Film Noir - recommendations?

[evilC]

I've just realised that I can't say that I've knowingly seen any real Film Noir. (No, really!)

However, I've just come across this 'top 25'. Would you mostly agree with this list or are there any missing entries that trump these?

[Cal Alamein]

Film Noir - recommendations?

Love a lot those on the list.

Go for #s 4, 5, 11, 15, 21 and 23.

[jason voorhees]

Film Noir - recommendations?

I wrote a few Film Noir reviews back in the day.

Religious Experiences
Out of the Past - Mitchum at his haunted best, and one of the greatest endings of any movie ever made.

Detour - Rancid, dark, cheap, scary, while giving you the feeling of falling into Hell. One of those great Z Movies that turns out through it's cheapness and mistakes to hit every miracle perfect note.

The Set Up - Martin Scorcese showed this to Leonardo DiCaprio before filming The Departed. DiCaprio excitedly said "this is a masterpiece !" To which Scorcese replied "yeeeeahhhh...that's why I showed it to you..."

There's a comic series out called "Fatale," which every fan of film noir must look up. It takes the archetype of the Femme Fatale...haunted, irresistible to men, brunette with red lipstick...and explains that it's actually a demonic curse. Only a matter of time before it ends up on HBO or the movie theatres.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Film Noir - recommendations?

Here's a few more:

The Blue Dahlia — Arguably the best of the Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake flicks.

Born to Kill

The Big Clock

I, The Jury*

Kiss Me Deadly*

Black Angel

Border Incident

* Mike Hammer movies. A warning: It's impossible to avoid, or excuse, the misogyny of writer Micky Spillane. That said, if you can grit your teeth both these are worth the trouble. Kiss Me Deadly is just plain astonishing — especially the ending.

[Incandenza]

Film Noir - recommendations?

I had a post that got eaten up. Second on Kiss Me Deadly. It also serves as an excellent timepiece for how downtown LA used to look like. All of the streets filled with skyscrapers housing banking and insurance companies now on Bunker Hill used to be a tight network of tenements, boarding houses, and bars.

Others: Strangers on a Train, Notorious (both Hitchcock--the first is more traditional noir), The Third Man, Stray Dog, Wages of Fear (some might say this is more suspense than noir, but it fits for me).

Neo-noir and noir-inspired: Chinatown, The Long Goodbye, Blue Velvet, Blade Runner, LA Confidential, The Usual Suspects, and Lone Star.

[G-Man]

Film Noir - recommendations?

If you are going to start wuith Film Noir, start with the obvious ones: The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, Out Of The Past, Sunset Boulevard...

[Amor de Cosmos]

Film Noir - recommendations?

Out of the Past is included in clive's link.

There's an ongoing conversation about what qualifies as noir. Must be B&W (most agree.) Urban locale (check, though there's a current trend to include rural noir — Border Incident would be an example.) Movies like Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard, or Hitchcock's films, are often ignored, either because they have A-list actors/directors, and/or were intended as first features, with a commensurate budget. Fifty years ago this would have been more evident than today, but purists still hold to it.

For me, noir is despair, pessimism, loneliness. People trapped within their own memories or obsessions. There's no humour, except extreme sarcasm — which is why, personally, I wouldn't include Hitchcock — and most of all no solutions, no way out. Noir films are individualism turned sour, the inverse of the American Dream. That's why they're deeply subversive, and why we find them more attractive today than they were on their release.

[Ginger Yellow]

Film Noir - recommendations?

Old school noir:

The Big Sleep
The Maltese Falcon
Key Largo
Strangers on a Train
Touch of Evil

Neo-noir:
Chinatown
The Long Goodbye
Vivement, Dimanche!
Get Carter

Modern Noir:
Red Rock West
The Last Seduction
The Man Who Wasn't There
Blade Runner

Noir parody/pastiche:
The Big Lebowski
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
Barton Fink

[blameless]

Film Noir - recommendations?

Devil In A Blue Dress is another good modernish noir thriller.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Film Noir - recommendations?

As G-Man said above

If you are going to start wuith Film Noir, start with the obvious ones: The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, Out Of The Past, Sunset Boulevard...

Several posters have mentioned The Big Sleep already. It's barely believable that it could not feature in any "top 25".

[Amor de Cosmos]

Film Noir - recommendations?

In part it might be because there are two versions, and one (the re-edited cinematic release) is generally considered more noir-ish than the (un-released until 1995) original.

There are significant differences — in the un-released version there's less Bogie and Bacall and more exposition, so the plot actually makes sense. Noir-ists tend to prefer the originally released version, they like the confused ambiguity and interaction between the two leads. Roger Ebert has a good essay on the differences.

It was also big box-office, which counts against it's noirishness for many people. It came at the height of Bogart/Bacall fever — which is why it was re-edited.

[Come along, Min]

Film Noir - recommendations?

The Lady From Shanghai.

Not only my favourite noir but a fairly underrated Orson Welles piece too. Very trippy film for a major studio to be putting out in 1947

Rita Hayworth

[Shaughnessy]

Film Noir - recommendations?

Was surprised to see In a Lonely Place on that list, never mind at the top of it. It's the chintziest of melodramas. Anyone looking for a lesser known noir starring Bogart would be better off seeing Dark Passage first. Bacall is in it and it was directed by Delmer Daves, who also made the original 3.10 to Tuma.

[Slightly Brown]

Film Noir - recommendations?

Luke R wrote: The Lady From Shanghai.

Not only my favourite noir but a fairly underrated Orson Welles piece too. Very trippy film for a major studio to be putting out in 1947

Rita Hayworth

The incidentals - his appalling Irish accent; their divorce and her subsequent brutal haircut - add to it too. You could argue Mr Arkadin was noir, but then the last time I tried that gas a dame slugged me and left me sore with the memory of her chewing-gum walk.

[Sam]

Film Noir - recommendations?

Staggered that I'm only the second person to mention The Third Man. I love it.

And seconded on Welles' Irish accent in The Lady From Shanghai. It's a fine film but I almost pissed myself laughing when he first started talking (perhaps worth mentioning that a friend had leant me the DVD with the words, 'This film contains the worst attempt at an Irish accent you will ever hear from a professional actor').

I've not seen a lot of noir, but I like what I have seen. I'll certainly be revisiting this thread for some recommendations, especially since rather a lot of old stuff is on Netflix.

[Ginger Yellow]

Film Noir - recommendations?

I love The Third Man, but I don't really consider it noir. I mean, I can understand why people sometimes classify it as such, but it's too far away from the archetype for me to group it with, say, Double Indemnity.

[MsD]

Film Noir - recommendations?

Me too. It's my favourite genre, and while many great films are noirish, they're not noir.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Film Noir - recommendations?

Yes, because it's a b&w suspense flick from the 40s/50s doesn't necessarily mean it's noir. OTOH it's hard to pin down exactly what does (see above.)

[MsD]

Film Noir - recommendations?

I thought you did it very well.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Film Noir - recommendations?

T'anks. You're a swell dame.

[MsD]

Film Noir - recommendations?

Huh. You should see me on a good day.

[via vicaria]

Film Noir - recommendations?

Sorry, Wrong Number is a less popular one that I quite like. And for something a little different there's the noir-inspired animated film Renaissance (Paris 2054), which is one of the more stunningly animated things I've seen.

[Sam]

Film Noir - recommendations?

As I mentioned on Facebook the other day, The Maltese Falcon is available for the watching here, and it is bloody superb.

[Sam]

Film Noir - recommendations?

Also, why would you specifically exclude The Third Man, AdeC? Based on what you mentioned in your second post, I mean? Too much humour? Too big a name involved in the making of it?

[Ginger Yellow]

Film Noir - recommendations?

It's a spy thriller at heart that draws on noir influences.