Here is an interesting article by Stephanie Zacharek at the L.A. Weekly. Though the title catches your attention with an interesting theory, there is a lot of other great insight into one of the all time great films noir. The article talks about some of the other great actors who were considered for the two main parts and why they “settled” for Cotten and Welles.
Check out the full article here:
http://www.laweekly.com/film/in-the-third-man-orson-welles-is-actually-the-femme-fatale-5754481
Renaissance is an animated sci-fi neo noir made in 2006 using CGI, Motion Capture, and only Black and White with no shades of grey. This film is French and directed by Christian Volckman, but since it is animated it does not have subtitles, but is re-voiced in English. Daniel Craig voices our main character Karas.
This film takes place in a future Paris of 2054 and combines a classic noir look and story in part, with a futuristic sci-fi plot line. The film starts with our hard-boiled detective, Karas having a nightmare of his past. This shows his hard upbringing and his mind state in the present. The film takes us to a flashy club where we meet two sisters. They are an yin yang pairing as one is a hard driven scientist and one is a slacker who just wants to have fun and can careless about work. Our hard-working scientist is kidnapped while leaving the club with no trace. Karas is brought on to the case to find her and she has to be alive. The girl works for a big corporation called Avalon and they work on anti-aging and health products. They are also very powerful. This is where Karas starts his investigation. Was our kidnap victim part of corporate espionage? a victim of circumstance? Did she discover something in the lab she shouldn’t have? Will Karas find her?
This film is more style then substance. It isn’t a bad story, but your senses are drawn to the visual style more than anything.
This is a fun film to watch, think a mix of Sin City and Blade Runner. If this sounds amazing to you, you should check out this film. Though I would recommend both of those films over this one, it is still worth watching.
The Telegraph in the U.K. has a nice slide show if Femmes Fatales, with a few surprises on there. Check out the full article here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatpicturegalleries/7352663/Film-noir-femmes-fatales.html
Lamentation by Joe Clifford is a noir book that takes place in New Hampshire. There is currently a big movement of Southern Noir in literature, but who doesn’t like a change of location once in a while? I received a copy of this book for a fair and honest review.
This book came out in late 2014 and is well received by book reviewers everywhere so far. Things won’t change much here, because I also loved this book.
Lamentation is told from the point of view of Jay. Jay is a smart guy who grow up in a small town in New Hampshire and is still there. He works for Tom who does estate sales. He basically moves things from the house of the dead and decides what is trash and what Tom can sell at flea markets and such. It is the middle of the winter and Tom doesn’t have any work for Jay and lays him off until things pick up. Jay has an ex-girlfriend, who he is still in love with, and they have a child together. Jay also has a brother, Chris, who in my opinion is the most interesting character of the book. Chris is also a thorn in Jay’s side. Chris is a homeless drug addict who is full of paranoid conspiracy theories.
When Chris is wanted for questioning in the murder of his business partner, it is in everybody’s best interest if Jay finds him before somebody else does. As Jay knows Chris is not capable of murder, he recruits his best friend and an old high school classmate that is now an investigator for an insurance company, to help him with his own investigation. The book gets more interesting as Jay looks into the murder and how Chris is involved. Small town rumors boil to the surface and Jay learns more about his brother and his town as he goes.
I loved this book! It is well written and has a story with multiple threads of interest that I could not read fast enough to see what it all meant. This does delve into some pretty dark themes and is immensely entertaining. If you are a fan of noir, mystery or crime fiction it is a book I believe you will enjoy. I look forward to reading more books like this from Clifford and wish him a long and lustrous career.
Ben Affleck and Dennis Lehane’s worked together before and made Gone Baby Gone. I read the book awhile ago and look forward to this film. How about you?
Bob le Flambeur is a French film noir from Jean-Pierre Melville. Melville also came up with the story and co-wrote the screenplay.
This story has a lot of characters and plot lines, all of which revolve around Bob, played by Roger Duchesne. Bob is a gambler and has had many successes, but is on a losing streak and is about out of money. We see him go through the night losing money at one casino and then another. As he goes through the city we meet our femme fatale, the young Anne played by Isabelle Corey. Bob’s young protegé, played by Daniel Cauchy, meets him for drinks. A pimp played by Gérard Buhr, bursts into his apartment in the middle of the night. The Pimp needs some money to leave town, he has beat up one of his girls and put her in the hospital. The pimp is afraid she will press charges this time. We also meet other characters like the cop who Bob saved from being shot years ago, and other gangsters and con men.
When Bob is out of money, he comes up with a plan to rob a casino. He uses his connections to set up a team of robbers and con artists to help him pull it off. Can a gang of outlaws work together to rob a casino? Will somebody double cross the team? Will Bob’s gambling get in the way?
This is a very good film, a film with a story I thought I had seen before, and I guess I have. This film has been remade as The Good Thief by Neil Jordan. It also was an influence on Sinatra’s Ocean’s 11 as well as Soderbergh’s re-make.Quentin Tarantino says this is his favorite gangster film and was an influence on Reservoir Dogs. Stanley Kubrick says he stopped making crime films after this movie, saying he could never top this film. It is also Jim Jarmusch favorite film. So needless to say this film has been an important influence on many of the great film makers of today and has been cribbed for some of the best heist films since its release.
So if that doesn’t make you want to check it out I don’t know what will. If you haven’t seen it in a while, re-watch it to see if you can pick up on how this movie touched so many movies that came after it.
A Simple Plan is a neo noir by director Sam Raimi of Evil Dead and Spider-Man fame. This is based on a book and screen play by Scott B. Smith. The film was released in 1998 and was nominated for two Oscars. The three main characters are played by an all-star trio with Bill Paxton as our main protagonist, Bridget Fonda as his wife and Billy Bob Thornton as his socially awkward brother.
The film starts in an everyday small town in the Northern United States. It is New Years Eve and Hank, Played by Paxton, is leaving work early for a family matter. He goes home where we soon see his pregnant wife Sarah, played by Fonda. He changes and soon his brother Jacob played by Thornton, pulls up outside in his beat up truck. Hank is not happy as he sees Jacob has brought his obnoxious friend Lou played by Brent Briscoe. The threesome goes to a cemetery to put a poinsettia on a grave. As they are leaving, a fox with a chicken in its mouth runs out in front of Jacob’s truck causing him to hit a tree. Jacob, not happy, grabs his riffle and the three take off in pursuit of the fox. They soon come across a wrecked airplane. Upon investigation they find a dead pilot and a bag full of money, 4.4 million to be exact. As the group discuss what to do, they decide that Hank will take the money and the three will keep it secret until spring. They will wait to see after the wreckage is discovered if the money is mentioned. If it is not, Hank will distribute the money and all three will move away happy and wealthy. Will money ruin these people’s life? Of course it will, but how?
This is a very good noir plot with money being the root of all evil and what will the common man do to keep his ill-gotten gains. I really enjoyed how the 4 characters that know about the money change as the film goes along. All are good average people when the film starts and change to evil people in different varieties by the end. Hank does what he thinks is right through out the film, but his femme fatale of a wife controls him like a puppet. Paxton does an amazing job as our everyday hero. Fonda as our femme fatale starts out saying she would never take the money to over thinking every little detail to dastardly consequences. Thornton, who got this part do to his performance in Sling Blade, shows once again how great an actor he is. The way he must balance friendship and family and is eventually pulled apart by this choice alone makes this worth watching. Briscoe’s performance of Lou is underrated and though he starts out as the biggest jerk, he changes the lest because of the money. Chelcie Ross plays the small town naive Sheriff to perfection and Gary Cole is also very good as the F.B.I. Agent in town to investigate the possible plane crash.
This is a great film by any measure and if you have not seen it, go do it now! If you have not seen it in a while now would be a good time to revisit this one.
Check out this article from Time. It is about James Ellroy’s new book of crime photos. Did the photos inspire film noir or did film noir inspire the photos?
Terek Puckett is back at it again with The Best Neo-Noir Films of the 1980s. His own rules apply to this list as his last one from the 1970s, where future or historic films are not included in his list, so Blade Runner will be missing in this list. Still a great list with some more films I have forgotten about or didn’t know much about. I added a few new films to my “To Watch” list,hopefully you will find a few films to add to yours.
Here is the link to the full list:
http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2014/the-20-best-neo-noir-films-of-the-1980s/
The Woman on the Beach is a film noir from 1947 directed by Jean Renoir. We have Joan Bennett as our femme fatale and Robert Ryan as our duped hero. Charles Bickford plays our disgruntled blind husband of Bennett. This is a short film of only 71 minutes long and a fairly simple plot with out much wow factor.
This film starts out very strong with Ryan having a nightmare. The nightmare is strange and wonderful, with some cool camera effects. Ryan plays a Navy man who has seen some bad things. Today we would say he has Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. He wakes from his nightmare as his bed’s head frame and shadows on the wall show he really is in a prison of his own mind.
He travels along the beach where Bennett catches his eye, though he doesn’t stop or acknowledge her, we see there is some electricity there. He continues on his intended path to talk to his girlfriend, played by Nan Leslie, to see if she will marry him. Is this a last-ditch effort to save himself from going mad?
Even though Ryan has just become engaged, he still finds an attraction to Bennett who he learns is married. Ryan soon meets the husband who is a famous artist, except he has recently gone blind. Bickford plays the blind artist who is a very interesting character. He is abusive to his wife, maybe taking out his frustrations on her? As the movie goes along we find the couple to be in a co-dependent relationship. Bickford takes a liking to Ryan, or does he just want his enemy close?
Ryan believes Bickford really isn’t blind but is pretending, to keep Bennett close to him. This all sounds great, but it seems to trail off from here with out to much of a plot. I think this film would have been much better with a little more plot towards the end and a slightly longer run time. Ryan is great as usual, playing an average man back from the war. Bennett is good as our complex femme fatale, using men to get what she wants, but does she really know what she wants? Bickford is also very good as the bitter husband that has lost everything important to him, but is trying to adapt.
This is a decent film worth watching. It has three great characters and starts out with a strong study of those characters. This first half hour is very intense and you feel like you are on your way to watching a hidden gem, but the second half fell a little flat to me. Still worth watching for film noir buffs and fans of the three leads.
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