I was considering which Hong Kong film to link in my post. HARD BOILED is too obvious; THE KILLER is legitimate but might get called out as neo-noir; A BETTER TOMORROW might be accepted, but I want controversy here. So, A BETTER TOMORROW 2? Oh, my. I've been throwing the Hong Kong (and, to a lesser degree, Korean) wrench into the film noir gear for years for the sole reason that it is the true heir to the noir crown and not the 90s pulp revival. Those are all great films, most of which wouldn't hold a place on any personal noir shortlist (say that not to deride your opinion, more to indicate where mine is coming from), so: not a single Edgar G. Ulmer flick? He's only the greatest director of all time. I'll save you from my posting of any Don Siegel videos. Edit: I'd be remiss if I didn't post one of my best friend's favorite noir of all time: Double Edit: Also, if you guys can get a copy of it, Elliot Lavine's book "I WAKE UP DREAMING" is a fantastic piece of work on B noirs. He's the long-time programmer of the Roxie, runs the San Francisco noir fest, and, since we're speaking about noir here, is a good friend of the friend I mention above, so do the guy a favor and buy his book.
Yeah Bryce I haven't seen Gun Crazy and I might not have heard of it before seeing it on people's best noir films lists today, but I really want to now. It sounds awesome.
Here's a great list you won't see anywhere else. Culminated from my three most trusted sources on film. They'd go into apoplectic fits if they saw that I took their lists, cut out any duplicates and put them into an alphabetical conglomerate, but, oh well, guys! ACT OF VIOLENCE (Fred Zinnemann, 1948) BLACK ANGEL (Roy William Neill, 1946) BLAST OF SILENCE (Allen Baron, 1961) BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (Sam Peckinpah, 1974) CRIME WAVE (Andre De Toth, 1954) DECOY (Jack Bernhardt, 1946) DETOUR (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945) DIAL 1119 (Gerald Mayer, 1950) DOUBLE INDEMNITY (Billy Wilder, 1944) FORCE OF EVIL (Abraham Polonsky, 1948) GUN CRAZY (Joseph H. Lewis, 1949) HE WALKED BY NIGHT (Alfred Werker, 1948) (Anthony Mann did some uncredited work on this) IL BIDONE (Federico Fellini, 1955) IN A LONELY PLACE (Nicholas Ray, 1950) KISS ME DEADLY (Robert Aldrich, 1955) NIGHTMARE ALLEY (Edmund Goulding, 1947) NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Charles Laughton, 1955) ON DANGEROUS GROUND (Nicholas Ray, 1951) OUT OF THE PAST (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) PICK UP ON SOUTH STREET (Samuel Fuller, 1953) PORT OF SHADOWS (Marcel Carné, 1938) RAW DEAL (Anthony Mann, 1948) RIFIFI (Jules Dassin, 1955) SCARLET STREET (Fritz Lang, 1945) STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR (Boris Ingster, 1940) SUNSET BLVD (Billy Wilder, 1950) THE BIG COMBO (Joseph H. Lewis, 1955) THE BIG HEAT (Fritz Lang, 1953) THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (Peter Yates, 1973) THE KILLING (Stanley Kubrick, 1956) THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE (John Cassevettes, 1976) THIEVES’ HIGHWAY (Jules Dassin, 1948) TOUCH OF EVIL (Orson Welles, 1958) TRY AND GET ME (Cyril Endfield, 1950) VERTIGO (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (Fritz Lang, 1937) I'd add my own (minus a decent amount of duplicates) but that list would make anyone impotent, wouldn't you agree?
Is Night of the Hunter considered a noir film? I was actually planning on watching that last night as it happens, but plans changed.
I have one very, very important point to make here: I do not consider Hawks to be a "lesser master". I think Hawks is absolutely the equal of any other American director you'd care to name. Hawks himself would never consider himself in those terms - he thought of himself as a craftsman, which is why I suspect he's so appealing to the film brats of the 70s and later guys like Quentin Tarantino. His edict for what makes a good movie - "Three great scenes, no bad ones" - is one that, if more people followed, would make for way better movies. The auteurists among us (and I count myself as one, no question) tend toward the flashy. Whether it be the cool detachment of Kubrick or the wild kineticism of Brian De Palma, movie nuts gravitate toward people who utilize the language of cinema in interesting ways. So the practical, no-nonsense film-making of Hawks can fly under the radar. I know that I didn't come into my real love of Hawks until my twenties, which is when I first started really delving into the history of American cinema in a more structured way than my more voracious childhood appetites of watching everything. It's not that Hawks is subtle, but he's direct in the way that John Carpenter (his clearest analog today) is. Hawks movies are lean in a way that is very, very appealing. He's also very clever. Working within a studio system that was so much more regimented than what the business is today, Hawks happily worked in any genre offered to him. And there's always something about working within constraints that I really love. I think the best art is created when there are restrictions placed on film-makers*. In Hawks' universe, he would cleverly subvert genre expectations in some incredible ways. Take Rio Bravo, supposedly a Western, where the bulk of the movie takes place in one room and is comprised of long conversations. It's only a Western in the most superficial of ways. And that leads into The Big Sleep, a movie that has all the trappings of noir but is secretly a love story. The mirror of The Maltese Falcon, where love doesn't amount to much in the end, and is certainly no reason not to send a woman to jail. In The Big Sleep, Bogart and Bacall (who, famously, were falling in love for realsies during the filming) find a connection in a world dripping with contempt, corruption, pornography, drugs, callousness and violence. The Byzantine plotting of The Big Sleep, which is almost impossible to follow, exists as a constant reminder that love is based on trust, and trust is in pretty short supply in Los Angeles. (And how about Los Angeles in The Big Sleep? A city of darkness and rain and fog. Utterly unlike the real Los Angeles, but do you ever question it in the movie? No way. That's the Los Angeles where Marlowe belongs.) Now all of that makes The Big Sleep sound like a slog, but because Hawks is at the controls it's the opposite. It's a firecracker of a movie, and Hawks (along with the five screenwriters who worked on it, including William Faulkner and Chandler himself) pack every scene with weird off-kilter humour and some of the best dialog since... well, His Girl Friday. Take the introduction of Marlowe to to General Sternwood, in his hothouse, and watch how every time they cut to Bogart he's covered in more sweat. Or the super creepy break-in to Geiger's house, where Hawks wordlessly (thanks to the Code of the day) gets across that some truly vile things have happened in this utterly normal looking house in the middle of a suburb. (I bet David Lynch watched that scene a million times.) Or how seemingly every woman in the movie is ready to fuck Bogart at a moment's notice. And, hey, let's talk about THAT for a bit. The Hawksian woman. Now, I don't know anything about Hawks as a person. I don't know anything about his politics or whether he was a nice guy or anything. What I DO know is that he and I agree on what makes for an attractive dame, and The Big Sleep is fucking jam-packed with 'em. Lauren Bacall is front-and-centre, of course, the epitome of the Hawksian woman: she's every bit Marlowe's equal, and that scene where they talk about horse-racing is probably the sexiest goddamned thing ever committed to celluloid: I mean, holy shit, right? Take that, Hollywood Code. Or that great bit when Bogey kisses her for the first time and she says: "I like it. I want more." Anyway, I could blow off the whole day doing nothing but talk about The Big Sleep, but I suppose I should do SOME work today. But believe me when I say that calling The Big Sleep the best noir is like saying I like Hatful Of Hollow just slightly more than The Queen Is Dead. There are more technically accomplished noirs. There are certainly noirs that are more intelligible. There are noirs that take more risks. But there's no noir that I love watching more than The Big Sleep. * Which is why I love Hitchcock so much. The best of Hitchcock's movies are like challenges he gives himself to work around.
Bryce: Detour is crazy great. Definitely a remission on my part. Detour might still be the best use of an unreliable narrator in any movie, and it definitely changed the way I looked at telephone cords. Extar: Gun Crazy is also great. The centerpiece is a one-take heist of a bank, shot with a handheld camera in real-time, all from the vantage point of the back of a getaway car. That scene is so great that it sort of unbalances the movie a little, but it's a very strong entry in the noir canon. I personally do not consider Night Of The Hunter a noir film; or, rather, I don't consider it to be ONLY a noir film. You could just as easily label it as Southern Gothic, or a nightmare fable. Night Of The Hunter takes it's cues from dozens of sources and combines them in a way that transcends any one genre.
HAH, I just notice Bryce snuck in Il Bidone in there. Cute. I never considered it as a noir, although a case could be made. I just think of it as one of Fellini's neo-realist pictures.
Here's a great interview that very accurately sums up my feelings on when people say they feel a film is or isn't a noir/sci-fi/western/whathaveyou. If it's a part of the genre, or meets some of the genre stylings, it's a part of the genre! Rigidly adhering to classification is boorish and so unhip, like, man. Noir, like Sci-fis and Westerns, are a pretty blank slate - you have genre conventions that identify what type of move you're watching, but beyond that, the story you tell is completely up to you. For instance, why you love THE BIG SLEEP, eh? Besides, it has one of the only actors to ever act in noirs that actually lived the noir lifestyle, so it's a noir.
True to a point, but in the case of Night Of The Hunter, I would never recommend it to somebody who was on a noir kick based on that alone. Like, if you liked The Killing I wouldn't say "Oh, you'll LOVE Night Of The Hunter!" because it's sooooooo different in tone and style. Night Of The Hunter is pretty unique in that regard, though. It's such a mesmerizing and in many ways maddening movie. I love it and I'm creeped out by it.
The problem with all these noir flicks you folks are talking about is that so few of them are on Netflix streaming...
Well, yeah. That's the problem with streaming and torrents - you're at the whims of lawyers on one hand and the tyranny of the idiotic masses on the other. My solution so far has been to obsessively and compulsively collect movies on VHS, DVD and bluray. You know, like our cavemen ancestors did. You're in Atlanta, right Jason? My suggestion is to comb the second-hand bookstores for this stuff. I spend about seven bucks on average for a used bluray, and about twenty on average for a new one via Barnes & Noble's twice-annual Criterion half-off sales. And there's always the library, some of which have surprisingly good collections. It's a shame that a generation of kids is going to grow up with the idea of streaming quality being good enough for movies. Film noir at it's finest is a visual treat, and you should try to watch the best versions you can.
What can I say, I can't take issue with much in your post. I just want to clarify here though that I don't throw the word "master" around lightly and I have the utmost respect for Hawks. I disagree with you that he's in the same god tier as Welles for instance, but only barely, and apart from the very few directors I would place on that tier Hawks is as good as anyone.
Would Eastwood be a modern analogue of Hawks? Perhaps not as good, but he has the same un-showy, craftsman-like approach to film-making.
Eastwood is more sentimental than Hawks. Another hallmark of Howard Hawks was how little he trucked in sentimentality and bathos, something you sadly cannot say of Eastwood. His most direct mentor was the Don Siegel, who not coincidentally directed Clint in two of his better movies (Dirty Harry and The Beguiled), and there are some similarities there for sure.
Enjoying the noir discussion. But came to this thread because I happened to see this: "The list of the year's biggest flops is here, and it's probably not all that surprising" http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-list-of-the-years-biggest-flops-is-here-and-it,88801/ Flops defined by box office vs. cost to make. Takeaway point for me:
The Long Goodbye is my favorite Chandler adaptation. I like The Big Sleep but Elliot Gould absolutely nails Marlowe, in my opinion after reading several of Chandler's books. I haven't seen either Killers Inside Me, but that book was sooo great that I'm afraid to watch it screwed up (I've heard mixed feelings from friends about the 2010 adaptation) Oh, and I also watched The Parking Lot Movie, which is currently on netflix. It's a doc about an eccentric crew of over-educated parking lot attendants in Charlottesville, VA. They get mad at the drunk frat boys and the people in Range Rovers who refuse to pay $.40 for 15 minutes of parking. The whole thing waxes on the entitlement people have about their cars and the shitfuckery they put the attendants through -- who in turn take out subtle and not so subtle revenge (or justice in their eyes) on the car-owners. Definitely worth watching.
It's been a while, but doesn't Altman completely screw up the ending in a way that breaks the themes of the book? I think The Long Goodbye is pretty clearly the best Chandler book but I'm not sure the film adaptation does it justice, whereas The Big Sleep certainly does.
Watched Temple Grandin this morning, which was pretty good. Like The Social Network which we watched last week it's well-executed but does have the same old biopic problems. Unlike TSN though it's at least about a truly amazing person who's worth giving a shit about. Liked it overall.
I think the thing that I like the most about that movie (and it's a messgae that's often lost in the discussion about Autism,) is that ultimately, they want to be want to be part of society and not ostracised or stigmatized. They just process information differently.
I haven't read The Long Goodbye yet, so that could be true and could shift my thoughts. Wikipedia says you're right, though. The Big Sleep certainly is excellent and I love Bogart, but Gould just hits the perfect Marlowe note for me in The Long Goodbye, even if the film deviates in a bad way from the novel.
Premium Rush. Well, I am currently watching it. This movie makes me so angry. Just yell "A COP TRIED TO KILL ME FOR THAT ENVELOPE" and BOOM movie is over. If the bike cop doesn't get a fucking medal by the end of this movie I will be so mad. Hey I have an idea. Get off your fucking bikes and get into a cab.
That's a good (rhetorical) question. I've seen only maybe a half dozen things he's in? But yes, always good.
Here's my lists of things I remember him in: The Oceans Movies Capricorn One A Bridge Too Far Harry and Walter Go To New York S*P*Y*S (with Donald Sutherland) Busting The Long Goodbye (I think I've seen this 6-7 times, which is a lot for me and any movie) MASH (with Donald Sutherland) Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
I haven't seen all those, but my first memory of him is as the guy in A Bridge Too Far who points a gun at a docs head to make him operate on his buddy who was shot in the head. Then again, A Bridge Too Far is full of good performances by good actors. So... uh... that's a good movie, right!?
That was James Caan, not Gould, though they work together in Harry and Walter Go To New York. Gould on the latter movie:
Man this is a repeat of me a few days ago -- Gary Busey confused with Nick Nolte. I blame extra strong beer and not being alive for their major feature films. But Gould is better than all my confusions. And upon retrospection I can place the man in jeep gun at doc with Rollerball, which I know is James Caan. The long and the short of it is I suck with names and alcohol and movies before I was born. Fuckin' actors all look the same. e: aww yes, Gould is the cigar chomper. God I love A Bridge Too Far.
You should add the Canadian tax-shelter masterpiece The Silent Partner to that list, as well as Altman's awesome gambling movie California Split.
The Angels' Share, Ken Loach's latest film. I don't think I've seen a Ken Loach film since Kes as a child, so I really didn't know what I was missing. I've still got Wind that shakes the barley to watch at some point. This one, though, was a gracious and heartfelt story of working-class Scots trying to find something better for themselves. It's nowhere near as dour as that sounds, I have to add, and thankfully doesn't try to give any deep, gut-wrenching blows or dwell on any misery. Instead it just shows bits and pieces of life (with some odd cutting in places) as it is in Glasgow for young Scots. I have to say it did feel a little bit TV-movie but that is not intended as a knock. I don't think this is supposed to be a cinematic film in any particular way; it's more a tale told with a grin. I very much enjoyed it but can't say I'll watch it again any time soon. Word of warning for Americans and other non-British/Irish people: Glasgow accents are famously impenetrable (although I personally had no problems; having said that, I generally don't with accents) and you may need subtitles. If you're used to thick accents from the UK/Ireland you'll probably be fine.
Watched 'Empire Strikes Back' with my son because it's his favourite. Well, watched half of it because he's almost five and has the attendant attention span. The thing I love about all of the Star Wars films (even the prequels, to a lesser extent than the OT) are the small details. Today what grabbed me was the bit where Han confirms his suspicions about the asteroid cave by firing a blaster at the floor. Cavalier.
Marged and I watched Princess Mononoke last night. We'd both seen it before but not for a long time, and it was wayyyyy better than either of us remembered. It's still probably only a mid-tier Miyazaki movie, but it's a fun fantasy yarn and the action sequences are awesome.
This weekend: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, a movie that weirdly still holds up fine for me. It was most triumphant. And Hellboy II: The Golden Army because I could watch that Troll Market scene on an endless loop. That's gotta be the closest any mainstream Hollywood movie ever got to Fellini.
Dude, it totally holds up. The only reason I don't watch it that often is that I don't often have time to watch that and Bogus Journey back to back as is my wont. Additionally: good news.
We watched The Amazing Spider-Man a few nights ago. The only thing I could think about the entire time I was watching it was how relentlessly silly the whole thing is. It's a clown draped with cotton candy, juggling trout and making fart noises with its mouth. Why? HONK HONK WHEEEEEEEEEEE!
