3 FOX FILM NOIR titles on March 11th (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

I don't necessary agree with that as the film does have some film noir elements.

 

[Jim_K]

That's fine. Just my opinion, not forcing it on anyone else.

Being a scope film and in color it doesn't have the classic Noir look and while the story does feature a sort of femme fatale it plays like a melting pot of 50's melodrama and murder mystery.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Some of my favorite film noirs are scope films. Also, being in color doesn't disqualify it to me. Anyhow, it's a lot closer to being a film noir than Daisy Kenyon which is in B&W and non-widescreen.

Anybody ready for another in-depth film noir discussion?




Crawdaddy

 

[Jim_K]

Okay.

A pure Noir film must:

1. Be shot in B&W
2. Generate a sense of mood and atmosphere with the lighting
3. Have a moral malaise to the main character (or the world they inhabit)
4. Feature a crime (or perceived crime) of some sort
5. Be set in contemporary times
6. Be made between 1940 to 1959

Anything that doesn't feature all of the above is not what I'd consider a pure Noir (at least in the way it's marketed). There are films that have a number of these qualities but not all so I'd consider them noir-ish if made before 1959 or neo-noir if made after.

All of the above is of course IMO.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I disagree with such restrictions, but that's fine. Because there is no way somebody is going to convince me that the following films aren't film noir.

Violent Saturday
House of Bamboo
House of Numbers
Party Girl
The Tattered Dress
A Kiss Before Dying

 

[flagbrothers]

I hope Fox release more CinemaScope noir films ie... "Violent Saturday and The Third Voice". Maybe Warner Brothers and Universal will jump on the band wagon and release their CinemaScope noirs "Hell on Frisco Bay", " I died a thousand times", "The Tattered Dress" just to name a few.

 

[Simon Howson]

Classifying films into genres is futile, because a single film can feature different properties that would make it belong to multiple genres. Ultimately genre classification is an interpretive process that can't be stopped.

Classic Hollywood knew this, hence "genre films" would all feature some commonly identifiable features, but always with the addition of new elements to make a new fresh and original film. Hollywood works on the idea that viewers want a rough idea of what they are going to see, but not a precise idea, because if they did, it would be pointless seeing any new films. But at the same time, viewers wouldn't risk their money on a film that seems unlikely to meet any of their expectations.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Yet, it's fun discussing such classifications and it inspires some of us to watch other films that have been discussed, but never seen before.

 

[Doug Otte]

I like Alain Silver's description of noir as a cycle, not a genre. With that in mind, only your number 6 above is required. Noir reflected a general perspective on American life that was prevalent during that period (the beginning of WWII through the Eisenhower era). Your other characteristics tend to be found in noir, but are not always there.

Regards,
Doug

 

[Charles H]

Hubert Cornfield mentioned on a commentary a few years ago (it was either PRESSURE POINT or THE NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY) that he recorded a commentary for THE THIRD VOICE. I think that Eddie Muller may have recorded a commentary for VIOLENT SATURDAY.

 

[Jim_K]

That's fine. Since nobody at the time ever set out to make a "Noir" because it was made up after the fact it can be anything you want it to be.

The way I view Noir is a combination of a certain cycle (1940-1959, contemporary setting), a certain style (B&W, moody shadows & lighting), a common theme (doomed characters/decayed society) and specific genres (Crime, drama, murder mystery, suspense/thriller).

 

[Richard--W]

Interesting discussion.

I see no reason why one genre can't have elements from another genre, or why one genre can't cross over into another genre. It's a thin line between crime drama and noir, and that line is blurred more often than not. If you take crime out of noir, is it noir or is it melodrama? While these films were being made in the 1940s and 1950s, the film makers were not aware of such distinctions and definitions. They were expressing how they felt and what they thought in telling these stories without analyzing it consciously. To impose a narrow set of rules after the fact on their creative instincts is not useful.

I think the generally held definition of film noir is too restricting. If the underlying subtext of the genre is present in the story, I see no reason why noir can't be in color. It may look different than the monochrome noir we're accustomed to from John Alton, but maybe we should think in terms of a different set of rules for color noir. Perhaps Color Noir offers a whole new set of aesthetics for us to enjoy. VIOLENT SATURDAY is most certainly a noir inside and out. So is LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN, NIAGRA, HOUSE OF BAMBOO, and A KISS BEFORE DYING. Gabriel Figueroa, a Mexican dp whose work has not yet been discovered, found a disciplined way to express noir in color in several amazing Mexican film noirs of the 1950s. Most of these are available on DVD, but not in good quality, and not in English.

It also seems to me that an essential element of noir is a lead character with some kind of fatal flaw or fatal quirk that is enacted out whether he's aware of it or not. Forget what the feminists write about femme fatales; they are wrong-headed. Femme fatales are the most interesting and demanding characters for an actress to play because they are usually conflicted in some way. While not essential to the genre, I always miss not having a femme fatale in a noir.

The cycle may have ended in 1959, but the genre never ended. Film noir continued to develop, from THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD in 1966 to CHINATOWN and BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA in 1974 to CHINA MOON in 1994 to NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN in 2007 with countless other films in-between. These are five of the purest, most vital and authentic noirs I've ever seen. The genre is alive and well today.

 

[Robin9]

Couldn't agree more! Well said, sir!. I particularly want Violent Saturday and The Tattered Dress.

 

[Richard--W]

I've been hoping for another round of Fox Noirs and welcome all three titles. I buy every noir and classic crime film that is released, so Universal, WHV, and Fox can count on my dollars for

Hell On Frisco Bay
I Died A Thousand Times
The Tattered Dress
The Third Voice
Violent Saturday

and every other noir they are disposed to release on DVD.

 

[Simon Howson]

I asked about I Died A Thousand Times at the Warner chat early this year, and they said they are "considering" it, I assume for a future Film Noir set.

 

[Richard--W]

I would also like to see Siodmak's CRY OF THE CITY on DVD which has always struck me as a defining noir of the 1940s. Along with ROAD HOUSE. Let's hope Fox will give them priority in the next round.

 

[Richard--W]

If I may offer another thought on some of the views expressed here ... I can't imagine withholding a noir from release because it's in color. My understanding is that color generally sells better than black and white. Nor do I care how its marketed -- as a Noir, Tough Guys, Gangster Classic, Crime Classic, or whatever. I just want to see the films released on DVD, and in my hands.

It may be just the hook the studios are looking for to call their next box-set Color Noir, or even Technicolor Noir.

The time for Color Noir has arrived.

 

[Pete York]

While I agree with what you're saying, I think there is a slight distinction to be made. The studios, producers, directors, writers, etc. of the films that eventually became the "noir" cannon all knew exactly what they were doing; they were making films within an established trend. While the term "noir", as you say, meant nothing to them, they knew they were making an entry in the red-meat cycle or a hard-boiled crime story or whatever. To wit, this from a contemporaneous article, by Lloyd Shearer, that appeared in the NY Times, August 5, 1945:

"Of late there has been a trend in Hollywood toward the wholesale production of lusty, hard-boiled, gat-and-gore crime stories, all fashioned on a theme with a combination of plausibly motivated murder and studded with high-powered Freudian implication. Of the quantity of such films now in vogue, "Double Indemnity," Murder, My Sweet," "Conflict" and "Laura" are a quartet of the most popular which quickly come to mind.

Shortly to be followed by Twentieth Century-Fox's "The Dark Corner" and "The High Window," MGM's "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "The Lady in the Lake," Paramount's "Blue Dahlia" and Warner's "Serenade" and "The Big Sleep," this quartet constitutes a mere vanguard of the cinematic homicide to come. Every studio in town has at least two or three similar blood-freezers before the cameras right now, which means that within the next year or so movie murder--particularly with a psychological twist--will become almost as common as the weekly newsreel or musical."

This all sprang from the success of Double Indemnity. This article attributes it all to the "time-honored Hollywood production formula of follow-the-leader", one we're all here familiar with to this day.

"Forever watchful of audience reaction, the rest of the industry almost immediately began searching its story files for properties like "Double Indemnity." RKO suddenly discovered it had bought Chandler's novel, "Farewell, My Lovely." on July 3, 1941. If "Double Indemnity" was so successful, why not make "Farewell, My Lovely"?...MGM excavated from its vaults an all-but-forgotten copy of James Cain's "The Postman Always Rings Twice." The trickle swelled into a torrent and a trend was born."

And as we know, that initial burst, spread through all the studios of the time, carried the trend for years until it morphed into the next stage, where then-current themes like the red scare and the nuclear age became more prominent. This is why I put Double Indemnity as the first noir (when I say noir I think of the initial cycle), anything before that would be a proto-noir, an ancestor. These films, like I Wake Up Screaming and The Maltese Falcon were just randomly occuring crime pictures, like war pictures. I don't see the style in full bloom just yet and being repeated in picture after picture. I tend to put the end near '55-56, because after that, there's really only a handful of films that fit. Certainly anything after Odds Against Tomorrow is affected by the shift that was the 60's and is a different beast and this is where the neo-noir comes into play. IMO

 

[Richard--W]

For those with multi-region capability, Siodmak's CRY OF THE CITY has been released by the British Film Institute in region 2 :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cry-City-Vic...6582046&sr=1-1

I'm thinking I'll probably buy it rather than wait for a domestic release. I had forgotten this was a follow-up to KISS OF DEATH, one of the toughest noirs of the period, and Siodmak is said to have pushed the genre a lot further in this one.

 

[Jim_K]

Absolutely. I wasn't calling for withholding color hard-boiled crime stories, murder mysteries, 50's melodrama's or color noirs and however they want to market them is fine by me. If for instance the only way Paramount will release The African Queen is to box it with The File on Thelma Jordan, The Secret Behind the Door and The Dark Mirror and call it a Noir set then I say bring it on.

On a side note, now that Fox has resurrected the Noir line are there any rumblings about Universal? It's a shame they haven't followed up with their initial Noir line from a few years ago. I'm still waiting for The Glass Key, The Blue Dahlia, Ministry of Fear, Phantom Lady, etc.