Barbara Stanwyck is perhaps the ultimate femme fatale and this is because of her performance in ' Double Indemnity ' Side note : I always picture hee when I hear the following line from Elvis Costello's ' Watching The Detectives ' : " She's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake " Don't know why but I do.
She is great. I love the line by Fred McMurray describing her as a "red-hot poker": "So I let her have it, straight between the eyes. She didn't fool me for a minute, not this time. I knew I had ahold of a red-hot poker, and the time to drop it was before it burned my hand off. I was all twisted up inside and I was still holding on to that red-hot poker. And right then it came over me that I hadn't walked out on anything at all, that the hope was too strong, that this wasn't the end between her and me. It was only the beginning." Such a great metaphor . He recognizes the danger of her, yet also the allure and seductive power she holds over him that he cannot let her go (still holding onto the red-hot poker that its burning his hand off). They don't write dialogue much like this anymore.
A nice synopsis with great commentary and background information on Double Indemnity from TCM: A common misconception is that Double Indemnity is "about a femme fatale sexually coercing a man into committing murder. That is not what this film is about. Walter Neff's real motive isn't a dalliance with Mrs. Dietrichson; it is proving that he can beat the house, that Barton Keyes' infallible actuarial tables do not apply to him. The affair between Phyllis and Walter is less about sexual attraction than it is about a pair of schemers coldly manipulating each other. The real love story and genuine heartbreak is between Neff and Keyes."
Thanks, we lost TCM several months ago with Xfinity. Most days no big deal, thanks to a dvd/Blu-ray Jones, but some days it is. I ordered the Blu-ray last night while looking at the program grid and nursing a Bushmill on the rocks. This intro/outro covers all the bases. Love the inclusion of the wig critique, which is an eyesore, but acknowledged and nicely explained away here.
Germany and France were making film noir in the 1930s. Some of you have confused mystery and suspense films with film noir. For hardboiled film noir I recommend: 1946 The Postman Always Rings Twice 1947 Nightmare Alley 1947 The Set-Up 1947 They Live By Night 1948 Key Largo 1948 Raw Deal 1949 Border Incident 1949 Gun Crazy 1949 The Third Man 1950 The Asphalt Jungle 1950 The Breaking Point 1952 The Narrow Margin 1953 The Big Heat 1955 The Big Combo 1955 Kiss Me Deadly 1957 Sweet Smell of Success 1959 Touch of Evil Major films when they were released, and great films each and every one.
To me Noir stopped being interesting when it started down the road to explicit sadism. Say what you will about the Hays Code but it made movies more clever.
It's silly but I can never get My Three Sons (or Murder, He Says) Fred McMurray out of my mind when I watch Double Indemnity. I never liked Barbara Stanwyck so also I can never understand why anyone would fall for her. OTOH Out of the Past is aces.
Good point. Can you think of any scene or line in these noir films that just caught you by surprise? I'm trying to think of some but I'm drawing a blank. I do remember saying to myself in reaction to some really old ones..."How did they let that get by the censors?" "Who directed this?!...Oh, William Wellman...that figures!" Just saw a couple of weeks ago a noire Bogart flick on the "Movies" channel called "In A Lonely Place" that had some really intense scenes and complex psychological situations that seemed over the top cruel and inappropriate. It was directed by Nicholas Ray.
The coffee incident in The Big Heat came as a shock. I think everyone has their own idea as to what is "film noir," beyond, "a saving of electricity." I like some Alan Ladd's earlier films. Two he made in 1942. I'd consider "This Gun For Hire" film noir, but "The Glass Key" not.
I saw both of these on a double bill at the New Beverly 10 years ago. I was mostly disappointed that Veronica Lake didn't have her peek-a-boo hairstyle. I'm a big fan of Sullivan's Travels. The audience wasn't impressed either but it's pretty tough to outdo Bogart in any Chandler or Hammett movie. William Bendix was great.
I may have already stated this, but to be film noir I feel like some sort of illicit romance/affair/seduction has to be at the center of it all, whether it be a femme fatale (Scarlet Street), a homme fatale (The Prowler), true partners in crime (Gun Crazy) or against each other (Nightmare Alley.) If that aspect is secondary to the point you don't even remember it, I have a hard time calling it noir. For this reason a lot of the heist films like The Killers, Kansas City Confidential or Asphalt Jungle just don't feel like noir to me, too many dudes. They seem to have more in common with Fast and the Furious than The Last Seduction. I have already mentioned how regular detectives with barely any personal involvement in the case don't feel like noir to me either (many Bogie ones), despite it being the basis of the literary version. Maybe those films are boiled so hard that the central man is too cynical to ever get truly duped by a dame, and too fast talking to seem relatable to me. This all makes things hard to define, because a film like My Name is Julia Ross or Cause for Alarm by most accounts shouldn't be included, but I want to. Maybe it simply comes down to my preference for the "woman's picture" noir over the gangster/heist/detective type noir. I am curious what someone's idea of the dream cast for a single noir is. For choice characters/actors I could watch forever I gotta say Robinson, Bennett and Duryea in Scarlet Street. But then you have Stanwyck, Heflin, Scott, Douglas in Strange Love of Martha Ivers, and a curious alternate with Stanwyck, Heflin, Mason, Gardner in East Side West Side. Then just for sheer numbers When the City Sleeps: Andrews, Fleming, Price, Sanders, Duff, Lupino amongst many "I know that person" actors. And who would have thought Lucille Ball and Boris Karloff held a screen together, but they did in Lured, along with George Sanders, Charles Coburn, Hardwicke and Zucco.
Lucille Ball is excellent in the Film Noir The Dark Corner (1946). Took me completely by surprise the first time I watched it. And any film with Bill Bendix in it has to be fun to watch! Jeff
Over 10 years ago I made a spreadsheet of the first 100 noirs I saw and gave them a letter grade. I just found the list again, funny how some rated less than an "A" later became favorites (the ones highlighted.) GRADE A A Stolen Face, Act of Violence, Cause for Alarm , Chase, The , Crime Wave, D.O.A. , Dark Waters, Detour, Double Indemnity, Fear in the Night, Gun Crazy, Heat Wave, In a Lonely Place, Inner Sanctum , Kiss Me Deadly, Mildred Pierce, Naked Kiss, The, Night of the Hunter, Out of the Past, Pickup on South Street, Red House, The, Scar, The, Scarlet Street, Sleeping Tiger, The, Sorry Wrong Number, Spiral Staircase, Split Second, Stranger, the, Sunset Blvd, Tension, Touch of Evil, Underworld Story, the, Woman in the Window, Woman on the Run GRADE B Angel Face, Big Heat, the, Big Sleep, Black Angel, Born to Kill, Compulsion, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Damned Don't Cry, Dark Passage, Dead Reckoning, Fallen Angel, Guest in the House, Hitchhiker, Hoodlum, The, I Wake up Screaming, Illegal , Impact, Jeopardy, Killer Bait, Lady from Shanghai, Laura, Man Who Cheated Himself, Mystery Street, Narrow Margin, Niagara, Nightmare Alley, On Dangerous Ground, Possessed, Road House, Secret from Beyond the Door, Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Strange Woman, Sudden Fear, This Gun for Hire, Where Danger Lives, Whirlpool GRADE C Crash by Night, Dark Mirror, the, Decoy, Gilda, Great Flamarion, The , Key Largo, Life at Stake, A , Man Bait, moontide, Naked City. the, Please Murder Me , Postman Always Rings Twice, Set-up, the, Shock, Side Street, Strange Illusion , Thieves Highway, Undercurrent, Whistle Stop, Half a Sinner , Shoot to Kill
Last night I watched the pre-release version of The Big Sleep and enjoyed it much more. I think it helped having watched the 70's Mitchum version somewhat recently so I had a better understanding of the plot, and the theatrical version of Big Sleep seemed to dilute the plot with the love story for the sake of bumping up Bacall's screen time. I can better see how people rate it amongst the best, however, at times it was a pain because there were just too many names and associations getting thrown about. Who in fact killed Geiger? It helped me better explain my noir distinction. Some noir are about following a thread to solve a mystery, this is the part that Shane Black would borrow for his recent buddy noir films. Other noir has everything pretty much known and the only mystery is how it will all play out. Double Indemnity is a good example or this.
From what I read decades ago, this hair style became very popular with young women in the war years. She was discouraged from using it as it was considered a danger when adopted by many girls who were working on machinery in war industries.
That was only the first 100 I saw. I since have added hundreds more but didn't keep track of those. The Killing I like enough to own, no to Murder My Sweet although I should revisit it. Haven't seen Ride the Pink Horse.
In general, I have found that my personal rating for a given movie aligns very closely with that contained in Leonard Maltin's annual Guide. Older copies of the Guide can be had for literally pennies, online and in used book stores, and they all contain reviews and ratings for all but five of the Film Noir listed in Silver and Ward's book that I mentioned previously. Those two books, together, can be a great resource to anyone looking to get in Film Noir. Start with a few that are four star rated, then start mixing them up according to rating. If there's a correlation between Maltin's rating and your own feelings about a given film, then stick to ones that are rated three stars or better. Some Film Noir are stinkers - deserving to be watched only by students and masochists. Jeff