film noir

Ha! I might have done the same back in the day. I might also have confused C.L. Moore with the title character in Cordwainer Smith's "The Ballad Of Lost C'Mell."

My top 5 Noir authors:
1. Thompson
2. Cain
3. Willeford
4. Chandler (props for inventing the genre could make him #1)
5. Hammet

Interesting how, to me, I think of Orson as being one of the personifications of noir, yet he isn't, really. Except that he used expressionism in everything he did (in b&w, at least). The only proper 'genre' picture he did is Lady from Shanghai -- which I'd mention as a recommendation as, even butchered as it is and with a horrible music score, is spectacular, premier league luncacy.

Some argument over Touch of Evil. Obviously not a noir, really, but close on a lot of points. (Ditto Third Man: not a hint of urban America in sight, though in every other sense a clear contender.)

I also like Double Indemnity a lot. I prefer it to Postman, because the two leads are, well, let's be honest, kinda UGLY compared to the beautiful Garfield and Turner, which makes it more interesting. The script is also better. Postman is kinda patchy and badly structured... it might be considered a poor film if not for the great lead performances raising the bar so high.

Fred and Barbara both bring the right kind of sweaty cheapness to their parts, Garfield and Turner in Postman aren't able to be as unlikeable as Cain characters need to be.

I guess Welles is just too much of himself to be included in a genre, sort of like you can't call Jimi Hendrix a bluesman even though he was a very good one. Orson with his big budgets and top-level crews was able to explore the imagery of noir more deeply than the "get it done in two weeks" directors ever had an opportunity to. Even some of Jane Eyre (which, like 3rd Man, he sort of co-directed just by being around) has noir in it.

What I like so much about Cain (& Thompson -"the dime store dostoyevsky" ) is their ability to get inside semi-repulsive characters -no Marlowe-style heroes in their stories- and allow one to understand (and even sympathize with) them, to follow the inner logic of their self-directed doom. To me that sort of cynicism (the kind that rules Detour) is what anchors the genre and what limits my rating of Chandler a bit. Just as authors, without the appended "noir" I agree that "Chandler is just straight out the best writer" of the lot.

I've only read The Big Sleep of Chandler's, too. I liked it without necessarily totally loving it or feeling much for the characters. It's an exercise in style, really -- presumably, all of his work is? I think, due to truncation and change, the film makes even less sense. I could be contentious and argue that the book does almost make sense. :) It overdoes the atmospherics -- the crime equivalent of Lovecraft's fixation on ambience -- but no doubt it captures a lot of things brilliantly. I don't rate the film high on the noir scale, though. Sans Bogie and Bacall, it'd be a pretty minor effort.

Oh, I just picked up the DVD of Scarlet Street. It's an Elstree budget release, so no doubt from a worn theatrical print, but I don't remember ever seeing it and am looking forward to checking it out...

Oh no way. HOWARD HAWKS! It would have been fantastic whoever was in it.

I didn't assume there was any sex with the bookseller, either. Maybe I missed something. :-/ I thought she kind of offered herself, but he was too preoccupied to take her up -- albeit with some regret? Oh no, I didn't miss an obvious visual metaphor anywhere, did I?!

Anyway, the film is lots of fun, don't get me wrong. But to me, not quite up there with Double Indemnity, Maltese Falcon, even Lady from Shanghai. (NTS: must watch that one again soon.)

What I'm looking forward to massively is this fab box-set of Mr. Arkadin from Criterion. (Um, Euro-noir?)

Jeez, he's not even credited with directing that, and the degree to which he did is uncertain.

btw the high school noir, Brick, is being released next month. Richard Roundtree is in it.

i'm borrowing the lady in the lake from the library to remind myself if I feel like championing it or not

anyway, in high school, when my friend kip and i used to hang out at his brother's condo and watch movies all night, dark victory came on; kip was bored and went to sleep, but i stayed up and watched the whole thing, because it was AWESOME

I just read on ILM that the picture in the newspaper of Lauren Bacall's dad is of the director, Delmer Daves.

I recently saw John Boorman's Point Blank. I'm assuming maybe it doesn't exactly fit into the "noir" category, maybe neo-noir, "hollywood rennaissance"? I love how lots of people die in it and the main character's motivation is violence and revenge, but nobody gets killed by him. Such a fantastic movie with some very funny/brutal parts.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol17/issue09/screens.windsor.3.gif

"I bet your the kind of man that does push-ups every morning just to keep his belly hard."
"..You got something against good health?"

Just saw something about Richard Fleischer by Dave Kehr in the Times- a few films showing at the Walter Reade and Film Comment in the coming weeks.

Oh man just saw Night and the City starring Richard Widmark. One of the bleakest noir films I've ever seen. Widmark is amazing in it.

Richard Fleischer thing starts on Friday at FF. It's in color- in Cinemascope!