*** Official Film Noir Discussion Thread

I don't disagree that Mildred Pierce is film noir, though the melodrama keeps it from being a film noir in my dvd collection.

My top ten film noirs (in alphabetical order):

The Big Sleep
Body Heat (1981)
Chinatown
Double Indemnity
Gilda
The Killers (1946)
L.A. Confidential
The Maltese Falcon
Out of the Past
The Postman Always Rings Twice

Very painful to pare down to 10. The following are also in my top 10 (mathematically impossible, but there it is

This Gun for Hire
The Big Heat
Sorry, Wrong Number
Blade Runner
Laura
The Blue Dahlia
They Won't Believe Me
Crossfire
Criss Cross
The Third Man
The Stranger
Cause for Alarm
Dead Reckoning
Dark Passage
Gaslight

While creating this list, I'm also reminded of a couple of other films that might be noir:

Dark City
Soylent Green

and some comedy 'honorary noirs':

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
The Cheap Detective
Murder By Death

I hope you're talking about the Dark City from 1950 that starred Charlton Heston which is a very fine film noir.






Crawdaddy

To me, it's more noir than a gangster movie. Too many different angles plot-wise for me to consider it simply a throwback gangster film.

By the way, I watched "The Big Clock" again on the dvd that I just received and Charles Laughton was such a hammy actor. There weren't too many films he was in that I didn't appreciate his performance.

No, it's pretty essential since most noir films deal with sexual deviance, issues of masculinity, and some kind of twisted heterosexual relationship, and you need the presence of a woman for this.

Noir films also almost always question the value of 'the system.' The main character is typically an independent agent of justice. They function outside the formal apparatus of the law and legal system. Despite not being an agent of the state, they can still be a moral person, and often do a better job as result. Thus, this is why the protagonist is so often a cop turned private detective.

Obviously this is a key point, and while I haven't explicitly stated it, I'm obviously in the genre/style camp as opposed to the movement camp.

There's lots of reasons for this, but if you're going to say that film noir is a movement that started in 1941 and ended in 1958, then I have to wonder what constitutes a movement. Apparently it was the French that noticed this movement sometime after 1946, so none of the proponents of this movement in the first 5 years knew it? And how does a movement end? Did a bunch of directors come forward in 1958 and say, we no longer are going to make those types of films? It just seems to me that typically a movement has certain proponents, and if you look at the directors who made the top tier film noir from 1941 to 1958, I think most of them made mostly non-noir films. I'm thinking of:

John Huston (The Maltese Falcon vs. African Queen, Moby Dick)

Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity vs. The Major & the Minor, Stalag 17, Sabrina, The Seven Year Itch)

Orson Welles (Touch of Evil vs. Citizen Kane, Magnificent Ambersons, Macbeth)

Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past vs. Cat People, Berlin Express, The Flame & the Arrow)

Fritz Lang (The Big Heat vs. American Guerrilla in the Philippines, Rancho Notorious)

etc., etc.

I'm certainly no expert on movements, but it seems for instance in painting, that the artists in a movement (e.g., expressionism) made only that kind of painting. Even in film movements such as neo-realism or German expressionism, it seemed the same way - proponents who made that type of film (at least while the movement lasted). I just don't see the same thing in film noir.

I guess the relatively labyrinthine stuff with Turturro's character, along with a couple of other things, might push it into that category.

Can Memento be classified as neo-noir? I think it definitely has some of the requisite elements.

I probably should have clarified my opinion on the issue of it being a movement. I use the word because there really isn't another to describe it. It was an accidental one. It wasn't self-aware, it came through natural progression, taking the 1930's gangster movie and adding psychological elements to it. I'm pretty sure the world being at war didn't do anything to make the atmosphere cheerier. Add to that the amount of european immigrants making these movies and voila. Film noir. The french only coined the term, had they never noticed it, someone else would have come up with another one later. There were still the overall themes that linked the films (however unaware the individual film makers were, and I assure they knew they weren't re-making Public Enemy over and over again)

As for why it ended, you're right a group of directors didn't decide to end it. It began to die as the popularity for such movies waned (there are less noirs from 1957 as there are from 1955). The emergence of the "teenager" as a viable marketing group hurt but the biggest reason was the popularity of the television set. Once TV was common there two problems; one, movies needed to be different then TV, hence the movie to widescreen images and the more promonent use of color in film (and also color techniques were now better). Plus the added issue of showing movies on small sets, the movies needed to be brighter. Again just the natural progression of film.

That's why I call it a movement, it happened because of circumstances that can never be repeated within a relatively concentrated era and area. Anything made after 1958 that considers itself a noir, is only doing so because it's aware of itself and has made a conscious decision to use the elements that it does (barring a few examples up til maybe '64).

As for a lot of directors doing non-noirs, that's because not all movies made in the forties were noirs and these director worked for a studio, so they made different pictures. Some have called Citizen Kane a noir, I'm not sure I agree, but I see their point.

It's a unique style of film, one that is hard to really classify, which is one of things that make it fun for me. I understand your position that it is strictly a genre, but I think that discounts alot of the other factors that went into the style, things that can only be copied.

Andy, what did you think of THE GIRL HUNTERS which had Mickey Spillane playing Mike Hammer?

Well, the presence of a woman does not make her a Femme Fatale. FFs aren't just any woman who happens to be in a crime movie. Hayworth in The Lady From Shanghai is a Femme Fatale, Jean Peters in Pickup on South St is not.

I'll quote myself here



Add to that list;

Touch of Evil
The Big Sleep
This Gun For Hire
The Big Combo
DOA
and many others

All noirs, all with no FFs.

Well, it's just my opinion, but perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a trend. I can certainly see that there was a trend towards making those kind of films, and that doesn't require die-hard proponents.

It's obviously a very philosophical thing as to whether film noir is a genre or a historical thing (movement, trend, whatever). Clearly there was a first wave of film noir, and films like Chinatown, etc., were not historically part of that wave. There will be differing opinions as to whether membership in that first wave is necessary to be a 'true' film noir.

Well this is a subtle point, but I have a hard time distinguishing between those films after 1941 that are part of the trend because their directors made a conscious decision to imitate certain styles of previous films (even if the style didn't yet have a name), and those after 1958 where a similar decision was made, just after the style was more fully realized.

Like everything else in this discussion, we're talking fine lines. While Bacall doesn't serve as a femme fatale by the time the movie is over, she is certainly in that function throughout most of the film. The only real difference is that in the end, her motives turn out to be good, and she can be trusted. Rewrite the last few minutes of the film (without changing anything that came prior), and she could easily be a conniving, lying bitch and a femme fatale. I guess I'm saying that I think that film has 'enough' of a femme fatale to qualify.

I've never seen it. I've heard about it, though, and I've heard that Spillane actually did a pretty good job playing Hammer. Is it on dvd yet?

I would not call The Third Man a noir film. While it has the visual look, it lacks the thematics. For instance, despite the film's cynical outlook, 'the system' works in it. Holly tries to be an independent agent of justice, and all he finds out is that Calloway is really a good guy.

As all of us can see, we all have different interpretations as to what constitutes a film noir. Hopefully, after recognizing that difference in opinion, this thread will move forward and shift the discussion towards more in-depth discussion about specific films.

Herb - I noticed that The Last Seduction wasn't on your list. Do you, or anyone else for that matter, not consider this movie noir or neo-noir? I think that Linda Fiorentino's characters is one of the great FFs.

Greg

Thanks Walter! I'll check some of those out. Especially the Bogart one. I've seen Double Indemnity. Great movie!

Greg, I sure would consider The Last Seduction a neo-noir. It appears the thread's originator is allowing for wide discussion covering films well beyond the 1940-1958 time period. Noir and neo-noir, for identification sake only, Robert, I'm ready and willing to dig in to the meat.

In regards to Reed, How would you rank The Fallen Idol? With his two other gems being mentioned.

Dave - Excellent summation in post #38. And BTW, welcome to the HTF.

Robert - Good suggestion. I'll be moving on to more specific film discussion. I have a couple of ideas I'm pondering regarding this thread. Discussing more contemporary noirs is fine with me. I would hate to limit the discussion too much.

- Walter.

Y'know, as cool a term "film noir" is to say or to write, sometimes I think we might be better off calling these crackerjack films what the people who made them used to call them:

Thrillers
Mysteries
Melodramas
Crime pictures

So much simpler that way, with none of the quibbling.

There, problem solved.

I don't have a "top ten" list, but here are some good films that don't get mentioned as often (though are on Herb's master list elsewhere on this forum):

THIEVES' HIGHWAY (1949)
CRIME WAVE (1954)
THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK (1941)
WOMAN IN HIDING (1949)
711 OCEAN DRIVE (1950)
INFERNO (1953)
CANON CITY (1948)
NAKED ALIBI (1954)
FOURTEEN HOURS (1951)
SPLIT SECOND (1953)
JOHNNY COOL (1963)
THE PHENIX CITY STORY (1955)
WARNING SHOT (1967)
THE INCIDENT (1967)
THE KILLER THAT STALKED NEW YORK (1950)
THE OUTFIT (1973)
THE HIT (1984)
PAST TENSE (1994)

Andy, THE GIRL HUNTERS is out on DVD.

Yeah, trend works for me, but I do see it as a little more then just that, most of the directors did know that they were making this style of film. Hey, maybe style is a good...nah, that's still too narrow. Perhaps there's no good answer. It really is one of the only genres/trends/movements where you can have this discussion, everything else seems to have fairly accepted and standard boundaries.



They were very aware that they were making darker crime stories, and they were certainly aware of previous films and that helped push the movem..."it" along. They were still using fedoras because people actually still wore them (which really helped with the shadows, another small factor), they were still making "immidiate" films. When Garnett made the Postman... he wasn't making a "retro-movie in the style of Double Indemnity". He may have had some elements borrowed, but it was still the same world that they were living in, so the esthetic changes wouldn't have to be made. Chinatown is aware of every bit of detail, so to make it look more authentically noir, something Postman... never had to do.

That's all I meant, not that noir directors weren't aware of what they were doing. That's why towards the end of the '40's and into the '50's the films get darker, more violent, more angry becuase of societies constant need to top what has been done before. Then with TV, that ended the publics appetite for pushing the envelopes in that direction and they moved on to other areas.



I guess that's the point though, the ending isn't rewritten and Becall is clearly good. In fact I would argue that she's clearly good from the beginning. You know that she weilds some power, and you may question her motives at some turns, but I never questioned her goodness. From the time Ava Gardner enters the screen in The Killers, you know she's bad, not just trouble, bad.

Neither here nor there, a Femme Fatale is a leading lady who through her charms and lies, convinces our protagonist (and he's not off the hook, he allows himself to be lead, hence my mention of fate in the other post), to do bad while having no intention of remaining faithfull to him, usually planning to have him killed or taken care of in other ways (prison). Becall just doesn't fit that role as it was written, and with Becall and Bogarts popularity after To Have and Have Not, there was no way Warner was making the type of movie you suggest could have been made.



I've never heard anyone seriously question whether The Third Man is a noir or not before. Kudos to you, but I believe that you are wrong in this case. The idea of the system working isn't unique to this film. He Walked By Night, Pickup on South Street, The Big Heat and The Big Combo as well as The Asphalt Jungle, Black Angel and many others have systems that work...in the end.

That's the point of a lot of noir, that there may be one bad cop (Jungle), or a slightly corrupt, but not bad, cop (Pickup on South St.) possibly even a system that get's things wrong (Black Angel), these movies are rarely an indictemnt of the system. Alot of times, if the protagonist had gone through the "normal channels" he could have saved himself a lot of trouble. Even though the cop in Asphalt Jungle or The Killing are bad, the rest of the police force is good (Jungle makes that VERY clear), to say not that the system is corrupt, but that all of us can be, it's up to us to make sure it never get's out of hand.


I don't think it's just a matter of knowing that everyone has a different opinion and then moving on. There are a lot of very strong views as to what constitutes noir and it's one of more interesting things about it. I try to flavor my posts with mentions of other films and if anyone wants more detail on them I'm happy to give them, but how many times do you want people to say how much they liked Double Indemnity? We all like it, it's a great movie, I don't know if it's the perfect movie, but it would probably be top ten for me. I'm more then happy to move in whatever way the thread seems to go, but right now it still appears people are interested in dicussing what noir is.


Thanks, I hope to have a chance to explore the other areas of this forum (I don't have a home theatre [just a 27" flat screen]), but I do love my movies, esp. noir.



I don't know, they're called that because, there are themes/styles/visions that link these films. And they are stronger then the themes that link "thrillers" from the 1960's or 1980's. You can't just call them something else, the french really did see something when they watched them all, and that style still apperent today.

You're not really gonna compare Nick and Nora Chatles to Marlowe or Hammer are you?

Greg... no I haven't. I'm most certainly from the camp the believes film noir existed primarily between 1940 and 1960 - with a few exceptions on either side and as such I would (personally) label The Last Seduction as a neo-noir just as I would with the majority of fine films mentioned here in this thread produced after the early 60's i.e. Blade Runner (tech-noir), L.A. Confidential, Chinatown, The Man Who Wasn't There etc etc.

Dave,
First off, welcome to the forum, but I think you need to reread my post again. Where in my post did I suggest that we stop talking about what noir is today or even tomorrow? I made it very clear in my post that once we exhausted that part of the discussion that I hope we move on to other topics of discussion like specific film titles.






Crawdaddy

whoops, you're right. sorry 'bout that. As you know, I'm new here, so I couldn't read you're personality as well as others could. Wasn't sure if it had been directed at me or not (overly sensitive? probably).

This forum seems civilised, and that is a rare thing so I should have fun.

DP... sorry.

Having written that I’m more in the camp with Walter and Herb, I really don’t care that much if we classify Chinatown as film noir or neo-film noir.

I care a bit more about films like The Usual Suspects but I’ve made two posts on that movie already and I know that Robert and I see the world differently. In this case also, the classification of the film one way or the other is not that important.

A good discussion on the film and the elements of the film, vis-à-vis the concept of film noir should prove to be enlightening.

And welcome Dave—this is a very civilized forum. I’m sure you will enjoy yourself.

Well, Dave may have gotten that impression from my post, Robert. Because to be honest that is sort of what I thought you were implying. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Anyway, on with the thread.

- Walter.

Here are some settings and scenes from various film noirs that give me immense enjoyment:

Jazz Clubs:
D.O.A: After a rather routine and sometimes corny beginning, the film abruptly shifts to the world of noir with the scene in "The Fisherman" jazz club. The angles, close-ups of sweating musicians and frantic jive fanatics, the actual crime occurring throw the film into high gear with O'Brien giving us a character of such self-determination seldom seen on screen.

Phantom Lady: Ella Raines strutting her stuff and Elisha Cook Jr. drumming to climactic orgasm in an improvised jazz session is definitely the highlight of this film, and a wonder it got by the censors..

Staircases and steps, and tunnels:
Dark Passage: After undergoing plastic surgery, Humphrey Bogart climbs up a seemingly endless set of steps to get back to Lauren Bacalls apartment. One of the many great San Francisco location shots in this far-fetched but for me very watchable noir.

Kiss Me Deadly: Ralph Meeker, perhaps the most brutal of the P.I.s throws a hood down a long set of steps on the streets of L. A. presumably to his demise.

He Walked by Night: Richard Basehart, an extremely intelligent and elusive cop-killer, uses the storm drains of L.A. to escape police until they figure it out. The final chase is beautifully filmed.

The Third Man: The sewers of Vienna are the final trap for Orson Welles in this most magnificently photgraphed black and white film.

Shadows and fog, neon and venetian blinds: These visual staples of noir are too numerous for one listing. Here are some:
Murder My Sweet: The alternating neon sign and reflection of hulking Mike Mizurki as Marlowe (Dick Powell) sits at his office desk.

Double Indemnity: Fred MacMurray is awash in the shadow effect of sunlight through the venetian blinds when he first meets femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck in her home.

The Big Combo: One of the darkest of the noirs, probably in part to hide the cheap sets, the ending shoot-out in the airplane hanger is so fog enshrouded you could cut it and spoon it up.

Yes, I think it's one of the best scenes in any of these films, probably because I always thought Ella Raines was one of the most striking actresses I ever saw on screen.







Crawdaddy

Well, I definitely want to see that movie now!

Speaking of striking actresses, after watching Out Of The Past for the first time ever thanks to the Warners noir box set, I'm surprised that Jane Greer didn't become a pretty major star. She was extraordinary.