This is an interesting article on what Zeltserman considers noir. He has some good points, and some interesting reading recommendations.
http://artery.wbur.org/2015/03/16/dave-zeltserman-noir
Zeltserman is making a counterpoint to Dennis Lehane’s view of noir in this article:
I like both there takes, but Hammett and Chandler will always be noir heroes to me, no matter how good an argument Zeltserman has.
Crack-Up is a film noir from 1946 staring Pat O’Brien!
No, Not that one, this one:
Crack-Up is based on a short story from Fredric Brown and is directed by Irving Reis. Our leading lady is played by Claire Trevor. Trevor appeared in many film noir threw out her career. Character actor Wallace Ford plays our lead detective.
The story starts out with our hero breaking into a museum and looks to be drunk and out of control. He is followed in by a police officer who wants to arrest him for public drunkenness and for trying to take a swing at him. The board for the museum is having a meeting at this time and recognize our hero and ask if the police officer will let them take care of him. He isn’t drunk he is sick. Our hero comes to and tells our detective how the last thing he remembers is being on a train when it wrecked with another train. The only problem is there was no train wreck! This is where the mystery takes off. Why does he think there was a train wreck? What happened to our hero? Was he drugged? This mystery is just the beginning, as we have murder, art, money, dames, conspiracies and a twisting plot that will leave you swinging in the wind.
Another great looking film noir, this one by camera man Robert De Grasse. The story sometimes doesn’t make a lot of sense and may have some holes in it that are hard to overlook. I really thought this movie might have a mentally ill main character, given the name of the film and the way he acts at first. I guess in 1947 the public wasn’t ready for mentally ill main characters. As the movie goes along we find a perfectly good reason for the way our hero is acting. Then it is made light of with our last line, “Everybody is nuts around here, but me.”
This is not a widely watched film with a 6.6 rating on IMDb from only 657 voters. I would say this is a far rating and is worth watching for the hard-core film noir fan, but not a film I would recommend for somebody that is looking for just a few good examples of the genre.
I’m taking part in my first Blogathon! Not sure what I’m doing but look forward to it. I will be looking at Catherine Tramell for my part. Here is the list of everybody taking part and who they will be looking at:
https://hqofk.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/great-villain-blogathon-2015/
Look forward to taking part and looking at everybody else’s take on their villains. If your a blogger, grab a villain and take a crack at it.
A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes starts out with the stupidest scam I’ve every heard of. They put $10 bills in some cardboard and put it in an oven and change it to $100 bills. Our protagonist Jackson falls for this con, he gets all his money together, some not even his and has our con men try to change it for him. I thought how stupid is our main character to fall for this? Then I see how his girlfriend, our classic femme fatale, Imabelle is the driving force behind him being involved. The first part of this book I found funny but found our criminal characters not intelligent enough to be entertaining. Then I got to thinking, most criminals in real life are not that intelligent are they? I was not liking this book at first, but then it was like a snowball getting bigger and bigger as it rolled downhill and I started liking it more and more.
Jackson’s twin brother, Goldy, who most people think is a nun, is a slightly smarter criminal then Jackson and an interesting character. Our trio of bad guys/con men are not characters we get to know very well, but it’s their history that we learn and drives the story towards the end.
The characters of Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones are introduced, but play secondary characters in this book. Not sure if they play this secondary part in the rest of the Harlem Cycle, but they do appear in all the books.
Himes’ descriptions of Harlem in the 1950’s are amazing. His humor is great through out. The situations our characters get into are sometimes a bit over the top. As the book went on, I found the story only getting better and enjoyed it all the way to the last page.
Here is a cool cover of the book, under its original name, For Love of Imabelle.
Himes was a criminal himself and went to prison for armed robbery. When in prison he began to write crime stories. This gave him respect from other prisoners and the guards, as well as a new career when he got out. His story might be better than any of his books. He moved to Europe where he eventually died in 1984. This is a classic of the noir genre and I look forward to reading more in the Harlem Cycle. I read this book, because it was the group read of the month for the Pulp Fiction Group over on Goodreads, here is a link to see what other noir fans thought of the book:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2234732-march-2015—a-rage-in-harlem
A classic must read for noir fans, give it a chance and you will enjoy the ride.
Alphaville is the first sci-fi neo-noir film that I’m aware of. It is the predecessor for films like 12 Monkeys, Donnie Darko, and Predestination, but it may be closer to Matrix, Terminator and Blade Runner. Why? you ask…, the theme. The Theme of this movie and the other three are not time travel but machines taking over and running the humans. This film is very strange, beautiful, unique, challenging, and trippy. I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t understand a lot of this film. I think each person that watches it may take something different away from the experience. A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution is the tag line of this film and seems to be a far assessment.
This film is written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, a french director that started directing in 1955 and is still going strong today. He has made a few noir type films and I look forward to reviewing some of those later on this blog. This film is filmed in a classic film-noir fashion, black and white, interesting angles and lighting, an odd perspective that makes it interesting to watch. It takes place in the future in the city of Alphaville, but is just filmed in than modern-day 1965 Paris. This gives it a unique look, its futuristic for classic noir era, but probably felt old-looking to 1965 viewers.
Eddie Constantine plays Lemmy Caution in this film, he also played this character in 13 other films. Though I have never seen any of these other movies, they look to range from traditional crime dramas in the 1950’s to musicals to a drama in 1991, also directed by Godard. This is interesting to me and would like to see a few of these to see how the character evolves over time.
Anna Karina plays our femme fatale, we never know if we can trust her, if she is just a pawn for the computer Alpha 60, or she is working with her engineer father to take down Caution. Karina was married to Godard at this time and starred in many of his films in the 1960’s.
I still don’t know what to think of this film, it will definitely stay with you and make you think. It may be a movie worth watching a couple of times to get all the subtleties. I would not recommend this film to just anybody, but if you find the science fiction neo-noir movies I listed above interesting and some of your favorites, I would check it out. Would this replace any of the above movies on my favorite 1001 movies of all time? No, but this movie gave me some prospective of where they came from.
T-Men is a B-movie film noir from 1947. It’s told in a documentary-drama style story. This movie is directed by Anthony Mann and showcased his talent. It is filmed in a low light, classic film noir style that looks amazing. Mann directed a few more film noir B movies and then moved on to westerns and eventually full on Hollywood historic epics. Even though T-Men was a fairly low-budget film it got nominated for an Academy Award for Sound. The movie was written by John C. Higgins and Virginia Kellogg both of which wrote many crime films in their career.
Dennis O’Keefe plays our main hero and undercover T-man. He definitely had a good presence is this role and did many B-movies including a few more film-noirs, he also did a lot of television work, including having his own show for a while. Wallace Ford plays The Schemer and that describes the character well. He is always looking for an angle and scheming for his next score. Ford played the most interesting character in the film, in my opinion. Alfred Ryder plays O’Keefe’s undercover partner and comes across as an average every-man that may be in over his head.
I could not find anything about the story behind this movie. It plays as a true case from the Secret Service, but I can not find if it really is. Anybody out there shed some light on this? If these bad guys were real, they where both incredibly brutal and smart.
This story is about two T-men or I.R.S. Agents sent undercover to break up a counterfeit ring. The ring seems to be based in Los Angles, but anytime anybody gets close to the root of the group it leads to a dead-end. They trace some counterfeit stamps in Detroit that are from the same group. Are hero’s are sent to Detroit to infiltrate the ring from there. This is where are adventure takes off.
This movie isn’t the most interesting story or have many twists and turns to it, but if it is a true story that would make sense. I would not put this noir in my top ten, but it is worth viewing for hardcore film noir fans.
Heat is 20 years old now! That is hard to believe, I didn’t know if I should call it a classic, but after 20 years I think we are safe. This is a Neo-Noir epic with one of the best casts in a noir film ever.
Michael Mann writes and directs, Mann is a legend of neo-noir film making. He got his start in some great television shows and went on to make some amazing movies. This one may be his best.
Lets start with the cast, this is the first time we see two of the greatest actors of our time on the screen at the same time with each other: Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro. There seen together was filmed at a restaurant in Los Angles, one where you can actually sit and have a meal at the same table even today. They did appear in another film before this, a little film called Godfather II, but were never on screen together.
This is almost like two films in one, we are rooting for our brilliant thief and hoping he gets away and lives happily ever after. We are also rooting for our hard nosed cop that has to find the violent criminals before they get away clean. It’s a cat and mouse game that we can not pick a side on. The trip is worth it.
Though this is enough to make any movie big, no need to have anyone else in the cast, but we do. A lot of my favorite crime actors are in this film and I’m just going to list them here:
Val Kilmer plays a gambling addict that earns his money stealing.
Ashley Judd plays his wife and our only real femme fatale.
Jon Voight plays the ring leader of the bad guys, interesting note: his character is based on Edward Bunker, a career criminal that has appeared in many crime films and has written many noir books himself. I plan on reading and reviewing some of his books on the website later.
A young Natalie Portman is in here as the angry step daughter, she already showed some amazing talent in this small role.
We also have an all star supporting cast of crime film regulars: Tom Sizemore, Mykelti Williamson, Wes Studi,Ted Levine, Dennis Haysbert, William Fichtner, Kevin Gage, Hank Azaria, Danny Trejo, Henry Rollins, and Jeremy Piven.
This movie actually is based on a real life cop and his pursuit of a career thief. The real story is about Chuck Adamson, a real life cop in Chicago who meet in a non violent situation with the real Neil McCauley and chased him for part of his career. Adamson also helped write on some of Mann’s T.V. shows and is also the source for one of Mann’s other movies, Thief.
At almost 3 hours long, this is a long film, but worth it.
The question I had before viewing this film was “Is this a film-noir or not?” I have no degree in film, and this doesn’t have the traditional technical aspects of a true film noir, and from what research I can find, Otto Preminger didn’t want this to be a traditional film noir. Preminger was a director that knew noir, he made quite a few, some before and some after this one. So could this be the very first neo-noir? All I know is this is filmed in black and white and doesn’t have as much shadow play as most films of this era. The subject matter on the other hand is very noir, it is gritty and dark. The movie is based on the book of the same name written by Nelson Algren.
We have a convict fresh out of prison. He was arrested as a card dealer at an illegal casino and he has a drug problem. He comes out of prison, clean and with a new skill as a drummer. He is looking for a fresh start, but gets pulled into his old ways. His girl is bound to a wheel chair because of a spinal issue, she needs money to go to the doctors to help her find a cure. She is about as close to a femme fatale as you can get. There is also the beautiful neighbor down stairs who is the girl our hero really likes. We have an old boss that wants to control our hero and get him back into dealing cards for him. We got his best friend that is an honest hustler, he feels he is more honest than the criminals around him, but still a criminal. Murder, drugs, gambling, dancing-girls, hustlers, thugs and love triangles, sounds like noir to me.
The film also pushed the boundaries of The Motion Picture Association of America’s film code and is one of the reasons the code was changed. Because of its drug use in this film it almost wasn’t approved. After this film, taboo subjects like drugs, kidnapping, abortion and prostitution were allowed in film. This would of course be big for noir and neo-noir films to come.
This was nominated for 3 Academy Awards including Frank Sinatra’s one and only nomination for his portrayal of Frankie Machine. Eleanor Parker plays Frankie’s wheel chair bound girlfriend. Kim Novak plays their neighbor, Molly. Funny man Arnold Stang plays Frankie’s side kick Sparrow. Darren McGavin plays the underworld boss that is trying to control Frankie.
So for those fans that have seen it, what do you think? Is it a film-noir or a well done crime drama? In either case it is a good film worth watching.
Snake Eyes is from legendary director Brian De Palma. De Palma was one of the best neo-noir directors through the 1980’s and 90’s. In one of the coolest and most underrated scenes in movies is the first 20 minutes of this film. It looks like it is one continues shot, but it is edited together. There are some other really cool shots in this movie as well, I liked the point of view shots and the hotel room pan shot. Our protagonist is Rick Santoro, played by Nicolas Cage. He is a dirty cop with a gambling issue. He is in his town, Atlantic City, where he has ambitions of local politics after his police career ends. The movie starts with Rick coming to the local casino to watch a Heavy Weight Championship fight with his old classmate, Lincoln Tyler played by Stan Shaw. He has ringside seats with his friend and Commander in the Navy, Kevin Dunne played by Gary Sinise. Dunne is there on protection duty for the Secretary of Defense who is there to watch the big fight. Soon Julia Costello, played by Carla Gugino sits next to Rick at the fight and all hell breaks loose. I like Gugino as our femme fatale, as she changes from a platinum blond in all white to a brunette in a black jacket, our prospective of her also changes.
This has a very intricate plot and is well executed. I’m not really sure why this film has such low ratings with a 5.9 on IMDb, 52 on Metascore, and 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. I watched this in the theater when it first came out and just re-watched it tonight. I don’t think this is a masterpiece by any means but feel it should be a sold 3.5 to 4 stars out of 5. If you are a noir fan give this a second chance.
New book by Lili Anolik and some noir recommendations from her. Looks like she has pretty good taste, look forward to reading this book soon.
everythingnoir 