The Noir List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[domino harvey]

Have you seen 'Tension', then?

Yes, but I barely remember it

[Matt]

knives, I'm definitely putting some Melvilles on my list.

Could someone please explain the concept of "swapsies" to me (and maybe dh can put that explanation in the top post)? This is a development that came along after I stopped participating in the decades lists.

[Yojimbo]

And further to Domino's post, a big vote in support of The Spiral Staircase, a chiller that still works brilliantly all these years later, and one which completely traumatised my mother as a child, even though she never saw it - but that's another story.

I love the cover on the Region 2 DVD: gorgeous looming shadows

[domino harvey]

Could someone please explain the concept of "swapsies" to me (and maybe dh can put that explanation in the top post)? This is a development that came along after I stopped participating in the decades lists.

You select a film you'll be placing on your list that you think will get overlooked. You offer it up as a swapsie, meaning you agree to see another member's swapsie if they see yours. Participating members usually comment in-depth on the film they agreed to watch as well, leading to a lot of good discussion to boot. It started with the 80s thread to convince people to see They All Laughed and the idea caught on. It's a good way of getting a lesser-known film considered by others. Also, if a member sees your swapsie but you'd already seen their pick before, it's generally a good idea to ask them for an alternate so the spirit of the thing stays valid

[Yojimbo]

(I take it only US noir is being considered for this list)

I hope not. It would make the leg work harder, but the definitions easier, but would turn the list boring. France has put out some of the best noirs these last few years.

Well since the referenced DVD Beaver link oks it, I'll definitely have two Kurosawa crime Masterpieces on my list: 'Stray Dog' and 'High and Low'

[Matt]

I'd like to offer up a swapsie, then: Aroused (Anton Holden, 1966). Probably not to everyone's taste, but it's definitely going on my list. It certainly fits Borde and Chaumeton's "oversimplified" description of noir as "oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel." Trailer.

[Murdoch]

So neo-noir is accepted? If so then my swapsie will be The Last Seduction (John Dahl, 1994) which pushes the femme fatale to possessing almost supernatural powers over men and brings the noir portrayal of women full circle.

[Yojimbo]

So neo-noir is accepted? If so then my swapsie will be The Last Seduction (John Dahl, 1994) which pushes the femme fatale to possessing almost supernatural powers over men and brings the noir portrayal of women full circle.

I much prefer the same director's 'Kill Me Again'
(and 'Red Rock West')

[knives]

Just out of curiosity has anyone seen Corneau's Serie Noire? I've heard many great things about it, but the available discs are region coded, and with no english subs but that is a more minor inconvenience.

[Cold Bishop]

My top two without a second thought. Jules Dassin's Night and the City and Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly. Save for its non-American landscape, the former is to me the perfect noir: a fatalistic tragedy set in a nightmare city of crime, paranoia and post-war male anxiety, so bleak and grotesque, it borders on the apocalyptic. The latter bypasses the borders completely, exploding the romantic pretenses of the genre - and the proto-fascist masculinism that reached its pinnacle in Mickey Spillane's series of novels - with all the force of an atom bomb.

Riffifi is almost as great as Night and the City: if the latter's the perfect noir "of male anxiety", Riffifi is the finest noir "of male camaraderie". It's lean, tough-as-nails, white-nuckle tension still shocks long after the heist genre has been run to the ground, and is better than even The Asphalt Jungle or The Killing.

While were on Dassin: Brute Force is still the ultimate prison film, one-upping even George Hill's brilliant The Big House, which it borrows copiously from. As dominoharvey already mentioned, and like most of Dassin's film, its surprising how much violence the film gets away with, and its nearly as uncompromised as Riffifi and Night and the City. The only flaw: the terrible flashbacks, created for the sole purpose of adding some women and romance into the plot, and padding out the already lean running time, indulges in all the sentimentality and saccharine gloss that the rest of the film abstains from. Not quite as uncompromised: Thieves Highway which (much like Sirk/Fuller's Shockproof) is a near perfect noir that is left damaged beyond repair by a self-negating ending. However, the first eighty or so minutes are unbelievably good, with a tension, escalating doom and surprising eroticism that is lacking from even the best 40s Noir. In a perfect world, somebody would set out to track down Dassin's original downbeat ending (which he shot) with the same passion as the missing scenes from Greed or The Magnificent Ambersons.

My swapsie: the Mark Robson/Val Lewton's The Seventh Victim (see avatar). It's difficult to think of a more off-beat film to come out of Hollywood in the forties. Not quite a horror film, not quite a crime story, not a particularly satisfying narrative as a thriller, its a noir in the strict sense that "black film" is the only real way you could possibly describe the film. What it works as is a mood-piece, a stark, atmospheric meditation on loneliness, nihilism and suicide. I still don't know how this film ever got made, not only because its bleakness is such at odds with the rest of the output of that era, but its unflinching stare into the void is at odds even with the rest of Lewton's brilliant output.

[Highway 61]

This sounds like a very fun project, especially for someone like me who doesn't have the time to do a whole decade justice but has always wanted to participate in a list thread. This seems a little less daunting since I already own many of the key films and have a sizable collection of books on the genre.

One book that I'd recommend in particular is Jack Shadoian's Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster Film. The title is somewhat misleading. For many of the movies discussed, I imagine most would think film noir before gangster. It's been years since I've read it, but I recall thinking Shadoian's prose was unusually strong for a work of film criticism. I remember that his appendix at the end of recommended films was both insightful and filled with surprisingly funny anecdotes. Also, I appreciated that he treated the subject seriously, never approaching film noir/gangster movies as camp or indulging in genre fetishism.

[Sloper]

Just wanted to put a word in for Cornered (Edward Dmytryk, 1945), which will at last be coming out on Warner's 5th film noir box, in July I think. For me this film works much better than the previous year's Farewell My Lovely, with Dick Powell as a de-mobbed Canadian soldier hunting in Argentina for the Vichy collaborator who murdered his wife. Part of me wishes a better actor had been cast in the lead role - Robert Ryan in my dreams, but Edmond O'Brien would have done - although it's nice to see Powell extending himself even further than in Farewell; he works very hard to convey the character's rage, exhaustion and despair, and overall does pretty well. Walter Slezak is a wonderfully greasy sub-villain, who provides much of the film's entertainment, and the unmasking of the real villain at the end is a nice twist. Like many great noirs, a lot of it plays out in hotel rooms, but the opening features some evocative location work that sets the mood beautifully, and the setting of the climax is dark and dingy enough to secure the film's place as a classic noir. I also seem to remember a very effective scene set in a Paris Metro station. I sense this one has never been too popular, but maybe worth re-assessing.

Also, if we're allowing non-US pictures, Ossessione is of course a must. There was an earlier French version of Postman called Le Dernier Tournant, starring Michel Simon as the husband, and I've heard it's quite good. Take a look here for a rather scary image of the actress who plays the lion-tamer. As far as I can tell, this is only available in a very expensive second-hand VHS from Amazon.fr.

[antnield]

One noir auteur not yet mentioned, but definitely in need of major consideration, is Joseph H. Lewis. Gun Crazy is going to figure very high on my list, whilst The Big Combo, My Name is Julia Ross and A Lawless Street will also be in contention. (I'd have to see A Lady Without Passport and The Undercover Man again.

Speaking of Lewis, would Terror in a Texas Town warrant an inclusion on the list? It, along with Walsh's Pursued, is amongst the most noir of Westerns.

[Yojimbo]

Just out of curiosity has anyone seen Corneau's Serie Noire? I've heard many great things about it, but the available discs are region coded, and with no english subs but that is a more minor inconvenience.

I bought an English-subbed disc from a Belgian site which I was alerted to on here a few months back: I recommend it unreservedly
(I also love the Jim Thompson novel)

[Yojimbo]

Also, if we're allowing non-US pictures, Ossessione is of course a must. There was an earlier French version of Postman called Le Dernier Tournant, starring Michel Simon as the husband, and I've heard it's quite good. Take a look here for a rather scary image of the actress who plays the lion-tamer. As far as I can tell, this is only available in a very expensive second-hand VHS from Amazon.fr.

Ossessione is my favourite version of 'Postman', and, along with 'Senso', my favourite Visconti.
I wasn't so taken with 'Cornered' on my only viewing, some 20 years ago,- particularly disappointing after Powell's performance in 'Murder My Sweet', - but I may give it another look if and when I get that box-set.

[Steven H]

Two of my top ten films for this list will be Andre de Toth's Crime Wave and Kobayashi's Black River. Crime Wave is just a nasty behemoth of a noir that hopefully most forum goers are familiar with from the WB set. There's a french subbed version of Black River that looks absolutely gorgeous (fansubs around for it too.)

[Yojimbo]

Two of my top ten films for this list will be Andre de Toth's Crime Wave and Kobayashi's Black River. Crime Wave is just a nasty behemoth of a noir that hopefully most forum goers are familiar with from the WB set. There's a french subbed version of Black River that looks absolutely gorgeous (fansubs around for it too.)

Is 'Crime Wave' the one with the hilarious James Ellroy commentary track?

[cysiam]

Would any of the films in the Nikkatsu Noir set qualify or would those be for a later Yakuza list? If so, Cruel Gun Story will probably find a place on my list, and A Colt is My Passport might squeeze in too.

[Yojimbo]

Would any of the films in the Nikkatsu Noir set qualify or would those be for a later Yakuza list? If so, Cruel Gun Story will probably find a place on my list, and A Colt is My Passport might squeeze in too.

if 'Scarface' and those great Kurosawa crime films qualify, I'm sure they would also.
Although, great as it is, I wouldn't even consider including 'Scarface' in any noir list of mine: its a gangster film, Period!

[Lemmy Caution]

Is 'Crime Wave' the one with the hilarious James Ellroy commentary track?

Not familiar with Crime Wave, but Ellroy rampages through the commentary to The Line-up, on the Columbia Noir set. Ellroy has a grand time insinuating smut everywhere and referencing Finocchio's as much as possible.

Siegel's The Line-up (1958) is definitely worth seeing for this list. Eli Wallach is a ruthless sociopath/hitman, working for a drug smuggling ring with a flawed business model. The film has nice pacing, and the tight 24 hour timeline places a whole lot of mayhem during broad daylight in San Francisco.

I also thought that Five Against The House (1955) from the same set was wildly entertaining, but it seems much more a heist/crime film and not what I'd consider noir. I really enjoyed the cheesy/clever dialogue and the meandering plot line.
The film is full of weird shifts, as the college shtick shifts to a jazz club because of the girlfriend, and then a little post-Korean War traumatic stress kicks in there, and after a little more of that triple-play, suddenly its casino heist time, featuring such a ridiculous fool-proof plan that I was left laughing for days.
But again, it doesn't seem noir to me in any sense.

Lang's terrific The Big Heat and Dmytrik's creepy The Sniper are also in the Columbia set.

[Yojimbo]

Not familiar with Crime Wave, but Ellroy rampages through the commentary to The Line-up, on the Columbia Noir set. Ellroy has a grand time insinuating smut everywhere and referencing Finocchio's as much as possible.

that probably makes it worth the price of admission alone,-going solely on his 'Crime Wave' commentary,- although Siegel at the time was in such a rich vein of form, with the likes of gems such as 'Private Hell 36', and 'Riot In Cell Block Eleven', that I can't believe 'The Line-Up' doesn't similarly hit the high spots

[Matt]

I'll second The Lineup as a must-see for anyone considering compiling a list.

[knives]

The Line Up has my favorite car chase scene in it. It might not be as real as say Bullitt, but where the camera is placed makes for an exhilarating ride (even in bad back projection). As already mentioned Wallach is insane in this. If you've enjoyed any of Pesci's performances you will love this one. It is definitely my choice for Seigel noir. If all of that doesn't convince you, than just see it for the commentary. It's the most absurd thing of its kind.

[Yojimbo]

The Line Up has my favorite car chase scene in it. It might not be as real as say Bullitt, but where the camera is placed makes for an exhilarating ride (even in bad back projection). As already mentioned Wallach is insane in this. If you've enjoyed any of Pesci's performances you will love this one. It is definitely my choice for Seigel noir. If all of that doesn't convince you, than just see it for the commentary. It's the most absurd thing of its kind.

Speaking of car chases, did you see the car chase, in the Wall Street district of New York, that featured in Anthony Mann's 'Sidestreet'
(also on one of those Warner noir box-sets).
It truly is a beautiful piece of work, for the most part stunningly photographed from a helicopter, high overhead, so that the protagonists have the appearance of nothing so much as scurrying laboratory rats under a microscope.

The estimated delivery date for my Amazon.com order of that Columbia Pictures Noir set is July 13, 2010, so hopefully I won't have too long to wait!

[knives]

Embarrassed to say I haven't seen it, or most classic noirs for that matter. That's why this is a good exercise I suppose. Won't really be in my element until we get into one of the horror genres.