Thu 24 Aug 2023
From a Q&A newsletter called Quora that comes into my email inbox a few times a week, a question was asked, “What do you think are the four best noir films of all time, ones you would use to introduce the genre to, say, teenagers today?”
The answer as given, in order:
1. Double Indemnity
2. The Maltese Falcon
3. Laura
4. Detour
Not a bad list, but what do you think? If you were add a number 5, what would it be?
August 24th, 2023 at 4:15 pm
I dunno. To me, noir’s a dense fog, a sense of malaise, of inescapable doom, haunting the atmosphere. Like The Third Man and Out of the Past. The ones cited are good. I like them. And they’re in the noir canon probably. But not sure if they’d form my paradigm and not sure those four form an aesthetic unity as clearly as say: M, out of the past, third man, and night of the hunter.
BTW, a site’s been trying to put together an essential noir list of 1000 films. They’re up to 990:
https://www.theyshootpictures.com/noir1000a.htm
August 24th, 2023 at 4:30 pm
Out of the Past, Murder My Sweet, The Big Sleep, I Wake Up Screaming, Notorious, Shadow of Doubt, Asphalt Jungle, The Big Heat, Night of the Hunter, even the slicker The Postman Always Rings Twice all before Detour. The other three I’m fine with.
Detour is an interesting film but honestly, I have always found it highly overrated, marred by the limits of its stars. Ulmer is a fine director for poverty row and B films, but he’s not an A film director.
August 24th, 2023 at 5:46 pm
I agree with David, but hanging out on the fringe, Force of Evil and Johnny O’Clock.
August 24th, 2023 at 5:55 pm
As said above, “Out of the Past”, “The Third Man”,
“Murder My Sweet”, and one no one seems to mention
anymore, “Stranger On the Third Floor”, a really terrific noir with Peter Lorre. As to “Asphalt Jungle” I don’t consider it a noir but my all time favorite “Caper” movie.
August 24th, 2023 at 7:33 pm
I’d add “Gun Crazy” as #5, but “The Big Heat” would be a near-tie.
August 24th, 2023 at 8:46 pm
The Lady From Shanghai and Ruthless are quality products that fit the bill.
August 24th, 2023 at 10:29 pm
Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, In a Lonely Place, Third Man, and The Big Heat. I’d also like to give special mention to Raw Deal, which I think is the most underrated film noir.
August 25th, 2023 at 4:54 am
I may have said here before, I don’t do words like “best” and “favorite” because I might enjoy certain elements, performances, scenes or whatchawannacallits in a movie, and can’t decide whether I like them better than other — maybe completely different — bits of other films.
And there are moments in distinctly inferior films that I truly treasure. Like the surreal torture scene in THE LONG WAIT, or the chilling moment in CONFIDENTIAL AGENT when cringing Peter Lorre whines, “The Doctor gave me six months to live.” and Charles Boyer coldly replies, “He was wrong.”
So let me just cite two films that might be overlooked: Michael Curtiz’ super-stylish THE UNSUSPECTED and Nicholas Ray’s ON DANGEROUS GROUND. And then there’s HIS KIND OF WOMAN. And THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER…..
August 25th, 2023 at 8:26 am
All good choices – I personally love THE THIRD MAN, and we once got to follow part of their footsteps in Vienna (other than the sewer!).
BLOOD SIMPLE
August 25th, 2023 at 10:28 am
A more recent movie, but Body Heat with Kathleen Turner and William Hurt
August 25th, 2023 at 8:46 pm
I’m one of those strict, rigid “purists” when it comes to defining film noir.
To me, the term only accurately applies to a set of low-budget Hollywood ‘studio production tricks’ forced on some American filmmakers immediately post-WWII.
I feel it’s a methodology rather than a style; a creativity based on cost-cutting. The ‘cleverness by necessity’ achieved by those experimental-minded directors and producers wrought stark results which were at their most quintessential in just that one time and place.
How does ‘pure’ noir afect me? How does viewing a pure noir (like Ulmer’s ‘Detour’) make me feel? Physically nauseous. It’s nausea so sharp I want to vomit.
The oppressive, palpable disgust and revolt is as overwhelming as the “fright” found in horror movies, but not quite the same as that at all.
It’s distinctly a “despair”, which is as much spiritual/metaphysical, as it is physical.
It’s a queasy, squirming, “stomach-sinking-into-a-pit” sensation so intense, I want to slither down under the steel swivels of my theater-seat to escape it. Or even, crawl out of the theater on my hands and knees.
It feels as if life is over. It feels as if I’m being tied to a stake for execution by a firing squad. A ‘sense of impending doom’ so harrowing …like I’m an insect being tortured by cruel toddlers just prior to being squashed into a pulp.
As entertaining as so many other works may be, nothing else feels quite like ‘pure’ noir. No mystery, no detective-mystery, no WarnerBros crime yarn invokes such panic, dread, and self-loathing.
All those other great flicks –wonderful though they be –seem to merely graze, “stumble into”, or “brush up against” the noir formula by accident, or from habit, or by calculated borrowing of the exemplar.
Since Ulmer’s “Detour” is already present in the list above, I might only add Jules Dassin’s “Night and the City” as title #5.
I’d include it even though this flick supports the contrary argument that noir is a style rather than a method, since it is set in London.
I’ll nonetheless still maintain that the very purest form of noir is rooted in Joe McCarthy’s 1950s, post-war America, with a nameless, ‘everyman’ type of character, and ideally a broke, ex-WWII G.I. who can’t find a job.
August 26th, 2023 at 12:03 pm
Lazy
That’s about the most accurate description of Film Noir as I’ve ever read, based on a personal reactive basis. And why not?
August 26th, 2023 at 11:11 am
I would add The Third Man, and I would replace Detour with The Big Sleep.
I think four—or five—is really too few, given the number of choices, and you would be more likely to get a consensus at ten or twelve.
August 26th, 2023 at 12:33 pm
You could also try to capture the best directors in such a list, for example:
Kubrick: the killing/shining/clockwork orange/Lolita
Welles: touch of evil/lady from Shanghai
Hitchcock: psycho/vertigo/rear window
Huston: Maltese Falcon/treasure of the sierra madre/asphalt jungle
Lang: big heat, scarlet street, m
August 26th, 2023 at 12:38 pm
Add to prior comment:
Wilder: double indemnity, ace in the hole, sunset Blvd
August 26th, 2023 at 3:06 pm
re: #12. Thx thx thx
Yea, hardcore noir shakes me up like a rag doll.
If the protag is written as an everyday-joe, and photographed with that gritty ‘low budget’ aesthetic, then [for me] the line between screen and world dissolves. Whatever befalls that ‘schlep’, feels like it’s befalling me.
Whereas, if the male lead is a boxer, a hit-man, a detective, or smart guy like Harry Lime –someone with ‘life skills’ –then, it loses that icy noir edge and becomes merely “fun and entertaining”.
The plot is then, “happening to someone else”. It’s ‘happening to’ Humphrey Bogart (so I kinda know he’ll get out of it). Or it’s ‘happening to’ Kirk Douglas (and I know he can take it).
But good noir is like undergoing a personal existential crisis. One might well ask, “What is the ‘quintessential noir scene?” –we do this for other genres.
For noir, I’d name a little moment from Kubrick’s “Killer’s Kiss”.
It’s the horrible instant when the poor sap has his scarf plucked off his neck by the wind, and he has to go chasing it down the street. As soon as I saw that, I knew I was in for another slough-of-despond.
And the universal noir image might just be Tom Neal dressed in bum’s rags, shuffling off down Route 66 (or whatever interstate that was), knowing he has nowhere to go anymore.
Or the sight of Burt Lancaster in an apron behind the counter of that diner in Summit New Jersey, as McGraw and Conrad come in looking for The Swede.
Agggh! Noir!
August 28th, 2023 at 12:06 pm
I must venture to suggest that Lazy George’s movie memory has expanded to include scenes that were never filmed. I’m not sure we ever even see pump-jockey Burt in the diner in THE KILLERS, much less behind the counter in an apron.
Still, it is an intriguing thought…..
August 28th, 2023 at 5:55 pm
The opening scene in the diner is one of the greatest in all film noirdom. Unless he’s shown there in a flashback, Burt’s not there, even later on, and I”m sure I would remember it. Wouldn’t I?
November 28th, 2023 at 12:17 pm
re: #18 yes, that occurred to me after I posted. The Burt Man is not actually in the first sequence. My mistake! What a goof!
But –moving right along –I have a fresh/unrelated inquiry here –and I don’t know how to post this as a “formal inquiry” to the site, so I’m adding it to this thread. Hope that’s okay.
TV/Cinema Trivia question.
You all know how Dick Powell –as Phil Marlowe –is lounging in his office one night, sipping scotch, gazing out his window at the lights of Los Angeles. He’s got no active cases. No dough coming in.
It’s all part of the opening sequence in ‘Murder My Sweet’. Suddenly –behind him –the ghastly face of Moose Malone (Mike Mazurki) looms over him in the darkness, reflected by the neons winking on his windowpane. Powell sits up and turns around.
So far so good? Okay so, I’m talking to someone lately who wants to know whether there is any crime, mystery, noir, hard-boiled detective movie-or-TV-series which incarnates the archetype above: keeping everything exactly the same as the above, except that ‘the detective turns around’ because of a knock at his door. He bids the visitor to enter and the newcomer is a beautiful femme fatale in need of his help. Via voice-over, his mental patter is the usual, ” …she looked like trouble right from the start…” or words to this effect.
He swears this is the opening scene in a classic crime flick. I’ve racked my brains trying to pin this down. A lot of candidates were easily eliminated; I’m fairly sure that it’s not the opening scene in any of the really famous P.I. movies.
Currently, I’m hunting through old episodes of Mike Hammer on TV (Darren McGavin’s run), Lloyd Nolan’s Mike Shayne movies, the early Spillane movies like ‘Girl Hunters’, and even the Bob Hope parody movies like ‘My Favorite Brunette’.
The maddening aspect of it all, is that this ‘trope’ could literally be from anywhere: TV commercials, graphic novels, SNL skits, cartoons. It might not have ever been filmed at all. Could be found only in homages or pastiches. Might not even be from the majors era, could be something from the ’70s.
So as a last resort, I am throwing myself on the mercy of this court. What say ye? Thx thx thx!