Noirvember Requests?
Thursday, November 10, 2016 at 11:30AM What are your three top noirs you'd love to see discussed this month? I mean besides the obvious choices like Gilda (a personal fav) and films we've discussed in the past few years already like Double Indemnity, Blood Simple, The Bigamist, and Woman in the Window.
Easy Access FYI:
• Netflix has a paltry selection of Noir but they are offering Dressed to Kill, Don't Bother to Knock, Laura, and House on Telegraph Hill
• Amazon Prime is streaming The Killer is Loose, The Man in the Attic, The Hitchhiker, Shoot to Kill, Scarlett Street, Dark Passage, Strange Woman, Fear in the Night, The Stranger, Port of New York, Strange Illusion, Whistle Stop and Woman on the Run
• The new FilmStruck service has several foreign titles mostly from Japan and France
Reader Comments (37)
Romeo is Bleeding (1993) and The Grifters (1990).
Does Body Double (1984) count as noir?
Detour
Out of the Past or Touchez pas au grisbi or Victim (w/Dirt Bogarde)
I'd also be interested in discussing Jean-Pierre Melville's films because I've seen so few of them and the ones I haven't sound interesting
Top 3 noirs: The Third Man, Kiss Me Deadly and The Big Sleep
But if you do Laura it'll give me the push I need to see it for the first time.
Feel like revisiting The Blue Dahlia, Leave Her To Heaven & since the holidays are here, the 'noir' Pottersville section of It's A Wonderful Life.
Key Largo, Niagara, They Live by Night
I like my noir extra black and extra weird:
Leave Her to Heaven ('45, Stahl)
Gun Crazy ('50, Lewis)
The Big Heat ('53, Lang)
The Night of the Hunter ('55, Laughton)
Touch of Evil ('58, Welles)
Blade Runner ('82, Scott)
The Grifters ('90, Frears)
To Die For ('95, Van Sant)
Crash ('96, Cronenberg)
PLEASE!
Does Brick count?
Three I'd love to see that haven't been mentioned yet:
In a Lonely Place (please, please!!)
Criss Cross
Nightmare Alley
** I would love to see 1954's "This is My Love" with Linda Darnell and Dan Duryea based on the ultra dark "Fear Has Black Wings" discussed but it is extremely hard to find so I hold out little hope. Still a fascinating film if you get the chance.
Of those already suggested I second The Big Heat and Niagara.
Paul, how does Cronenberg's Crash count as noir?
I'd love to see The Player discussed by the TFE community.
Brick!!
@ /3rtful
The level of paranoia, perversity and alienation in that film is off the chart.
"It's a film noir in bruise tones." (Daugherty, Salon)
Recently saw "This Gun for Hire" and thought it was interesting, if a little archetypal. Maybe this is too off-model, but Laird Cregar's work in "Hangover Square" and "The Lodger" are both pretty compelling.
Is Ace in the Hole (dir Billy Wilder) considered Film Noir? One of my favorites from that era, but prob the wrong genre for this post.
Leave Her To Heaven, Out of the Past, Diabolique, The Third Man, and Night of the Hunter are terrific. Does Chinatown count? That's a personal favorite. Or The Manchurian Candidate? Of course Laura and Gilda. In light of the election, The Grifters might be appropriate. Snerk.
I've never seen Crossfire or The Lady From Shanghai. Are there any noirs with a holiday theme?
If we're basing this on the lists above, I choose Laura, The Stranger, and Dark Passage.
Dave S.-Laird Cregar was a great undersung character actor who did so much great work in his short life. Hangover Square would be a great choice for this. This Gun for Hire is wonderful-Veronica Lake & Alan Ladd paired so well together.
Pam-Ace in the Hole is absolutely a film noir. Another great one.
Dave in Hollywood-A holiday noir-great idea! The only one that came to mind is ironically called Christmas Holiday starring Deanna Durbin as a good girl reduced to prostitution while singing in a roadside cafe and Gene Kelly as her psychotic killer husband!
Dave in Hollywood: That's...odd. The closest example (as in something that could both A: Reasonably be called "noir" and B: Is inescapably "about" the holiday, not just shallowly throwing up the decorations for ironic purposes to a plot that could otherwise take place at any other time of the year while having little or no effect on plot or implied theme) to that end suggestion I'm aware of would probably be Batman Returns. They show up a lot in horror fare, especially of the slasher kind, but writing something that could be identified as a noir plot that ALSO satisfies the "B" criteria? That's impossible for Thanksgiving and close to impossible for Easter. I could easily see the angle, though, on a suffused, noir-subversive, vision of Independence Day.
It's tough, largely because it near impossible to pin down exactly what Film Noir encompasses.
I'm stumping for
Pickup on South Street - part spy thriller, part seedy underworld pic with rare sympathetic performance from Richard Widmark.
Crossfire - with the central murder motive changing from homophobia to anti-semitism in the adaptation of Richard Brooks' The Brick Foxhole there's both a talking point about Noir & the Hays code, as well as a fascinating modern resonance.
Laura - because how can you talk Film Noir without Laura?
Many great suggestions but one that hasn't been mentioned is Andre De Toth's "Pitfall" from 1948. It's a dandy and stars two noir icons, Dick Powell and Lizabeth Scott. Plus Raymond Burr in memorably slimy villain mode.
Devil in a Blue Dress - 1995
Love Letters with Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten. Jennifer was first offered Laura but Selznick told her to turn it down. It's intriguing to think of her doing that.
Now we're talking!
If you manage to see it, I'd love to discuss the magnificent Anthony Mann's Raw Deal, which has maybe the best cinematography of all noirs, by the great John Alton, and a KILLER supporting performance by Claire Trevor (she won for another movie). As a matter of fact, it'd be fantastic entry for Hit me with your best shot, but it's so entrancing that we can talk about it even without focusing on its cinematography.
Other than this, I love Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past and the extremely and criminally underrated late noir Odds Against Tomorrow, by Robert Wise and starred by Harry Belafonte (a very smart movie with a real underground feeling, including gay characters).
This movie has a memorable six-minute sequence of seduction between Robert Ryan and the wonderful Gloria Grahame that is the most sexually-charged of all American cinema of the 50's.
Of course you could make this a Gloria Grahame festival, because she starred in so many classics and you can't talk about noir without her.
In a Lonely Place is her best movie and performance (and the best performance by Bogie, like ever), but I love Fritz Lang's Human Desire (a remake of a movie by Jean Renoir, only better) and Fritz Lang's The Big Heat (yeah, with the hot coffee sequence).
I take back my suggestions to focus on only one movie and increase its chances: In a Lonely Place. PLEASE
In a Lonely Place wasn't on my original list, because I don't really think of it as noir, but it's one of my all time favorites.
If Cronenberg's Crash qualifies as noir I wanna volunteer Videodrome as tribute.
From the Filmstruck list:
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Mona Lisa
Other:
In a Lonely Place. One of my favorite Bogart movies.
I feel like I could shout out 100 titles and it's great to see so many fabulous suggestions above.
I can't resist bringing up the two absolute greatest noirs: Touch of Evil (1958) and Kiss Me Deadly (1955).
But I'd love it if TFE could somehow track down and cover Anthony Mann's He Walked by Night (1948). Even by noir standards it's strange and dark and inventive and breathtakingly well-shot and documentary-like in its naturalism and in so many ways way way waay ahead of its time. It's one of my absolute all time favourite films and possibly the most 'obscure' of all my favourites. So I would love to hear if other people see something hypnotic and masterful in it as well or if I'm just projecting.
Oh there are so many! Limiting to three is no good:
Leave Her to Heaven
Criss Cross
Night of the Hunter
Black Widow (It's not the greatest movie ever, but I would be really interested to hear what others think)
Le Samourai
The Grifters
Force of Evil
The Third Man (Joseph Cotten ... so underrated)
Elevator to the Gallows
Just saw Laura for the first time. So odd, so stylish, and so wonderful that it opens with a good-lookin' cop throwing a towel to and checking out the naked bod of a dandy intellectual, despite being made in the late '40s. It lingers. A total masterpiece of the genre, one of the best of all time.
"Out of the Past" is a perfect noir
Charlie G: if you mean the Black Widow movie with Ginger Rogers, you might be interested to know that the novel it was based on was written by Hugh Wheeler, who did the book for A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd. Wheeler wrote and co-wrote a series of mysteries under the pseudonym Patrick Quentin.
"Blast of Silence" (1961)
"Hanyo" (1960)
"Bob le Flambeur" (1956)
for example. I love all the old and better known Noirs like "Laura" (1944), "Double Indemnity" (1944), "Gilda" (1946), "Out of the Past" (1947) a.s.o. but wouldnt it be nice to get in contact with something not known so well?
Pretty much anything with Robert Mitchum or Richard Widmark
Double Indemnity!!!!!!!!!
Sorry Ingrid but Stanwyck DESERVES the win!!!! "Rem, U & I are in this together, straight down the line!"