Film noir: your favourites

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!

Sorry, wrong Thelma Ritter movie.

Probably the wrong thread for Odds Against Tomorrow; heist films are adjacent to noir, with some overlap, but to me they're a little different.

Disorienting to see '70s guys Richard Bright (Al Neri in The Godfather) and MASH's Wayne Rogers. (Also Zohra Lampert.) When Ed Begley assures everyone "It's gonna work," he's like the character who goes downstairs with a flashlight in a horror film: "What's wrong with you--haven't you ever seen a heist film before?" Anyway, while I wouldn't rank it with The Killing or The Asphalt Jungle, it was good. How did Robert Wise go from this to his oversized road-show films of the '60s?

The Peter Principle?

Saw Odd Man Out with James Mason a few months ago and it's such a bare bones no-fat noir against a running clock. It's stayed with me ever since.

Can’t fault the accent work

he's beautiful

https://i.imgur.com/Aij9Hj6.jpg

Odd Man Out gets better with every viewing.

Was one of the few I disliked back in college movie classes, but I owe it a rewatch

I fell asleep multiple times the first time I watched it, but that often happens when I am especially stressed or sleep-deprived.

Carol Reed is terrific generally.

Yes. Even like that one in the tropical paradise with Trevor Howard, Outcast of the Islands.

Find myself re-watching They Live By Night more than maybe any other film? Not quite yearly but gotta be close.

I got ahold of The Asphalt Jungle on Blu-ray... as with others I've watched recently, it's one I've seen in the past, and certain lines/characters were dimly familiar (but I remembered nothing else about it).

The first strike is that it was filmed almost entirely on a studio lot (no actual city streets), which is kind of a bummer for a movie like this. Plus, it's set in a generic Midwestern city (that's not Chicago or Cleveland); so it lacks even an attempt at geographic specificity.

Beyond that – it's a long, somewhat slow & plodding film about a not-very-interesting heist and its not-very-interesting aftermath. If they had tightened it up by 30 mins or so, it may have played better? – but as it stand, most scenes feel roughly the same length, with actors circling the set, visibly hitting their marks, and chewing the scenery a bit (Sterling Hayden is an exception, but he also doesn't quite seem to know what to do with his character). The best performance (IMO) is by Louis Calhern, as the caddish lawyer who "finances" the heist.

There's also a super awkward "thin blue line"–type speech by the police commissioner at the end; I assume the studio required this, to compensate for the crooked-cop character, but oy. I did like the swing dance scene in the diner.

Yeah Asphalt Jungle is a plodder

There's a YouTube channel that posts full length film noirs frequently often reasonable enough quality. The films themselves are a mixture of classics and a good dose of by-the-yard b movies starring people with names assembled from the names of bigger stars. A date with dignity starring Rita Hayes and Joseph Powell, that sort of thing. 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?

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. For instance I had seen desert fury but nothing else with Lizbeth Scott and really enjoyed a couple of films where she was pure simple evil. Obviously this all applies to a far broader range of films than noir but it does fit that genre's ready-to-be-pulped appeal.

Sounds cool, what's the name of the channel?

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.

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.

and how quickly it became impossible to see everything in one lifetime.

Well you're never gonna get there with that attitude!

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

it seems to have been around for ages. But yeah when one gets yanked there's never a lack of other channels.

Cool, thanks.
I don't noir much during the summer for some reason, but looking for"ard to diving back in soon...

sounds like a Criterion Channel playlist..."Summer Noir"

The summer noir
Came creeping in
From a dark alley

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?

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).

The summer noir
Came creeping in
From a dark alley
Smelling like gin

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.

I had never seen Lady in the Lake, currently on Criterion. Clever idea, bizarre execution.

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.