Your favourite films noire.

[scoundrel]

We have threads for Westerns, War Films, British Films, Hitman Films, Worst Films Ever, Horror Movies, Best Films Ever. We need another film thread, obviously.

My proposition is: Which film or films noire do you particularly like, and what is it about it/them which especially pleases you . A post naming the film is all very well, but with no extra information the members who haven't already seen the movie won't get any value from your contribution, and might not click the 'Thanks' button!

Here are two from me to start the ball rolling.

Casablanca (1942)


Surely one of the best films ever made. Humphrey Bogart was never better than as the bleakly witty and icily cynical Rick Blaine. Rick is a man who has opted out of love: love of women (though he certainly still enjoys their companionship); love of his fellow man (the black piano player Sam excepted); love of his own country - he is now a self-proclaimed citizen of the world; love of freedom, except for himself. Why? Because love has only ever disappointed, defeated and betrayed him.

In a film full of complexity, we can see almost immediately that Rick still retains some moral centre and is not as callous as he pretends to be. There is a fascinating little byplay when a pitiable, though very attractive Bulgarian girl approaches Rick with a mortifying question she is forced to ask: If she goes to bed with chief of police Captain Renault (Claude Rains), can she trust the man to pay her prostitute's fee: visas to the Free World out of the open prison called Casablanca, for herself and for her hopeless fool of a husband? After all, once he has had what he wants from her, why should he?

Rick takes the question at face value: the answer is ''yes, Captain Renault can be trusted to keep his word'', because Captain Renault has the virtue of honest corruption. But without seeming to, Rick has noted the agony the girl is in, how much this matters to her when so many girls in Casablanca would think nothing of it. In a surreptitious gesture of compassion, Rick allows her husband to win on the roulette tables so that Captain Renault can be painlessly bought off with money.

Three people know what Rick has done. The croupier, who accepts the fact with calm resignation; the girl (she will always remember Rick in her prayers); and Captain Renault, who will need to revise his plans for the night. Renault is not angry: he seems to accept Rick's actions as a mild, implied reproof, and to realise that his original plan for the girl would have done her great harm, which absolutely was not his intention. He is a cad, but a gentlemanly one and free of cruel intent.

This is a tiny throwaway detail but typical of this densely woven, superbly acted character piece. It helps to establish Bogart's screen character, Claude Rains' screen character, and the deeply ambivalent cat and mouse ''friendship'' of the two.

Its almost a musical: it has far more good tunes than that rubbish stage-musical, Blood Brothers, and doesn't trade on this at all.

Its an action drama: note the shootout at Ricks, the subsequent killing of the Nazi villain Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt in fine form).

It is, of course, a romantic love story: Ingrid Bergman is perfect as Ilse, both sexy and full of class. Losing a woman like her would make any man feel bitter.

What a film!

Incidentally I have only scratched the surface of what there is to say about Casablanca: if anyone else wants to say more about this film, please do.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)



Billy Wilder's masterpiece starring William Holden, a penniless Hollywood screenplay writer on the skids and a truly great Gloria Swanson as a clapped out former screen goddess called Norma Desmond who takes Holden into her little sychophantic court as a junior courtier and toyboy.

This film is a classic Hollywood satire about Hollywood, exploring the dark side of the film business and the pitiless way in which it discards those who are no longer useful. There is a great late cameo performance from Erich von Strolheim as Norma's long term lover, director and (truth be told and if only Norma had eyes to see it) the one person in the world who is really there for her. Nancy Olson is also excellent as the junior studio screenplay editor who could and should have been the love of Holden's life. Delusions, blindness and loss of love are key themes of this dark and compelling thriller.

The last scene, when Swanson descends the Grand Staircase of her palatial mansion towards the police is iconic: even the hard-boiled LAPD detectives are moved to pity her.

Simply wonderful.

OK folks! What does the collective VEF critical mind have to add to these two?

[eelcat]

Double Indemnity for sure.
I'll give my vote to "Sorry, Wrong Number", again with Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster.

[tabler]

A film which I love that sends up the whole genre of 'film noir' is 'Dead Men Dont Wear Plaid' with Steve Martin. Sorry no details at the moment will post more when not pissed

[Mal Hombre]

The original Cape Fear (1962,i think) with Gregory Peck as the epitome of goodness and the great Robert Mitchum as the essence of pure evil. As the pyschopathic Max Cady,Mitchum chills without even raising his voice and is horribly believable.

[Farowt]

[eelcat]

We can't forget The Big Sleep...........and Robert Mitchums' The Big Steal. I enjoyed both of those, although I haven't seen them in more than 20 years.

[smutwerx]

I have two favorites. First is Out of the Past with Robert Mitchum, and second is Ride the Pink Horse with Robert Montgomery.

Out of the Past is great for a lot of reasons. The direction by Jacques Tourneur is good, the acting is good, and Mitchum is a stud in general. Part of the film is set in Mexico, which is a noir plot device I always like. The depth of blackness here is notable. The blacks are full and rich, especially as the film goes on, and the shadowplay gets really wild during a fight sequence in the middle. One of the better noir fights, by the way. Anyway the deep blacks and shadows really help hint that circumstances closing in around the hero.

Ride the Pink Horse is set in a U.S./Mexico border town, and it's interesting for the effort paid toward actually trying to make this setting feel authentic. In that way it succeeds where Out of the Past doesn't. Here you get some believable Mexican flavor, and at least one Mexican with a good speaking role. The title refers to a carousel in town that has a pink horse. Basically, Robert Montgomery arrives in this town under mysterious circumstances, and with unknown intentions. People are looking for him, but he's also looking for a local kingpin. Montgomery also directed this, by the way.

[snorkie]

My favorite novel as well as my favorite film:






One often has to explain to a first time viewer that all of those clinches they're seeing began with this film.

Actually, Nicole Black is my favorite filmed noir!

[doyle]

And the original D.O.A. (1949). Haven't seen the re-make and don't want to.
The original is one of those modest 40s movies (probably shot in a month), that look better with time. It has tremendous speed, good acting (even though they're reading their lines off cue cards in some scenes), and interesting views of L.A. and San Francisco in 1949, before they became traffic clogged tourist traps.

[scoundrel]

I have never seen this one from start to finish: caught the first half during a season of Dymytryk films shown by Channel Four, and the second half years later - can't remember where.

Interesting that cloq mentioned Bad Day At Black Rock: not often thought of as a film noire but it has key elements of the genre, particularly the moral ambiguities, guilt and paranoia of the various townsfolk who are all implicated in the crime which Spencer Tracy gradually exposes, even if only by their years of cowardly silence. Robert Ryan was a key player in BDABR and we see him again in Crossfire.

Though set in urban America and in a different social context, Crossfire has a similar plot and similar themes to BDABR. Robert Young as the DA's Investigator, in the same way as Spencer Tracy, peels away layer upon layer of lies and half-truthes with deadly patience until the various guilty parties have been exposed both for the crime and for the rottenness of their souls. Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum and George Cooper all turn in good performances. This film also deals with thuggish racism in American society and like BDABR it invites the viewer not to be so complacent about society, his own friends, or himself.

The deviant sexuality common to so many films noire is present in Crossfire in a low-key, muted way. Where soldiers or ex-soldiers gather, naughty girls are seldom far away and so we have the hapless witness, a girl who is no better than she should be but had the sheer bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She is played with some pathos by Gloria Grahame.

The storytelling, much of it through flashbacks is stylish and involving. the acting is first rate. Dymytryk's direction maintains the pace seamlessly in what could have been a clunky and static talking-too-much kind of drama and keeps up the tension.

This is what film-makers had to do when they had no special effects and CGI to hide behind: tell a damn good story.

Thanks so much to everyone who has chipped in so far. Keep up the good work guys and girls!