Film noir: your favourites

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...

There's also Slightly Scarlet - based on a James M Cain novel, colour cinematography by John Alton:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slightly_Scarlet_(1956_film)

Starring or co-starring the late Arlene Dahl! It's good!

House of Bamboo doesn't use Technicolor™ but it's a good one.

So no Natalie Kalmus needed on that set then.

Can’t read all this now but seems like some interesting details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Kalmus#Kalmus's_color_chart,_1932

"Black Widow" used to show on TMC a lot, it's kind of trashy but worth a watch. The trailer basically gives away all the plot points.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIx8x7yyNA0

lol black widow has such a weird cast, would watch literally anything with gene tierney tho!

I didn't know about natalie kalmus -- very interesting!

going to give gun crazy a go tonight wish me luck

Good luck!

i've been watching the fox noir on criterion channel. Hangover Square, Somewhere in the Night, The Sound of Fury (a.k.a. Try and Get Me) were all very good movies. It's a shame that old movies with big stars still get most of the attention while there are so many worthy movies without the big names.

Had totally forgotten about this thread, which is still a great resource---totally agree w Michael Atkinson way upthread, about expecting to see "new" noirs, from 194x etc., "in my dotage"; in fact it's happening now.
Also agree with myself way upthread, about what Act of Violence explained:
Shit you can't take back, no matter how much you pay, which is my definition of film noir, or at least the part that lures me the most--along w continued proximity of mental-emotional collapse. This includes movies about obsession w revenge---total focus, the purpose-driven life---driving over a cliff, or pert near. This last could be the spacey momentum of Point Blank(Richard Stark/Donald Westlake has commented that his character doesn't really know what he wants, past a vanishing point of so-far-so-good/bad)(in that sense, he is Parker before Parker, re the series of crime novels: in there,P Parker doesn't give a shit about anything but the next heist---not what the money can buy, not nothin' but the plan and the payoff and a little chaos along the way, apparently, cos he must know by now it will always happen.
The purpose-driven life driving over a cliff is more Get Carter, which is somewhat like The Sopranos before The Sopranos, in terms of colorful scary humor and scariness, also women in the midst of all this macho bullshit as a given.
Also in No Country For Old Men, when the young widow asks him why, after all the shit he's gotten back and done, he's going to kill her. "I promised your husband I would, " he admits sadly. Also the sense toward the end that if/when there are only stray parts left of him lately, they will keep clattering along like cans tied to the back of an old car with a tail sign that reads, "Just Married."
(After a month of Lou Reed talk on ILM, Bogie's suffering committed asshole in In A Lonely Place seems more like Morb's take than ever.)

Sorry for typos in there---in terms of noir in the first great decade or so:
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.

― dow, Wednesday, August 2, 2017
Oh yeah, and
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.

― dow, Thursday, August 3, 2017

Working my way through those Indicator boxes the main revelation has been Richard Quine - his noirs are really twisted and sexual, you can see how he'd be attracted to comedy as a genre but make no mistake they're bleak as fuck. Drive A Crooked Road features a great perf from Mickey Rooney (!) as a sexually repressed car mechanic taken as a patsy by femme fatale Dianne Foster and her homoerotically charged muscle beach boyfriend; Pushover combines Double Indemnity (Fred MacMurray seduced into wrongdoings) with Rear Window (he's a cop on a stakeout voyeuristic not just towards his target but also her neighbours). Don't wanna oversell its feminism but the first 20 minutes or so especially are pretty hardcore in showing male manipulativeness and the film also does some interesting stuff with the femme fatale archetype. Also very in line with Elmore Leonard's summation of the essential message of noir: you're fucked.

drive a crooked road was also co written w blake edwards

gun crazy is wild, i'm a little unaware of its rep, but the cinematography is crazy and it has such strong new-wave features bits of it are so strongly godard/altman. I've never heard of it as a cahiers classic but it felt like a real rosetta stone, particularly the shots filmed from over the leads shoulders driving to the stick-ups, improvising dialogue. really like nothing i've seen in an american film from that period. having a great time itt lately. in a real noir mood.

Same here. I don't have time at the moment to list/discuss, but I've just seen a bunch.

I don't think there's much in it that feels similar to Gun Crazy's vibe, but I highly encourage you to delve further into the works of Joseph H. Lewis if you haven't - for some reason these days he's often used as a punching bag for ppl wishing to minimize the auteur theory, but dude had a crazy sense of visuals and made a buncha great films. Especially recommend The Big Combo (one of the most stylized noirs I've ever seen, great world weary monologues, Lee van Cleef!), My Name Is Julia Ross (b movie entry into Hollywood's post-Rebecca gothic cycle, tense as fuck, kind've a subversion of the genre as the protagonist refuses to be gaslit) and Terror In A Texas Town (western, Sterling Hayden with a preposterous Swedish accent and a hook weapon).

Hangover Square has been rising in my estimation since I watched it on Criterion Channel. Has an opening that matches the best of Sam Fuller. Also made Stephen Sondheim's list of 40 favorite movies that's been going around a little, along with some other noirs. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/stephen-sondheim-40-favourite-films-of-all-time/

Classics I had somehow never seen previously:

Out of the Past

In a Lonely Place

Other new watches:

The Big Steal (Really didn't care for this one much; too much screwball comedy.)

Where Danger Lives (LOVED this. My kind of noir, a descent from passion into madness. "If you take her, it's a long road. There's no turning back.")

Rewatched:

Nightmare Alley

His Kind of Woman (Saw this many years ago and I could remember nothing of the plot or who was in it. I could really only recall the amazing set design of Morro Lodge. I like this one, although Vincent Price turns the third act way too comedic.)

In a Lonely Place is such a monster.

gloria graham is so good in in a lonely place that nobody ever talks about how good she is in a woman's secret

Bande a Parte (1964) one of my fave Godards, and despite the why-not dance sequence, which fits tonally, it's mostly "Hey, Asshole" and plot twists in the back and sideways.

I don't think there's much in it that feels similar to Gun Crazy's vibe, but I highly encourage you to delve further into the works of Joseph H. Lewis if you haven't
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 7 December 2021 10:57 (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think the only other one by him I've seen is the big combo actually based on this thread. I have not come across these movies in most lists/overviews. Honestly those two are kindof how Fuller has been described to me but I found them both more convincing than anything by fuller.

House of Bamboo doesn't use Technicolor™ but it's a good one.

Didn't want to let this one pass without emphasizing that it's very, very good - one of my faves of Fuller.

Yeah, House of Bamboo is great. Some amazing footage of Tokyo and Yokohama in it.

Yeah, you can tell Fuller had the intelligence to actually look around himself and explore Japanese culture.

The yakuza jazz dance party is awesome.

Watched Black Widow, which was enjoyable enough, but as with so many of the mid-range noirs, it has a good first half but only a so-so second half. The resolving of a mystery is never as good as the mystery itself, I guess.

"Try and Get Me" (aka "The Sound of Fury") mentioned above is an odd little film; not exactly noir, more crime melodrama with some preachy social-justice angles in the third act. Lloyd Bridges is insanely over-the-top as the bad guy. It drove me crazy trying to place where I had just seen the star, Frank Lovejoy, who plays a great everyman in over his head; he also played Brub in "In A Quiet Place" the same year. Currently on Criterion, but not part of the Fox Noir package.

I should add I liked it a lot, much of it is resonating with me the day after viewing. And if the central message of noir is, as noted above "you're fucked," then this movie is definitely noir.

a good first half but only a so-so second half.

yup, great starts are comparatively easy but wholly satisfying endings are very hard

I watched Desert Fury last night, part of this month's Criterion Technicolor noir series. I'm not sure what makes this a noir at all, it seemed to me much more a sub-Douglas Sirk overwrought melodrama. It's plenty weird though, and interesting for sure.

I'm no film noir maven, but I'll toss in another vote for Pickup on South Street. Widmark is damn near perfect in his role.

I am a huge fan of Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer books, but have never seen the two that were adapted into movies (Harper and The Drowning Pool).

If 'M' is considered noir, wouldn't it be the earliest?

― oops (Oops), Saturday, April 10, 2004 2:34 AM (eighteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

People don't talk about proto-noir as much as I'd like. (Mind you, by "proto-noir" I mean certain deservedly obscure silent and pre-code films.) German expressionism, along with American crime/gangster films and French poetic realism, contributed to what people generally recognize as film noir.

If anyone here hasn't seen M (Lang, 1931), do so ASAP. Other proto-noir recommendations available on request.

I haven't even heard of a couple of these:

https://crimereads.com/10-underappreciated-american-neo-noirs-of-the-early-1970s/

Received a blu-ray of Phantom Lady for Xmas and watched it for the second time tonight. Just a fantastic film. It’s pretty boilerplate for awhile, with the “wronged man convicted of killing his wife sent off to the gallows” aspect, which could have led in any number of less interesting directions, but choosing to follow Ella Raines as the framed guy’s lovelorn associate, and her tenacious and dangerous pursuit of the real culprit (who is hell-bent on silencing witnesses) is pretty great. She’s second-billed in this film but it’s a true star vehicle, and one of the great sequences in noir is when she turns up at a theater to flirt with and seduce and shortly thereafter drive absolutely crazy Elisha Cook Jr while attempting to get to the bottom of his part in the twisted story.

my kid announced he was kinda tired of watching MCU films and picked Kiss Me Deadly last night out of a few options. I think he loved it beyond being thoroughly mystified by Marian Carr as Carl Evello’s sister Friday, and her very strong immediate affection for Mike Hammer upon meeting him. (me: “that kind of thing doesn’t usually happen.”) Meeker is probably underrated as an actor who possesses a lot of charisma and presence, he’s quite a nasty force in this film and yet not entirely unsympathetic, despite his frequent use of brute force, bullying and slapping around half the people he meets, and despite being a callous meathead to the women around him (tho he is almost gentle with the women around him a lot of the time, and seems mainly motivated to avenge the death of a woman he barely knew.) The energy of the film is one of its primary drivers and the direction isn’t flashy but its perfect throughout in terms of framing and camera movements that don’t draw attention to themselves. It’s still almost heartbreaking to see all the scenes filmed in the Bunker Hill neighborhood of Los Angeles, and how it used to be.

side note — Maxine Cooper (who played Velda) was really something else:

Cooper married Sy Gomberg, a screenwriter and producer, in 1957.[1] She left the acting profession in the early 1960s in order to raise her family.[1]

Gomberg and her husband became active members of the Hollywood activist community. She helped to organize groups of actors, writers and studio executives to participate in marches with Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Alabama, during the 1960s.[1] Cooper also led campaigns against House Un-American Activities Committee's Hollywood blacklists.[3] She also spearheaded protests by those in the entertainment industry against nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War, and other causes.[1]

Gomberg briefly returned to her acting roots during the 1970s.[3] She made a cameo appearance as herself in the 1975 television series Fear on Trial, which starred George C. Scott as John Henry Faulk, a blacklisted 1950s television and radio host.[3]

Gomberg became a photographer during her later life. Her photographs were used to illustrate a book by Howard Fast entitled The Art of Zen Meditation. The Los Angeles Times referred to the book as "beautiful" in a 1977 book review when referring to her photographs.[1]

watched THE GLASS KEY last night, and it’s a good one. You can really see a lot of Miller’s Crossing in this, but the shifting loyalties are less of a plot point, and the ending isn’t the same bittersweet one but rather a happy one. Brian Donlevy is really great as the powerful political boss who’s also a lovelorn rube a bit in over his head. Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake make quite a pair, lots of heat but it simmers throughout the film rather than getting consummated early. The plot is just really interesting for a noir, as one might expect since it’s based on the Hammett novel, and the nameless mid-size eastern city/right-hand man pulling the strings/possible femme fatale with a loser brother is really most of what the Coens borrowed for their own film. It fits a ton of plot into a runtime under 90 min. The direction is fairly boilerplate, and not very overtly stylish, but Stuart Heisler did a really fine job of giving the film a lot of real city life energy (tho it looks like it was all sets.)