The Film Noir Thread

What's your favourite example of a film noir?

For me, the ideal candidate has:

• Deep shadow photography

• A voice over

• A tough but none-too-bright (fall)guy/anti-hero.

• A smart and sexy femme fatale to lure said anti-hero to his doom

• Flashbacks

• A downbeat ending…

Looking at that checklist some might say that Vertigo, The Manchurian Candidate and The Third Man qualify. Feel free to make the case. If you can find and load an appropriate clip from youtube all the better.

Anyway, for me it's Out of the Past .

Its got all that and more. 8)

The obvious choice, Colly, but I can't argue against it. :)

ambler wrote:

The obvious choice, Colly, but I can't argue against it. :)

I got that in a DVD shop I frequent - we started talking about 30s gangster films and moved on to noir. His favourite was THE KILLERS, while he said DOUBLE INDEMNITY was the obvious choice. And even though it was nowhere near my first noir, I've found nothing before or since that continues to have the same power/intensity/zing as DOUBLE INDEMNITY. Its a cocktail that's simply got-it-all, and I cant help if everyone else finds it similarly awesome. ;)

That said, I suppose I'm more attuned to the more "pleasing" aspects of noir - I love tough-talkers, sexy dames, smoking, gun-play, murder and retribution; and commonly find them more engrossing than the "lost soul" side of noir like OUT OF THE PAST. Though I simply love THEY LIVE BY NIGHT, IN A LONELY PLACE and ON DANGEROUS GROUND.

I'll take...



Preminger's best before he went independent. It deserves all the attention Laura gets, and more.

That's the film I think of when I think noir, but my favourite film within the genre has to be...



A film that (arguably) establishes a genre, and at the same time, doesn't take it seriously at all.

For me "Kiss me Deadly" is the perfect example of the genre:

That film is so terrifically nasty. I love how Meeker grins when he slams a guys fingers in a draw. 8)

colly wrote:

That film is so terrifically nasty. I love how Meeker grins when he slams a guys fingers in a draw. 8)

His portrayal of Hammer was really the prototype of the perfect noir anti-hero.

Salomé wrote:

colly wrote:

That film is so terrifically nasty. I love how Meeker grins when he slams a guys fingers in a draw. 8)

His portrayal of Hammer was really the prototype of the perfect noir anti-hero.

Noir is mostly 1940s for me and KMD wasn't until 1955. BTW, has anyone here seen Prix de Beauté?

ambler wrote:

Salomé wrote:

colly wrote:

That film is so terrifically nasty. I love how Meeker grins when he slams a guys fingers in a draw. 8)

His portrayal of Hammer was really the prototype of the perfect noir anti-hero.

Noir is mostly 1940s for me and KMD wasn't until 1955. BTW, has anyone here seen Prix de Beauté?

A valid point, though Meeker's portrayal was undeniably influential.

I have always thought that Aldrich's amoral protagonists (Joe Erin in Vera Cruz) influenced both Boorman and Leone.

I'll nominate HANGOVER SQUARE, LE DIABOLIQUES, THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, LE DOULOS, THE LOST WEEKEND, SUNSET BOULEVARD, and THE NAKED CITY.

Reasoning will come later.

But I have to say, I don't think noir is a genuine genre. It's just a style of expressionist crime thriller. So therefore, it can merge with the French New Wave, Italian Neorealism, and German Expressionism, et al.

Salomé wrote:

I have always thought that Aldrich's amoral protagonists (Joe Erin in Vera Cruz) influenced both Boorman and Leone.

He certainly influenced Leone. Aldrich is yet another director who seems to have been forgotten. Interesting how reputations fade, sometimes for no obvious reason.

Coming back to this thread, is there such a thing as European noir or is it an exclusively America idiom? I ask because film noir clearly owes its look to German expressionism and there is the occasional neo-noir, for want of a better expression, that emerges from Europe, most recently Mike Hodges' final films.

EDIT: I see Sharky's post has overtaken mine. Something to discuss anyway.

ambler wrote:

Coming back to this thread, is there such a thing as European noir or is it an exclusively America idiom?

Although it's more to do with setting, I think Night and the City certainly qualifies. That being said, opinion seems to be divided on the matter.

But I think there's a difference between something with noir style and elements and an actual noir film. Les Diabloiques had never occurred to me as a noir.

And there's also the post-war shift away from heavy shadows and romanticism into grittier works, usually shot on location - Boomerang, Pickup on South Street and the like. Are they more suitable candidates as noir than The Third Man, purely because of where they're shot?

I remember that one of my teachers, a while back, stated that every American drama made from c. 1941 to c. 1959 or so had some noir DNA. I'm hard pressed to find any examples that disprove that theory.

Did EAST OF EDEN really have noir elements?

Did Written on the Wind?

Sharky wrote:

Did EAST OF EDEN really have noir elements?

Maybe it was an earlier cutoff date. I can't remember.

Although Aron arguably plays into the doppelganger trope to a degree. Cal's as wayward as they come. And the photography briefly moves into deep shadows.

ambler wrote:

What's your favourite example of a film noir?

Oh, I don't know. That's a hard one. It's such a rich genre. My personal favorite is probably TOUCH OF EVIL.

ambler wrote:

Looking at that checklist some might say that Vertigo, The Manchurian Candidate and The Third Man qualify. Feel free to make the case. If you can find and load an appropriate clip from youtube all the better.

VERTIGO sits on the fringe, but I don't think it's really a great example of film noir, even if it is pretty much the greatest thing to happen to ever happen to cinema.

Arkadin wrote:

ambler wrote:

Looking at that checklist some might say that Vertigo, The Manchurian Candidate and The Third Man qualify.

VERTIGO sits on the fringe, but I don't think it's really a great example of film noir

Nor do I, but it shows the hazard of reducing films to checklists.

She's a dish... a 60 cent special, cheap, flashy, strictly poison under the gravy...

Perhaps "The Lady from Shanghai" would also count, along with "The Web", "Kiss of Death", and "Dark Passage".

Mr. Brown wrote:

Perhaps "The Lady from Shanghai" would also count

I would enter that in two categories; 'film noir' and 'unintentional comedy' for Awesome Orson's Appalling Oirish Accent. His speech is almost as bad as my alliteration.

ambler wrote:

What's your favourite example of a film noir?

For me, the ideal candidate has:

• Deep shadow photography

• A voice over

• A tough but none-too-bright (fall)guy/anti-hero.

• A smart and sexy femme fatale to lure said anti-hero to his doom

• Flashbacks

• A downbeat ending…

Looking at that checklist some might say that Vertigo, The Manchurian Candidate and The Third Man qualify. Feel free to make the case. If you can find and load an appropriate clip from youtube all the better.

Anyway, for me it's Out of the Past .

Yes! In some ways OUT OF THE PAST is my favorite movie. It's hard to explain, but I seem to love every second of it. It's not really my favorite film, but I just love it. And it's the perfect noir to me. DOUBLE INDEMNITY is up there on that list as well.

Mr. Brown wrote:

She's a dish... a 60 cent special, cheap, flashy, strictly poison under the gravy...

Perhaps "The Lady from Shanghai" would also count, along with "The Web", "Kiss of Death", and "Dark Passage".

THE NARROW MARGIN is another one I love. Not a world class piece of cinema, but a great B movie and a film any thriller director should know IMO. Just a great, cheap, pulpy piece of entertainment. I'm a big fan of Charles McGraw too.

Arkadin wrote:

ambler wrote:

What's your favourite example of a film noir?

Oh, I don't know. That's a hard one. It's such a rich genre. My personal favorite is probably TOUCH OF EVIL.

TOUCH OF EVIL is, like (and I'll catch shit for this) VERTIGO, a film that I admire greatly but that doesn't actually move me as much.

I've only posted this a bazillion times...



And this... Any fans of DETOUR? Sometimes I like my noir cheap and dirty.

I'd say Double Indemnity...but that's a bit too cliche. Chinatown really does it for me. Even if it's more recent I consider it among the best in the genre. And one of the best films of all time really.

Strangers on a Train has always felt noir-esque to me, more-so than Vertigo anyway. Both are fantastic films.

I never really saw NOTORIOUS as a noir, though I see it included in many lists.

Does you guys look at it as a genre? Or as a style? I say "post facto genre". I see it was a cycle of films that had a similar style or themes that evolved into a genre when people like us looked back at them.

Well, the French didn't back. They looked at them.

Hitchcock now means more than just the director; it's become a genre of its own.