Looks like I get what I hoped for as well as what I feared in my earlier post. Both Narrow Margin and Born to Kill which I consider A rated noir are in the set, but Dillinger while quite good is more suited for a second Gangster box as for Clash by Night and Crossfire they represent the 'filler' both only fair in spite of boasting great casts. I can't comment on Point Blank as I haven't had the pleasure to see it yet, looks interesting enough. I'll buy the set, but its not in the same league as Vol. 1.

clutch44 wrote

Point Blank is a top notch film, but is not included in this boxset.

the digital bits mentioned Lady in the Lake as included in the box. I hope it is.
I have to say that I am very pleased with all of the titles being released in this set, many of them are more obscure and that is more exciting to me than other titles that will obviously be released in later volumes.
Also, I'm sure that the condition of many of these titles gave them the edge. They were not expecting to release a follow up so soon. So I'm sure some of these titles are in better shape than other more popular titles that have been in circulation for years, and have experienced more wear and tear. I will be happy to wait for some of my other favorite Film Noir, after they have been given the restoration they deserve ie They Live by Night

From what I've read, that's correct. Point Blank is being released on the same day, but is not part of the Noir box proper.

Not only did The Digital Bits mention Lady In the Lake in their news item, Robert Harris mentioned it in his piece there as well. They must have had some reason for suspecting its inclusion. I suspect that Warner originally intended to include Lady, but pulled it from the lineup for some reason. Perhaps they are putting together a Chandler box with The Falcon Takes Over, Murder My Sweet, Lady in the Lake, Marlowe, and (fingers crossed) a two-disc edition of The Big Sleep.

We got cover art ---

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=56595

Bearing in mind I'm not one to gush over artwork for DVD's but Point Blank sure looks good!

Robert Mitchum would have made a terrific Quentin Crisp, judging by the Crossfire cover.

Re CROSSFIRE. Oddly Mitchum plays a relatively "straight" (if you know what I mean Devlinn) character in this, kind of doubling up with police inspector Robert Young to solve the murder (Young actually gives a nice, subtle performance up until the preachy anti-semitism speech.) And I don't agree with other estimations of this as a minor Noir. Although the picture is embedded in the narrative of Brook's "message" novel, the movie is filled with Noir detail at the edges and in the centre. For one thing the substitution of anti-semitism for the homosexuality of the murdered character in Richard Brooks'original novel was obviously to keep the Production Code at bay. Nevertheless I find quite a bit of gay "coding" around the edges here - look at the staging and blocking of the scenes in the "Jew's" apartment with Ryan getting drunk which throws off more than a little whiff of the original text, (and indeed Sam Levene's "girlfirend" looks like a classic Beard.) You can certainly read the scenes as a gay pickup gone wrong. Then there is the extremely oneiric role of George Cooper as the incriminated Corporal (he seems to be wandering through a dream), and Paul Kelly as Gloria Grahame's hallucinatory ex-husband. Certainly I think CROSSFIRE has more Noir elements than MURDER MY SWEET which is far more flashy and contrived.
I am really looking forward to this title being given the Warners treatment!

I feel that the underrated Act of Violence would have been a better choice for a Robert Ryan noir, it certainly bests Crossfire's tacked-on PC ending, and is thus closer to the true noir spirit. (You really can't deny that, flixyflox ). - But then again, Crossfire was a *big* movie; Oscar-nominated for best picture(along with nominations in other categories) - as was the case for The Asphalt Jungle, too. I guess WB had this in mind when they decided upon the inclusion of this title.
I agree that Dillinger clearly belongs to the gangster movie genre, and it was released as part of The Gangster Collection series issued by CBS/Fox on VHS in the early '90s in the US. Gun Crazy appeared in the same series, incidentally.

flixyflox wrote:



There is no doubt that Crossfire is a stagey overrated film, no matter what they substituted for the taboo homosexual aspect of the novel. I will always find it stagey and definitely not a prototypical noir.

I wouldn't deny for a minute that Dmytryk's direction is generally stodgy and the Brooks/Paxton screenplay is definitely preachy and stagey BUT that reinforces the sheer surprise of seeing the elements I mentioned earlier seeping through into this "major studio project". Again I find the movie preferable to MURDER MY SWEET which I increasingly find all show and little real substance (bar Claire Trevor alone.)
As to other titles what about Irving Reis' CRACK UP, another "minor" RKO Noir with Pat O'Brien (!) as an art critic (!!!). Fascinating movie with a postwar paranoia subtheme of modern art as decadent/subversive, and O'Brien as a classic amnesiac/oneiric lead. And a far more interesting one than similarly amnesiac Dick Powell in CORNERED which really is Dmytryk's dullest Noir.

I guess if everyone had the same taste it would be a boring world. I think Murder, My Sweet is an excellent example of film noir. Every frame just exudes what a noir film should be. I much prefer Powell's Marlowe to Bogie's. Don't get me wrong, I love Bogie, I just think that he is too suave, cool and sophisticated for a contemporary Marlowe. Powell's interpretation is of a more alienated character, something contemporary audiences seem to associate with male noir protagonists.

I think the dream/hallucinatory sequence in the movie is very well done.

Certainly true. I used to like MURDER MY SWEET much more but my tastes in Noir (and what IS Noir!) have changed a lot over 20 years.
To pick up on Henrik's earlier definitional discussion I thnk an awful lot of what is called Noir is merely convenience categorizing. CLASH BY NIGHT? (not a Noir but HOUSE BY THE RIVER and BIG HEAT are); THE BIG SLEEP defies categorization as anything other than a Hawks movie and is simply not a Noir by any criteria. Neither is LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN or - frankly - even LAURA (WHIRLPOOL just scrapes in whereas ANGEL FACE, WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS and THIRTEENTH LETTER are, etc etc.) And then do you include JOHNNY GUITAR or DESERT FURY, even though they are both in color and one is a meta-western? (I feel I should.)
This was an old thread but favorite Noirs for me are RAW DEAL (and desperately in need of restoration- Mann's best Noir and one of his two or three best films); OUT OF THE PAST (the most emblematic of these movies perhaps); CRISS CROSS (which is pioneering for its depiction of class, and one of the first to depict sexually rapacious heros/heroines, stunningly played by Lancaster and De Carlo, like the later GUN CRAZY); THE BIG COMBO (also desperately needing a decent print on DVD in which the doomed love of the two gay S/M thugs Mingo and Fante becomes the central emotional issue... etc etc etc (more ellipses?)
I was reminded by a friend in NY Schrader said years ago, and I agree, Noir is an ambience, not a movement.

Flixyflox, very well said. I too have a soft spot for CRISS CROSS. The transfer on the Universal DVD is excellent. I have now seen the movie three times, and discover more after each viewing. This is one movie with alot of depth. This film is just as good (or even better) than Siodmak's previous noir The Killers.

I agree with you that labelling a film noir is a very fluid process. Some movies seem to blend noir/detective/whodunit like Laura (with more of an emphasis on the latter two), others noir/soap/tragedy like Leave Her to Heaven, noir/western etc.

IMO the perfect example of 40's noir (and it is decade-specific, the late 40's, early 50's noirs have a McCarthyist subtext) is DOUBLE INDEMNITY, and in the 50's nothing surpasses THE BIG COMBO
I have the Image DVD of The Big Combo, and I do agree that a restoration is way overdue.

I'm sure you are thinking of Criss Cross, not Crossfire

This really for the benefit of Alandau, Devlinn or any other Oz posters - the recent, chaotic programming of RKO titles on ABC TV has yielded some very decent prints of things like, among others CROSSFIRE, CRACK UP, ON DANGEROUS GROUND and Irving Pichel's excellent THEY WON'T BELIEVE ME (bizarrely colorized!) Main drawback to these prints is the slight overscanning of what are clearly tape sources and of course the damned watermark (on digital anyway.) But they have held me at bay until Warners comes good. (Not to mention ludicrous early non-Noir stinkers from Dmytryk and Mann like BAMBOO BLONDE and HITLER'S CHILDREN - appalling but fun, maybe Noir-camp.)

Oh yes, I lOVE the rather obscure House by the River (photographed in such visual splendor that it belies its shoestring budget), but unfortunately all the prints I have seen have been severely battered, and I fear that there's not a cat's chance in hell that it'll ever appear on a decent-looking DVD. I would assume it descended to public domain hell ages ago. Please, could anybody here prove me wrong?

YES! HOUSE BY THE RIVER is a fabulous Noir and was shot by Edward Cronjager (whose sublime camp piece for Busby Berkely is THE GANG's ALL HERE, among many other distinguished movies) and like Lang another refugee from Nazism. I have a lousy old TV print (isn't it Republic?) and wonder when it will turn up (hopefully in something as gorgeous as the R2 Wildside disc of SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR shot by Stanley Cortez, and it looks like it in this print!)

All the films were new to me except Asphalt Jungle. I personally rank them in the following order:

Out of the Past
The Set-Up
Gun Crazy
Asphalt Jungle
Murder My Sweet

I thought the Set-Up was great but Out of the Past edges it out for me.

Hah. Just watched Out of the Past last night. My first time. Definitely one of the finest noirs I've seen. Haven't watched Set-up or Gun crazy yet but would otherwise rank the other two the same.

As a company man, Wise would be held in the highest regard by the industry. Critics have longer memories. No matter what he has achieved, there will always be that little episode in the early 40s with Welles, the RKO Studio brass, days of reshoots, alot of trimming, and the butchering. He's not to blame, just a man doing his job, being told what to do. The company man through and through.

Born To Kill gives it a run for it's money. It's one goddamn depraved Noir. Lawrence Tierney is one evil bastard.

How poor was the commentary from Scorsese though, If he'd have said 35mm one more time I would have exploded.

Anyone else having problems w/ their Born To Kill disc? I've tried two players, it won't load properly and starts sticking close to the hour mark.

No, my Born To Kill works fine but I've had problems with my Crossfire DVD, it seems to have problems loading. It takes about 10 min to load and it skips the WB logo and skips straight to the main menu, and it will not play the feature. Has anyone else experienced this? It is a new DVD player and has never given me problems, even with scratched discs.