TEN BEST FILM NOIRS: Loser, Damaged Heroine, Main Chance, Miscalculation, B&W = Black Magic!
Sep 06 '06 (Updated Feb 16 '08)
The Bottom Line My TEN BEST FILM NOIRS are classic black and white, produced between 1940 and 1959. They reflect growing a modern distrust in our institutions, and all easy untested answers.
To form a definitive list of THE TEN BEST FILM NOIRS is an almost impossible task. A manageable approach is to stay with the classic B&W form, setting aside (in hopes of another category) the later color, modern, or what I've just heard called, "Daylight Noir." Because the majority of pictures which formed the genre were inexpensive B-Films, unappreciated in their time, I've strayed from some of the "usual suspects" to pick up a deserving, down-and-out sleeper or two.
Film Noir, with the exception of the Western Movie, ranks as not only the richest, most revealing, important American genre Hollywood ever produced, but unlike the Western, it continued to be popular, remains relevant now. In fact, Film Noir may be seen as successor to the Western because it tells us so much about the elementals and internal meanings of our mythic life; in this case, our "life in the city" since we became a predominantly urban society.
Like the Western, Film Noir was a product of necessity and convenience. Restrictions imposed by World War II [much more stringent than any suffered in our "war on (fill in the blank)" today], forced the Studios to maximize the use of their vast Hollywood lots and sound stages as never before. Practical economic incentives were the loss of the overseas market at the beginning of the War , a need to save money at home, the shortages of fuel and power, the draining of personnel into the war effort.
Talented technicians, during a "wartime" unprecedented for America, turned to the convenience of simple invention. They used B-Film performers and new-comers to replace stars and staff on active duty; temporarily discarded electricity-greedy Technicolor for traditional B&W photography; constructed simple sets along Expressionistic lines; shot day for night; limited lighting; employed shadows to create mood; experimented with long lenses to reduce the number of camera setups, etc. As never before, they utilized musical scores on Wagnerian themes with Jazz and popular musical twists to maintain a dark contemporary mood. These innovations and devices allowed Hollywood to survive financially, as well as artistically, during the uncertain wartime years, and in many instances became virtues in the days which followed.
The coming of the War also brought unsettling changes to America's populace, already rocked by the crumbling of their whacky economic optimism before the Great Depression. Citizens learned anew that leaders might be unreliable. What we were told, they found, was sometimes convenient propaganda. Jobs and the promise of jobs often turned out to be a chimera.
Ten million men returning from WWII to wives and girlfriends in bastions of rural puritanism discovered that many had been unfaithful. Alcoholism and drug addiction deepened as a systemic middle class problem. Links to crime from the upper political, economic and social classes became more apparent, These links emphasized a dichotomy between how we wished ourselves to be seen -- following the extended "good neighborism" of the New Deal -- and the hushed ignorance, xenophobia, or racial bigotry of an older, darker America, always lying just beneath our democratic surfaces. Coincidentally, perhaps, irrational individual acts throughout the society became more common.
We struggled to deny our bigotry, justify by the "Cold War" our drift toward fascism. By the end of the period, the term "politically correct" was heard distantly as backlash for the first time.
Brought together in academic studies, Film Noir, this reflected combination of disillusionment, denial, necessity and convenience was recognized, and it has had a life of its own ever since:
Night or a Black and White Screen a doomed hero or flawed anti-hero greed and/or disillusionment an Evil or Foreign presence a crime a femme fatale a miscalculation a strong or surprise ending = CLASSIC FILM NOIR.
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My list of THE TEN BEST FILM NOIRS, then, is going to be limited to the classic black and white productions which gave Noir its name:
10. TOUCH OF EVIL (Orson Welles, 1959) -- It is fitting that the last title on my list, created by Writer/Director Welles, unrecognized in its time as an attack on American racism and nascent fascism, is often said to be the final true example of the genre. Welles, the man sometimes credited with the first technical compilation of Noir techniques in his monumental CITIZEN KANE, followed that masterpiece in the Post War with the slightly more conventional (in the mutilated form we have it) LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1948). And in TOUCH OF EVIL he capped the genre, turning it on its ear. Detective Hank Quinlan (a porcine Welles), who once would have been seen the solver of crime problems, has become the problem himself. The foreigner, Mexican Investigator Mike Vargas (Charleton Heston), a lesser character, even the villain in an earlier time, is now the hero. The crime, an opening sequence tour de force, is an assassination with criminal/political overtones. The miscalculation is in "the keeping of records" -- all of this before the JFK Assassination or Watergate! One of Henry Mancini's first scores alternates with more innovative "found music." [Be sure to get the restored version.] With Janet Leigh, Akim Tamiroff, and a host of Mercury Players, including Mercedes McCambridge as a butch femme fatale.
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-56EB-4CC3BE-38C95F91-prod4
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9. I WAKE UP SCREAMING (aka, "Hot Spot," R. Bruce Humberstone, 1941) -- Here is my candidate for the true beginning of the genre. To win a bet, an oily Pygmalion, Promoter Frankie Christopher, aka, Boticelli, (Victor Mature), makes a star model out of a blonde waitress, Vicki Lynn (Carole Landis). When this ungrateful celebrity beauty is murdered, Frankie is marked for suspicion by Quinlan-like Police Inspector Ed Cornell (Laird Cregar). The repentent Frankie's only hope is the victim's antagonistic sister, Jill (Betty Grable). There's excellent support from character actors (several soon to become staples of Noir): Elisha Cook, Jr., William Gargan, Alan Mowbray, Morris Ankrum, and Chick Chandler. With its twisted plot and stark lighting, I WAKE UP SCREAMING comes across grittier than Warner's A-Picture of the same year, THE MALTESE FALCON, and may be a forerunner of TOUCH OF EVIL. "Blonde Bombshells" Carole Landis and Betty Grable had their best dramatic roles; Director Humberstone his only distinguished film; Mature and Cregar their keys to rather bizarre stardom. Alas, Carole Landis's life, in a way, sadly followed the plot.
Stephen Murray is the only Epinionator to write on this film, but as usual, he gives a detailed, factual review:
http://www.epinions.com/content_246340292228
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8. THEY WON'T BELIEVE ME (Irving Pichel, 1947) -- As a murder defendant on the witness stand, Larry Ballentine (Robert Young), a rather common womanizing businessman, tells the jury in convoluted flashback how he cheated on his wife Greta (Rita Johnson) with not one tough beauty but two, Verna Carlson (Susan Hayward) and Janice Bell (Jane Greer), resulting somehow in their deaths. Larry is even more cowardly than the previous picture's Frankie Boticelli, and the women who might have saved him are dead. His conviction that "they won't believe me" seems only logical, for in a moral sense, he is guilty as sin. Straight arrow leading man Young ("Father Knows Best") was reluctant to play this part and was always resentful that he did so.
http://www.epinions.com/content_340276186756
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7. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (Tay Garnett, 1946) -- Based on the novel by James M. Cain, the picture has a drifter on the make (John Garfield), enticed by bored blonde waitress (Lana Turner) to murder her older husband (Cecil Kellaway). The story had its origins in the sensational Snyder-Grey Murder Case of the 1920's. But in a movie sense, the film springs from Billy Wilder's Billy Wilder's DOUBLE INDEMNITY of two years before (also based on a Cain novel). This highly successful noir established Garfield's Post War reputation as a tough guy, and fulfilled Turner's promise as a "Blonde Bombshell" in her own right. MGM insisted that she be dressed only in white, which they hoped would suggest a certain innocence and tone down her sexuality for the censors. It didn't work in either case.
http://www.epinions.com/content_7887752836
[7b. LAURA (Otto Preminger, 1944) -- By popular request from both the estimable eplovejoy and Stephen Murray, I am doing something I hardly ever do nowadays. I'm fudging. I'm adding an alternate choice. Lt. Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), a man with an unreliable streak who feels inadequate, falls in love with the portrait of Laura (Gene Tierny), the secretary cum protegee/model, whose murder he is investigating. He must deal with her affected patron, Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), her needy, waspish fiance, Shelby Carter (Vincent Price), and whole cocktail parties of New York characters. Preminger took over LAURA in mid-production and turned it into a most different kind of Film Noir. Yet we can see connections to I WAKE UP SCREAMING. The film contains the most haunting of all Noir scores, by David Raksin.]
From a number of fine Epinions, I have selected ebrown's, which I had originally marked Most Helpful (before screwing up, just now), because it also includes a rundown of the many excellent features on the DVD version:
http://www.epinions.com/content_39216909956
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6. NIGHT AND THE CITY (Jules Dassin, 1950) -- Dassin may be potentially the greatest of all American Noir directors, and it is regrettable that, after directing THE NAKED CITY (1948) and THIEVES HIGHWAY (1949), the Black List forced him to go to Europe. Nevertheless, he did for the genre in Britain and France what he had done in America. NIGHT AND THE CITY finds one Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark), a cheap American shill, steering rich American drunks to a London Soho clip joint, The Silver Fox Club. Always figuring an angle, Harry engages the boss's wife, Helen Noseross (Googie Withers), in a scheme to finance a wrestling grudge match. Unfortunately for Harry, in doing so he makes two powerful enemies, which causes the story to play out like a melodramatic British LA DOLCE VITA. Features a fine Franz Waxman score, and memorable sequences of nightime and early morning London. With Francis L. Sullivan, Herbert Lom, Gene Tierny, Mike Mazurki, and Stanislaus Zymbisko.
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-2681-12306880-3884EE42-prod1
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5. RIFIFI (Jules Dassin, 1954) -- As his Black List problems became permanent, Dassin retreated to France, where working on an extremely small budget, he made what Francois Truffaut called the greatest French Film Noir. Set in Paris and environs, again featuring extensive location shooting, RIFIFI stars Jean Servais in a comeback performance as Tony le Stephanois; the master himself (Dassin) as an Italian jewel thief; plus Magali Noel, later a love object in several Fellini films. The 32 minute jewel heist sequence, shot without dialogue, or even George Auric's music, is considered a classic. Dassin discarded most of the novel on which his film was based except its title, and one can't help think that the elements of the story are strongly influenced by Huston's THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, in the gang setup, the jewel robbery, and especially in a desperate, poetical drive back to Paris, with a bleeding Tony at the wheel.
[UPDATE: January 31, 2007 -- I was pleased to notice that RIFIFI in the IMDb Top 250 List. Quite amazing, really, for such a generally unknown film.]
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-CE1-3BC04C06-3A1F35EF-prod6
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4. THE MALTESE FALCON (John Huston, 1941) -- Based on Dashiel Hammett's seminal private eye novel, this film is often considered the first film noir. Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), a seedy private detective, sets out ostensibly to find a medieval golden statuette, but really to avenge the murder of his partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan). Writer Huston's debut as a director, the film made the careers of Bogart and Sidney Greenstreet. It was a comeback role for Mary Astor as the shady Brigid O'Shaughnessy. With Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook, Jr., Ward Bond and Barton MacLane.
http://www.epinions.com/content_100821077636
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3. THE KILLERS (sometimes known as "ERNEST HEMINGWAY'S "THE KILLERS": Robert Siodmak, 1946) -- Edmond O'Brien plays Jim Reardon, a conscientious insurance investigator who, in tracking down the beneficiary of a small life policy, uncovers a tale of betrayal involving an unsolved payroll robbery. The movie opens with a great sequence taken directly from Ernest Hemingway's short story, in which the killers of the title, Al and Max (Charles McGraw and William Conrad), track down the cheating, and cheated, Ole "Swede" Andersen (Burt Lancaster). The rest of the flashback story is narrated, in part, to his boss R. S, Kenyon (Donald McBride) by Reardon, in a role which reestablished O'Brien in Hollywood after his return from Service. Ava Gardner is the femme fatale, Kitty Kelly, a star-making performance. [There appears to be a lot of cat symbolism in the movie.] Lancaster also became a star, in his first movie appearance. If you listen closely to Miklos Rozsa's driving score at the climax you will hear the famous "Dragnet Theme." Largely written by John Huston (uncredited). With Sam Levine as Lt. Sam Lubinsky, Vince Barnett as the poignant grifter Charleston, Albert Dekker as "Big Jim" Colfax, Jeff Corey as "Blinky" Franklin, and Jack Lambert as "Dum-Dum" Clarke. The names almost say it all.
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-6622-E7313F-39C93734-prod1
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2. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (Billy Wilder, 1944) -- Clearly an influence on several previously described films, this story of murder and betrayal was also based on a James M. Cain novel, and written for the screen by another master of the form, Raymond Chandler. Narrating in flashback, Insurance Agent Walter Neff (Fred McMurray) explains how he became ensnared by Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) in a plot to murder her husband (Tom Powers). Edward G. Robinson plays Neff's boss and father-confessor, Barton Keyes. Miklos Rozsa provides the music. McMurray ("Father Knows Best"), like Robert Young in THEY WON'T BELIEVE ME, was reluctant to play the part of an adulterer like Walter Neff. It is his most memorable dramatic role.
After looking at over a score of Epinions, weirdo 87's seemed to me the most thorough and informative:
http://www.epinions.com/content_69503848068
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1. THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (John Huston, 1950) -- Here we seem to combine all of the Noir elements in a perfect film. As an erudite character says, in an epigram which might stand for Film Noir, "Crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor." Based on the novel by W.R. Burnett, screenwritten by Director Huston and Ben Maddow, the picture tells the story of how Dix Handler (Sterling Hayden), a country boy and small time thug, becomes the heat for the jewel robbery scheme of Master Criminal" "Doc" Erwin Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe). The robbery is to be financed through a middleman, Bookie "Cobby" Cobb (Marc Lawrence), by a well-known criminal lawyer, Alonzo D. "Lon" Emmerich (Louis Calhern), who is having trouble keeping in separate, sedate luxury his invalid wife May (Dorothy Tree) and a blonde mistress, Angela Phinlay (Marilyn Monroe), at the same time. The crime is brilliantly executed, but a chance miscalculation blows a hole in its success. Here, the unreliable heroine, Doll Conovan (Jean Hagen) comes through for her man. There's even a crooked cop, Det. Lt. Ditrich (Barry Kelley). Miklos Rozsa's score is all the more effective for being heard only under the main credits of the picture, and during its very affecting last few minutes. Miss Monroe's first important performance, and startling it is. THE ASPHALT JUNGLE is just the Best!
From a number of fine Epinions on the picture, I've once more picked one of weirdo 87's:
http://www.epinions.com/content_227550465668
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As you will see, the coming of World War II, just twenty years after "The War to End All Wars," left Americans, and later even Europeans, wondering about the essential nature and future of Mankind. The close of that second World War, with Veterans returning to surprisingly harsh realities -- the true end of the Frontier (or as we can now see, America's extension of its Empire to the ends of the Earth and into the Stars); an acceleration of flight from relatively innocent small towns to smoky, vice-filled central cities; the lure of cheap big town celebrity, which turned men into lounge lizards and women into bimbos; the re-emergence of organized crime, enslaving the poor and weak-natured to drugs, gambling and prostitution -- all suggested that the promise of a future good life for modern young men and women might be in doubt.
Ironically, the twenty years of World War II and the Post War were economically the best years working and middle class Americans would ever see, for what followed insidiously replaced real quality of life for most of us with a pattern of scattered families, tribalism, a cynical destruction of our best institutions, a foolish leap into fascistic imperialism, and an endless obsession with instantly obsolete gadgets.
Americans who had lost their innocence in our coming to Empire, without quite knowing it, turned their experience into Film Noir, and Europeans facing the devastation of conflict and the end of their own empires, also favored the genre.
Those changes were the half dream/half nightmare motivations from which Film Noir was born, and would prescribe how the genre grew after 1940 until the coming of age for the "Boomers" in the early 1960's.
Watch the above ten films, and you will see why and how, in terms of psychodrama, we are at our present state of hypocrisy and souless rationalization.
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Best Ten Classic Movie Soundtracks:
http://www.epinions.com/musc-review-7EAE-7C94774-38EFF7CD-prod6
Best Ten Motion Picture Dramas:
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-206C-8305A31-3919C5F2-prod3
[Over 10,500 people have read about my favorite Epic Films. What's wrong with my Ten Best Movies of All Time?] --
Best Ten Movie Epics:
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-6829-8A8EB97-391C90BC-prod5
[Thrillers have now gained 13,000 Readers] --
Best Ten Thriller/Suspense Films:
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-4F8B-A4CDE20-392D90B1-prod1
[Over 11,500 people have read my "virtual life" thesis on Sci-Fi Films. Why not you?] --
My List of the Best Sci-Fi Films Ever ("In Our Time):
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-40F-1A90D6-392B0AC0-prod6
[The following odd and last laughs are at 9000 reads now.] --
My Personal Ten Best Comedies:
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-594-8E7CA52-394192DC-prod6
[And over 22,000 people have consulted this next list -- growing by hundreds of reads a month. It must do something for them!] --
My list of the Best Horror Films Ever:
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-2638-D6E33A2-394D52A7-prod5
My Ten Best Movies Ever:
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-2CF-E157FA3-398B7E5B-prod1
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11/7/09: Another Bloody November.
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