*** 4th Annual HTF Noirvember Movie Challenge*** (1 Viewer)

[dana martin]

Same as last year

1. Watch as many Noir/ Western Noir/ Neo-Noir-Themed films, etc. from midnight Noirvember 1, 2024 through the month of Noirvember 2024 (the start of the Holiday Season) (use your own time zone to set the ending time).

2. Theatrically released films and short features count as 1 point each. Running times are irrelevant.

3. Two of the films, et. al. should be new discoveries, movies you've never seen before. The point of this is to see those few movies you've always meant to see, but never got around to. Please specify new discoveries in your film list by making them bold, adding asterisks, different colors, etc.

4. Come here and talk about 'em. ( this is the best part )

5. There is an uber-category, the Heavy Smoker/ Femme Fatale for those who wish to put all of the rest of us to shame. This is the heavyweight division. These people, if they choose to accept the challenge, must view 24 Noir/ Western Noir/ Neo-Noir themed movies before dawn on Dec. 1st. Ten new discoveries are recommended for this one. The rest of us will bow down in awed reverence to these HTF members. The bragging rights will be awesome and long lived. What movies qualify?



Film Critic, Roger Ebert’s A Guide to Film Noir Genre

Film noir is . . .

1. A French term meaning "black film," or film of the night, inspired by the Series Noir, a line of cheap paperbacks that translated hard-boiled American crime authors and found a popular audience in France.

2. A movie which at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending.

3. Locations that reek of the night, of shadows, of alleys, of the back doors of fancy places, of apartment buildings with a high turnover rate, of taxi drivers and bartenders who have seen it all.

4. Cigarettes. Everybody in film noir is always smoking, as if to say, "On top of everything else, I've been assigned to get through three packs today." The best smoking movie of all time is "Out of the Past," in which Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas smoke furiously at each other. At one point, Mitchum enters a room, Douglas extends a pack and says, "Cigarette?" and Mitchum, holding up his hand, says, "Smoking."

5. Women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa.

6. For women: low necklines, floppy hats, mascara, lipstick, dressing rooms, boudoirs, calling the doorman by his first name, high heels, red dresses, elbowlength gloves, mixing drinks, having gangsters as boyfriends, having soft spots for alcoholic private eyes, wanting a lot of someone else's women, sprawling dead on the floor with every limb meticulously arranged and every hair in place.

7. For men: fedoras, suits and ties, shabby residential hotels with a neon sign blinking through the window, buying yourself a drink out of the office bottle, cars with running boards, all-night diners, protecting kids who shouldn't be playing with the big guys, being on first-name terms with homicide cops, knowing a lot of people whose descriptions end in "ies," such as bookies, newsies, junkies, alkys, jockeys and cabbies.

8. Movies either shot in black and white, or feeling like they were.

9. Relationships in which love is only the final flop card in the poker game of death.

10. The most American film genre, because no society could have created a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic.

Been a great year since the last, with lots of new releases all around to discuss,

And a link http://www.filmnoirfoundation.org/home.html

For more information



HTF Threads about Film Noir

 

[Robert Crawford]

But Noirvember is a whole thing—in November

The best noir movies to watch this Noirvember

All-time-great noirs, under-the-radar gems, and everything in between

www.polygon.com

True, but with only a handful of people participating, it’s just not as enjoyable as it could have been if more of us were involved in the challenge.

 

[cda1143]

...

View attachment 237405
24) 11-10-24: “The Face Behind the Mask” (1941) (Criterion Channel) 3/5 Stars
.. for this 1941 Columbia "B" film noir. They are Peter Lorre, Don Beddoe and George L. Stone. With Lorre in the lead, he plays a recent Hungarian immigrant that is disfigured in a hotel fire. He turns to crime to finance a possible plastic surgery restoration of his face while temporarily securing a facial mask that hides his hideous facial scars from third degree burns. Along the way he leads a gang of thieves in a city-wide crime wave that baffles the police due to Lorre's technical skills which includes being an expert watchmaker and safecracker. All is fine until he meets a blind woman played by Evelyn Keyes, who changes his outlook on what kind of life he can be without being a criminal. He decides to quit the gang and most of his former gang seeks revenge on him because they wrongly thought he was ratting them out to the police. After their failed attempt to silence him, dire consequences come into play as Lorre plays his final hand in handing out justice to those that did him wrong. This is definitely pre-film noir from 1941... My film grade is 3/5 stars with Lorre, Stone and Keyes giving good acting performances. I luckily ran across this title while browsing The Criterion Channel ... I wish this movie was released on Blu-ray.... The Criterion Channel's video presentation was mediocre at best so I can only give it a 2.5/5 stars grade.

Thanks Robert. Just watched this and very much enjoyed it. I'll go 3&1/2 stars for the film. Superb performance by Peter Lorre. I thought Criterion's transfer was quite watchable, not perfectly clean, but obviously and HD scan, probably from the now out of print Imprint UK blu. Fine Columbia film which I'm hoping Sony releases.