No.3112
The list is helpful to get started on
NOIR with plenty of great titles waiting. I've been working through the 250 films on and off for a few years, so why not discuss it here? I hope I'm not the only one interested in this style of filmmaking.
http://www.theyshootpictures.com/noir250noirs1.htmdips bedora No.3407
> I hope I'm not the only one interested in this style of filmmaking.
So my fears were realized. Regardless I'll give this thread a bump to try again.
Some of the nice surprises on this list for me have been Crime Wave, Criss Cross, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, The Mask of Dimitrios, and The Set-Up. The worst entries have been adaptations of plays like The Big Knife (one of the most misleading titles ever) and Clash By Night (the weakest Fritz Lang film I've seen, although he can't be blamed for the tepid script). Both are far afield from "quintessential noir" in my view.
A couple enjoyable noirs omitted from the list are The Bribe (tropical noir with Ava Gardner) and Decoy (very cheap and bleak). Edward Dmytryk's thriller Obsession from 1949 is also very good.
No.3408
I like them but I'm not an expert. I can count all the ones I've seen:
The Asphalt Jungle, The Big Heat, The Big Sleep, Brute Force, The Crimson Kimono, DOA, Detour, Double Indemnity, Gun Crazy, He Walked By Night, Key Largo, Killer's Kiss, The Killers, Kiss Me Deadly, The Lady from Shanghai, Laura, The Maltese Falcon, Ministry of Fear, Mr. Arkadin, The Naked City, The Naked Kiss, The Night of the Hunter, Out of the Past, Pickup on South Street, Scarlet Street, Shadow of a Doubt, Side Street, Strangers on a Train, They Live By Night, The Third Man, Touch of Evil, White Heat
Also saw Foreign Correspondent and You and Me which didn't make the list.
The short list of my favorites are generally the ones that too crazy, to the point of not making sense, so that the viewer cannot suspend disbelief without coming up with some alternative interpretation like in the case of The Lady from Shanghai (Michael's accent falling in and out, 'kill me' request), Detour (the all too coincidental account all from his perspective), The Naked Kiss (sequences of the children's hospital, the woman with the dead husband, all very dreamy), and Kiss Me Deadly (ayy). If you know more that are like that then I'm all ears.
No.3410
>>3408Oh yeah, Lady from Shanghai is one of my favorites too. I like it more than Ambersons which really couldn't withstand the edits IMO. It's interesting that Lady from Shanghai was also heavily cut, but the resulting confusion kind of works in its favor.
Admittedly I can enjoy Orson Welles even when he's in a bad movie, like Journey Into Fear for example. That's a very shoddy production, bad accents all over the place.
A few others you might enjoy (other than what I mentioned above) are Nightmare Alley, The Big Combo and Raw Deal. They all go heavy on atmosphere, although maybe the plots make too much sense (it's been a while).
No.3434
I'm interested in it but I don't think that list is very newcomer-friendly as its just sorted by date. I feel like I need to watch far more of these movies for it to be relevant to me (which is fine). I hope a year from now I can participate in these discussions.
No.3435
>>3434Have you seen any of them? I'd say start with the top ten "most cited"
> As mentioned in the introduction, these 250 noir films aren't necessarily the best (although they would be very close to it), they are simply the films that - according to our research - have most often been cited as noir in publications and across the world-wide-web.
> For interest sake, the top-ten most cited noir films are: Out of the Past (1947), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Laura (1944), Touch of Evil (1958), D.O.A. (1949), Double Indemnity (1944), The Killers (1946), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Big Sleep (1946) and Kiss Me Deadly (1955). The most cited years are between 1944 to 1958, with 1947 being the peak year.The list also gives each title a ranking. So the next step could be watching those that are "Highly Recommended"
No.3448
>3407
Clash by Night isn't even near the worst Lang did. In fact, I find it very underrated, BUT it isn't a noir at all, in my opinion. It is often viewed as one, but I'd rather think of it as a melodrama. Some shots are ones of the most remarkable in Lang's American movies.
No.3449
>>3448Fuck, meant to answer to
>>3408 No.3451
>>3448That's one issue I have with this list.
Sometimes it misplaces expectations, which can lead to disappointment if you're in the mood for a mystery or thriller.
No.3452
> Clash by Night isn't even near the worst Lang did
Can't argue with that … but it's the weakest I've seen after watching most of his best work :P
No.3460
>>3452>>3451How good is Liliom?
No.3466
>>3460That's one I still haven't seen, although I get the feeling it's not in his top tier.
For the purposes of this list I fully recommend Scarlet Street, Woman in the Window, The Big Heat and M of course. Fury didn't make this list, but it's right up there in terms of quality. I'd put While the City Sleeps and Ministry of Fear slightly below those.
I haven't seen any of Lang's westerns either. Curious how those turned out.
No.3467
>>3466The Big Heat has a great ending line.
No.3478
Another interesting Glenn Ford noir from when the style/genre was running on fumes. I give the film's shortcomings a pass because it's a very slick production featuring a beautiful California modern. Rita Hayworth is in rough shape though, unrecognizable.
No.3672
I seen Nightmare Alley and that's all, but boy howdy I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would
No.3673
I know of a couple worthwhile noir podcasts
http://outofthepast.libsyn.com/http://darkcityconfessions.podbean.com/Interesting to listen after you watch. The second one has above average production but the guy hasn't released anything new for almost a year.
No.3688
>>3460>>3466Liliom is fun to watch, has decent photography, and some great scenes, but it tries to make an apology of domestic abuse in such an awkward way that it kinda killed the movie for me, how the fuck can you justify the fact that a French drunken asshole beats his wife out of love.
Noteworthy for being the only French Lang film (with some neat set pieces to boot, also)
I honestly don't find Ministry of Fear that engaging either. I'd better recommend You Only Live Once, even though it is more of a proto-noir, since it is by far the bleakest film he made in the US.
No.4505
I watched the original film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon, made only a year after the book was written.
It's interesting to see how a story which spawned major noir cliches was originally depicted. The tone is much lighter, with plenty of overt pre-code sexuality. The suave lothario protagonist is a male fantasy with a ritzy apartment, not a doomed and disillusioned anti-hero. Bubbly women dress in elegant gowns as opposed to female ballbusters in boxy suits and shoulder pads.
As much as the Hays Code eventually cleaned up these detective stories, the more confrontational gender dynamics and the everpresent sense of foreboding make the traditional noir films of the 1940s more compelling than their predecessors.
No.4832
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TCM has scheduled 24 hours of noir on Fridays in June and July, starting tomorrow.
http://summerofdarkness.tcm.com/
What's unusual is they actually have a free online course led by a USC film professor to accompany the programming. Supposedly they're doing Google hangouts and livesteam viewings as part of the class.
https://www.canvas.net/browse/bsu/tcm/courses/film-noir
> In this nine-week course, we’ll go back in film history to investigate the "The Case of Film Noir"—the means, motives, and opportunities that led Hollywood studios to make these hard-boiled crime dramas, arguably their greatest contribution to American culture.
> This course will run concurrently with the Turner Classic Movies "Summer of Darkness” programming event, airing 24 hours of films noir every Friday in June and July 2015. This is the deepest catalog of film noir ever presented by the network (and perhaps any network), and provides an unprecedented opportunity for those interested in learning more to watch over 100 classic movies as they investigate “The Case of Film Noir.”
> Both the course and the associated films will enrich your understanding of the film noir phenomenon—from the earliest noir precursors to recent experiments in neo-noir. You will be able to share thoughts online and test your movie knowledge with a worldwide community of film noir students and fans.
No.4893
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No.5403
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
How about the small subgenre of noir comedy?
Carl Reiner and Steve Martin made Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid which constructs a story using footage from several classic noirs.
It's a fun experiment if you're willing to go with it. They even got Miklos Rozsa and Edith Head for a late-career credit.
No.5408
>>4893
i thought neo-noir was more Chinatown and The Long Goodbye and Night Moves (watch Night Moves if you haven't, for real)
and googling this image up, i found they did a remake recently so that's probably awful
No.5409
Yeah neo-noir can be defined pretty loosely sometimes. Anything with a loner and a gun, or just a grimdark mood.
I don't buy most of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_neo-noir_titles