Film noir: your favourites

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.

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?

Fedoras have retained cultural relevancy longer than Stetsons

Smoking vs. chewing tobacco

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, 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.

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.

Yeah, I think noir casts the biggest, um, shadow.

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.