 10:27 (five months ago) link
In general this golden era stuff seems increasingly unguarded by copyright claims. I've been wondering if studios have started writing off the last few years of copyright for large chucks of this beyond the obvious play it again Sam type perennials. Does anyone know if this is true or a totally spurious hunch?
Good question! I do have success finding old stuff on YT more often than I'd think - but it's also true that when I then suscribe to these channels they get taken down on a pretty regular basis.
Then there's the wild west of DailyMotion...
I went the pricier route of b noir by buying all of those Indicator Columbia box sets - I can't say that they justify the price but they did leave me with a larger appreciation of people like Lizbeth Scott, Dan Duryea, director Phil Karlson.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 27 October 2023 10:29 (five months ago) link
and how quickly it became impossible to see everything in one lifetime.
Well you're never gonna get there with that attitude!
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 27 October 2023 10:30 (five months ago) link
not noir, but this week I was ill off work and watched a bunch of Jean Arthur movies. All the classic ones were easy to find on YT.
the noir channel i use is literally the one that comes up if you type 'film noir' into the search bar. its called dk classics ii
― plax (ico), Friday, 27 October 2023 10:37 (five months ago) link
it seems to have been around for ages. But yeah when one gets yanked there's never a lack of other channels.
― plax (ico), Friday, 27 October 2023 10:38 (five months ago) link
Cool, thanks.I don't noir much during the summer for some reason, but looking for"ard to diving back in soon...
― m0stly clean (Slowsquatch), Friday, 27 October 2023 11:44 (five months ago) link
sounds like a Criterion Channel playlist..."Summer Noir"
― dan selzer, Friday, 27 October 2023 11:49 (five months ago) link
The summer noirCame creeping inFrom a dark alley
― Chris L, Friday, 27 October 2023 12:08 (five months ago) link
I recently came across a new website devoted to film noir, but I lost the link. It had the movies sorted into around 4 ranks. Seemed to be a single guy doing the whole site. Does this ring a bell to anyone?
― formerly abanana (dat), Friday, 27 October 2023 14:28 (five months ago) link
I recently heard about "Ride the Pink Horse" (via a recommendation); I see it's been discussed somewhat extensively above. I'll have to check it out... (hard not to hear the title in the cadence of a certain Laid Back song).
― Girl (1956) (morrisp), Friday, 27 October 2023 15:41 (five months ago) link
The summer noirCame creeping inFrom a dark alleySmelling like gin
― nickn, Friday, 27 October 2023 16:19 (five months ago) link
Anyway I like it in the sense that it feels like catching a movie on TV in a way I have felt robbed of in recent years, it doesn't have to be any good (most aren't) but when you hit a seam it's good.
Totally feeling this. Although we have multitudinous cable channels, there's none showing the kind of stuff that used to be on late night TV. (Criterion is great but it's mostly too curated to show B-grade cheapies.) I'll watch almost any 40s/50s crime drama regardless of quality. I just love looking at the suits/dresses, the cars, the architecture, the furnishings, and all the forgotten actors. It's my happy place.
I just watched Step Down to Terror, a 1958 remake of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt starring Charles Drake and Colleen Miller.
― Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable POST (Dan Peterson), Friday, 27 October 2023 17:09 (five months ago) link
I had never seen Lady in the Lake, currently on Criterion. Clever idea, bizarre execution.
― Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable POST (Dan Peterson), Monday, 4 December 2023 21:11 (four months ago) link
A film professor of mine always showed it as a must-avoid example; he considered the first-person camera a fundamental misunderstanding of the medium.
― Halfway there but for you, Tuesday, 5 December 2023 19:43 (four months ago) link
i watched suzhou river (2000) this week and parts of that are in first person. i thought it was effective but it's not the whole movie and it's about layers of fiction/perspective anyways so it might make more sense in that context
― na (NA), Tuesday, 5 December 2023 19:46 (four months ago) link
I actually enjoyed Lady in the Lake, but the first-person camera makes the movie kind of jokey in a bad way. Add to that the miscasting of Robert Montgomery as Marlowe, the stilted line delivery, and the overacting of several of the cast (looking at you, Jayne Meadows) and it's at least an interesting failure, almost a parody of the genre.
― Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable POST (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 5 December 2023 20:29 (four months ago) link
The novel is kind of an orphan.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 5 December 2023 20:34 (four months ago) link
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0hC22q6VrsU/YPGRqq7kvXI/AAAAAAABwqY/5nTPtF0oPBci1-QrHrrMsa2rajzBTjzaQCNcBGAsYHQ/w640-h478/lady-in-the-lake-03.JPG
― Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable POST (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 5 December 2023 20:43 (four months ago) link
It is pretty remarkable how few successful experiments there are with first-person POV in film, or maybe how fundamentally ill-suited that device is to the medium. I went searching on ilx for a thread about it and sure enough there is one here, but it has scant examples, and the ones mentioned are the same few that I thought of off the top of my head. If any of you film aficionados in this thread wanna revive that one, would be interested to see if there's been further explorations of the conceit.
― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Wednesday, 6 December 2023 20:39 (four months ago) link
A little pricey after shipping--what isn't?--but these look pretty great.
― clemenza, Sunday, 17 December 2023 18:55 (four months ago) link
I watched *Night and the City*. Like a lot of noir, I would gladly have every frame of the thing on my wall; something about it being London just amplified all of that. Widmark is so good in it. So frantic and doomed.
Aside: is there a film that contains more running? I'm resisting Run Lola Run.
― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Sunday, 31 December 2023 13:21 (three months ago) link
Licorice Pizza?
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Sunday, 31 December 2023 15:44 (three months ago) link
Forrest Gump?
― Godzilla Minus Zero/No Limit (morrisp), Sunday, 31 December 2023 16:30 (three months ago) link
chariots of fire obv
― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 31 December 2023 16:31 (three months ago) link
Run Fatboy Run
― Dan Worsley, Sunday, 31 December 2023 16:56 (three months ago) link
To get back on topic, I watched this recently and it works both as a noir and a comedy. Appreciate Bob Hope isn’t to everyone’s taste but Dorothy Lamour is a pretty enchanting love interest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgIZZfG22wQ
― Dan Worsley, Sunday, 31 December 2023 16:58 (three months ago) link
Lol what a weird cast!
― plax (ico), Monday, 1 January 2024 18:32 (three months ago) link
Sounds irresistibly horrible
― plax (ico), Monday, 1 January 2024 18:33 (three months ago) link
(Also Zohra Lampert.)
― dow, Monday, 1 January 2024 18:59 (three months ago) link
I have the urge to rewatch Douglas Sirk movies, and started with Lured (1947), the only one (easily) streaming. It’s described some places as a noir, but really really isn’t, by any measure. Lucille Ball is fantastic in it! It’s very well directed, naturally, though somewhat choppy…Anyway, the guy who wrote the screenplay, Leo Rosten – who sounds like a very interesting character (among many other things, he apparently coined that famous definition of “chutzpah”) – also provided the story (not screenplay) for a slightly earlier film with Ball – The Dark Corner – that one a true noir, it sounds really good, I’ll have to watch it soon.
― Wooly Bully (2005 Remaster) (morrisp), Saturday, 6 January 2024 07:22 (three months ago) link
…watching The Dark Corner now. Maybe I’m not in the right headspace, but it’s rough going… stilted, low-budget, dull.
― Wooly Bully (2005 Remaster) (morrisp), Tuesday, 9 January 2024 05:02 (three months ago) link
most noirs low-budge tho, i thought dark corner was solid of its type but maybe lucy in a different setting doing a lot of the work"The film earned $1 million at the box office, less than the $1.2 million cost of production"not even that cheap by 1946 standards, 20th Century Fox B Movies do tend to look a bit anemic compared to the other big studios back in the day
― buzza, Tuesday, 9 January 2024 06:18 (three months ago) link
Yeah, maybe “cheap-looking” is a better descriptor…
― Wooly Bully (2005 Remaster) (morrisp), Tuesday, 9 January 2024 06:30 (three months ago) link
Aw man, I’m sorry you didn’t like Dark Corner. I thought it was suitably shadowy and pulpy. Mark Stevens (who I don’t recall seeing in any other films) was good, Lucy is of course spunky, and William Bendix and Clifton Webb lend good support. I’ve watched far worse.
― Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable POST (Dan Peterson), Wednesday, 10 January 2024 03:29 (three months ago) link
Is there another corner of cinema that gets explored so thoroughly as noir does? I think of noir and westerns as relatively equal parts of the classic Hollywood era, but in terms of say boutique label box sets noir has westerns beat so hard it ain't even funny.
Is the fact that it's not a "real" genre and thus you can explore further afield part of it?
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 10 January 2024 10:50 (three months ago) link
Fedoras have retained cultural relevancy longer than Stetsons
― craning to be leather (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 10 January 2024 13:14 (three months ago) link
Smoking vs. chewing tobacco
― Little Billy Love (Tom D.), Wednesday, 10 January 2024 13:21 (three months ago) link
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, January 10, 2024 10:50 AM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink
I wonder if another way of thinking about this is 'is there a competing aesthetic within american cinema of this period that holds a similar status as diagnosis of social and political neuroses?' I wonder if a tentative answer is screwball but that is more tightly bound to genre than noir is and relies on a kind of 'success' in a way noir doesn't. just a thought.
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 13 February 2024 12:32 (two months ago) link
Screwball and noir don't overlap really in terms of chronology, screwball p much done by the time noir comes around so they're diagnosing v different societies I think.
The western would once again lend itself to this kind of lens but I guess a lot of it, "psychological westerns" and such, register as noir to some extent.
Of course in the 50's you'd also have sci-fi, not really a fair comparison in terms of the talent involved but certainly another niche that has been deeply explored.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 13 February 2024 12:43 (two months ago) link
Yeah, I think noir casts the biggest, um, shadow.
― The Ginger Bakersfield Sound (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 13 February 2024 12:46 (two months ago) link
I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes, now on Criterion, is my kind of noir: pulpy Poverty Row murder mystery based on a Cornell Woolrich story, with a no-name cast (Don Castle and Elyse Knox) and where “Depressed and anxious, Tom impulsively throws his only pair of tap dancing shoes at howling cats outside his window” is a salient plot point.
― Requiem for a Dream: The Musical! (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 15 February 2024 05:44 (two months ago) link