List of Crap #129: Top 50 Film Noir Features

[George-2.0]

Welcome, you're about to enter the world of film noir - dark as sin and compelling as hell.


Legendary cinematographer John Alton composed the final iconic image of The Big Combo (1955) as Susan (Jean Wallace) and Detective Leonard Diamond (Cornel Wilde) walk out of an airplane hangar into the fog. (Allied Artists/TASCHEN) -from Reed Richardson article

Noir is a genre that didn't start off as a genre and can be difficult to pin down, it's really about a time, a mindset, a style. While primarily an American craze, it's one that had its roots in German expressionism of the 20s and 30s, and directors like F. W. Murnau, G. W. Pabst, and Robert Wiene, whose films were noted for their stark camera angles, chiaroscuro lighting, and shadowy, high-contrast images. However, it wasn't just the American's they influenced, but Britishers like Alfred Hitchcock, and Frenchmen like Julien Duvivier, with his proto-noir classic, Pepe Le Moko (1937).

Other sources of inspiration came from American hard-boiled pulp writers, like Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, and Cornell Woolrich.

While the classic noir era began in 1940, it wasn't until 1946 that it was given a name, Film Noir (literally 'black film" or "black cinema') was first coined by French film critic Nino Frank, who took notice of this trend towards thematic darkness and ink-black photography in American crime and detective pictures made during and after WWII.

Filmsite.org notes that... "The primary moods of classic film noir were melancholy, alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt, desperation, and paranoia." which is reflected in its male protagonist (who may have lost much during the war) and femme Fatales (who wield sexuality like a superpower and have a long lineage, from women like Salome to the vamps of silent cinema).

All told, it was fatalism at its finest.


Classic noir framing and lighting - Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum in Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past (1947)- From Brad Stevens BFI article

The look was striking and is what signifies noir for many - swirling cigarette smoke, unbalanced compositions, interiors lined by the shadows of Venetian blinds or prison bars, rain-slicked streets, fog-filled nights, flashing neons, and low key lighting.

While American noir started to slow significantly in the mid-50s and came to a close by 1959 (rekindling in the 70s as neo-noir) - Japanese noir was still going strong, it took hold in the 50s and flourished in the 60s -- though many of their noirs were about gangsters or police, and leaned hard into pulp crime stories, rather than focusing their lenses on everyday folk, as noir in the States would often do (though disillusioned youth were readily found in Japanese noir, and an American military presence was usually felt). French noir would pop up here and there, in the films of Yves Allégret or Henri-Georges Clouzot, and later, Godard's sci-fi mashup, Alphaville (to name one). The German's would play around with it -and post-war struggles- in movies such as Helmut Käutner's Black Gravel (1961). And of course, there was Brit-noir.

So let us begin, if you dare - once you take that first step into the darkness, you can never turn back...

Bibliography: Many of the classic noir write-ups come from filmsite.org, which is authored by film historian Tim Dirks - I've edited them down to size but left links so that they could be read in full. Others were pulled from Wikipedia and IMDB

[George-2.0]

#50 - 20 points on 1 of 8 lists - Highest Ranking: #2 (partial - Russoguru)

Quote: "If we can't make memories, we can't heal."

Plot Summary: Guy Pearce stars as a man who, as a result of an injury, has anterograde amnesia (the inability to form new memories) and has short-term memory loss approximately every fifteen minutes. He is searching for the people who attacked him and killed his wife, using an intricate system of Polaroid photographs and tattoos to track information he cannot remember.

Background: Memento is a 2000 American neo-noir psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, and produced by Suzanne and Jennifer Todd. The film's script was based on a pitch by Jonathan Nolan, who wrote the 2001 story "Memento Mori" from the concept

The film is presented as two different sequences of scenes interspersed during the film: a series in black-and-white that is shown chronologically, and a series of color sequences shown in reverse order (simulating for the audience the mental state of the protagonist). The two sequences meet at the end of the film, producing one complete and cohesive narrative.

Memento premiered at the 57th Venice International Film Festival on September 5, 2000, and was released in the United States on March 16, 2001. It was acclaimed by critics, who praised its nonlinear narrative structure and motifs of memory, perception, grief, and self-deception, and earned $40 million over a $4.5 million budget. Memento received numerous accolades, including Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing. The film is now widely regarded as one of Nolan's finest works and one of the best films of the 2000s. In 2017, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. - Wikipedia

Further Reading:
Nandini Godara's Memento and Neo-Noir

[George-2.0]

#49 - 21 points on 1 of 8 lists - Highest Ranking: #5 (stethacantus)

Quote: "Why so serious?"

Plot Summary: When the menace known as the Joker wreaks havoc and chaos on the people of Gotham, Batman must accept one of the greatest psychological and physical tests of his ability to fight injustice.

Background: The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed, produced, and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is the second installment of Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins, starring Christian Bale and supported by Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Morgan Freeman. In the film, Bruce Wayne / Batman (Bale), Police Lieutenant James Gordon (Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Eckhart) form an alliance to dismantle organized crime in Gotham City, but are menaced by an anarchistic mastermind known as the Joker (Ledger), who seeks to undermine Batman's influence and throw the city into anarchy.

Nolan's inspiration for the film was the Joker's comic book debut in 1940, the 1988 graphic novel The Killing Joke, and the 1996 series The Long Halloween, which retold Harvey Dent's origin. The "Dark Knight" nickname was first applied to Batman in Batman #1 (1940), in a story written by Bill Finger. The Dark Knight was filmed primarily in Chicago, as well as in several other locations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong. The film was the first mainstream feature to partially utilize IMAX 70 mm cameras, with Nolan using them for 28 minutes of the film, including the Joker's first appearance. Warner Bros. initially created a viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight, developing promotional websites and trailers highlighting screenshots of Ledger as the Joker. Ledger died on January 22, 2008, some months after he completed filming and six months before the film's release from a toxic combination of prescription drugs, leading to intense attention from the press and movie-going public.

Considered one of the best films of its decade and one of the best superhero films of all time, the film received critical praise for its screenplay, visual effects, musical score, themes, performances (particularly Ledger), cinematography, action sequences and direction. The film also set numerous records during its theatrical run. The Dark Knight appeared on 287 critics' top-ten lists, more than any other film of 2008 with the exception of WALL-E, and more critics (77) named The Dark Knight the best film released that year. With over $1 billion in revenue worldwide, it became the fourth-highest-grossing film at the time, and highest-grossing film of 2008; it also set the record for highest-grossing domestic opening with $158 million, a record it held for three years. At the 81st Academy Awards, the film received eight nominations; it won the award for Best Sound Editing and Ledger was posthumously awarded Best Supporting Actor. In 2020, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The Dark Knight Rises, the final film in the trilogy, was released on July 20, 2012. - Wikipedia

[George-2.0]

#48 - 21 points on 4 of 8 lists - Highest Ranking: #17 (Edward J Grug III)

Quote: "My theory is that everyone is a potential murderer."

Plot Summary: A psychotic socialite confronts a pro tennis star with a theory on how two complete strangers can get away with murder—a theory that he plans to implement.

Background:  Strangers on a Train (1951) was director Alfred Hitchcock's suspenseful, noirish black and white thriller about two train passengers: tennis pro, Guy Haines (Farley Granger) and psychopathic dandy Bruno Antony (Robert Walker), who staged a battle of wits and proposed trading murders with each other. It was Hitchcock's first film for Warner Bros.

The story, with many deep subtexts, was based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith. It was co-scripted or adapted by Raymond Chandler (whose contributions of two drafts didn't make the final script) and Whitfield Cook (plus major reworkings by uncredited Ben Hecht, his protege Czenzi Ormonde, Hitchcock's production associate Barbara Keon and Hitchcock himself).

Hitchcock has always been acknowledged as the auteur master of the thriller or suspense genre, manipulating his audience's fears and desires, and taking viewers into a state of association with the representation of reality facing the character.

There were a few great set pieces, including the amusement park murder (and the thick-lensed glasses), the cocktail party scene of how to commit a murder by strangulation, the prolonged tennis match with the cross-cutting sewer grating scene, and the out-of-control, wildly-spinning merry-go-round in the finale.

...was considered a come-back for the director, after box-office, critical and artistic failures of his four previous films, The Paradine Case (1948), Rope (1948), Under Capricorn (1949) and Stage Fright (1950). However, it went un-nominated in all Academy Awards categories except a well-deserved nomination for Best Black and White Cinematography (Robert Burks), evidenced in the film by expressionistic, noirish, chiaroscuro images.

There were actually two versions of the film: the so-called "British" (or Preview) version (a few minutes longer), and the "Original" ("American" or Hollywood) version - the one finally released. Most of the differences in the "Preview" version involved additional footage (especially during the dialogue in the opening train sequence, and the scene of Guy's entry into the Antony house), while the "Original" version was edited more tightly during the showdown on the carousel. The most significant extension in the "Original" version was the inclusion of the last sequence on the train (omitted in the "Preview" version)

https://www.filmsite.org/strangers.html

Eddie Muller Noir Alley intro

[George-2.0]

#47 - 22 points on 1 of 8 lists - Highest Ranking: #4 (stethacantus)

Quote: "Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you; you took no notice."

Plot Summary: A former police detective juggles wrestling with his personal demons and becoming obsessed with a hauntingly beautiful woman.

Background: Vertigo (1958) is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most powerful, deep, and stunningly beautiful films (in widescreen 70 mm VistaVision) - it is a film noir that functions on multiple levels. At the time of the film's release, it was not a box-office hit, but has since been regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. The work is a mesmerizing romantic suspense/thriller about a macabre, doomed romance - a desperate love for an illusion. (And) an intense psychological study of a desperate, insecure man's twisted psyche and loss of equilibrium... Hitchcock's work was a masterful study of romantic longing, identity, voyeurism, treachery and death. It also told about female victimization and degrading manipulation, the feminine "ideal," and the protagonist's fatal sexual obsession for a cool-blonde heroine.

The film's screenplay, written by Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor, was based upon the 1954 mystery novel D'Entre les Morts (literally meaning "From Among the Dead" or "Between Deaths") by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Boileau and Narcejac were also the authors of the story for French director Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques (1955, Fr.) starring Simone Signoret.

The film's theme of play-acting and/or remaking a woman by male domination was also echoed in Greek legend, and in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (and My Fair Lady (1964)). The film spawned clones with similar themes, such as Brian DePalma's Obsession (1976), and director Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again (1991).

Although much of the film's interiors were shot in a Los Angeles studio, the exteriors were often shot on location (mostly in San Francisco, including such spots as Fort Point, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, Ernie's, and the graveyard at Mission Dolores).

Hitchcock's masterpiece was the recipient of only two Academy Awards nominations, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, and Best Sound, and it was left without a single Oscar statuette.

www.filmsite.org/vert.html

[George-2.0]

#46 - 22 points on 1 of 8 lists - Highest Ranking: #4 (George-2.0)

Quote: "What's the matter? You look like you've been on a hayride with Dracula."

Plot Summary: When a hitman is double-crossed by his employer, he vows revenge and soon crosses paths with a beautiful singer who is working as a spy to learn about shady wartime deals being brokered by Cregar's crooked boss.

Background: This Gun for Hire is a 1942 American film noir crime film directed by Frank Tuttle and starring Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, and Alan Ladd. It is based on the 1936 novel A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene.

The picture was the first for what became one of noirs classic pairs, top-billed Veronica Lake and a 4th billed bit player by the name of Alan Ladd, who became a sensation when Paramount cast him as a professional killer in the picture. The duo would team up several times, including film noirs, The Glass Key (1942 - which was remade by the Coen's as "Millers Crossing") and the Blue Dahlia (1946), from writer Raymond Chandler.

The film features Yvonne de Carlo in an early role. She has one line, "Cigarette, sir?", in the Neptune Club scene. Making the film caused her to be fired from her job dancing for Earl Carroll.

93% at Rotten Tomatoes:
"Catapulted Alan Ladd to stardom, established Ladd and Veronica Lake as a screen team and is just plain as close to a perfect representation of film noir as you're likely to get." - Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress

"There's a lot to unpack...And perhaps this is the very reason why This Gun for Hire has endured for as long as it has. It's a complex noir where rooting for a 'hero' doesn't have a clear line of sight." - Kelechi Ehenulo, Set the Tape

Film Noirchives

Eddie Muller Noir Alley intro

[George-2.0]

That's it for today. From here on out I'll likely do 3 a day, but thought I'd start with 5 to get us going.

Until tomorrow, I'll leave you with this superb video... how many of these noirs do you recognize, and how many will make the 50?

[Cyrusso]

I had NO idea The Dark Knight was a film noir, otherwise I would have put it on my list. 

[Edward J Grug III]

Great start.

So far only one of my picks has made the list - Strangers on a Train. A local cinema has just announced they will be screening it with North By Northwest in a couple of weeks - can't wait!

I haven't revisited Memento or Dark Knight since I got kind of fed up with Nolan, so I'm unsure how I'd enjoy them today - still, I enjoyed them at the time.

I love Vertigo but I never really think of it as noir (even though I acknowledge it is).

I am yet to see This Gun For Hire. Looks right up my alley of course.

[dbsommer]

I confess all of mine were from the initial time period rather than later ones. So if they will pop up they'll be higher up probably.

Momento falls into the rare category of 'If I heard the pitch, I'd have laughed at the idea working.' and then Nolan made it work. I was floored. Nolan showed the climax first, yet still built up tension and interest by doing things in reverse order.

Dark Knight. I have two nice things to say about it. One: Ledger deserved that award because there is *nothing* to the character. It's a series of trite sayings masking themselves as deep thought between rambling nonsense. That he made what on script was blathering, compelling was a testament to his acting. I have rarely seen someone do so much with so little.
Two: Aaron Eckart's own outstanding performance is overlooked due to Ledger's better one.
I can never define it as great for a number of reasons, including the entire thing is built upon a tower of contrivances beyond measure for no reason. But the one that broke me was... Joker's police station plan is lifted from Dr. Evil. It literally relies on the police leaving one inept guard to watch him to make it work.
I still contend Nolan did that intentionally to see if anyone would notice.

I voted for Strangers.

Vertigo. It's okay. Not near my favorite of Hitchcock's. But I understand James Nguyen was a something of a fan.

Why, I haven't seen Gun for Hire. Now it's on my list of things to watch.

[stethacantus]

I had NO idea The Dark Knight was a film noir, otherwise I would have put it on my list.

I love Vertigo but I never really think of it as noir (even though I acknowledge it is).

My list started with referencing Wikipedia's list of Noir films, just to pick out the ones I had seen.  Depressingly, most of the classic era Noir films I had seen were either from MST3K or worse. For example, Laurel & Hardy's A Haunting We Wil Go is an awkward mix of Film Noir and what-the-hell-are-Laurel-and-Hardy-doing-in-a-Noir-film.  However, I saw a lot of movies that made the Neo-Noir list. So it was either a short list with a lot of garbage films from MST3K, or a full list with Neo-Noir which would include the likes of Chinatown. However, I did not simply take Wikipedia's word that every film on he list counted as Noir. For example, they had a few Chuck Norris films that barely count as martial arts, let alone Noir. So I went over every film and eliminated any that didn't include the elements that would define them as Noir. And most of the Batman films are prime examples of Noir. The only difference being the detective in those movies insists on wearing a bat costume. Vertigo I had to think about, but ultimately has all the Noir elements.

So far only one of my picks has made the list - Strangers on a Train. A local cinema has just announced they will be screening it with North By Northwest in a couple of weeks - can't wait!

Never saw this film, but did see the sort-of remake Throw Mama From The Train. I wonder if that movie counts as Noir?

[George-2.0]

* While the Bat is a noirish figure, I think the closest he really got to noir film-wise, was with the animated series... so the one I'd look to would be Mask of the Phantasm, where you get the noir-like shadows, the woman you can't get out of your head and the fatalism.  But even then, it would be pushed out by others that I'd personally consider 'more noir' if you will - if you're strictly sticking to modern, neo, flicks, Body Heat or The Last Seduction, for example, are both more in line with what I'd consider pure noir and would leap over the Bat-flicks... but that's just me.

* I didn't put any Hitchcock on my list, as I had so, soooo many other movies I wanted to focus on, though yes, he certainly deserves inclusion on a noir list.

Today, Vertigo is one of my top 5 features of all time, but on my first viewing I was a shade underwhelmed, like a lot of folks I got hung up on the mystery (which is solved a half hour before the ending), but on re-watches I realized that it wasn't a mystery, if anything, the mystery was a McGuffin, what Vertigo was, was a psychological study, and on that level is a masterpiece.

* I'm a big fan of the Lake and Ladd noirs - The Glass Key (which the Coen's remade as Miller's Crossing), The Blue Dahlia (Raymond Chandler first original screenplay), but This Gun For Hire was head and shoulders my favorite.

* Memento was a great puzzle box, I've not seen it in a while (and the last time was when it was being riffed on) but I remember it fondly.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Ledger deserved that award because there is *nothing* to the character. It's a series of trite sayings masking themselves as deep thought between rambling nonsense. That he made what on script was blathering, compelling was a testament to his acting. I have rarely seen someone do so much with so little.

I think this is the reason each time I've watched The Dark Knight I've liked it less, once you lose that initial awe of the performances there's not a lot there.

[Edward J Grug III]

Ledger deserved that award because there is *nothing* to the character. It's a series of trite sayings masking themselves as deep thought between rambling nonsense. That he made what on script was blathering, compelling was a testament to his acting. I have rarely seen someone do so much with so little.

I think this is the reason each time I've watched The Dark Knight I've liked it less, once you lose that initial awe of the performances there's not a lot there.

That sums up my feelings with Nolan in general

[stethacantus]

* While the Bat is a noirish figure, I think the closest he really got to noir film-wise, was with the animated series... so the one I'd look to would be Mask of the Phantasm, where you get the noir-like shadows, the woman you can't get out of your head and the fatalism.  But even then, it would be pushed out by others that I'd personally consider 'more noir' if you will - if you're strictly sticking to modern, neo, flicks, Body Heat or The Last Seduction, for example, are both more in line with what I'd consider pure noir and would leap over the Bat-flicks... but that's just me.

I didn't realize animated features would qualify.  But even then, Mask of the Phantasm probably would not crack my top 25. I was ranking the films by which ones I liked best, not by how close they came to the definition of Noir.  The original Bob Kane  Batman comics fell right into the definition of Noir. That is until Robin showed up and suddenly Batman was less moody and seemingly having fun as a crime fighter.  Out of the live action films, the 1966 film and the Schumacher films are too colorful to be Noir. The Burton films.... sort of.  I had a few other  Superhero films that qualified as Noir but didn't crack my top 25, which were The Spirit, The Shadow and Darkman.  There were a few Neo-Noir films I had seen that didn't make my list. But these were mediocre films.  What it comes down to is would you rather have the Nolan Batman films on the LoC or Shanghai Surprise which is a little closer to Noir, but nowhere as good.