The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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Yojimbo
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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#451 Post by Yojimbo » Mon Dec 13, 2010 8:28 am

I don't have time to read it, Bish!
Too many 11th hour viewings to fit in! :wink:

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domino harvey
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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#452 Post by domino harvey » Mon Dec 13, 2010 9:51 pm

Cold Bishop, to quote myself in response to the write-up for Cutter's Way, I'd love to see the film you saw.

Many regrets as I close the book on my noir list: I never made it to the last Warners set, or the half dozen Archive noirs I had left, nor the dozens of PD titles or rare pix I'd acquired in the last months. Surely this will be a busy thread for weeks to come regardless of the list deadline.

I would sort of expect more lists than I have already, so hopefully all of you reading remember to submit your goddamn lists by 5PM EST tomorrow. Earlier is better but whatevs

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Cold Bishop
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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#453 Post by Cold Bishop » Mon Dec 13, 2010 10:19 pm

Except this is a much greater film than Cutter's Way.

So the Western list is next?

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domino harvey
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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#454 Post by domino harvey » Mon Dec 13, 2010 10:44 pm

Yup, I'll start that thread tomorrow when I post the Noir List

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Steven H
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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#455 Post by Steven H » Tue Dec 14, 2010 12:48 am

domino harvey wrote:...I'd love to see the film you saw.
This is how I felt during Split Second. I spent the whole film trying desperately to see beyond its leaden characterization, failings at every opportunity to provide a real human moment to actually hold onto during the atomic "tension," and especially at the teleplay quality of presentation, replete with wooden dialogue and even woodier acting. It was like a Mr Show skit version of what a "escaped convicts race down time to a nuclear explosion" film would be like, empty and awkward (I was really expecting a lot out of this maybe especially because I *LOVED* the other recent DH recommendation of Tomorrow Is Another Day).

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domino harvey
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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#456 Post by domino harvey » Tue Dec 14, 2010 6:04 pm

Voting closed. Results posted soon. Additional short statement to prompt dramatic anticipation.

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Cold Bishop
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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#457 Post by Cold Bishop » Tue Dec 14, 2010 7:13 pm

And while we wait, I have another piece of writing for those interested.

Breaking the Cycle: Two Film Noirs by Arthur Ripley

Arthur Ripley is a great example of a “what could have been” filmmaker. It’s perhaps an odd thing to say about a person who had a 40+ year career, working in films from 1914 to 1959. His silent day triumphs included his work with Harry Langdon, being the second major behind-the-scene force alongside Frank Capra, and being largely responsible for his dark edge. The thirties saw a steady decline into poverty row, but not before directing several of the W.C. Field shorts for Mack Sennett (he's even in the Collection!). Throughout the 50s, he seemed to have been prolific in television, and more importantly, academia: he was UCLA’s first Professor of Cinema Arts, and a major force in founding its Film Center. This despite being, by all accounts, an eccentric, a man who Edgar G. Ulmer described, not entirely jokingly, as being of unsound mind and body, but by other accounts knew everything there was to know about filmmaking.

Despite this prolific career, his dramatic feature-film career consists of only 4 1/3 films, all but one made in a brief burst in the 1940s. His first, Prisoner of Japan, was a war-time propaganda film that is largely impossible to see. This despite being written and co-directed by Edgar Ulmer, making 18 times its budget, and which by most descriptions has more than a few auterist links with his later films, including a deep sense of sadism and tragedy which seems uncommon for simple gung-ho jingoism. His last, and most famous, film is Thunder Road, a fine feature, not entirely lacking in the Ripley touch, but where its star-producer (Robert Mitchum) is as much an auteur. Beyond that, he did uncredited work (with fellow noir stalwart John Brahm) on the Maria Montez vehicle Siren of Atlantis, a deliciously campy, yet arty (so much so it was first rejected by its studio) slice of exotica which fits right in with his other films, even if its unclear where he was involved.

Standing at the center of this outburst are two bizarre, dreamlike and disjointed film noirs: Voice in the Wind and The Chase. Both were low-budget affairs, both were critically acclaimed… yet both failed with audiences, cutting short what could have been a fascinating directing career. An auteurist study is perhaps long overdue (the man was in fact mentioned in Sarris’s famed Film Culture #28 issue), but with so much of his work absent from view, I won’t attempt to make it. But by simply comparing these two films, one can already see signs of a clear distinctive voice. Both films take place in humid, exotic locales (the island of Guadalupe, Miami, Havana), with a strong emphasis on the nocturnal. Both have what I would call, for lack of a better term, a delirious and grotesque “funhouse” quality to them, which almost represents Ripley’s two conflicting impulses: one is a deliberate artiness, based in the popular art-house traditions of the period (Cocteau, Poetic Realism, German Expressionism, the French Avant-Garde), a self-consciously European flair, a fixation on classical music; on the other hand, there is a picturesque, subversive element of black comedy, one would venture to guess rooted in his time in comic shorts, as if both films have a deep-seated vulgarity that threatens to break loose at any moment. Both films are deeply tragic in their trajectory, but also essentially romantic: they both concern a young, traumatized, passive male protagonist, psychologically damaged in both films by WWII. In both films, they fall in love with a quietly suffering female character. For this love, they attempt to shake off their passivity, but in both films, must journey across a cruel and violent world to be united with her, embodied by a similar pair of sadistic antagonists in both films: one is silent, serious, more physically menacing; the other is mischievous, humorous, almost playful. In both cases, it is the latter which surprisingly reveals a more shocking sadistic streak. Both romances end tragically, and are accompanied with a deep sense of predetermination: from the opening frame of Voice in the Wind, it is clear that things will end badly, and The Chase ingeniously and deceptively plays with the idea of fate.

Voice in the Wind (Arthur Ripley, 1944)

Voice in the Wind is a hard film to write about. For starters is the matter of its obscurity; this is a film that barely anyone has seen since its initial release (and few watched it then), which for a while was impossible to find. As far as I am aware, there are only two 16mm prints of the film (one housed in the Cinematheque Francaise), and even my copy is truncated. As such, I will keep my comments brief, as I am more focused on the way this film informs The Chase, a more widely available film, and a superior one. It’s a film ripe for discovery, but even then, one wonders whether it would rise above a poverty-row curio. The other problem in looking at the film is the obtuse, disjointed quality of it all. It is ostensibly what one could call a Refugee Noir – that subgenre of wartime propaganda that dealt with the plight of civilians under Axis occupations, such as Andre De Toth’s searing None Shall Escape, or William Cameron Menzie’s visually stunning Address Unknown. Voice in the Wind is the most noir of them all, with its focus of the war as past trauma, and its moody, personal fatalism. Yet, as a classic narrative, it is unsatisfying, frustrating, and at times seemingly inept. It’s central conflict between El Hombre and the two corrupt fisherman feels rushed, its WWII flashback never fully integrated and connected with the going-ons in Guadalupe. It’s difficult to get a finger on what the film is: Anti-Nazi propaganda? Homegrown poetic realism? A treatise on music as cultural identity? A tragic romance? There’s a hollow, incomplete feeling to the film, as if we’re not watching a finished film but the compiled fragments of an abandoned project.

But what haunting, evocative fragments! Michel Michelet’s operatic score, an eerie reworking of Smetana’s La Moldau, establishes the tone early on, and holds the fragments together (how many poverty row films can claim an Oscar nominated score?). Francis Lederer’s El Hombre roams this world of eternal night and fog like a phantom, unable to die until he finds the woman and identity that he’s lost. His frightened eyes, his somnambulist silence, his absolute bewilderment at the world, all are much like the walking dead of the aforementioned Lewtons. Smetana’s music is the only link, the only clue, he has to the world of the living he’s left behind, that he’s abandoned and been abandoned by, both a symbol of the Europe he’s lost to the darkness of the war and the cause of his downfall. The film shoots the island of Guadalupe like some purgatory, some isle of the dead for those who have escaped Europe but await an uncertain, perhaps darker fate. We feel as if all these refugees are doomed. Alexander Granach’s Angelo is almost as captivating. It’s a performance that shouldn’t work; he’s loud, boisterous, over-the-top, saddled with a ridiculous ethnic accent. But his broadly comic, hammy demeanor is turned into a strength, as its always set against his behavior. He’ll go from cheating refugees out of thier only money in one scene, to having a touching homo-erotic moment with El Hombre in the next, to absolute sadism, all while retaining his over-the-top persona. Take this scene, one that’s downright Lynchian in its oddness: a scene of broad, exaggerated slapstick which unsuspectingly becomes genuinely sadistic and misogynistic: a scorned woman attempts to shakedown Angelo's brother. He pays her off, all while trading quips and playful insults to the woman. It's all playful and broadly comic, but without changing his boisterous, over-the-top sense of humor, he reaches over, grabs the girl by the neck. He gives her one slap, then another, then another… until she’s been beaten unconscious, as he lets out one last obnoxious laugh, and everyone joins him. It’s an example of one of the fragments of the film that sticks with you, so unlike any other moment of screen violence of the period. And much like the fragmented narrative, Angelo remains an unresolved contradiction, going from moments of misogynistic violence to moments of true affection for El Hombre. All this is enhanced by the uncredited work of Eugene Schüfftan, that favorite cinematographer of Carné, Ophüls, and later Franju, who gives the film a true sense of poetic realism.

While poetic realism certainly informs the film, one wonders what Ripley was looking at the aforementioned Val Lewton. Certainly, the Lewtons laid the groundwork for aspiring artists working at the lower end of the Hollywood system. And much as Lewton would refashion his pulp material around pieces of high-art – classic literature, poetry, painitings – so does this film build itself around pieces of high-culture. It does so less successfully, perhaps more pretentiously than the Lewtons, out of a stronger need for compensation, but it does so nonetheless. Take the aforementioned La Moldau, which anchors the film. Even more importantly, is a later scene, an awkwardly placed flashback between El Hombre and Marya, before the war, which nonetheless stands as the key to the film. It is a dark, starry night, they sit on a bench, huddled close together, and read the preface to Percy Shelley’s “Alastor”:
They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge... loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond... rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse... They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country... Selfish, blind, and torpid, they constitute the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.

'The good die first,
And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust,
Burn to the socket!'
The film draws a line in the sand, between the lovers, the citizens of the world, like El Hombre and Marya, and the "the enemies, the philistines", like the thieves of the island, as well as the Nazis. "Shelley wrote that 120 years ago," he exclaims, "they had them around then too... the world has always had them." Here, Ripley tries to raise this above simple propaganda. The fascists may have thrust the world into darkness, the infinite night and fog of Guadalupe standing in for the darkness that has consumed war-torn Europe, but its just a continuation of an eternal struggle. As the pair die in eachother’s arm, we're left with a last image, a dolly shot moving in a bed side candle, flickering in the darkness of the room. While I have found no proof, I have found accounts that the film (possibly abroad) was released as Candle in the Wind, and it is perhaps a more appropriate title. While Voice in the Wind may point the haunting persistence of La Moldau, this final image is a perfect summation of the film’s modest powers. El Hombre and Mayra, all the "citizens of the world", are much like the candle; a small, flickering, faltering beacon of hope and love threatened by all consuming darkness, threatening to blow out any second. It is too disjointed a film to do these fragments justice, and perhaps its dark sense of tragedy isn’t always earned, sometimes forced and pretentious. But in this mess of a film exists a true sense of dark, romantic poetry, the raw material from which a truly great film could have been mined. It would take the next film to do just that.

The Chase (Arthur Ripley, 1946)

For those who have seen it, The Chase has always been a source of great controversy. Daring in its narrative structure, people either find it courageous or a cop-out. Likewise, as a Woolrich adaptation, it’s equally audacious. It guts much of the novel, retaining only brief fragments, and then seemingly disregards them in its final third. Yet, beyond this, it comes closer than any film in catching the macabre, nightmare quality of Woolrich’s work. Controversy invites more controversy, and I have my own reading and opinion of the work that I hope to touch on here. It’s a reading that becomes especially clear once someone has seen Voice in the Wind, and begins to see the clear connections between the two films. While it may use Woolrich as a source, its clearly an Arthur Ripley film, continuing the prior films struggle between the lovers of the world and the enemies. It is above all, a restaging of that film’s tragedy, but in its ingenious narrative structure, allowing Chuck Scott and Lorna Roman to redeem themselves, and the previous lovers by proxy. I highlighted some similarities above, but the most striking has to be its structure. Both films have what I would call a sandwich structure: they roughly consist of three segments, the opening and closing one existing in a similar setting, but with the middle offering a sharp break. In Voice in the Wind, the opening and closing segments unfold on Guadalupe, in the present day. The middle segment exists in the past, in Nazi-Occupied Czechoslovakia. Likewise, while the bookending segments exist in an “objective” world, the middle is “subjective”: the repressed, lost memories of El Hombre. The Chase continues this, albeit in a different way. The opening and closing segments take place in Miami, the middle in Havana. Likewise, in the films controversial twist, we learn that the bookends took place in the “real” world, while the middle was seemingly a “nightmare”. In both films, the middle segments consists of a world that the protagonists forget in their amnesic illnesses, although the Voice begins where the The Chase third act does in relation to their amnesia. Other links are drawn: El Hombre’s only link to his repressed past is his piano-playing; here, when Chuck Scott finds romance, he suddenly rediscovers he can play the piano. Likewise, his room is adorned with a single, insistent candle which calls to mind to one that closes Voice in the Wind. Here, Ripley refines some of the oddity of Voice, of course: here the twin rivals are more clearly antagonistic, although they retain the same odd duality: Peter Lorre’s stern, silent hatchet-man; Steve Cochran’s misogynistic, joker. The greatest change is in the female love interest: she’s no longer a completely passive character, dying in a filthy bed. Lorna Roman is allowed some agency here, as is Chuck Scott/El Hombre, and as such given a shot at some redemption, although she is still suffering, this time under the control of Steve Cochran’s Eddie Roman. Still, essentially the film is a restaging of the liebestod that befalls the leads of Voice in the Wind. It is refined, more satisfying and coherent as a narrative, but the same trajectory remains. However, the films true genius comes through in the way it averts tragedy.

Whenever this film is theatrically shown, modern viewers have tendency to call it Lynchian. And while I’m not one to throw around the label easily, it’s perhaps a more fitting label than many people realize when using it. Just as the similar objective/subjective, reality/dream structures in Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr. are never clear-cut, so does The Chase bends it structure in ways people don’t give it credit for. Fred Madison may escape the illusion of young Pete Dayton, but he’s still stuck in a purgatorial mobius strip; hardly reality. And many people still debate any easy Betty Elms / Diane Selwyn distinction in the latter film, as they probably should. The Chase’s dream is likewise deceptive. Not only can its “trick” narrative be described as a prototype for the likes of Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr., but it’s also a prototype for another completely different type of film: narrative games in the spirit of Celine & Julie Go Boating and Three Resurrected Drunkards. Much like the dreams of another Lynch project, Twin Peaks, dreams can deliver exclusive knowledge not available elsewhere. Not only does the film replay the tragedy of Voice in the Wind, but once it runs its course, it allows Chuck Scott the chance to play again. The nightmare gives him knowledge of the film’s narrative trajectory and his place in it, and with that knowledge he is able to seize control of the narrative. He conquers the predetermined tragedy of the film - in fact, the fatalistic spirit of film noir – by becoming aware of that predetermination.

The biggest clue that all isn’t what it seems comes in the form of Chuck Scott’s awakening from his dream. It is the most trance like moment of the film. He doesn’t awaken in one clean start, or a drowsy coming-to. No, the film visualizes his awakening in a series of superimposed fades that establishes a disorientating sense of repetition. If one wants to give it a literal reading, one can easily do so: the repetition is a representation of the drowsiness that comes from awakening from such a stupor. Furthermore, it represents the way a memory can hid itself behind the haze of amnesia. Very well, but it ignore that the scene, and particularly its editing, has a precedent in the film. If we represent the nightmare as nightmare, and everything surrounding it as reality, then the logical place for this early repetitive edit would be sometime around when Chuck Scott goes to his apartment and falls asleep. But this preceding moment doesn’t occur there. Rather, in a much earlier scene (within the seeming reality) Chuck and Lorna stand on the coast. It’s a stormy night, and the waves whip across the rocky shore. Chuck stands a couple yards back, dressed in a black uniform, passive, detached. Lorna stands next to the water, in a white gown, distant, despondent. Chuck asks her, “Is there anything I can do?” “Yes, make it four years ago,” she responds, “if you can’t do that, just look the other way.” And, as in response, as if willing a change in his own narrative world, we cut to a similarly conspicuous series of superimposed fades, of the roaring waves. When we cut back, we meet the pair again, in the same setting. But it is calm. Chuck no longer seems passive and detached to Lorna, but close to her, standing right next to her this time. Lorna is no longer despondent, but almost happy. She’s even dressed in black, linking her with Chuck Scott. Their professional detachment seems to have given way to personal confidence. Lorna’s helplessness in the former scene has been replaced by a boldness; she devises their scheme to escape to Havana. Once again, one can read this literally, the series of waves being a simple passage of time. But both superimposed montages are so conspicuous, and conspicuously similar, that one can’t help but connect them. The earlier montage creates such a sharp break in the narrative trajectory and in the behavior of the characters, that it would seem the most logical place for a dream to begin, even as the latter montage says otherwise.

One of the major elements of the film is the extension of oneiric beyond the middle segment, the only place that should logically be oneiric. But the film isn’t simply fixated on the dream as a psychoanalytical phenomenon; it also takes up the dream as a metaphysical one. And if metaphysics considers time as a continuous loop, in the film, dreams are an embodiment of that loop. For the films other fixation is the predetermination of fate. This is clear from the opening scene, no less dreamy than what arrives later, where Chuck Scott passively follows a wallet in to the Roman mansion and a new career. Eddie Roman’s race with the train is another example of those trying to fight against and conquer an uncertain fate. If in the film noir, the future is uncertain and unknown, here Ripley plays with the idea. It begins as such, but through the dream, Chuck Scott is made away of the trajectory of fate. Look at the later “replay” of the race against the train, the death of Eddie Roman and Gino: it is once again dreamlike, too convenient and unmotivated to seem like objective reality. Yet, Chuck Scott, having gained knowledge about the future, and aware of Eddie Roman’s continuous tempting of fate, almost wills the crash, just as he wills the transformation on the beach. With his knowledge, he begins reshaping the predetermined fate, that is, the predetermined narrative trajectory. His rescue of Lorna Roman continues this idea of persistent dreamlike atmosphere, so unabashedly romantic and operatic that it seems like the dream itself is continuing. And this becomes clear with its final scene, in front of the same Havana club, in the same carriage, which preceded Lorna’s death, and the consummation of the tragedy. We also have reached the point where, Eddie and Gino being dead, Chuck Scott’ knowledge of the predetermined future ends. With it, he has seized control of the narrative, but ultimately, was only able to make some minor changes, its basic trajectory repeating itself, the loop continuing on. The film ends just as Chuck and Lorna reenter the uncertainty of the future.

The aforementioned scene in Voice in the Wind seemed to establish the struggle between El Hombre/Marya and the thieves/Nazi as one between lovers and enemies of the world, an eternal struggle as old as time. The Chase continues this thought by representing Chuck/Lorna’s fight against Eddie/Gino as another chapter in this eternal struggle, so eternal that it continuously repeats itself within the film. Chuck Scott’s amnesia gives him the chance to walk away with a clean slate, but he decides to continue the loop, risking becoming one of the “good” of Shelley’s poem, who “die first.” Chuck Scott and Lorna manage to break the cycle of tragedy, but they reenter the Havana night with no knowledge of what’s to come. This new cycle will run its course, perhaps happily, perhaps tragically, but one sense’s they have gained enough experience to put up a fight. The Chase is one of the great anomalies of film noir: it traffics in a world of impending death, sexual guilt and paranoia that is of a piece with the darkest end of the genre. Yet, through this dark night of the soul travels an unabashedly romantic and anarchic spirit. This is Arthur Ripley’s spirit, and it should have had a long, brilliant career.

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Murdoch
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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#458 Post by Murdoch » Tue Dec 14, 2010 7:59 pm

Brilliant write-up, The Chase (along with The Thief) was the anomaly of my list-compiling experience. The film's structure is most interesting since a definite reality is never presented to ground Scott's nightmare in, the first act presents us with what appears to be the real but upon Scott's return to that "reality" - if he is indeed engaging with the same world and not some other peripheral existence - we are presented with an all-too-quick succession of events as the bad guys are nicely taken care of and the two lovers once again elope, the repeated image of the lovers in each other's arms a visual cue to the unreality of the moment. I like the idea of Scott stuck in a purgatorial loop, that the film is a mere glimpse of Scott's illusory existence and he forever stumbles upon some device (this time a wallet) to lead him down the same ill road. And now I regret not putting it higher up on my list...

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Yojimbo
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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#459 Post by Yojimbo » Tue Dec 14, 2010 8:16 pm

I note Steve Cochran is in that, also; for a relatively little-known actor he made some very interesting choices.
Aprt from this and 'Tomorrow...', he also starred in my fave Antonioni, 'Il Grido', and another fave noir of mine, 'Private Hell 36', which made my list.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#460 Post by domino harvey » Tue Dec 14, 2010 9:35 pm

THE NOIR LIST (GENRE PROJECT) TOP 100

01 Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur 1947) 483
02 Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich 1955) 434
03 Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder 1944) 382
04 In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray 1950) 381
05 Touch of Evil (Orson Welles 1958) 351
06 Night and the City (Jules Dassin 1950) 320
07 Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding 1947) 304
08 the Lady From Shanghai (Orson Welles 1947) 298
09 Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang 1945) 297
10 the Big Heat (Fritz Lang 1953) 294

11 Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky 1948) 282
12 Gun Crazy (Joseph H Lewis 1949) 280
13 Detour (Edgar G Ulmer 1945) 273
14 the Killers (Robert Siodmak 1946) 252
16 the Big Sleep (Howard Hawks 1946) 244
16 They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray 1949) 244
17 Raw Deal (Anthony Mann 1948) 242
18 the Killing (Stanley Kubrick 1956) 236
19 Thieves' Highway (Jules Dassin 1949) 212
20 Crime Wave (Andre de Toth 1954) 205

21 the Asphalt Jungle (John Huston 1950) 203
22 On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray 1952) 200
23 Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller 1953) 198
24 the Maltese Falcon (John Huston 1941) 187
25 Act of Violence (Fred Zinnemann 1948) 177
26 Laura (Otto Preminger 1944) 175
27 Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick 1957) 171
28 Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder 1951) 162
29 Angel Face (Otto Preminger 1950) 160

31 Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak 1949) 150
31 the Reckless Moment (Max Ophuls 1949) 150
32 the Set-Up (Robert Wise 1949) 149
33 the Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino 1953) 147
34 Dark Passage (Delmer Daves 1947) 146
35 Where the Sidewalk Ends (Otto Preminger 1950) 141
36 Sunset Blvd (Billy Wilder 1950) 137
37 T-Men (Anthony Mann 1947) 135
38 the Lineup (Don Siegal 1958)

41 Kansas City Confidential (Phil Karlson 1952) 124
41 the Prowler (Joseph Losey 1951) 124
41 the Third Man (Carol Reed 1949) 124
42 Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock 1951) 123
43 Border Incident (Anthony Mann 1949) 121
44 He Walked By Night (Alfred J Werker 1948) 120
45 Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk 1944) 118
46 Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton 1955) 117
47 the Big Combo (Joseph H Lewis 1955) 114
48 99 River Street (Phil Karlson 1953) 107
49 A Kiss Before Dying (Gerd Oswald 1956) 106
50 Slightly Scarlet (Allan Dwan 1956) 102

51 Pitfall (Andre de Toth 1948) 101
52 the Blue Gardenia (Fritz Lang 1953) 100
53 Ride the Pink Horse (Robert Montgomery 1947) 99
54 Gilda (Charles Vidor 1946) 97
56 Brute Force (Jules Dassin 1947) 94
56 Human Desire (Fritz Lang 1954) 94
57 Murder by Contract (Irving Lerner 1958) 93
58 Shockproof (Douglas Sirk 1949) 92
59 Armored Car Robbery (Richard Fleischer 1950) 88

62 He Ran All the Way (John Berry 1951) 87
62 Fallen Angel (Otto Preminger 1945) 87
62 Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock 1943) 87
63 the Narrow Margin (Richard Fleischer 1952) 86
64 the Blue Dahlia (George Marshall 1946) 84
65 Underworld USA (Samuel Fuller 1961) 82
66 Hollow Triumph / the Scar (Steve Sekely 1948) 81
68 Kiss of Death (Henry Hathaway 1947) 79
68 Leave Her to Heaven (John Dahl 1945) 79
69 the Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett 1946) 78

71 the Phenix City Story (Phil Karlson 1955) 77
71 the Seventh Victim (Mark Robson 1943) 77
72 Chinatown (Roman Polanski 1974) 76
74 Caged (John Cromwell 1950) 73
74 the Naked Kiss (Samuel Fuller 1964) 73
75 Side Street (Anthony Mann 1950) 72
77 Where Danger Lives (John Farrow 1950) 70
77 Whirlpool (Otto Preminger 1949) 70
78 Tomorrow is Another Day (Felix Feist 1951) 68
79 White Heat (Raoul Walsh 1949) 66

81 Moonrise (Frank Borzage 1948) 65
81 the Thief (Russell Rouse 1952) 65
83 Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk 1947) 64
83 Somewhere in the Night (Joseph L Mankiewicz 1946) 64
87 the Chase (Arthur Ripley 1946) 63
87 DOA (Rudolph Mate 1950) 63
87 the Sniper (Edward Dmytryk 1952) 63
87 the Woman on the Beach (Jean Renoir 1947) 63
88 the Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang 1944) 61
89 the Tall Target (Anthony Mann 1951) 58
90 Woman on the Run (Norman Foster 1950) 57

92 the Big Steal (Don Siegal 1949) 55
92 the Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak 1946) 55
93 the Racket (John Cromwell 1951) 52
94 the Long Goodbye (Robert Altman 1973) 51
95 Body and Soul (Robert Rossen 1945) 49
96 Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmak 1944) 47
99 Detective Story (William Wyler 1951) 46
99 Nightfall (Jacques Tourneur 1957) 46
99 Panic in the Streets (Elia Kazan 1950) 46
100 Mr Arkadin (Orson Welles 1955) 45


Key to color codes:
On every submitted list
On every submitted list but one
On every submitted list but two
On every submitted list but three


To paraphrase Robert Mitchum, Out of the Past may not have been any member's number one pick for best noir, but it comes the closest


ALSO RANS (two or more members voting, in descending order)
High Sierra, the Window, the Unsuspected, the Dark Corner, This Gun For Hire, the Glass Key, the Lady in the Lake, Born to Kill, Private Hell 36, Secret Beyond the Door, the Burglar, Railroaded!, the Strange Love of Martha Ivers, the Amazing Mr X, Dead Reckoning, the Big Clock, Pushover, Boomerang!, Mildred Pierce, Cape Fear, Decoy

ORPHANS (only one member's vote, in alphabetical order)
Between Midnight and Dawn, Beware My Lovely, the Big Night, Black Angel, Black Tuesday, Blues in the Night, Brainstorm, the Breaking Point, the Bribe, the Brothers Rico, Call Northside 777, Caught, the Crooked Way, Cry Danger, Damnation, Deadline USA, Desert Fury, Desperate, the Desperate Hours, the Devil Thumbs a Ride, Diabolique, Dial 119, Dragonwyck, Drive a Crooked Road, Drunken Angel, the Enforcer, Farewell My Lovely, Fear In the Night, the File on Thelma Jordan, Fury, the Gangster, High and Low, His Kind of Woman, House of Bamboo, House of Strangers, Impact, I Walk Alone, Johnny Angel, Juke Girl, the Kill-Off, La Bete Humaine, Lady Without Passport, Le Jour se leve, the Long Night, M, Macao, the Man From London, the Manchurian Candidate, Memento, Mickey One, the Naked City, Night Moves, Notorious, Odd Man Out, Odds Against Tomorrow, Ossesione, Out of the Fog, Party Girl, Pickup, Pickpocket, Point Blank, Possessed, Pursued, Reign of Terror, Riffifi, the Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, Road House, Roadblock, Rogue Cop, Scandal Sheet, the Scarf, Seconds, Serie noir, 711 Ocean Drive, the Shanghai Gesture, Shield For Murder, So Dark the Night, the Sound of Fury, Split Second, Strange Impersonation, the Street With No Name, the Suspect, Suspense, Taxi Driver, Tension, They Made Me a Fugitive, Touchez pas au grisbi, Two of a Kind, the Underworld Story, Union Station, the Verdict, Vertigo, the Woman on Pier 13, You Only Live Once
Last edited by domino harvey on Wed Dec 15, 2010 6:28 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Tribe
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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#461 Post by Tribe » Tue Dec 14, 2010 9:43 pm

Domino, from the hints you dropped, I was expecting an entirely unique Hot Hundred. But this appears to me a pretty standard and canonical list, no surprises here. Maybe I was reading way too much into your previous posts. Not quibbling with it in the least, mind you.

EDIT: Also, the only non-American noir is The Third Man...seems like the vast bulk of those submitting lists limited their picks to American productions. I don't agree, but there are certainly well-supported grounds for doing so. The same goes for post-50s noirs...very, very few from just a glance.

EDIT: One surprise (for me)...only one vote for Point Blank (which I think was me).

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#462 Post by Yojimbo » Tue Dec 14, 2010 9:54 pm

Initial thoughts: pleased to see 'Nightmare Alley' feature so high, although somewhat surprised 'Detour' didn't make the Top 10.
Nice, also, to see 'They Live By Night' and 'Raw Deal feature in the Top 20.
I almost resorted to flipping a coin when trying to decide between 'Double Indemnity' and 'Out of the Past' for my 'Numero Uno', until I settled on the former, which hasn't lost its appeal over considerably more viewings.

Disappointed 'Pushover' didn't make it: that was possibly the most wonderful discovery of the many wonderful discoveries of the two Sony noir box-sets and one I'm looking forward to re-watching.

Thanks to you, dom, and your crack team of compilers
I demand a recount! :D

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#463 Post by Yojimbo » Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:02 pm

Am I the person with the most 'orphans'?
I recognise a lot of my 'babies', there!

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#464 Post by Murdoch » Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:08 pm

Four of mine didn't make it (High Sierra, the Unsuspected, the Amazing Mr X, Cape Fear). And there were quite a few on the main list I regrettably never got to, only saw seven of the bottom twenty.

And how did so many see The Prowler? I thought there was no release of it available.

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#465 Post by domino harvey » Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:13 pm

I've seen 82 of the Top 100, and the number of unseen will hopefully go down a bit. A couple titles I remembered I'd forgotten while tallying wouldn't have made much difference (Whoops, I Wake Up Screaming!) and most of my unwatched pile was likewise in no danger of being counted for anything but another spot with the Orphans

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#466 Post by Yojimbo » Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:25 pm

Murdoch wrote:Four of mine didn't make it (High Sierra, the Unsuspected, the Amazing Mr X, Cape Fear). And there were quite a few on the main list I regrettably never got to, only saw seven of the bottom twenty.

And how did so many see The Prowler? I thought there was no release of it available.
I taped my VHS copy from a BBC2 'Videodrome' season of some 20 years ago, presented by filmmaker Alex Cox ('Repo Man', etc).
I converted it into a DVD-R, although the VHS copy is better quality

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#467 Post by knives » Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:25 pm

I can count ten orphans, but most of those were never going to get an other vote so I'm happy for their listing. Limited myself to just one foreign and neo (though I guess you could count Seconds as neo). Really wish I hadn't missed all, what was it ten, showings The Prowler's had recently. Guess I'll definitely have to pick up that DVD.

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#468 Post by Yojimbo » Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:39 pm

knives wrote:I can count ten orphans, but most of those were never going to get an other vote so I'm happy for their listing. Limited myself to just one foreign and neo (though I guess you could count Seconds as neo). Really wish I hadn't missed all, what was it ten, showings The Prowler's had recently. Guess I'll definitely have to pick up that DVD.
I think I had more foreign language than colour noir; it wasn't a conscious effort on my part to be eclectic, necessarily, just a case of evaluating noir 'essence' and 'spirit' as well as period and the Expressionism influence.

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#469 Post by swo17 » Tue Dec 14, 2010 11:12 pm

I've already given my heart to the decades projects, but I greatly appreciate the efforts of everyone who participated here, and intend to use this thread as a resource during the '40s and '50s lists. Thanks!

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#470 Post by Cold Bishop » Wed Dec 15, 2010 6:47 am

Three out of ten for the top 10. Seven out of twenty for the top 20.

Four also-rans. Eight orphans (two of them top 5 ranked). That's what I get for voting foreign.

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#471 Post by souvenir » Wed Dec 15, 2010 11:42 am

I guess I was the only one who considers Notorious to be film noir. Also wondering who else voted for The Burglar.

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#472 Post by Yojimbo » Wed Dec 15, 2010 1:42 pm

Cold Bishop wrote:Three out of ten for the top 10. Seven out of twenty for the top 20.

Four also-rans. Eight orphans (two of them top 5 ranked). That's what I get for voting foreign.
I had seven foreign, and five colour noir, excluding the foreign.
Two of the Top Ten didn't make my 50, even though I've seen both on two occasions

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#473 Post by Murdoch » Wed Dec 15, 2010 1:42 pm

Notorious just barely fell off my list, but it was on it for a while as a sort of placeholder until I saw something "more noir." Hitchcock is just a strange case of having his own distinct genre of filmmaking that it feels weird to confine his films to a single genre, especially one so odd as noir. Strangers on a Train made mine since it feels the most noir of all Hitch's films, but even there I hesitate to go all-out and declare it noir.

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#474 Post by Yojimbo » Wed Dec 15, 2010 1:53 pm

Murdoch wrote:Notorious just barely fell off my list, but it was on it for a while as a sort of placeholder until I saw something "more noir." Hitchcock is just a strange case of having his own distinct genre of filmmaking that it feels weird to confine his films to a single genre, especially one so odd as noir. Strangers on a Train made mine since it feels the most noir of all Hitch's films, but even there I hesitate to go all-out and declare it noir.
I pondered about including 'Strangers on a Train', and even 'The Wrong Man', but then I decided that Hitch, even with his Lang influences, is a distinct and separate animal.

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Re: The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#475 Post by the preacher » Wed Dec 15, 2010 3:35 pm

I chose 50 American films between 1940 and 1960 to make the exercise easier, but I love criminal foreign films too (from O Drakos to Bob le flambeur, the list could have been very different).

I've seen all but 3:
A Kiss Before Dying (Gerd Oswald 1956): Only seen the (heavily edited) Spanish version.
Tomorrow is Another Day (Felix Feist 1951): I have taken good note of your recommendation.
the Thief (Russell Rouse 1952): No dialog, eh?

Glad to see unfairly neglected The Woman on the Beach make the list.

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