Favourite Film Noir?

jeffreylebowski

I'm curious to see what people like best, my favourite Film Noir was for a long time The Big Heat, but more recently I think it's The Big Combo for me.

Noirs in general that I've really enjoyed:


The Big Sleep
Double Indemnity
Out Of The Past
Gun Crazy
Strangers On A Train
This Gun For Hire
Detour
I Wake Up Screaming
Stranger On The Third Floor
The Maltese Falcon
Laura
In A Lonely Place
Body And Soul
Dark Passage
Johnny O'Clock
The Big Clock
Pickup On South Street
The Third Man
The Undercover Man
The Asphalt Jungle
D.O.A
Sunset Boulevard
Rogue Cop
The Big Knife
Kiss Me Deadly

I'm sure I'm leaving out god knows how many, once you start digging in Noir you realize how many you've seen at three am on TCM. (And TNT before it)

I'd love to hear what people's favourite Noirs are, and if they have any recommendations of stuff not on this short list?

Karl Hungus

Need I say more?

uncleoswald

Not very well up on a lot of those movies but I've watched a few of them in the last couple of years. Favourites would be Out Of The Past, never knew just how damn cool Robert Mitchum was before this. Double Indemnity is one sexy movie, like North By Northwest, Thomas Crown and Out Of Sight it has a scene in which characters just talk with their clothes still on and yet it feels like you've just watched a sex scene. Watched Sunset Boulevard recently and loved the long dialog scenes in which the writers didn't have to sign post everything so as to not put off the unintelligent. Don't make big budget star vehicles like that anymore.

But The Third Man is possibly my favourite movie so I'll have to say that. Never thought of it as noir until now, should have known better with all those shadows and odd angles.

I generally catch them on a lazy Sunday afternoon on BBC2 from time to time. Great way to spend the day.

Nichololas

The Third Man
In A Lonely Place
Blade Runner
The Big Lebowski
e: and L.A. Confidential

mike65

Farewell My Lovely (1944 and 1975) I've seen the '75 version with Robert Mitchum and its very good. Lady in the Lake (1947) another Raymond Chandler is interesting - the whole film is POV.

Robert Altmans the Long Goodbye, is a very cheeky update - 40s LA WASP becomes Noo York Jew (Elliot Gould), again worth checking out.

Meeja Ireland

That's a great list, OP. Kudos for including Detour, which should be much more widely known.

Out Of The Past is my favourite. A few I would add are:

The Blue Dahlia: great Chandler script, and the always enjoyable Alan Ladd.

Where The Sidewalk Ends has the same director as Laura, and another brilliant Dana Andrews performance, and the low-budget quickie Too Late For Tears has a terrific turn by Lizabeth Scott. There is a coolness and cruelty to her that makes her perfect for noir - she's like Veronica Lake, but with an inner life.

(I enjoyed your list of Korean movies, by the way, and will eventually work my way through it.)

Valmont

Karl, what was that film you posted a picture of? I like the Maltese Falcon and Brick (!) but they are the only two noirs I've actually seen.

mike65

Chinatowen!

/the shame, the shame!

krudler

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Instant Karma

Sin City deserve a passing mention possibly?

Kess73

The Maltese Falcon
The Set Up
The Wrong Man
The Night Of The Hunter
Stray Dog
The Big Lebowski
The Big Sleep
Lifeboat (might be stretching the definition with this choice though)

jeffreylebowski

Man, nice posts everyone. I love the movies mentioned here. I stuck to Classical-Era noir, but some of my favourites are later period.

I really love Red Rock West for instance. People argue over whether it's neo-noir or noir, I don't really care about that stuff.

Chinatown is incredible, I like films where you see actors of one period playing another and you realize they're absolutely perfect for it. Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway are an incredible noir couple!

Meeja, those are three movies I haven't seen! A friend of mine beats me over the head for not having seen any Preminger except Laura. And I absolutely love Dana Andrews (Night Of The Demon is one of my favourite horror movies ever). I'm a big Chandler fan, so I still don't know why I've never seen The Blue Dahlia. Oh, and I've never seen The Glass Key, another Alan Ladd noir that's supposed to be pretty amazing. I really love Miller's Crossing, which is pretty close to the novel The Glass Key.

Lizbeth Scott was in Dead Reckoning! I think I forgot that one on my list? Bogart noir is always rewarding. Glad you liked the Korean list too!

mike65: Yeah actually, I have been meaning to see Lady In The Lake, how does the POV thing work out? It's very novel, does it actually work?

Enlil_Nick: Your list comprises a few of my favourite movies. I can just never say enough good stuff about Blade Runner. (Even the pc game. I talked a friend of mine into letting me review it on his games website instead of something modern)

And everyone else, like I said great posts! I appreciate the recommendations very much.

jeffreylebowski

Valmont wrote: »

Karl, what was that film you posted a picture of? I like the Maltese Falcon and Brick (!) but they are the only two noirs I've actually seen.

Oh yeah! Brick is another of my favourites. I think it's incredible, I've watched it three times I think. It shouldn't work, but for me it absolutely does.

Wacker

Of the movies that I own that I would class as Film Noir (not a huge list, in fairness), my favourite would be Double Indemnity. It's much more engaging than a lot of films of the era, so I'd recommend it to most people.
Any of you crazy kids read many comic books? The Sin City tale A Dame to Kill For is very similair. Well, in terms of character any way. The stories couldn't e much more different, but who cares about story lines these days anyway? :pac:

bnt

My all-time fave has to be The Big Sleep, and also Hitchcock's Thirty-Nine Steps (if you can call that Noir?), but I also like a couple of later oddballs:
The Long Goodbye: Altman's take on Chandler has Philip Marlowe as an anachronism in '60s LA, working to principles few others understand;
The Man Who Wasn't There: from the Coen Brothers, not so much a "whodunnit?" as a "whattheblazes?", a case of a small town barber as a catalyst for all sorts of nasty shenanigans.

That_Guy

Double Indemnity is fantastic. Really enjoyed it.

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is a great film noir spoof with Steve Martin.

tunguska

Cant beleive nobody has mentioned Cutters way. Bit of a masterpiece really.
Altmans The Long goodbye is also top class. Just a reminder of how cool Elliott Gould was before he became Ross' father on friends.

mike65

Mathew Sweets enjoyable doc The Rules of Film Noir is on BBC 2 Thursday, December 24th, 2009
1:25am to 2:25am, followed by The Reckless Moment with James Mason as a no doubt suave mysterious sort of chap.

jeffreylebowski

mike65 wrote: »

Mathew Sweets enjoyable doc The Rules of Film Noir is on BBC 2 Thursday, December 24th, 2009
1:25am to 2:25am, followed by The Reckless Moment with James Mason as a no doubt suave mysterious sort of chap.

Nice, Mike, thanks for that! I'll check that out. I think one of the reasons Film Noir has had such lasting popularity since the films got dug out by critics after the fact, is that it's so much fun to analyze, discuss, chew the fat about. The documentary sounds great, to that end.

Kastiel

LA Confidential.

imme

great thread JLebowski.:)

I love Dark Passage, I though it was so inventive when I first saw it.
The Third Man, when I first saw it I didn't appreciate it, now it's one of my faves of all time.
Sunset Blvd is pure class.

LA Confidential, please no. I hated it, it's trying to be something it's not.

Edit: Journey Into Fear, another Welles/Joseph Cotten noir movie. Check it out if you can.

superfly

Brazil

Hank_Jones

Double Indemnity

and Blade Runner (favourite film ever)

indough

could seven be classed as a noir? if so that, kiss me deadly and blade runner would probably be my top 3, dont know which id like best out of them

jeffreylebowski

imme wrote: »

great thread JLebowski.:)

I love Dark Passage, I though it was so inventive when I first saw it.
The Third Man, when I first saw it I didn't appreciate it, now it's one of my faves of all time.
Sunset Blvd is pure class.

LA Confidential, please no. I hated it, it's trying to be something it's not.

Edit: Journey Into Fear, another Welles/Joseph Cotten noir movie. Check it out if you can.

Thanks!

I really loved Dark Passage, and yeah I think the device is excellent. I haven't seen Journey Into Fear, I'm adding it to my list of stuff to see right now.

jeffreylebowski

indough wrote: »

could seven be classed as a noir? if so that, kiss me deadly and blade runner would probably be my top 3, dont know which id like best out of them

Kiss Me Deadly is great isn't it? It's so completely insane.

As for Seven, yeah it's that whole debate about noir vs neo-noir.
A lot of the time the classification is just period, for instance that from Stranger On The Third Floor in 1940 to Touch Of Evil in 1958 is widely regarded as the Classical period of Noir. It's often referred to as a movement, like French New Wave or New Hollywood or whatever, rather than a genre. So you have this representation that's really heavily tied to historical period rather than genre which makes a lot of critics define something as neo-noir even if it meets all the criteria, just because it's outside the accepted historical period.

Some of my favourite movies are "Neo-Noir", I really like the modern films that are influenced by Noir. The Big Lebowski, for instance, is my favourite movie of all time. It's a pretty good example of a movie that riffs on Noir archetypes and conventions, while really doing its own thing.
Red Rock West too, I think I mentioned somewhere else in this thread.

indough

jeffreylebowski wrote: »

Kiss Me Deadly is great isn't it? It's so completely insane.

i watched southland tales there again recently and noticed it appears in the film

jeffreylebowski

indough wrote: »

i watched southland tales there again recently and noticed it appears in the film

Oh I've never actually seen Southland Tales. I must check it out, I loved Donnie Darko.

crybaby

great thread been working my way through imdb top 50 film noir recently

Scarlet Street is brilliant would defintley recommend it.

A Fugitive From A Chain Gang as well

jeffreylebowski

crybaby wrote: »

great thread been working my way through imdb top 50 film noir recently

Scarlet Street is brilliant would defintley recommend it.

A Fugitive From A Chain Gang as well

I love I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang!
It's a good example of a movie that feels really noir even though it's before the prescribed classical period. That and the original Scarface are the only things I ever saw Paul Muni in, I really like him from just those.

It's quite risque too, it got in just before they really started enforcing the production code.

Scarlet Street is great, it's a really beautiful-looking movie too.

Nolanger

• Night and the City - wrestling in London
• Detour - best Noir of all
• Nightmare Alley - set in a carnival
• Where the Sidewalk Ends - corrupt cop

jeffreylebowski

Nolanger wrote: »

• Night and the City - wrestling in London
• Detour - best Noir of all
• Nightmare Alley - set in a carnival
• Where the Sidewalk Ends - corupt cop

Wrestling Noir? Sign me up.

Detour is incredible. The lead actor was... kind of a wild one:

Tom Neal is best remembered for his off-screen exploits, which involved scandal, mayhem and a charge of murder. Before his 1938 screen debut in MGM's Out West with the Hardys (1938), Neal had been a member of the boxing team at Northwestern University, had debuted on the Broadway stage in 1935 and had received a law degree from Harvard, also in 1938. Throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, he appeared mostly as tough guys in Hollywood low-budgeters. In 1951, in a dispute over the on-again / off-again affections and the wavering allegiance of notorious actress / "party girl" Barbara Payton, he mixed it up with Payton's paramour, the aristocratic actor Franchot Tone. The former college boxer Neal inflicted upon Tone a smashed cheekbone, a broken nose and a brain concussion. Hollywood essentially blackballed Neal thereafter, but he would come to find a livelihood in gardening and landscaping. He was brought to trial in 1965 for the murder of his wife Gale, who had been shot to death with a .45-caliber bullet to the back of her head. Prosecutors sought the death penalty for Neal, which at the time meant a trip to the cyanide-gas chamber. The trial jury, however, convicted him only of "involuntary manslaughter", for which he was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

I haven't had the courage to watch Nightmare Alley yet, what with its accolades as things like "bleakest of the already-bleak noirs"... I guess I should man up and watch it huh.

Where The Sidewalk Ends, I've heard great things about that flick.

Morlar

Some of my favourite movies have been listed so far but 2 movies which spring to mind that don't seem to be mentioned are
Cat People (1942 version) and
'The Night of the Hunter'.

Morlar

Karl Hungus wrote: »

Need I say more?

Kind of ironic that one centres around a child being sexually abused.

jeffreylebowski

Morlar wrote: »

Some of my favourite movies have been listed so far but 2 movies which spring to mind that don't seem to be mentioned are
Cat People (1942 version) and
'The Night of the Hunter'.

Oh HELL yeah.
Can't believe I forgot Night Of The Hunter!
And Cat People is fantastic. Jacques Tourneur is just incredible. I think I mentioned Night Of The Demon somewhere earlier while talking about how cool Dana Andrews was. I saw I Walked With A Zombie, another Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur movie a few months ago and it's become one of my favourite movies of the forties.

But Night of the Hunter... that performance from Robert Mitchum is a once-off, I've never seen anything like it.

Good additions!

superfly

The rules of film noir starts on BBC2 tonight at 12:55

Kess73

Morlar wrote: »

Some of my favourite movies have been listed so far but 2 movies which spring to mind that don't seem to be mentioned are
Cat People (1942 version) and
'The Night of the Hunter'.

It is in post 11



Great film, and one that never grows stale.

Meeja Ireland

superfly wrote: »

The rules of film noir starts on BBC2 tonight at 12:55

The Sky schedule says 1.25, but it'll be thereabouts anyway. It's followed by The Reckless Moment, a Max Ophuls noir/melodrama from 1949 with James Mason and Joan Bennett. I haven't seen it, but it looks interesting .

I was wrong about Dana Andrews being in Whirlpool, by the way. I confused it with yet another Preminger noir, Where the Sidewalk Ends, in which he takes the lead. They're both excellent, though.

Joycey

Had a look at The Big Combo, that one you recommended in your first post the other night. Enjoyed it, mainly because of the guy playing Mr Brown, I loved his voice and his delivery, unbelievable. Really disliked the main guy, not sure if that was intentional but took away from the rest of it IMO.

Overall about 7/10 for me, enjoyable but definitely not my favourite. Thanks again for this thread, gonna be a while working my way through all these

jeffreylebowski

Joycey wrote: »

Had a look at The Big Combo, that one you recommended in your first post the other night. Enjoyed it, mainly because of the guy playing Mr Brown, I loved his voice and his delivery, unbelievable. Really disliked the main guy, not sure if that was intentional but took away from the rest of it IMO.

Overall about 7/10 for me, enjoyable but definitely not my favourite. Thanks again for this thread, gonna be a while working my way through all these

Yeah, Mr Brown is really something. But I can't believe you didn't like Cornel Wilde! I loved him in that movie. Or do you mean you didn't like the character of the main guy? I liked both. He definitely not a vanilla hero, but a character I really enjoyed all the same.
It's just a beautiful-looking movie isn't it? So much of that was budget, like you always hear that about noir, that they used less lights to hide that they were using really crappy sets, or that the set was small and the lack of light helped hide the edges of it. But that's really true of The Big Combo. There's that really amazing night-time scene at an airstrip, and for the sky in that scene they used massive black velvet curtains.

Aaaanyway. I could go on about it, but yeah I'm glad you liked it overall.

Joycey

jeffreylebowski wrote: »

Yeah, Mr Brown is really something. But I can't believe you didn't like Cornel Wilde! I loved him in that movie. Or do you mean you didn't like the character of the main guy? I liked both. He definitely not a vanilla hero, but a character I really enjoyed all the same.

Heh I didnt like either actually. I think it was moreso the actor than the character really, but maybe it was just that everyone else in the film is so much in the shadow of Mr Brown that as the male lead I was left wondering "when am I going to hear Mr Brown speak again?" for more time when he was on the screen than for anyone else .

It's just a beautiful-looking movie isn't it? So much of that was budget, like you always hear that about noir, that they used less lights to hide that they were using really crappy sets, or that the set was small and the lack of light helped hide the edges of it. But that's really true of The Big Combo. There's that really amazing night-time scene at an airstrip, and for the sky in that scene they used massive black velvet curtains.

Yeah I enjoyed the look of it. Im never quite sure if there is some specific expressionistic meaning to big, looming shadows in noir when they appear, or whether it is just a more general atmospheric approach, 'setting the scene', so to speak. I did notice, and appreciate, several interesting uses of those looming shadows, even if their purpose was only to hide the shabby set .

Aaaanyway. I could go on about it, but yeah I'm glad you liked it overall.

Yeah I did, thanks for the recommendation.

The Volt

For me it's The Big Heat with Glenn Ford

mike65

Just a heads up to note that The Third Man, Classic Graham Greene-Carol Reed thriller set in post-WW2 Vienna is on tomorrow on BBC4 at 7.15pm (part of the Orson Wells season)

krudler

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang would be a great modern one, its got all the elements, narrated (hilariously) by our protagonist,a jazzy score, a dame to kill for, corruption, intertwining plotlines, detectives, hard boiled dialogue by the ever excellent Shane Black, and its cool as fcuk

And again, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and yes i'm being serious

krudler

LA Confidential, please no. I hated it, it's trying to be something it's not.

Sacrilige, one of the best movies of the 90's

Joycey

Just watched Notorious there and its excellent. Think id seen it before but couldnt remember it. Definitely in my top 5 noirs now anyway. If its a noir that is, gonna have to look it up on wikipedia :pac:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038787/

Edit:

wikipedia wrote:

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.

Yep id say it is

Joycey

The big heat is absolute quality. Dont think id ever seen it before. Well worth checking out for anyone who hasnt watched it

Valmont

I watched The Big Lebowski again last night. I find it is one of those rare films that gets better every time I watch it. I always notice some subtle joke that I missed previously. I love how the Dude is so inarticulate, it's fantastic.

Kolido

Havent seen High Sierre mentioned and a movie I watched recently, Fallen Angel staring Dana Andrews. Need to watch more of his movies.