I’m tired of politics and awful people. What are you favorite film noir and neo noir choices?
Also, another plug for Slow Horses on Disney. The best show on television.
And it has been 34 years and I still am pissed off that Dances with Wolves beat Goodfellas.
Splitting Image
The Third Man and Touch of Evil would both be good choices.
I’m also fond of Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.
TBone
@Splitting Image: I was coming in to say Touch of Evil, so seconded!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_of_Evil
Also, Out of the Past
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Past
And, of course, Chinatown.
Eolirin
Isn’t Slow Horses an Apple TV thing?
twbrandt
The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre remains my favorite film nor.
Ken
Lady in the Lake, provided you can get past the gimmick.
Spanky
I’ve been watching Youtube clips of The Big Sleep, and now I want to watch the whole thing.
geg6
Double Indemnity. Barbara Stanwyck is so amazing and you can’t go wrong with Fred McMurray and Edward G. Robinson. The best, IMHO.
ETA: And how could I forget Body Heat? William Hurt and Kathleen Turner are too hot and I love it!
kindness
Goodfellas aged better. I did like DWW a lot when it came out.
Anoniminous
And don’t forget: Chinatown, Reservoir Dogs, Farewell My Lovely (1975 with Robert Mitchum as Marlowe.)
wjca
Why in the world would anyone go for film noir when the real world is way more than noir enough? Totally not getting it.
Signed, your local compulsive optimist
piratedan
yeah, that whole series of Bogart films (Key Largo, Maltese Falcon, etc) are really good. The Asphalt Jungle is also pretty tasty as far as noir is concerned.
TF79
Slow Horses is great – I’m sad my partner is traveling or we’d be watching the new episode tonight
columbusqueen
@geg6: Seconded. Having seen My Three Sons reruns when I was young, it was one hellava jolt to encounter Fred McMurray in it. Talk about versatile! And I always love Stanwyck whether she’s a bad or good girl.
dmsilev
Slow Horses is amazing, one of Gary Oldman’s best roles. And that’s a high bar to clear. Apple TV+, not Disney.
columbusqueen
@piratedan: Dark Passage is seriously underrated among the Bogart/Bacall films.
RandyG
@Ken: ….which wears thin after about 15 minutes. But a decent flick.
Noir: Laura, Gilda, White Heat, D.O.A. (the 1949 original), Diabolique, Asphalt Jungle
Neo: Blood Simple, Manchurian Candidate
twbrandt
@geg6: both of those are so good.
Wileybud
@Ken: Same “gimmick” was used by Bogie & Bacall in 1947’s Dark Passage. Done quite well I might add.
Lady in the Lake rates as a Christmas movie the same as Die Hard does.
@Ken:
Anne Laurie
@geg6: Hallmark did a mini-series version of Double Indemnity back in the 1980s, starring Diana Rigg!
We’ve just ordered a DVD copy (but it’s available for streaming) because I’m gradually getting the Spousal Unit into Agatha Christie… and we both adore the late great Dame Diana.
columbusqueen
@geg6: Never dug Body Heat; my hard core dislike of Hurt always gets in the way.
frosty
Other than the good B/W ones from the forties, I gotta say Body Heat. Good lord, Kathleen Turner was smoking hot in that one.
ETA: I’ve read all the Slow Horses books and liked them. Somehow I’m out of the “sitting down to watch television” phase, probably because I’m spending all my time on this blog. Maybe that phase will come back.
ETA2. Duh, read the comment below mine. Chinatown of course. Especially because the plot was rooted in LA history.
Princess
@Splitting Image: I’m not a noir person, but I second The Third Man. I’d also pick Chinatown or LA Confidential.
Villago Delenda Est
Noir: Double Indemnity
Neo-Noir: Chinatown
Jeffro
just chiming in here to recommend “The Last Kingdom” on Netflix. King Alfred (and later, his son Edward) repel the barbaric Danes and unite England with the help of Uhtred of (many titles)
Holy cow is it good! Based on Bernard Cornwell’s novels. Moves like…(apologies for the cliche’)…LIGHTNING!
Villago Delenda Est
@Princess: I’d chime in for The Usual Suspects as well.
“Poof!”
Villago Delenda Est
@Jeffro: Barbaric Danes: They ram pastries down your throat!
frosty
@Wileybud:
Christmas movies? Last Kiss Goodnight with Geena Davis. Not noir, though.
Best description. She was asked once why there was not Bourne-type movie with a woman protagonist. She said yes, there was, and I starred in it. See above.
Harrison Wesley
@Anoniminous: Glad you mentioned Mitchum. It’s been many, many years since I last saw The Night of the Hunter.
Jeffro
@Villago Delenda Est: but what a way to go, amirite?
apocalipstick
Out of the Past.
Chinatown.
LA Confidential.
The Third Man is a dark classic, but there’s a real debate over whether or not it’s an actual noir.
Against All Odds (basically a remake of Out of the Past)
The Last Seduction
The Late Show (Art Carney and Lily Tomlin)
One False Move
Shana
@Spanky: just don’t expect it to make sense
RandyG
For your amusement, here are a couple of “noir” quizzes I wrote for a trivia league that I used to belong to. (Note that you won’t be able to view the media attachments for a few of the questions.)
Noir: https://learnedleague.com/oneday.php?filmnoir
Neo-noir: https://learnedleague.com/oneday.php?neonoir
On a mobile device, you may have to click a link to display the questions.
lamh47
Alright, I’m about to check out Agatha AllAlong![]()
ep 3
SpaceUnit
I like Dancing With Wolves. A lot. Top twenty. And in general I don’t much care for mob or prison films. I find them sort of depressing.
I understand why actors and directors like making them – they feel that they’re exploring an inverted moral universe, but I just don’t see it that way. It’s the same old world without the usual veneer. And I don’t watch movies to be depressed. I watch movies as a form of escape. That’s my two cents.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
Off the top of my head
Noir: Black legion, All Through the Night, White Heat
Neo Noir: The Long Goodbye, Who’ll Stop the Rain, Q & A
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
@SpaceUnit: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?
Chief Oshkosh
The Bogart series already noted by others are my favorites. The Big Sleep additionally has some repartee that is reminiscent of classic screwball comedies, which adds to the enjoyment for me.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038355/quotes/
H.E.Wolf
@columbusqueen: I always love Stanwyck whether she’s a bad or good girl.
I think “The Lady Eve” would satisfy both constituencies.
Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, William Demarest (“positively the same dame!!”), my forever bae Eugene Pallette, and a supporting cast that’s almost as full of clever con artists as “The Sting”.
Torrey
Dead Again: Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Derek Jacobi.
Wait, you’re tired of awful people, so noir is where you’re going for a change of pace?
West of the Rockies
Could it be argued that Blade Runner is noir?
Literata
This is a really minor recommendation, but I was binge-watching Murder, She Wrote while sick recently, and watching a young Jerry Orbach in some of the neo-noir episodes is like a vision of Law and Order Yet to Come.
twbrandt
@West of the Rockies: you could argue that, but you’d be wrong.
hueyplong
The Big Sleep
Out of the Past
The Maltese Falcon
Double Indemnity
Crime Wave (young Chuck Bronson)
Criss Cross
Chinatown
LA Confidential
The Killers
Asphalt Jungle
In the 80s I briefly lived in what I believe to be the apartment building out of which Agnes Morehead took a tumble in Dark Passage. I was not on a high floor like hers.
JoyceH
@wjca: same. When real life gets too noirish, my go-to is Gene Kelly movies. When things are really dire, I deploy the big guns – Fred Astaire.
kalakal
Some that haven’t been mentioned
Double Indemnity
Witness for the Prosecution
Brighton Rock (1948 version)
Ksmiami
@geg6: north by northwest too!
eclare
I’m still pissed that Forrest Gump beat Pulp Fiction.
RandyG
@H.E.Wolf: The Lady Eve has 5 — count ’em 5 — of the greatest comedic character actors of all time in one film! Eugene Pallette and William Demarest, already mentioned; also Charles Coburn, Robert Greig, and Eric Blore. Preston Sturges certainly knew how to find them and highlight them.
hueyplong
@eclare: I’m kind of irritated that Forrest Gump exists.
Peke Daddy
Pickup on South Street. A Sam Fuller joint, with Richard Widmark and Thelma Ritter. Also, Rocky beating Network? Pleeeze!
Villago Delenda Est
@eclare: I still long to know what is in that McGuffin satchel that Jules Winnfield is carrying around.
Anoniminous
@Harrison Wesley:
Mitchum’s screen credits reads like a list of Best Films Ever:
The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), Out of the Past (1947), Angel Face (1953), River of No Return (1954), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Thunder Road (1958), The Sundowners (1960), Cape Fear (1962), El Dorado (1966), Ryan’s Daughter (1970), The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), and the aforementioned Farewell, My Lovely (1975).
Yarrow
Gaslight (1944). It’s a terrific film and you get to see where the overused term came from. Bonus for Angela Lansbury in her film debut film.
brendancalling
I love “Double Indemnity.” “Out of the Past” is great as well.
Rough day at school. Not enough sleep, realization my lesson was over a lot of my kids’ heads.
different-church-lady
@Spanky: Pro tip: don’t try to make sense out of it, just enjoy it.
JiveTurkin
Out of the Past. Mitchum at his best, Jane Greer is stunning and evil. My favorite line is when she is trying to explain that she didn’t steal the $40,000 (which she did) and he says “baby, I don’t care”, and he really doesn’t.
Jager
I was depressed enough last week to escape into comedy. I discovered Deon Cole on Netflix, I’m still grinning when I think about his “Vintage Women” bit.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Does Who Framed Roger Rabbit count as noir?
Yes to all Bogart.
hueyplong
@JiveTurkin: Kirk Douglas is also great in Out of the Past.
JiveTurkin
@Anoniminous: He’s scary as hell in Cape Fear, but he’s completely terrifying in Night of the Hunter.
Timill
@Villago Delenda Est:
Here you go: the contents of the briefcase
I recommend reading to the end for the third location…
meander
My favorite is Laura, which plays on TCM now and then.
Out of the Past is excellent. Some great writing, like Mitchum to the femme fatale: “You’re like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another.”
Two with expired copyrights so they are available in full on YouTube and elsewhere: Detour, and Too Late For Tears (perhaps Dan Duryea’s most nasty villain).
Dark Passage is fun, especially if you know San Francisco (Bogie’s “shortcut” near the end is a ridiculous geographic garble).
CaseyL
I took a college course on noir movies. I hadn’t really encountered noir before, and the discussions about the characteristics of a noir film fascinated me.
We saw some, I guess you’d say middle of the pack – films that aren’t as celebrated as the favorites listed here. I remember The Big Heat and Underworld USA in particular for some reason. Maybe because Cliff Robertson is in the latter, and I had only ever seen him play good guys, so seeing him as a (mostly anti-) hero was a shock!
Seems to me there’s a lot of overlap between original noir and the gangster movies. Same themes, with anti-heroes and corruption everywhere.
JiveTurkin
@hueyplong: You’re right, it almost seems like he isn’t even Kirk Douglas, he really is Whit Sterling.
Anoniminous
@West of the Rockies:
Decades ago I got into a ridiculous multi-person discussion (read: Shouting Match) over that very topic. The crux was whether neo-noir was really film noir or merely borrowed/stole tropes, motifs, and mise-en-scènes of film noir.
As is the nature of those kind of things we never reached agreement but had a good time yelling at each other.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
Strangers on a Train.
Year of Living Dangerously.
RandyG
For noir fans, check out The Film Noir Foundation: https://www.filmnoirfoundation.org/
TBone
@apocalipstick: I adored The Late Show – so quirky!
TBone
I watched Bad Day at Black Rock today. Not classic noir but always excellent. Neo-western noir.
Winter Wren
Slow Horses is great, we eagerly await each Wednesday drop. Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas are phenomenal and waiting for Hugo Weaving to appear (haven’t seen today’s yet). Books very good too.
Bad Monkey (also on AppleTV) is well worth watching too – Vince Vaughn is surprisingly good. Kind of noir vibes, with some light comedy and southern Florida/Key West atmospherics thrown in. The book is also good.
These are the only shows that we watch currently that haven’t finished their seasons.
John Cole
No mention of Memento by anyone…
Mr. Bemused Senior
@John Cole: ooh yes good one
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
neo noir: The Professional, Le femme Nikita, State of Grace, V for Vendetta.
TBone
Klute is on TCM tomorrow night – neo noir ish.
hueyplong
@John Cole: It’s easy to overlook modern ones because when someone says “film noir” it’s pretty tempting to go all late 40s-early 50s.
An off the main path modern neo noir is Red Rock West.
Matthew
We just saw “Double Indemnity” for the first time – awesome. Also, local repertory theatre just showed “The Big Sleep” and, my fav, “The Maltese Falcon”.
nasruddin
Couple obscure ones for ya
Road House – Ida Lupino
The Stranger – Orson Welles – kind of a precursor to 3rd Man
This Gun For Hire – Ladd & Lake
Sure Lurkalot
Notorious (Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains) and the rarely shown Mirage (Gregory Peck, Diane Baker, Walter Matthau).
Sure Lurkalot
@TBone: I haven’t seen Klute in a while, Sutherland and Fonda were great in that flick.
NotMax
Keeping in mind that favorite is not necessarily the same as best.
Classic: M, Crossfire, Key Largo, Bad Day at Black Rock, The Thin Man.
Neo: Blade Runner, Blowup, Cutter’s Way, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Dark City.
divF
@Splitting Image: I will. never forget the word “reinemachefrau”.
Geminid
@Jeffro: It’s always good to remind Cornwell fans that he wrote some good action novels besides the Sharpe series. The protagonist in the Saxon Chronicles slashes and hacks his way through nine novels. The absence of gunpowder doesn’t seem to cramp Uthred’s style one bit.
The Grail Quest series is pretty good too That hero mopes around France shooting people with his longbow for three novels.
Cornwell also wrote three other series with eleven novels between them, plus five stand-alones. That’s as of 2016, which is when my copy of The Flame Bearer was printed.
nasruddin
@West of the Rockies: In that case, the first season of the Expanse
RandyG
@Sure Lurkalot: I love Mirage. Joe Turtle!
Citizen_X
@frosty: Also has a nice against-type turn by Samuel L. Jackson as a sad-sack alcoholic detective trying to redeem himself.
Stretching neo-noir (immediately post-cold war spy neo-noir?): Atomic Blonde. (Which also has a woman, Charlize Theron, as a Bourne-type lead.) Catches the slippery atmosphere of post-Warsaw Pact Berlin well.
prostratedragon
I like the genre a lot; no point in fussing the definition imo, because it becomes a wall that closes off the consideration of stories that belong together.
Some favorites not yet mentioned are D.O.A., The Big Combo, Scarlet Street, and Act of Violence.
Back when “women’s pictures” were still a thing there were some very noirish ones, like The Letter, Mildred Pierce, Nora Prentiss, The Reckless Moment, and Cause for Alarm! There’s even a noir case to be made for Sunset Boulevard and, from Eve Harrington’s p.o.v., for All About Eve.
prostratedragon
The first neo-noir might be Vertigo.
H.E.Wolf
Thank you for the other names, and the shout-out to Preston Sturges!
“The Lady Eve” revealed (to my surprise) that Henry Fonda could do physical comedy.
Back to noir… does Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” count as noir? It has un homme fatal, in the person of the glamorous uncle – in the sense of “casting a glamour” – who comes to visit.
Yarrow
I also liked the Coen brothers’ noir film, The Man Who Wasn’t There.
divF
Sweet Smell of Success. “Match me, Sidney”.
BR
Silicon Valley always hits close to home. It is strange how close a show that absurd is to being a documentary.
moonbat
@columbusqueen:
It had a fabulous line from Turner though: “You aren’t too smart, are you? I like that in a man.”
lol
Bupalos
I love The Sweet Smell of Success but after I watch it my internal monologue goes into a noir patter dialect for days on end, and that gets pretty annoying.
Gretchen
Do you have to start with season 1 of Slow Horses?
Chet Murthy
@Gretchen: I haven’t watched the series, but I hear they’re pretty faithful to the books. And yeah, I think you have to start the books with the first. FWIW.
RandyG
YW.
The Lady Eve is perfect in so many ways. It also showed that Barbara Stanwyck could effortlessly play comedy too.
Shadow of a Doubt would qualify as Noir, which is often the mood/feeling of a film, rather than whether it necessarily checks off the common characteristics.
Austin
@apocalipstick: Thanks for mentioning The Late Show. Carney and Tomlin are fantastic together.
BR
Harris is really sharp in this Ruhle interview (I’m finally watching). And I almost can’t watch at my usual 2x speed because she’s talking too fast.
dmsilev
@Gretchen: Not really. It helps because it introduces the main characters, but each season tells a pretty self-contained story.
prostratedragon
@Sure Lurkalot:
Mirage is a nifty puzzle.
moonbat
I’ve seen Night of the Hunter mentioned several times and some Coen Bros films. The Coen Bros must worship NotH because they keep recreating scenes from it in their movies. One of their wildest homages is in The Man Who Wasn’t There when they have Jon Polito recreate the scene with Shelly Winters being ‘buried’ in her car underwater after Mitchum offs her.
My favorite neo noir has to be Miller’s Crossing though, speaking of Coen Bros.
Rand Careaga
Night and the City: London noir.
karen marie
@Eolirin: It is. I’ve never seen it because I don’t have Apple TV but I cannot recommend the audio books enough. Mick Herron is a wonderful writer. I’ve listened to four or five of his Slough House series on Audible. I took a break because, as can happen with long series, they can start to run together. Herron’s short stories collected under the title Dolphin Junction are wonderful.
To clear my head, I’m on the second book of Caimh McConnell’s Dublin Trilogy. He’s as good as Mick Herron and reminds me of Donald E. Westlake. I love a hapless hero.
prostratedragon
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: Hitchcock generally is at least noir-ish [pace George Santos].
Honus
@hueyplong:
@hueyplong: good list but no love for Kiss of Death with Widmark as Tommy Udo?
schrodingers_cat
Hindi film noir of the 40s and 50s set mostly in around Mumbai or sometime Calcutta, is quite a trip.
C.I. D and Aar Paar both directed by Gurudutt come to mind.
Musically too, these movies set a high bar.
Honus
@JiveTurkin: Night of the Hunter is based on a true story and filmed just down the river from the Blogfather’s Bethany home in Proctor, WV. Check out Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips for the whole chilling true story of the serial killer Mitchum’s character is based on.
tihotm
Noir is a fave of mine. Great picks from everyone.
The original Nightmare Alley is pretty spectacular in my book … https://letterboxd.com/film/nightmare-alley/
Also too here’s a list of romcoms if anyone is looking for that genre https://letterboxd.com/paul_grace/list/a-romantic-comedy-list/
columbusqueen
@John Cole: Sorry, I think Christopher Nolan is highly overrated.
prostratedragon
@hueyplong: Crime Wave is good, though I’d say not great. Like many noirs, it has outstanding photography, and that strong debut by Bronson, who I think was billed under his given name. It also is the movie where I saw a man absolutely float across a floor and thought to myself, “This must be a dancer.” Turned out to be Gene Nelson, a couple of years before Oklahoma!.
columbusqueen
@schrodingers_cat: So does Mahal count as noir?
Honus
@nasruddin: Might as well put Blue Dahlia in there too. And I almost forgot maybe the best, The Glass Key
prostratedragon
For Rand Careaga @ 102:
👍👍👍
[Wait, three??!]
schrodingers_cat
@columbusqueen: IDK, but why not? Then Madhumati would have to count too. They were both great at building that eerie atmosphere.
I think of noir as mostly about movies with gangsters and such but I am not a film studies major.
Kent
I like Noir and have seen most or all of the films listed here. But I think to be honest, my faves from the classic period of the 1930s tend to be comedies. Bringing up Baby, Philadelphia Story, My Man Godfrey, Modern Times, etc.
So would No Country for Old Men and Fargo be considered Neo-Noir?
MaryRC
@columbusqueen: You should see Fred McMurray in The Caine Mutiny or The Apartment — about as far as a friendly dad figure as you could get.
Villago Delenda Est
@Timill: It all fits!
prostratedragon
English, or at least Anglo-American noir and Hindi noir have been mentioned. Eddie Mueller has promised more Argentine noir to come soon. He showed No abras nunca esa puerta [Never Open That Door] a few months ago and it was well worth seeing, kind of a missing link.
Honus
@moonbat: Miller’s Crossing is an explicit remake of The Glass Key.
Geoduck
John should join the DLDWWS.
columbusqueen
@MaryRC: Oh, I’ve seen both, but I think McMurray’s performance in Double Indemnity remains in a class by itself.
Maxim
@Gretchen: Not absolutely necessary, but I’d recommend it. Each season’s narrative does build on its predecessor(s).
columbusqueen
@schrodingers_cat: I think gangsters can be an element of noir, but not completely necessary. Most ’30s gangster films lack the femme fatale figure that strikes me as essential to ’40 noir.
columbusqueen
@prostratedragon: He ought to start showing some French New Wave neo-noir films, especially ones with Alain Delon.
VFX Lurker
I wanted to recommend Blade Runner as a good noir film, too, though at least one scene makes me uncomfortable (Deckard’s treatment of Rachael).
schrodingers_cat
I wish that Mnem still commented here. She would have a lot to say about this.
moonbat
@Honus: Except for the crucial scene when Tom has been ordered to kill Bernie at Miller’s Crossing on which the whole plot turns and the fact that Tom loves Leo more than he loves Verna, sure. lol
prostratedragon
Wrong thread
Rose Weiss
For something current that’s noirish – Monsieur Spade with Clive Owen on Netflix. Sam Spade’s life years after the events in the Maltese Falcon. I started watching only because Maltese Falcon is one of my all time favorite movies.
dlwchico
Slow Horses is great.
So good after I watch an episode I don’t want to watch anything else cause it all seems bland and stupid in comparison.
For noir, does the movie “Heat” count?
trollhattan
Slow Horses is so great. Gary Oldman tonight, everybody.
Me, departing sofa on hearing that.
ETA Body Heat holds up as modern noir. My vote, that’s it.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
@columbusqueen: His last film was a bomb
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
@Honus: He’s barely in the film. Though now that you mention Widmark he was in a great neon noir with Hackman, “The Domino Principle”
NotMax
@columbusqueen
Purple Noon? (The first talented Mr. Ripley film.)
Ivan X
Neo: Heat. Strange Days.
Armadillo
A friend of mine teaches a college course on noir. During the pandemic I audited it and complied the following rankings based on films in the course and films I saw myself:
1) The Big Sleep – Out of the Past
2) Double Indemnity
3) Mildred Pierce
4) The Last Seduction – Red Rocks West
5) Force of Evil
6) Body Heat – Gun Crazy
7) The Lady From Shanghai
8) The Maltese Falcon
9,999) A Touch of Evil
Also like many of the films others have recommended:. Chinatown, LA Confidential, Miller’s Crossing, Memento.
One that seems to have been left off: the Coen Brothers’ first film: Blood Simple.
RandyG
@NotMax: Purple Noon, sure! A lot of French New Wave, as mentioned, have rather distinct noirish sensibilities: Breathless, Alphaville, Shoot the Piano Player, Le Doulos, Le Samourai.
It took me several tries to get through Purple Noon. Not because I didn’t like it, but because much of it was so troubling.
cw moss
@geg6: the first seven comments name movies that are so dear to my heart that I’m almost brought to tears. Thanks all of you jackals.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
French noir: Rififi
NotMax
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
Great film (later retooled for Hollywood as Topkapi with the same director).
Wouldn’t categorize it as noir, though. A straight heist film.
SFAW
@frosty:
Long Kiss Goodnight?
Melancholy Jaques
@Torrey:
Also Robin Williams as the former psychiatrist.
kalakal
Stormy Monday neo noir with Sean Bean, Sting, Melanie Griffiths, Tommy Lee Jones
Get Carter (1971) Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, John Osborne, Britt Ekland
The Long Good Friday Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren
Mona Lisa Bob Hoskins, Kathy Tyson, Michael Caine
The first two are neo noir
The Long Good Friday is a fantastic film
Jim Brown
Mick Herron’s Jackson Lamb is first class anti-Bond entertainment and in a way so too is Ben The Mac of The Times … and if you like real fact based espionage tales of the unexpected try Beyond Enkription where Newcastle Brown and lager rule rather than effeminate martinis.
If ever there was a bunch of spies that despised the status quo in MI6 when John le Carré’s couch potatoes and Ian Fleming ruled the reading roosts then Pemberton’s People surely deserve the gold medal.
However, if you do read Beyond Enkription, it is an enthralling read as long as you don’t expect fictional agents like Ian Fleming’s incredible 007 to save the world or John le Carré’s sluggard yet illustrious Smiley to send you to sleep with his delicate diction, sophisticated syntax and placid plots.
For some Amazonians Beyond Enkription may be a free read but no matter what don’t miss a trip to the advert free website at TheBurlingtonFiles. It’s a museum of espionage exhilaration and true but oft sordid tales of the unexpected. PS Don’t forget the FaireSansDire website link on TheBurlingtonFiles home page.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@NotMax: Hard disagree about Rififi. The heist sequence is the center of the plot, and is the best ever on film, but the heist isn’t the point of the movie. The point is the relationships between characters, and how they fall into the darkness surrounding them. Truffaut called it “the best film noir I have ever seen.”
David_C
Slow Horses is great. I’d start from the beginning because each season is worth watching and for the character development. For great noir, one film not mentioned is I Wake Up Screaming, with Victor Mature and Betty Grable. It came out around the same time as Falcon, but had all the cinematography of noir – lighting, camera angles, shadows – and a noirish plot. The background music included “Over the Rainbow,” which was a little jarring for noir, but the performance by Laird Cregar is downright creepy.
Also in the public domain is The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, which was Kirk Douglas’s film debut and was also a Stanwyck vehicle.
Ah, the catching up when one is a morning person.
Noskilz
My favorite is The Maltese Falcon, but a very good noir film is 1946’s Deadline at Dawn A sailor who isn’t sure what he has been up to needs to clear his name fast.
Brighton Rock is also worth a look. Where a cheap hood with big ideas finds himself in over his head when a gullible young woman and comic singer cross his path.
hueyplong
I can almost hear Cole getting exasperated and saying, like Polito in Miller’s Crossing, “Running things!”
kalakal
@Noskilz: Richard Attenborough is wonderful in Brighton Rock as a ruthless psychopath, one of the most sinister characters in film
Elizabelle
This is a great thread. Saving it. Thanks, jackals.
satby
@Shana: @different-church-lady:
If you read the background about that movie, or the book it was based on, it makes sense. The censors of the time forced the sex trafficking and pornographic filming of the drug addicted younger sister to be mentioned so obliquely only viewers in the 40s got it.
prostratedragon
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch:
Like Night and the City, directed by Bronx native Jules Dassin who also did The Naked City.
Rififi is one of several very similar stories; also The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing, whose title reminds me that no one has mentioned one of the best, The Killers (1940something version). Any of these is a priority view in my book.
zhena gogolia
Sorry I missed this thread
zhena gogolia
@nasruddin: ida lupino singing one for my baby is the greatest
Jamey
A lot of great choices here
I’m watching Alphaville now (First time I saw it, I expected sci-fi.)
Motherless Brooklyn sticks with me as quality neo-noir. YMMV
satby
@zhena gogolia: right? Great thread!
tokyokie
@Chief Oshkosh: Of course, The Big Sleep is well-written. Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner co-wrote the screenplay!
tokyokie
@JiveTurkin: Or when Mitchum’s fiancee says nobody can be as evil as he’s described Jane Greer to be, Mitchum’s rejoinder is, “Yeah? Well she comes closest.”
zhena gogolia
All in all, not that they’re my favorites, but it seems to me that Detour, original DOA, and Out of the Past are quintessential noir. Everything else is an amalgam of noir with other genres.
But it’s just an opinion!
tokyokie
@MaryRC: Sadly, after years of Disney movies and My Three Sons, MacMurray, one of Hollywood’s most right-wing actors, basically disavowed his performances as a heel. But I’ll give him credit for pushing to have William Demarest replace William Frawley in My Three Sons after its first season. The show introduced Demarest to a new generation of viewers and provided him a nice retirement income. (MacMurray and Demarest were from the same hometown in Wisconsin, so MacMurray knew him from way back when.) Still, I find it interesting that an Austrian Jew (Billy Wilder) recognized MacMurray as personifying the banality of evil, whereas most everybody else in Hollywood didn’t see that aspect of him.
tokyokie
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: Directed by an American, Jules Dassin, who fled Hollywood after being outed to the HUAC types by the loathsome Elia Kazan. He stopped in London on his way to France to make Night and the City.
PBK
This was like a bonus mid-week Medium Cool post! Great discussion and suggestions.
tokyokie
A couple of noirs that I consider great that are barely or not touched in this thread: Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (for those wondering where Tarantino got the idea for the mysterious glowing briefcase in Pulp Fiction) and Angel Face, in my opinion, Mitchum’s best noir outside Out of the Past. Reportedly, Otto Preminger kept asking for retakes of a scene in which Mitchum slaps co-star Jean Simmons, claiming Mitchum wasn’t hitting her hard enough. Mitchum finally got fed up and went over to Preminger and hit him as hard as he could. “Like that, Otto? Is that hard enough?” As a result, Preminger didn’t ask for any more retakes, and Simmons became a lifelong friend of Mitchum.
And yes, I should have gotten on this thread last night.
Shana
@JoyceH: my big guns are either The Women or Auntie Mame. With a possible third and fourth being The World of Henry Orient and The Trouble with Angels. None of them noir in the least.
Shana
@RandyG: another great Stanwyck is Ball of Fire
zhena gogolia
@Shana: If we get started on Stanwyck, this will be a TBogg!
Pensive
I know folks are focused on early noir, but one of my favorites is “Brick” directed by Rian Johnson and starring Joseph Gordon Levitt. I love that it’s all high school kids (you hear one adult voice and see one adult actor) dealing with serious stuff and the language is a great throwback to those old moves.
Femme Fatale “Do you trust me now?”
Levitt “Less now than when I didn’t trust you before”.
Also recently rewatched “The Last Seduction” – not sure that’s noir (or will cure you of your dislike for objectionable people” but wow what a film.
Elizabelle
@tokyokie: OMG that’s a great story about Robert Mitchum. Truly a good guy.
Primer Gray (formerly Yet Another Jeff
I have a weird and deep love of Murder My Sweet…Dick Powell’s Marlow is more or less unconscious for 1/4 or the film.
And after Halloween, it’ll be time for noir xmas films…like Blast of Silence.
stinger
Great noir I don’t think has been mentioned is the 1955 Diabolique with Simone Signoret, and a film probably no one here has seen, the 1982 Praying Mantis with Cheri Lunghi and Johnathan Pryce.
stinger
@zhena gogolia:
If we get started on Stanwyck, I’ll have to drop off and watch a buncha movies!
Fig Lewton
This is my first post–I guess the noir question reeled me in. I read the first 40 comments or so and did not see the name Val Lewton, so if someone beat me to it, my apologies. Val Lewton produced low budget horror noir films to compete with Universal studios. In my opinion those films from 1942-46 are all masterpieces of cinematography and suspense. “Cat People” may be the most well-known, but the sequel “Curse of the Cat People” is equally good. Also try, well, try all of them–but I love “I Walked With a Zombie” and “The Leopard Man”. If you have never watched a Lewton film from this era, pop some popcorn and get ready for a cerebral, dreamy, visual masterpiece.
gluon1
@Pensive: I’m so glad you mention Brick which is astonishingly good neo-noir.
For the old ones, I echo the praise of Out of the Past and The Maltese Falcon and would add The Thin Man, which is noir and clever despite being comedic, Kubrick’s The Killing, and The Big Heat and Kansas City Confidential as excellent classics that I haven’t seen mentioned yet.
RandyG
@Fig Lewton: Gee, I wonder how you came up with your nym? Val Lewton was a master innovator, particularly in how he achieved what he did — making you see and feel things that are NOT actually there — with miniscule budgets. (Of course his approach was required mainly because of the miniscule budgets.) And let’s give a shout out as well to Cat People director Jacques Tourneur, who also directed the very-mentioned-here and superb Out of the Past.
The Unmitigated Gaul
@hueyplong: The Don Siegel-directed “The Killers”? Superb movie. Also, Siegel’s “Charlie Varrik.” And (speaking of Walter Matthau), the original “Taking of Pelham 123”