*** Official Film Noir Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Greg Patenaude]

I would consider The Maltese Falcon to be a prototypical film noir. Of course, my choice is based on a pool of about five films! I may change my mind once I watch my 10 new film noir acquisitions.

Walter - I see your point. For me, when I watch a movie I love (any movie) I invariably look forward to certain moments or scenes. This could be anything from a whole scene that lasts for five or ten minutes or just a wink or nod from a character. For example: The Unforgiven

I love the moment when Clint's character reaches for the bottle of whiskey when he learns that his friend (Morgan Freeman) has been killed.


This moment obviously marks a turning point for Clint's character and not a word is said. This doesn't mean that I don't enjoy the rest of the movie. These are just special moments that I look forward too when watching a movie.

Greg

 

[Andy Sheets]

Exactly the answer I was going to give

I agree with the "scruffy but honorable protagonist" thing but I think there has to be another archetype for a protagonist. That is, many noir protagonists, IMO, are basically just losers who could be believably manipulated by the femme fatale. They're guys who have struck out at everything but then they see this gorgeous woman who shows some interest and they have to have her so badly that they would commit cold-blooded murder for her. Basically, the guy in The Postman Always Rings Twice. I don't really see them as honorable types (unless honor in this case simply means having the decency to feel kind of bad after killing a guy ), but I see too many of them in noir films to think that kind of character isn't a major part of the genre.

 

[george kaplan]

Andy,

Yes, Frank Chambers is another example of the "basically good, but weak-willed enough to commit murders they know are wrong" protagonist that shows up in many of these films, including Body Heat, another modern film I consider noir.

 

[Zen Butler]

I agree with this statement. Ironically you mention Odd Man Out, for which I consider film noir, and is in my top films of all time. Although, I don't find is as a complete noir as say Out of the Past or Maltese Falcon.

Count me in as a huge fan of Double Indemnity.

The bandwagon rolls on, as I would say Out Of The Past the film noir for which I compare all others too. It's classic noir in every sense.

I like the division of film-noir and neo-noir. I would add Blood Simple to the latter category, thoughts?

 

[Walter Kittel]

Daniel - With the caveat that there are some 'big guns' in the noir catalog, and many smaller films, that I haven't had the pleasure of viewing my top ten might look something like this:

Out of the Past
Double Indemnity
Force of Evil
The Big Heat
The Maltese Falcon
Mildred Pierce - Yes George it is part melodrama, but this one makes the list for Ernest Haller's cinematography. Along with Force of Evil shot by George Barnes, one of my favorite noirs in terms of photography.
The Set-Up
In A Lonely Place - For my money, Bogart's best performance.
99 River Street - An amazing little gem of a movie.
Detour

- Walter.

 

[DaveButcher]

Hello,

I'm brand new to the forum so be easy please. I was just crawling around the web looking for discussions on film noir, came across this one and knew that I had to sign up and throw my two cents into the conversation.

I'll start by saying I come from the school of thought that places Film Noir amongst the great film movements of the 20th century, not in the genre camp. Therefore to me, the time period is really 1941 (Maltese Flacon, I Wake Up Screaming) to 1958 (Touch of Evil), but that it had been in decline since about 1956.

With that out of the way, I'll respond to the list of noir genre requirments that I disagree with. Again I'm new here, so don't take offense to anything I'm saying, I don't know your individual personalities. I'm not trying to trash anyone, just offering a different perspective.


Although most noirs do have some or all of these elements, that's not always the case.

Femme Fatale to me is one of the least necesary requirments in noir. D.O.A. is one of the finest examples of noir and although there are "bad" women, none of them are femme fatales is the classic sense. Movies like Black Angel, Kansas City Confidential, The Third Man, In A Lonely Place and Brute Force have no femme fatales either are absolute noirs.

Most noirs do have a murder/mystery, but it's usually not for the sake of the muder/mystery. Murders usually happen as a by-product of the situation (Lady from Shanghai, Pickup on South Street) or as a set-up to watch the protagonist suffer (Kiss Me Deadly), not as the central purpose of the film.
Crime is the element that connects most of these films, and that is really because, if you're going to show people in compromising situations and make them morally ambiguous it usually must involve crime of some sort.

Voiceover and flashbacks tend to be used alot, but not always and a movies being linear doesn't remove it from the noir list (Pickup on South Street, Black Angel and many others use no voiceover and very few flashbacks).

Protagonists tended to be hardboiled, but again that was more a by-product of the style then an intentional decision. Fast talking and double entendres were a staple of not only noir, but almost all films made during "the code" years. They had no other choice, and noir really embraced it. I would consider this to be a key ingredient in determining whether or not a film is noir.

The unhappy ending is again not necessary, but fairly common. The Postman Always Rings Twice is the perfect example of why noirs tend to end this way, there is usually an element of fate that intervenes to punish everyone involved in whatever nefarious plot had been hatched.

I agree that your list has many elements that are common in noir, but to that use those to define them is too narrow.

I prefer to use a few critria to determine if a film is noir. Stark B/W cinematography used with strange angles. More importantly a sense of loneliness and isolation. And the idea that you cannot escape the fate that you have brought upon yourself through your own actions (usually driven to by loneliness and isolation). Nowhere is this more evident then In A Lonely Place (Bogarts finest noir).

Everything else is just icing for these two elements.

And yes, I do consider Pursued, Blood on the Moon and The Furies to be noirs.

There are even some color noirs (Kiss Before Dying and Desrt Fury), but they are so few and far between that they truly are exeptions to the rule.

My favorite noir would have to be Robert Siodmak's The Killers.

 

[Walter Kittel]

Zen - I would definitely put Blood Simple in the neo noir category. One of the things that separates this film, and some of the other contemporary thrillers loosely categorized as neo-noir from their predecessors is sense of self-awareness regarding the conventions of noir. This is probably more true of the Coens in particular, but I believe that filmmakers who mine the noir genre are looking for ways to deliver a twist or fresh spin on older storylines which tends, for me, to separate them their predecessors. Some examples include The Limey where a conventional revenge melodrama is given fresh life through a well constructed fragmented narrative that provides insight into the main character, and Bound where genders are reversed in a traditional pot boiler storyline involving lust and greed.

- Walter.

 

[Sam Favate]

This past Sunday's episode of Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show (really the best thing on the radio) was dedicated to Film Noir. He defined it pretty well, I think, saying it started with the Maltese Falcon in 1941 and its main period went through about 1958. He talked about German expressionist imagery and Italian neo-realism imagery and how the two blended to make noir. He had some interesting stories to tell about director John Huston, and gave us his defintion of what makes noir.

I highly recommend it. You can hear the show at: www.littlestevensundergroundgarage.com

or more directly,

http://www.littlestevensundergroundg...y/archive.html

 

[Haggai]

Since Blood Simple has come up, the Coen's most obviously noirish film has to be in the mix as well, The Man Who Wasn't There. A specific reference to one film in the new Warners noir box (just arrived in the mail for me today!) is Tony Shaloub's character, Freddy Reidenschneider. Sam Jaffe's character in The Asphalt Jungle is Doc Reidenschneider.

Miller's Crossing is probably more of a throwback gangster movie than a neo-noir. And you know what else has some noirish elements in it, although it's quite a stretch to put it in the genre? Some things to ruminate about from this link:Lebowski noir, baby.

 

[Zen Butler]

Walter, once again, I agree. Not that this "self-awareness" is necessarily bad but different. The reason I like the distinction between the two.

Wow, a lot of Out of the Past fans.


SIDE: Sam, that show is very good. I'm surprised at how eclectic the man is.

 

[george kaplan]

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

 

[Robert Crawford]

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






Crawdaddy

 

[Robert Crawford]

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.

 

[Robert Crawford]

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.

 

[Seth--L]

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.

 

[george kaplan]

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.

 

[Haggai]

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.

 

[DaveButcher]

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.

 

[David_Blackwell]

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

 

[DaveButcher]

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.