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I've circled Union Station each and every time I've gone to the video store for this project. I might just take that plunge next time.

Allan Dwan's a very underrated director. Slightly Scarlet may be a little too much melodrama for me to place it on the list, but Silver Lode and Passion are both strong contenders for the eventual Western project.

Slightly Scarlet, Leave Her to Heaven and ????
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The Set-Up - Will be something of a mid-carder for me. Maybe the real-time gimmick is cheated and overplayed, but I doesn't worry me too much; you're right about it being a conceit, but there's a lot more going on beyond it. The real strength of the film is its quiet desperation, its sordid lack of compromise. This is one of the saddest of all film noirs. Yes, Robert Ryan performance is the heart and soul of the film, but you guys make it sound like there's long swathes of the film where he's absent. Other than Audrey Totter's walk through the town, Ryan dominates the rest of the film. Yes, some of the side-players may be a little stereotypical, but I'm a sucker for these Classic Hollywood skid-row yarns: I wasn't expecting On the Bowery from a 40s RKO film, and in its stylization and dramatic simplification, when it works, there's a sort of post-Odets sensitivity to it. And to me, the suddenness to which the auditorium empties may not be realistic, but it punctuates the scene with its irony: Robert Ryan may have accomplished a great personal triumph, he may be on the brink of personal doom, but to everyone else, this is just another undercard bout. And the ending is heartbreaking, with everyone but Ryan getting off scott-free. Totter's last line may be a howler, but it's really the strain of trying to spin a happy ending out of a completely grim situation.

And Robert Wise is better when he stuck with b-movie material. When he's given an "important" project, forget about it... It's no mistake that The Haunting is the best of his post-50s work.
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To back-track to the De Toth one last time... I was rewatching the H.G. Clouzot film, and if Andre De Toth's Crime Wave is anything, it's an American Quai des Orfèvres. Of course, there's major differences in plot, and the De Toth film isn't quite as odd as its predecessor (no music halls here), but there are marked similarities; I'm not arguing there was any conscious borrowing so much as the two films seem to share a kindred spirit. Both directors' body of work create a violent and misanthropic world, with these being no exception. Both films revolve around standard genre fare, stories which in themselves are largely unremarkable - a cuckold murder story in one film, a heist film in another. Both stories are enlivened, rather, by an attention to detail, an ability to immerse itself into the subcultures which the plot navigates through, to fully develop even minor and marginal characters, the misanthropic vision of the world often undercut and complicated by an empathetic understanding of the characters stuck in it. Both films revolve around a hapless, sympathetic (if not always innocent) domestic couple who, through external characters and poor twists of fate, find themselves increasingly tangled in the world of crime.

In both films, this genre plot is answered by another genre - the police procedural. Both films work out of legendary "precincts" - Paris's 36 Quai des Orfrèvres and the Homicide Bureau of Los Angeles's City Hall, recreated in the Clouzot, on location in the De Toth - which the films spends a large amount of time in. Both investigations are lead by oddly drawn detectives who emerge as the films' unlikely heart and soul - Louis Jovet's Inspecteur Antoine and Sterling Hayden's Det. Lt. Sims. Both actors are top billed despite being in supporting roles to the main action; both actors earn there billing by their command of the screen and their ability to ultimately set the film's bleak, tangled narrative right in a way the "leads" can't. They both are sources of inflexible moral authority, of which the film presents both the good and bad. It's sympathetic to their search for justice, and the constant frustration they meet from every direction. Yet, it doesn't flinch from the brutality and underhanded tricks which that moral certainty and frustration creates, exemplified by the constant hounding of the "wrong man" in the film. Yet, in both cases, the detectives are ultimately able to make up for their obsessive pursuits, not only solving the cases and freeing the wrongly accused parties, but even coming to a begrudging, but tender understanding with those they were hunting. Both detectives even share similar send-offs, a rare moment of touching sensitivity and camaraderie with the "criminals" they were chasing: Antoine's final meeting with Dora in Quai des Orfèvres, with its magnificent kiss-off line ("When it comes to women, we'll never have a chance"), as well as his Christmas present; Sterling Hayden's cigarette break at the end of Crime Wave, indulging in two short moments of weakness before reverting to his uncompromising, irascible ways.

Wish I found this sooner, but for all the "is it noir or not?" debates, there's this fine little resource.

Ha! And there's FOUR people calling Seventh Victim a film noir.

Re: Slightly Scarlet. I watched this a few weeks back and didn't think it good enough to warrant comment. It's absolutely fascinating to see Alton transfer his noir sensibility into colour, something most of the other colour noirs (as opposed to neo-noirs) don't attempt: they play their bright sunniness ironically. On the other hand, while the cinematography is all well and good as R & D, frankly I'd rather watch Reign of Terror again. The moody, shadowy scenes seem dropped in, in quotation marks, amidst bright, bland, conventionally shot scenes.

Now that's a strategy that could work fine, but I'm afraid I don't find the material very compelling. Arlene Dahl has a ball, but her character's one-note and the rest of the cast are much less interesting. And I don't think the storytelling's particularly crisp or pacy, so all in all it ends up remote from a lot of the virtues of noir I'm most interested in.

zedz wrote:Re: Slightly Scarlet. I watched this a few weeks back and didn't think it good enough to warrant comment. It's absolutely fascinating to see Alton transfer his noir sensibility into colour, something most of the other colour noirs (as opposed to neo-noirs) don't attempt: they play their bright sunniness ironically. On the other hand, while the cinematography is all well and good as R & D, frankly I'd rather watch Reign of Terror again. The moody, shadowy scenes seem dropped in, in quotation marks, amidst bright, bland, conventionally shot scenes.

Now that's a strategy that could work fine, but I'm afraid I don't find the material very compelling. Arlene Dahl has a ball, but her character's one-note and the rest of the cast are much less interesting. And I don't think the storytelling's particularly crisp or pacy, so all in all it ends up remote from a lot of the virtues of noir I'm most interested in.

I think that was probably my impression, following my initial viewing on a vhs recorded from television, but after watching it again, on DVD this time, while I still wouldn't call it prototype , I'll most likely give it a nod, because of Arlene Dahl
And Alton, of course!

Cold Bishop wrote: Slightly Scarlet, Leave Her to Heaven and ????

A Kiss Before Dying, duh

Cold Bishop wrote:Ha! And there's FOUR people calling Seventh Victim a film noir.

'The Gang of Four'? :-k

Gerd Oswald, you magnificent bastard! Crime of Passion is formally different than the masterpiece that is A Kiss Before Dying, but damned if it too doesn't have a pulsating tone that defies easy categorization. Barbara Stanwyck plays a tough cookie newspaper dame turned housewife turned Lady MacBeth in a noir that strikes me as being pretty progressive-- Stanwyck rallies against the drudgery of domesticity and the film shows her wifely life as a dire circular hell of waiting around for her husband and obnoxious kaffeeklatches with women who interrupt the very people they then quote at length. The final moments of the film, with it's repeated cycle of Stanwyck waiting and pacing for word from her husband, speaks too of the pre-Friedan woman's plight in 1957. There is a great entry in feminist film studies cannon just waiting to be written here. Stanwyck is serviceable if perhaps a bit too old for the part, but Sterling Hayden and Raymond Burr are as dependable as ever, with Burr's small part being really quite good here-- his rejection of his own impulses is fascinating and the film makes it hard to really side with anyone.

As for the formalist tendencies of the film, Oswald forgoes the fascinating widescreen and long-takes of A Kiss Before Dying in favor of an elliptical editing style that serves the same function of alienation. I particularly liked the montage edited like a swaying boat-- the camera pans in, cut to the next shot and the camera pans out, etc., back and forth until it disorients. This is a film of disorientation, both narratively-- car accidents, blurred vision, rapid career changes and friendships-- and formally-- the clipped plot structure, the use of deep focus and extreme closeups right out of a Fuller movie. I've only seen two films (and Cold Bishop, I envy you with your laundry list of comments on his works earlier in the thread!) and already I'm convinced that Oswald is a fascinating auteur worthy of serious discussion and reappraisal, with the only thing holding such a thing back being the impossibility of tracking down most of his work in legitimate releases.

Screaming Mimi is coming out of Columbia Classics burn-on-demand program eventually; it was suppose to be out this month, but it looks like it was postponed. But if you can't wait, it shouldn't be hard to find; it's always been a major cult item, and it's not entirely out of the parameters of this genre.

Saw a couple of his westerns up on that site which shall not be named, pretty excited for the next list already... but not before I get through the dozens of films I want to take in before this list calls it a day. One more down from the unwatched pile, and the streak is white hot still with Kansas City Confidential, a sweaty, greasy bit of business so filled with so much uncommercial ugliness that they had to shoehorn in Coleen Gray (who sports a top made out of what appears to be origami handkerchiefs in one scene) halfway through the film for a pretty face to put on the poster. There's a real kinetic movement to the film's fisticuffs and the plot is pretty ridiculous no matter how much rope you give it (boy, now here's a film that gets a lot of mileage out of anti-police sentiment), but I found it pretty easy to forgive the faults when there's so much fun in what's going on up there on the screen.

I love the opening robbery (with it's Dick Tracy/Feuilladean visuals of sharply geometric architecture, masked bandits and armored trucks) and the downright menacing interrogation, but find the film begins to get sluggish and repetitive once they get bogged down in the resort. And the film loses its best asset - Jack Elam - far too early; his sweaty, twitchy paranoiac is a much more interesting character than what anyone else has to work it, and after a while, the only charm of the picture comes from watching Brand and Van Cleef chew up scenery. And while I like the morally ambiguous ending, the film doesn't play up the ambiguity nearly enough.

KC is certainly a contender for me, although I haven't even looked at my shortlist so I don't know what borderline competition it will be up against to make it.
If it does it would mean at least two John Paynes and probably at least two Mark Stevens
(noir films were certainly the refuge of the 'never quite made its)

domino harvey wrote:Gerd Oswald, you magnificent bastard! Crime of Passion is formally different than the masterpiece that is A Kiss Before Dying,

I know I saw 'Kiss' about 20 years ago but I just don't remember enough about it to include it in my list.
(I remember Wagner's character was miles away from Jonathan Hart, though!)
If I still have it on VHS I'll try and give it a look

Yojimbo wrote:If I still have it on VHS I'll try and give it a look

Don't bother watching this unless it's in 'Scope. I can't even begin to imagine how worthless this film is in P+S

domino harvey wrote:

Yojimbo wrote:If I still have it on VHS I'll try and give it a look

Don't bother watching this unless it's in 'Scope. I can't even begin to imagine how worthless this film is in P+S

I'm pretty sure I taped it off BBC2, and it was in 'scope

William A Wellman's the Iron Curtain is an average spy noir and a perhaps slightly better than average example of anti-Communist propaganda. A Russian immigrant to Canada realizes the Canadian way of life is better than his own and decides to turn over documents, only no one wants them. Dana Andrews at least attempts a clipped Russian accent but Gene Tierney, who appears to have filmed her scenes during off hours from Whirlpool, wisely doesn't even bother-- I still remember her Russian ballet dancer a few years after this in Never Let Me Go.

(As a side note, I'd love to be a TCM programmer for a night and make a Gene Tierney Plays Other Races night of Never Let Me Go, Son of Fury, China Girl, A Bell For Adano, the Iron Curtain, and the Egyptian-- and I'm sure I'm missing a couple!)

There is some striking use of shadows in the otherwise bare sets, and I liked the spatial geography of the apartment courtyard near the end of the picture. Also good is the choice to have diagetic classical music blaring during every scene set in the ludicrous secret document bunker. The fatalism of Andrews' decision to turn over the documents is tempered with a happy, flag-waving ending (even if there's a leaf on that flag) that stops this from ever achieving anything more than being a curiosity of its time. Also, this is probably the only noir with a crying baby in half of its action scenes.

Well, picking up the war noir torch, enjoyed a James Mason/Carol Reed double feature of Odd Man Out and the Man Between. I'd seen and enjoyed the Third Man and the Fallen Idol well enough, but these two films are head and shoulders above, particularly Odd Man Out. What a masterpiece-- bold, underline, full-stop-- this is! Reed takes the fatalism of American noir and transplants it against a bevy of fascinating English actors parading memorable supporting characters through the movie like a choir line as it speeds towards its bleak as Hell finale. But the pulse of novelty beats here as in the best of Fuller or Welles, and the film is novelistic and epic despite its eight hour narrative timeframe. The music is gorgeous, elegiac and quite appropriately sad, and the editing is fascinating-- simple moments like a ball being kicked down a street are given a rapidity of motion that is breathtaking. I didn't think anything could crack my top ten this late in the game, but what's more fun about these projects than discovering new favorites?

The Man Between, while not at the same level, offers as a centerpiece one hell of a crackerjack chase sequence unfolding over dimly-lit construction sites and apartment buildings, and a similarly fatalistic trajectory. I enjoyed how the film keeps the audience in the dark as to the plot mechanations until the last moment possible, so that nearly half the film unfolds before it's even clear what's going on! It too will find space somewhere further down my list-- as much as I enjoy the Third Man, it was never making my list. Reed it and weep!

I don't want this project to ever end...

domino harvey wrote:Well, picking up the war noir torch, enjoyed a James Mason/Carol Reed double feature of Odd Man Out and the Man Between. I'd seen and enjoyed the Third Man and the Fallen Idol well enough, but these two films are head and shoulders above, particularly Odd Man Out. What a masterpiece-- bold, underline, full-stop-- this is! Reed takes the fatalism of American noir and transplants it against a bevy of fascinating English actors parading memorable supporting characters through the movie like a choir line as it speeds towards its bleak as Hell finale. But the pulse of novelty beats here as in the best of Fuller or Welles, and the film is novelistic and epic despite its eight hour narrative timeframe. The music is gorgeous, elegiac and quite appropriately sad, and the editing is fascinating-- simple moments like a ball being kicked down a street are given a rapidity of motion that is breathtaking. I didn't think anything could crack my top ten this late in the game, but what's more fun about these projects than discovering new favorites?

I'd always reckoned Odd Man Out as Carol Reed's best, yep, even better than the somewhat overrated The Third Man.
I'm not sure that it will make my Top Ten, though, but its a shoo-in, nonetheless.

Trivia note: Joseph Tomelty is the father of Frances, Sting's ex-wife

domino harvey wrote:I don't want this project to ever end...

don't be going and giving 'Cold Bishop' any ideas, now!

Second viewing of two Jules Dassin films, each last seen almost 20 years ago.

'Night and the City' is probably the more highly regarded of the two, not least for having prompted a remake, but I found it to be less than the sum of its parts.
I wasn't fully convinced by Richard Widmark's characterisation, although it was a brave attempt to expand his range; for much of the time the London backstreets came across as nothing so much as similar scenes from the musical, "Oliver".
In addition there was a lack of balance, and inconsisteny in the overall tone of the movie; it was almost a blend of documentary and drama, but without the drama having been sufficiently worked out in advance.

But, as always in films such as this, the supporting character actors proved to be major compensations, particularly Francis Sullivan, Googie Withers and the two wrestler protagonists of a climactic unrehearsed fight scene.
Herbert Lom provided the quiet menace; the underused Gene Tierney the beauty, but little else.

The documentary detail did however serve to provide colour and breadth to the movie

I loved the final scene; it might be enough to edge it over the line, but I wouldn't bet on it.


'Thieves Highway' was far better than I remembered it; it smacked to me in large part almost like a classic Italian neo-realist movie, particularly in the scenes around and about the marketplace.
But, as with 'The Street With No Name', I was particularly taken with the background soundscape, particularly on the highway, and in the bustling marketplace.
I wondered whether Clouzot stole some ideas for his Masterpiece, 'Wages of Fear' from a tragic truckdriving scene here.

Overall the film had a muscular brutality reminiscent of Dassin's prison masterpiece, 'Brute Force', and it helped to have actors like Richard Conte and Lee J. Cobb to provide the muscle
(speaking of Lee J. Cobb, and I was reminded of Johnny Friendly and the way he also ruled the roost 'On The Waterfront').
Valentina Cortese provided good support as the hooker hired by Cobb to distract Conte, who proves to have a 'heart of gold'.

I hadn't expected this film to be a contender but now I'm convinced it will be

Incidentally, speaking of Conte, it should be interesting to see how many of his films end up on my list; I suspect he'll probably be competing with noir heavyweights such as Mitchum,Ryan, Widmark, Dana Andrews, John Garfield, and Kirk Douglas.
And perhaps might even surpass one or two of them.
He was the perfect actor for noir as he was equally at home playing bad guys and good guys, without needing to descend to the kind of manic psycho favoured by Ryan and Widmark.
Apart from 'Thieves', he should be represented by 'Call Northside 777', 'The Blue Gardenia', and perhaps one or both of 'The Brothers Rico' and 'House of Strangers'

And, if the director of 'Gun Crazy' is true to form, for 'The Big Combo' , which I'll be watching next.

'The Blue Gardenia' surprised me as conventional wisdom has it as being one of Fritz Lang's minor films and he himself has tended to be rather dismissive of it.
My DVD copy print, on the unfamiliar 'Blackhorse Entertainment', wasn't a particularly good one, which can prove especially fatal for a noir film, given the importance of light and shade, and of the degrees of each, but it wasn't so critical here as it would have, for instance, in a film lensed by John Alton.

The film is essentially about an amnesiac murder suspect's reaction to her guilt over her suspected murder of her date, and Lang exploits this to the fullest, aided and abetted by an outstanding performance by Anne Baxter.
In fact so good was it that I was reminded of the most famous performance in what for me was Lang's greatest film, that of Peter Lorre in 'M'.
Which is not to say her performance was comparable; it couldn't be, not least because the script didn't allow her to be, but it was admirable, and similar in style
I also thought she gave as convincing a portrayal of a drunk, and of somebody descending into drunkenness as I have seen in a film.
Her performance reminded me somewhat also of Hitchcock's 'The Wrong Man', which made me think how Vera Miles would have handled the role, which seemed the kind of role which came to be associated with her.
But I think Miles would not have been able to provide the subtlety that Baxter was able to employ here; perhaps born of her most famous role, of some three years previously.

What was also interesting about the film was of its depiction of what was essentially a date rape, and while Raymond Burr, the would-be protagonist and eventual murder victim, seemed at first somewhat miscast as a Lothario, - not least because of his ill-judged hairdo, - his fumbled and hurried attempts to impose himself on Baxter helped make it more apt.
Lang does not flinch from his depiction of Burr's intentions from the getgo, and isn't afraid to make us uncomfortable as we squirm to Burr's progress.
(somewhat remiscent of Hitchcock's up close and personal strangulation scene in 'Frenzy')

DP Nicholas Musuraca was somewhat underused, though I liked the lighting in the assault scene in Burr's apartment; also Baxter's arrival at journalist Richard Conte's office.

Conte is woefully underused here; George (Superman) Reeves is somewhat bland as the investigating cop.

The ending is somewhat rushed and not entirely satisfactory, although the confession scene was well done.

Conventional where? This board loves it. This boarder in particular thinks it's Lang's best film and it's placed right in the middle of my Top 10 Noirs right now. Until very recently I thought it to be the greatest of the female-centered noirs (I put Whirlpool in that spot now-- funny how Conte, an absolute non-talent, is in both!)

It's unfortunate that my rebuttal to praise for Thieves' Highway is "See Juke Girl instead," since probably no one will ever see it considering it both stars Ronald Reagan and is only available via the Warner Archives. But it is so much more successful than the Dassin film, both from a narrative and political standpoint, he says to no one listening.

The Hitch-Hiker is a skillfully directed, well-crafted, inarguably taut piece of business. It is also a loathsome proto-slasher film that left me with little else to praise. I became quite frustrated as the film wore on with the same frustration that keeps me away from modern movies like this. It's a simple question I ask myself, really: Why do I need to see this? A film with the same basic idea can work, as it did six years earlier with the Devil Thumbs a Ride. That was a film of many pleasures and complexities to compete with the unease. When that film turned violent, it unsettled the viewer from an earned place. But the Hitch-Hiker is all bark and bite with no wet nose or wagging tail. Lupino's film is seventy minutes of the repeated and consistent threat of bodily harm, of unwarranted emasculation and menace, of ciphers in peril for no reason other than audience titillation. What makes this superior to Wolf Creek et al? This isn't the fatalism of noir, it's just sadism.

domino harvey wrote:Conventional where? This board loves it. This boarder in particular thinks it's Lang's best film and it's placed right in the middle of my Top 10 Noirs right now. Until very recently I thought it to be the greatest of the female-centered noirs (I put Whirlpool in that spot now-- funny how Conte, an absolute non-talent, is in both!)

It's unfortunate that my rebuttal to praise for Thieves' Highway is "See Juke Girl instead," since probably no one will ever see it considering it both stars Ronald Reagan and is only available via the Warner Archives. But it is so much more successful than the Dassin film, both from a narrative and political standpoint, he says to no one listening.

The Hitch-Hiker is a skillfully directed, well-crafted, inarguably taut piece of business. It is also a loathsome proto-slasher film that left me with little else to praise. I became quite frustrated as the film wore on with the same frustration that keeps me away from modern movies like this. It's a simple question I ask myself, really: Why do I need to see this? A film with the same basic idea can work, as it did six years earlier with the Devil Thumbs a Ride. That was a film of many pleasures and complexities to compete with the unease. When that film turned violent, it unsettled the viewer from an earned place. But the Hitch-Hiker is all bark and bite with no wet nose or wagging tail. Lupino's film is seventy minutes of the repeated and consistent threat of bodily harm, of unwarranted emasculation and menace, of ciphers in peril for no reason other than audience titillation. What makes this superior to Wolf Creek et al? This isn't the fatalism of noir, it's just sadism.

I was massively disappointed with 'Whirlpool' on my only viewing; I'm unlikely to be able to give it another try as I don't have it in any format.
btw, what did you think of Burr's 'rug', in 'Gardenia'; and my comparisons with 'M' and 'The Wrong Man'?
(not to mention the 'Wages of Fear' comparisons for that scene in 'Thieves Highway'?)

I don't think The Hitch-Hiker will make my list: I just had a blindspot accepting as a punk psycho William Talman, Perry Mason's hapless adversary, DA Burger in the long-running tv series.

I don't reckon I'll see 'Juke Girl'; speaking of Ray-Gun', he was quite a good villain in Don Siegel's tv remake of 'The Killers', although I don't reckon it will make my list.

Would the teevee version even count as noir in the unlikely situation some one would consider it? I tend to feel that it's Siegel's (and maybe the whole of the genre) movement from noir into that more action procedural Dirty Harry thing.
Also pretty interesting things on Hitch-Hiker. The fact that it basically just is a horror is what compelled me throughout, but also what stops me from heaping much of any praise on it. The whole has just been done better since, particularly in Soul Man guilty pleasure The Hitcher. The whole stripping down the situation until it's three people yelling at each other over a blank background is such an effective concept to any genre, but especially noir and horror. Now I just wish there was a noir version that handled it more effectively than Lupino's light entertainment. A silent noir shot only with us seeing only the shadows of the action.

Night and the City is the greatest of all film noirs, and you're wrong. And that's all I'm going to say on the matter. [-(

The Big Combo on the other hand, really let me down on repeat viewing. It'll still make my list, and it has a lot of great things going for it, but I have no doubt that some of the other Lewis's will place higher (namely Gun Crazy and So Dark the Night). I forgot, especially, how much I dislike the ending, despite having one really great, interesting element that I feel is under emphasized:

Spoiler

Jean Wallace seizing control of the mise en scène

I've mentioned it elsewhere, but count me as someone else who prefers The Man Between to its more lauded predecessor. Neither are film noir, however. If I wasn't so fixated on genre purity, I may include Odd Man Out, but if I indulge one more foreign noir, I'll probably have to open the floodgates, and I can't have that.

Aren't you the one with a horror film as your "noir" swapsie, Mr Authenticity? The Lewton set is on its way to me, so I'll weigh in with more/less razzing then, but you are crazy if you don't consider Odd Man Out a noir, though!

I love The Hitch-Hiker and I think it works much better as a noir to me than a "proto-slasher" flick. Law enforcement details are given short thrift (imagine if it had lapsed into a police procedural halfway through as it sort of threatens to), Talman hams the sadism up to the Nth degree, and romance is completely absent (though, there's probably some homoerotic undercurrent we could awkwardly fit into the discussion) so the film takes on those psychological characteristics that scream "horror" to some. For me, it's basically a desperate "man on the run" noir story line with some atypical embellishments (sorta like Where Danger Lives with Margo played by a snarling, relatively anal, rabid dog) and I have hard time seeing past this. The desolate, hellish scenery and somewhat superhuman characteristics given to Talman's Emmett Myers does give me a slight pause, though, regarding genre.