The NZA Posted October 28, 2009 Share Posted October 28, 2009 Noir is awesome. I was glad to see it kinda resurrecting with Sin City. at least since playing Grim Fandango, ive been interested in revising the genre, and found a lotta local hondonians have an interest as well but havent seen much. The number of people not having seen Casablanca was unexpected. I got to watch The Big Sleep with sen tonight, really said i sat on that one for so long - Hepburn & a few others get named as early standout actresses, but ive loved Lauren Bacall since her work with the Duke. seeing her play off Bogey was just awesome. I'm gonna try for the Maltese Falcon next week. Compiling a small to-see list here, just added Chinatown recently. anyone else into this/have suggestions? "You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how far you can go." "A lot depends on who's in the saddle." - Bogart & Bacall in The Big Sleep Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reverend Jax Posted October 28, 2009 Share Posted October 28, 2009 Man, I thought you said we were going to do this as a group. Then you go off and watch The Big Sleep without me. You'll regret this, Custer! Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La Lindsay Posted October 28, 2009 Share Posted October 28, 2009 Chinatown is toooooooo long. Have you seen Brick? it's pretty good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The NZA Posted October 29, 2009 Author Share Posted October 29, 2009 Man, I thought you said we were going to do this as a group. Then you go off and watch The Big Sleep without me. You'll regret this, Custer! Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life! we've only got 1 down. you wanna work in schedules, or wait till 2010 or wha? i thought we just said things sometimes. what's a brick? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La Lindsay Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 high school noir. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lycaon Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 Angel Heart, perhaps? I still have to see this. Don't delve too deeply in to the IMDB page (the initial plot description should be safe) if you haven't seen this. Spoiler ahoy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reverend Jax Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 we've only got 1 down. you wanna work in schedules, or wait till 2010 or wha? i thought we just said things sometimes. If you're going to do a noir night, you don't have to do anything, not a thing. Just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you Nick? You just put your lips together, and blow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C_U_SPACECOWBOY Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 LOL! I was going to suggest Brick before I saw Lindsay's post. (I should of know). Anyway, I own the DVD Nick, was actually watching it the other day, after seeing The Brothers Bloom (same director). Lemme know if you wanna borrow it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Hakujin Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 Chinatown is tsoooooooo long good... Amended for accuracy. I really haven't watched enough classic noir. I own Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, and Chinatown but that's about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iambaytor Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 Cinatown isn't that long certainly not as long as Casino or The Godfather. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lycaon Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 Saw Kiss Me Deadly a while back at a movie marathon. Try it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Bob Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 Good noirs: The Maltese Falcon The Big Sleep Double Indemnity (pretty much the definitive noir) Chinatown (the first and still best "neo noir") Brick (it's like Bogey in high school, great study of the genre) The Third Man LA Confidential Key Largo Blood Simple/Miller's Crossing/The Man Who Wasn't There (Coen Brothers' take on noir. For my money, Miller's Crossing is by far the best, but Man captures the cinematography perfectly) Payback (try the director's cut, especially) Sunset Boulevard Touch of Evil (the last great noir of the original classic period, before Chinatown reinvented it) And if you want to venture off the path a little bit, try: Blade Runner (scifi noir) Dark City (even weirder scifi noir) Minority Report (more standard scifi noir) Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (noir spoof) Who Framed Roger Rabbit (literally written to be Chinatown with cartoon characters) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (noir comedy) The Ice Harvest (very dark noir comedy) The Good German (not so great movie but captures the look and feel of noir exactly) Sin City (insanely exaggerated noir) Veronica Mars (TV noir) Vertigo (Hitchcock's twisty noir masterpiece) The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe and noir seen through the eyes of Robert Altman) Memento (noir backwards?) By the way, I maintain that Casablanca looks like a noir and has a noir protagonist but is not a noir. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Hakujin Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 OK, SB (who'd have thought frickin' noir would've gotten him to post again!?) refreshed my memory. I own Key Largo, but haven't watched it yet. I also own (and have seen) Minority Report, Blade Runner, Vertigo (noir?), Miller's Crossing, Blade Runner, Dark City, Memento, and LA Confidential. Also saw Payback (didn't know there was a director's cut...), Man Who Wasn't There, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Sunset Blvd. I need to see: Double Indemnity, The Third Man, The Big Sleep, and apparently Brick since everyone else here has seen it and loves it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iambaytor Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 If you haven't seen the director's cut of Payback then you haven't seen Payback, you just saw the mass-market piece of shit that Mel Gibson turned it into. Watch it, it's an entirely different movie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Hakujin Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 If you haven't seen the director's cut of Payback then you haven't seen Payback, you just saw the mass-market piece of shit that Mel Gibson turned it into. Watch it, it's an entirely different movie. torrent link or it doesn't exist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iambaytor Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 You should just buy the DVD you whore. http://www.torrentscan.com/ check BT junkie under "Payback Director's Cut" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alive she cried Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 I love the genre but haven't seen enough LA Confidential Brick Miller's Crossing The Man Who Wasn't There Sin City Memento I've also sat on The Maltese Falcon for the longest time. Think I'll give a few on sb's a list a gander Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Bob Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 Vertigo (noir?), Vertigo is pure noir. The flawed detective hero, the femme fatale, the convoluted crime plot. Of course, Hitchcock elevates it above the genre somewhat, and it isn't always filmed like a noir (except the opening rooftop chase and the hotel room scene with the neon sign lighting) but it's definitely noir. If you haven't seen the director's cut of Payback then you haven't seen Payback, you just saw the mass-market piece of shit that Mel Gibson turned it into. Watch it, it's an entirely different movie. Most director's cuts say that, but in the case of Payback, it's literally true - it's an entirely different film. The entire third act is different material. Characters that were invented for the theatrical cut don't even exist in the director's cut. The climax takes place in a completely different place with completely different circumstances. It's a great, great director's cut. If you want an idea about how different it is, remember Kris Kristofferson's baddie and all the plot involving him? He's not even in the director's cut. And I can't stress enough how much anybody who is interested in good noir needs to watch The Third Man. It really doesn't get much better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The NZA Posted November 2, 2009 Author Share Posted November 2, 2009 /mindblown about Payback, i totally saw it and forgot about it. ill have to give it another go now. SB - thanks for the list, im gonna cross out either seen or have it in queue: Good noirs: The Maltese Falcon The Big Sleep Double Indemnity (pretty much the definitive noir) Chinatown (the first and still best "neo noir") Brick (it's like Bogey in high school, great study of the genre) - ok, 3 recommends, this is in queue soon. The Third Man LA Confidential Key Largo Blood Simple/Miller's Crossing/The Man Who Wasn't There (Coen Brothers' take on noir. For my money, Miller's Crossing is by far the best, but Man captures the cinematography perfectly) Payback (try the director's cut, especially) Sunset Boulevard Touch of Evil (the last great noir of the original classic period, before Chinatown reinvented it) And if you want to venture off the path a little bit, try: Blade Runner (scifi noir) Dark City (even weirder scifi noir) Minority Report (more standard scifi noir) Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (noir spoof) Who Framed Roger Rabbit (literally written to be Chinatown with cartoon characters) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (noir comedy) The Ice Harvest (very dark noir comedy) The Good German (not so great movie but captures the look and feel of noir exactly) Sin City (insanely exaggerated noir) Veronica Mars (TV noir) Vertigo (Hitchcock's twisty noir masterpiece) The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe and noir seen through the eyes of Robert Altman) Memento (noir backwards?) and yeah, i do need to watch Third Man soon, Junker was on about that like 10 years back and ive still sat on it. same with Vertigo, somehow. Double Indemnity, my first really noticing it though, ill have to look it up. also - By the way, I maintain that Casablanca looks like a noir and has a noir protagonist but is not a noir. controversy! how so, what was missing from the formula then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Bob Posted November 2, 2009 Share Posted November 2, 2009 controversy! how so, what was missing from the formula then? Casablanca is far too optimistic to be a noir. One of the defining qualities of film noir is its bleak outlook on life. In a true film noir, the only way the hero can win is simply by surviving to make it to the next day. If he's really lucky, he'll get the girl and he'll bring a couple people to justice. But the decaying society, the corrupt system, the hero can't beat that. Look at the end of LA Confidential, when Exley realizes that he can't stop the corrupt system, but he can join it and lie to get a promotion (and continue to do good work as a cop). At the end of The Big Sleep, Bogey's gotten some guys killed and bagged Bacall, but he really hasn't solved much of anything. Look at Blade Runner's ambiguous ending. Hell, look at Chinatown! In film noir, The Maltese Falcon has about the happiest kind of ending you can get. But what happens at the end of Casablanca? Everyone - even the corrupt official - does the right thing, the right people get shot, beautiful friendships are formed and everyone's off to go stick it to the Nazis. There's no sense of pessimism, no idea that "this is the way the world is and there's nothing we can do but try to make it through the day". It's far too optimistic a movie for that. And one of the most important reasons it's not a film noir is that it doesn't deal with a crime! There are many many arguments about what makes a noir and what doesn't, but one of the only things that everyone can agree on is that noir is focused on crime. Every single movie on that list is focused on crime. In Casablanca, the only crime important to the plot is the theft of the letters of marque, but this occurs before the film even begins and is resolved during the first act. The letters are just a macguffin and have no real bearing on the plot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iambaytor Posted November 11, 2009 Share Posted November 11, 2009 I have some to add to this list: Citizen Kane - A murder mystery where the victim is a man's soul rather than his body. Cape Fear (1962) - Not to be confused with Scorsceesee's good but slightly over-the-top remake (which is also noir). The Machurian Candidate (1962) - Political thriller noir with Frank Sinatra. Skip the remake with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep. My neo-noir picks: Big Trouble - Satirical comedy noir written by Dave Barry Taxi Driver - I don't know how this hasn't been brought up. Observe and Report - Taxi driver as a black comedy with a mall security guard. Se7en - Noir that borders on horror. Pulp Fiction - Pulp crime fiction (the grandfather of film noir) brought to the silver screen Jackie Brown - A movie that needs more love in general. The Usual Suspects - Another obvious one. Fargo - The Man Who Wasn't There looks the most like noir, but Fargo was the biggest noir movie the Coen's did. Collateral - Classic noir in a contemporary setting. The Ladykillers (1955) - Black noir-comedy with Peter Sellers, more noir than the Coen brothers remake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The NZA Posted November 11, 2009 Author Share Posted November 11, 2009 i gotta know if SB co-signs some of those entries. that said, ive clearly shown i dont have a complete grasp on the criteria. to that end, ive been told i should check out this documentary Visions of Light which addresses this somewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iambaytor Posted November 11, 2009 Share Posted November 11, 2009 Criteria: 1. Human beings in the story are always fallible and often corrupt 2. The fates are fickle and could pick upon anyone, anywhere, as the victim 3. The wages of even the slightest sin are likely to be death or at the very least social destruction 4. The most the god guys can generally hope for is a temporary victory. This is the criteria listed in "Noir Movies" by John Grant. Pretty much all the movies on Silent Bob's list made the list except Dark City and Brick (but that may just simply be because they're lesser known movies) it's got a pretty big list of a lot of movies in here and Casablanca is not featured here either, so John Grant (as well as myself) seem to agree with Silent Bob that black-and-white plus hard boiled inner-monologued hero does not a film noir make. The genre basically originated from pulp crime/detective novels though so I feel that all of those movies meet that criteria. Keep in mind that barring the original 3 the rest of the entries (with the exception of The Ladykillers) fit in the "Neo-Noir" category which is a very different animal. And I stand by Big Trouble most of all, though the book was a lot more noir than the movie I'll admit. Honestly the more I think about the more I think most of the Coen movies could be considered noir (maybe not Raising Arizona, though it does seem to have a lot of characteristics, definitely not Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty, or O Brother Where Art Thou, but just about everything else they've done from No Country For Old Men to Burn After Reading could easily fall under the umbrella of "Neo-Noir") Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The NZA Posted November 11, 2009 Author Share Posted November 11, 2009 huh. ok, that criteria's a lot more specific than id read, and black-and-white plus hard boiled inner-monologued hero does not a film noir make. i admit, this (plus corruption) was what i thought the criteria was for years. that said, im still sitting on Chinatown, but ive seen Blade Runner numerous times....does the criteria for neo-noir change much? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iambaytor Posted November 11, 2009 Share Posted November 11, 2009 It's the most consistent criteria I've read thus far, so I'll stand by it until I see better. Chinatown was so good that people are willing to forgive a man for a raping a teenage girl just for making it. Think about that a minute and just go watch it. Basically the only difference with Neo-Noir is they're allowed to have happy endings once in a while. They're usually also film noir tied with another genre. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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