Favorite Film Noirs

Double Indemnity

Pickup on South Street

Out of the Past

I say Double Indemnity also but I heard it really wasn't film noir...

The Maltese Falcon

Sunset Boulevard

The Third Man

And so many, many more, best film genre (or jandra) ever.

R2, don't listen to the person who told you that. Double Indemnity is classic film noir.

Check out the glorious Gloria Grahame in these noir classics:

In a Lonely Place (with Humphrey Bogart) Sudden Fear (with Joan Crawford) The Big Heat (you'll never make coffee again)

Then for a change of pace: Oklahoma! (not a film noir, of course, but she shows the dark side of Ado Annie -- can't say no, my ass!)

R5, I love The Big Heat. A great demonstration of why Fritz Lang is amazing.

The one "classic" film noir I didn't care for is The Maltese Falcon. The femme fatale was lackluster.

Chinatown

I love Kiss Me Deadly. Ralph Meeker is so fucking hot.

My other favorites:

The Narrow Margin

Road House

Criss-Cross

Detour

Kiss of Death

The Postman Always Rings Twice

The File on Thelma Jordon

The Prowler

Double Indemnity

Mildred Pierce

The Killers (Burt Lancaster's film debut)

They Live By Night is great

R6, I couldn't be fonder of you if you were my own son. But, well, if you lose a son, it's possible to get another. There's only one Maltese Falcon.

Brick

Double Indemnity

The Third Man

Scarlet Street

The Blue Gardenia

Black Angel

The Phantom Lady

Tension

Attack of the Clones

Sudden Fear

These classic noir films are great and in neo-noir I've liked:

Body Heat

Miller's Crossing

The Grifters

The Lookout

LA Confidential

Someone already mentioned Brick

Noir just never gets old.

Would Vertigo classify as film noir? I know some here are divided on the film, but I still think it's the most moving and disturbing Hitchcock film I've seen.

Additionally, regarding Neo Noir, I think Chinatown and Blue Velvet are standouts (although I DON'T think it's one of the two or even three best David Lynch movies).

If you're jones-ing for noir, try Dennis Hopper and Gina Gershon in "Out of Season".

You mean "films noir"

r21, wouldn't it then be "films noirs"?

R22, in French, technically, yes. But, English language borrowings from French are notoriously irregular and controversial.

See this explanation from a linguist:

[quote]But, English language borrowings from French are notoriously irregular and controversial.

In which case, why wouldn't "film noirs" be also OK?

Portrait In Black

Turner/Quinn

Yes, R24, it is more than okay. It is quite correct. I'm merely adding that less than correct usages have become standard in some Anglophone contexts (according to linguists).

No disagreement between us at all.

"Mike's Murder" is an excellent noir from the '80s. The unjustly underrated Debra Winger is never better and looks sensational. It's set in the drug underworld of Los Angeles, but the story is primarily around Winger's character as an innocent bank clerk. The late gay actor Paul Winfield has a juicy supporting role.

Please don't mention any film noir made after 1950. Thanks. If it ain't black and white, it ain't film noir.

Also, if you could mention those noirs that were set in Los Angeles, it would be helpful.

Honey, there were a lot of great noirs made in the 50s. And in black and white, too.

Sunset Boulevard is one my all time favorite films so of course I have to mention that, although I must say I never really categorized it as film noir. Somehow I always thought it was too layered to be noir but I guess it really is seen as one.

The only older noir I really remember by name is Kiss Me Deadly and I like it a lot. I've seen others, too, and some of them do have great athmosphere.

R30, agree, Kiss me Deadly has one of the greatest endings I have ever seen. It really influenced David Lynch's Lost Highway.

The Color Purple

[quote]Thanks. If it ain't black and white, it ain't film noir.

Huh?

I fell in love with Gloria Grahame in The Big Heat. That coffee scene was tragic. Joan Crawford also knew how to do a good noir.

Strangers on a Train

Mystery Street (Written by a gay screenwriter, Leonard Spigelgass)

Fear in the Night (based on a book by gay writer Cornell Woolrich)

Desert Fury is a good technicolor noir from the 40s

And it has a TON of gay subtext

House of Bamboo is another good noir with gay subtext

I'm more of a "neo noir" person:

Chinatown

The Long Goodbye

After Hours

Leave Her to Heaven is considered noir. I've read more than one critic state this.

The neo-noir I like best is THE GRIFTERS and CHINATOWN. Perfect movies. THE GRIFTERS is hard to watch, though, once you know it.

And I love (nothing unusual here)

TOUCH OF EVIL

DOUBLE INDEMNITY

MALTESE FALCON

THE BIG SLEEP

And the old Out of the Past film noir podcast was great for explicating and investigating noir. They made a great case for looking at noir attributes in NOTORIOUS and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, which people tend to overlook. On iTunes.

Caught

Sorry Wrong Number - sublime

Double Indemnity

for the newer ones

Chinatown, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Drive

Has anyone seen the Anthony Mann noir western, The Furies (1950)? Very weird.

Skip to 1:27

[quote]Please don't mention any film noir made after 1950. Thanks. If it ain't black and white, it ain't film noir.

'Body Heat' was called 'Film Noir in Colour', back in the day.

The Sin of Nora Moran

Christmas Holiday

No Man Of Her Own

I don't know if anyone else thinks that these are noirs or if many people even know of them but they have crime, death, bleakness and futility as the very oxygen people breathe.

The one with the great Ida Lupino letting her husband die in the garage.....

Lots of good titles so far, but everyone should check out the lurid "Nightmare Alley" with Tyrone Power, and Joan Blondell.

You'll want to shower afterward!

R 48, lurid is the perfect word to describe of "Nightmare Alley."

Laura with wonderful Dana Andrews

Imagine going out to movies on a date and seeing something as cynical and brutal as Double Indemnity or the The Big Heat. These were mainstream hit movies, not art house fare.

Stranger on the Third Floor

Phantom Lady

Double Indemnity

Murder My Sweet

The Big Sleep

Lady from Shanghai

Hitchcock's docu-drama, The Wrong Man.

You know, I was just thinking. Should it be "Films Noir"?

"Laura with wonderful Dana Andrews"

And proto datalounger Waldo Lydecker, played by Clifton Webb!

R28

Film noir is not restricted to just black and white movies.

Exactly, R56: "Devil In A Blue Dress"!

"Detour"!!!

DARK PASSAGE

LAURA

BORN TO KILL

are some that come to mind.

The "noir" in film noir refers to the blackness of the subject matter, not black-and-white film stock. (It's originally a take off on the French category of "romans noirs," about exceptionally dark novels.)

There are plenty of films noirs in color:

Accused of Murder

Bad Day at Black Rock

Niagara

House of Bamboo

A Kiss before Dying (the 1950s original)

Hell on Frisco Bay

Vertigo

I consider Psycho noir. Do you?

The Sniper is very creepy

My five favorite film noirs:

5. Out of The Past (best example of film noir techniques - flashbacks, voiceover, a femme fatale, a private eye, eerie black and white photography, and a pervasive sense of doom so identified with the genre.) 4. Sunset Boulevard (most unusual noir story and an unforgettable performance by Gloria Swanson) 3. Double Indemnity (best noir couple and best femme fatale) 2. The Third Man (beautifully directed, the most original film score, best cinematography and my favorite noir location - Vienna is as much a character as any of the actors) 1. Chinatown (my favorite, an astonishing homage to the genre)

Bad Day at Black Rock was much better than I guessed it would be. Excellent entertainment, Spencer Tracy at the very top of his game.

I think I'll write down all the films in this thread and start watching the ones I haven't seen yet. And probably rewatch some favorites like Kiss Me Deadly. I love the mood of noirs although I must admit I hate films that have the bad guys as protagonists. I remember watching some noir with Barbara Stanwyck in lead as some evil murdering bitch and I didn't enjoy it at all. I guess I'm a bit simple like that, to want to identify with the good guys.

"Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid"!

The sumptuous Rachel Ward; the debonair, yet quirky, Steve Martin; the classic Edith Head costume design; and, of course, the perfectly incorporated flim noir footage.

[quote] Sunset Boulevard is one my all time favorite films so of course I have to mention that, although I must say I never really categorized it as film noir. Somehow I always thought it was too layered to be noir but I guess it really is seen as one.

My all-time favorite movie, ever. Saw an ad for it on KTVU when I was about 10 and sneaked into the den to watch it on the late-late show. I was hooked.

'Mildred Pierce' is #2

I'm glad R59 mentioned Robert Wise's Born To Kill (1947). It's one of the more intense noirs with a cast that includes Claire Trevor, Elisha Cook, Jr. and the insane Lawrence Tierney. Great stuff.

Also, you can chronologically watch most of the films directed by Robert Siodmak between 1944 and 1950, starting with Phantom Lady straight through to The File on Thelma Jordan for a crash course on noir.

[quote] The Sniper is very creepy

Saw this for the first time recently at the MOMA. A great noir. Deliciously violent. And some great 50s scenery set in my native San Francisco.

HATED Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, and so did everyone else. Totally lame.

See the real thing, not the pale spoofs.

R70, at least it was better than Bob Hope's My Favorite Brunette!

[quote]A Kiss before Dying (the 1950s original)

This, like Leave Her To Heaven is in glorious color but is very grim and dark.

Hard Eight, the first PTA feature had a noir feel to it.

Great little unknown movie gem!

Film noir has nothing to do with it being filmed in black-and-white. It means the darkness of the subject matter.

I saw The Drop tonight and was blown away. I'm a fan of Tom Hardy for life and the girl from the first Dragon Tattoo has never been better. I usually only like James Gandofini as Tony Soprano but he was also great.

I must watch it again...

Arthur Penn's Night Moves with the great Gene Hackman.

Seventies noir masterpiece.

I am firrmly in the pro-Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid camp. You knew they really loved the genre and the splicing was hysterical.

I saw it with a group of Germans and their reaction to the ship being named the Immer Essen solidifes the film as a class for me forever.

Sam Fuller's Pick-up on South Street.

Ranks with Out of the Past for me, thouggh the ending is admittedly ab it soft. Still, Thelma Ritter's character, holy shit. Maybe there was a limit on how much bleakness could fit onto celluloid.

The Asphalt Jungle is great, and has one of the mist downbeat endings to any film I've seen. Sterling Hayden bleeding to death staggers through his parents farm, only to fall and die in a horse field as his girlfriend runs to get help. The last shot is a close up of him on the ground with horses sniffing at his lifeless corpse

Act of violence (1949 ) is a great noir about returning servicemen and the lies they tell their families. Mary astor was great as a washed up hooker

I rewatched In a Lonely Place a few days ago. Fantastic movie.

White Heat, w/ James Cagney

D.O.A., with Edmond O'Brien. Was just on TCM's Noir Alley this weekend.

And O'Brien was in White Heat. There's a scene in that where Cagney sits on his mother's lap. Only,Cagney could have pulled that off without looking ridiculous.

The Damned Don't Cry bumps along enjoyably, with hot Cochran (so to speak). Sort of a noir/meller like the great No Man of Her Own, which has a brief appearance by Richard Denning!

The Big Combo is a good tough noir, with a dopey title. And Holliman and van Cleef as hoodlum lovers. And a great Raksin score.

"Impact" with Brian Donlevy and the immortal Anna May Wong. I think this must have fallen into the Pubic Domain because a lot of independent TV stations used to show it regularly.

Another vote for Narrow Margin

Cry Danger. IIRC, lots of great Bunker Hill scenes.

The Killers, 1946

Pitfall is great and sort of a hybrid

Crime of Passion, with Stanwyck, is a 50s noir, with that gray LA look. Somewhat feminist.

Angel Face, one of the bleakest, with gorgeous Simmons.

SPOILER ALERT!

The only thing I didn't like about Narrow Margin is that the most interesting character is killed half-way through the film.

Another color noir is Slightly Scarlet, with perennial DL faves John Payne, Arlene Dahl and Rhonda Fleming. Here's an interview with the screenwriter for Slightly Scarlet, Robert Blees

I would like to add some modern film noirs. I thought Woody Allen's Match Point which followed the Ill fated affair between a handsome but venal working class lad and a aspiring actress was very enjoyable. I also recommend the work of a brilliant German director named Christian Petzold. Petzold's Jerichow and Phoenix are dark and noirish, like something that would be made in the US in the 1960s or 70s. I'm not sure If Cache, starring Daniel Auteil is technically a film noir, but it is a very dark drama that would appeal to fans of the noir genre.

Petzold is brilliant. His Barbara was also great, but maybe not a noir.

Cape Fear and The Night of the Hunter - i was mesmerized the first time I saw it - Loved the cinematography - its a shame Charles Laughton direct more movies...

*didn't

Chandler's Farewell My Lovely faithfully made into that Edward Dmytryk directed 1944 classic, Murder My Sweet with Dick Powell and Mike Mazurki. Any movie with tough guys slinging leather blackjacks around and forcibly confining and torturing dreamy Dick Powell gets my vote.

R90 Yes, Petzold is truly talented. I didn't mention Barbara because I didn't know if it fit the bill as noir but I loved it. Ronald Zehrfeld and Nina Hoss are both great. They are both genuine talents. While we're on the subject of Petzold, Yella is another great film of his, also starring the fantastic Nina Hoss. Very haunting and thought provoking film. Yella has noirish aspects but I'm not sure if it counts as film noir.

A few that I don't think have been mentioned yet:

Scarlet Street with Joan Bennett and Edward G. Robinson. Holy cow, talk about a bleak ending. Incredibly memorable.

The Red House, with Robinson again, also Judith Anderson, Rory Calhoun (at his hottest) and Julie London. When the heroine first sees the titular red house in the woods and freaks out, it's like watching someone else's compelling nightmare.

Born to Kill. Laurence Tierney at his sexy-scariest.

The Window. Incredibly tense and nerve-wracking thriller with little Bobby Driscoll as a little boy-who-cried-wolf in Manhattan, who then sees something he shouldn't have seen.

Boomerang! with Dana Andrews and Margaret Anderson herself, Miss Jane Wyatt.

Another Jane Wyatt, with Dick Powell and Lizabeth Scott.

"Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid"

I watched Gun Crazy a couple of nights ago.

R40, I've never read that comment before about The Grifters, but it's exactly how I fell. The film is incredible, but I've never been able to watch it again.

my favorite film genre.

the films are absorbing, with crisp dialogue and grown up themes.

On Dangerous Ground, very moving, with great Ryan and Lupino.

R99, Lewis also directed The Big Combo. I heard him speak at MoMA years ago, after a screening of Gun Crazy. He said he thought Dall's softness contributed to his performance. I think he was implying something else.

Ralph Meeker is so hot in Kiss Me Deadly. He played the Holden role on Broadway in the original Picnic, with Paul Newman. They were both replaced in the movie by Holden and Cliff Robertson.

Meeker had a raw sexiness for the role, as seen in a rare clip I saw here on DL from Ed Sullivan. Too bad Meeker never made it big; he was certainly talented, in all kinds of ways.

I’m not a big fan of the noir genre, but I do like some of them. Amazing that Miklos Rozsa composed effective scores to a lot of them, and then even scored Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, his last film.

Other noirs with his music, in addition to those already mentioned, include:

Brute Force

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands

The Bribe

The Lost Weekend

The Secret Beyond the Door

A Double Life

The Naked City

I saw an interview with a noir director; can’t remember who. He scoffed at the noir ideas, saying the only reason they used odd lighting was because that’s all they could afford, adding that his films were made on tight budgets.

Favorite noir quote, from the Rozsa-scored Criss Cross:

As Yvonne De Carlo is packing, leaving him, Burt Lancaster pleads, “But I love you!”

Her response? “Love! Love! Ya gotta look out for yaself!”

the big heat is violent and harsh, but absorbing.

the maltese falcon is my fave, i can watch this film endlessly

Too Late for Tears is considered one of the best film noir movies ever. The UCLA film archives remastered it a few years back. And it stars the Queen of Film Noir Lizabeth Scott who has her own DL thread from when she passed a few years back.

Someone uploaded Black Angel to Youtube, pretty good noir, June Vincent, Dan Duryea, Peter Lorre. Great opening shot zooming up the building, and bad girl Constance Dowling.