Film noir: your favourites

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.)

the book itself is also very much where Millers Dialogue comes from. I dont' remember the movie well enough to remember how much it kept to that but all that language... I always remember lines like "see where the twist flops".

Saw the pretty good Dont Bother to Knock, which may not be too noir-y besides the fact it was introduced by eddie muller on TCM. We couldn't get out in front of the plot, which was a pretty good sign

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 is there a gay love triangle? asking for a friend

my kid announced he was kinda tired of watching MCU films and picked Kiss Me Deadly last night out of a few options.

This sentence is like if Upworthy made headlines tailored to me.

Can anyone remember a noir set in a small farming town, an ensemble piece, where Jack Palance plays a heavy? Maybe an Aldrich. Saw it at the Cinematheque about 15 years ago but can’t remember what it was called.

Does “Letter from an unknown woman” count, structurally at least, as a sort of noir? If so, then that. I’ll be damned if I can remember a sadder film.

Sudden Fear?

City Slickers?

Shane?

Watched Phantom Lady last night, thanks to a recommendation upthread. A great noir, although like many it goes slightly off the boil once the mystery is revealed and you wait for things to play out. But Ella Raines is absolutely luminous in this, I wonder why she wasn't a bigger star. It's free on YouTube btw

That the one with the best drum solo in cinema history?

Yep!

Elisha Cook Jr def one of the great character actors of the era

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

^that’s not going to be the famous Out of the Past parody “Out of Gas,” is it?

Oh wait, that’s Aubrey Plaza. From last night, I guess.

Yeah, it's a sketch from last night.

I just checked, and the only thing on YouTube from Mitchum's episode that he actually appears in is his brief monologue.

in 1987, robert mitchum & jane greer reunited to star in an snl parody of their film out of the past (1947) called out of gas pic.twitter.com/dAtbVzq7ZR

— ana (@pelicinema) November 10, 2022

here is the rest of the sort of odd yet endearing skit pic.twitter.com/9KUuKnK9YA

— ana (@pelicinema) November 10, 2022

Playback on the second part is acting up for me.

Same for me. First part was excellent though.

Only goes around fourteen seconds.

Mitchum looks like George Kennedy.

Lol

Only goes around fourteen seconds.

Did it for me too, when it got unstuck the audio was completely out of synch.

It gets unstuck but then there's no audio at all after a certain point. I got the gag at least. Did you see the writer/director credit at the end?

Okay, now I heard the rest.

Yeah, it was made by his daughter, and I assume the kid was his grandson?

Irl grandson.

Yup.

Makes total sense now.

Last time I remember discussing this was here: Robert Mitchum C/D, S/D

I managed to watch all of the "leaving soon" noir on Criterion, last two were The House on Telegraph Hill (more gothic melodrama than noir, with echoes of Rebecca, but fun nonetheless) and The Breaking Point (Michael Curtiz' reworking of To Have and Have Not) which Criterion calls "daylight noir," and which is wonderfully scripted, acted, and shot.

Mister, you’re a better man than I.

Watched Criss Cross last night, which is a good film in its own right, but the excellent location shooting sent me down a several hour rabbit hole learning about Bunker Hill, the Angels Flight funicular and more.

http://americanfilmnoir.com/page19.html

^That's funny; I recently watched Kiss Me Deadly, and the BD bonus disc had a featurette on Bunker Hill. I wasn't aware of the neighborhood's history (and I've lived in L.A. a long time, have been to Angels Flight, etc.).

Just revisited Act of Violence – it's one of my all-time favorite, I guess movies, ever. I see it's been discussed a bunch on this thread, so nothing really to say about it, beyond – what a remarkable film. (Anyone who hasn't seen it should go in as "fresh" as possible, without reading too much...). By the way, that one also has a few great Bunker Hill scenes.

The Big Lebowski

Great line in Detour (1945), truck driver to diner waitress:

“Hey, Glamorous… gimme change for a dime, willya?”

Greil Marcus had a big write-up on Odds Against Tomorrow in connection with Harry Belafonte today:

https://greilmarcus.substack.com/p/real-life-rock-top-10-may-2023

Paywall, probably...Never seen it. I notice it's on YouTube, may watch tonight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSzDfNn3kYc

Ryan and Winters – what a pairing. I love Rob't Ryan so much...

Isn’t that a Robert Wise film? Have always wanted to see it but world enough and time etc.

Abraham Polonsky.

You're right--written by A.P.

Great film, wonderful enraged sweaty Belafonte song performance.

The film was nominated for a Golden Globe award for Motion Picture Promoting International Understanding.

https://static.simpsonswiki.com/images/c/c6/Springfield_Civic_Center_%28Brother%2C_Can_You_Spare_Two_Dimes%3F%29.png

Watched Pickup on South Street this morning, through a fog of tiredness and hangover (the quintessential conditions for noir-viewing, in honesty). Found it kinda flimsy at the level of plot and character motivation but dang, the violence was visceral and shocking. Kind of stunned it got through the censors in 1953? Standout was obviously Thelma Ritter, who came on like a character out of Dostoevsky. Her death scene is utterly heart-wrenching.

I watched it recently, too... as I think I mentioned on the TCM thread, the biggest issue for me wasn't that I didn't share the film's affection for the Richard Widmark character as a sympathetic rogue; it just didn't seem to do anything to establish his likability, or why Jean Peters would be drawn to him. (The scene where he stands over Peters in his shack, after knocking her out cold, and the camera/music are kind of leering in a titillated fashion was just... uncomfortable.) It had some good aspects, tho.

Thelma Ritter walks in and knocks the movie over imo

Wham! Like two taxis coming together on Broadway!