Any notable films on the radar for this subject? I always seem to miss the suggestions ... I scanned into Sunday for Noir, but not sure if the movies on TCM are on the "recommended" list. TIA!

Blue Gardenia next Sunday. Fritz Lang. And Raymond Burr before Perry Mason.
Pretty good.

Yes, The Blue Gardenia on Noir Alley this Sunday morning. Aside from The Big Heat, I'm not much of a fan of late Fritz Lang films (just look at the preposterous premise of his very late Beyond a Reasonable Doubt). Lang was one of germany's greatest directors during the Weimar era, and most of the great directors make better films as they mature. I'm not sure what happened with Lang, but The Blue Gardenia is most definitely film noir. Photographed by my favorite cinematographer of all time, Nicholas Musuraca.

Wasn't The Morning After based upon the same premise? You think you murdered someone but you didn't and you were framed. John Farrow's Where Danger Lives (noir icon Robert Mitchum, again) uses the same premise.

Thanks fellas - have the DVR set to record that one, so I look forward to it.

The following week on Noir Alley, they air another Fritz Lang film noir- Scarlet Street. This film is an example of how film noir managed to circumvent the Production Code. The code says that murderer's must be punished, and in Scarlet Street, well, that doesn't actually happen. Spirit/Letter of the Law

The following week comes an example of the ".99" I alluded to on the previous page.

After that, we get Jules Dassin and then the incomparable John Alton. (Why is it that the greatest cinematographers are almost always born in some country other than the one in which they achieve their fame? It's something to do with how they view the world, I guess.)

Oh, I didn't see this on the schedule-

Possessed is coming on TCM right now. Joan Crawford.

That's film noir.

1947 was the year 'subjective camera' was in style. Great use of it at the beginning of this film.

quote:

Fritz Lang film noir- Scarlet Street.

Loved that film. I was impressed with the versatility of Edgar Robinson. In many respects it shows that some things have not changed in this world, when it comes to relationships.

Did you guys catch Muller's introduction to The Blue Gardenia? Muller didn't get any of that out of the trivia section of IMDB, unlike much of the information in the introductions these days from other TCM hosts.

Just a few posts up from here, I said I was puzzled by the films Lang directed late in his career, and Muller explained it; HUAC. "Are you now or have you ever been..." I wasn't aware that Lang had been "grey-listed" by Hollywood. He was having a very hard time getting work.

This series, Noir Alley, and its host are the best thing on TCM right now. As far as I'm concerned, it should air twice a week.

I like Muller. He knows Noir. Heads above everyone else on TCM.

I had forgotten that I had seen The Blue Gardenia, but it was enjoyable regardless as I always see/pick up something new which I missed; moreso was that my better-half really enjoyed it and wanted more "noir". She was the one that guessed that the killer in TBG was pregnant, which I completely glossed over.

I have Tension recorded from the prior week, but will be pleased to have more to watch as they are presented.

Is the TCM website worth reading on the "Noir Alley" bits?

Next week: Scarlet Street. My take on this is how versatile an actor Edward G. Robinson was. He plays a mild mannered clerk turned killer to the T.
Week after: The Set-Up. Possibly Robert Ryan's best role. And some have said the best boxing movie ever made. I wont go that far but it is well worth watching.

So, Scarlet Street is now playing. Watch the end of this film and you'll see how the film makers managed to circumvent the Production Code.

I noted that Eddie Muller in his introduction to Scarlet Street stated that this film is "the best movie Fritz Lang made during his Hollywood career." Notice that Muller didn't just say it was his favorite American Lang film- he said it was the best. Since the film was an independent production and was something of a remake of Lang's 1944 Woman in the Window, I suppose I've never considered this to be the greatest American film of one of the greatest of film directors, although it is most certainly and emphatically one of the finest examples of the style of film noir.

Here's a list of Lang's 24 American films which were made between 1936 and 1956. The list is in reverse order, with his last American film listed first. Lang's first American film, Fury from 1936, starring Spencer Tracy, is an indictment of mob violence and is every bit the equal of Mervyn Leroy's They Won't Forget, from the following year.
Looking over this list, I have to say that I think Lang's 1944 Ministry of Fear, starring Ray Milland and from a novel by Graham Greene, is his best American work.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

While the City Sleeps

Moonfleet

Human Desire

The Big Heat

The Blue Gardenia

Clash by Night

Rancho Notorious

American Guerrilla in the Philippines

House by the River

Secret Beyond the Door

Cloak and Dagger

Scarlet Street

The Woman in the Window

Ministry of Fear

Hangmen Also Die!

Moontide (uncredited)

Confirm or Deny (uncredited)

Man Hunt

Western Union

The Return of Frank James

You and Me

You Only Live Once

Fury

____________________________________________________

"I am your retribution." - Donald Trump, speech at CPAC, March 4, 2023

Another great anti mob violence film:
The Oxbow Incident.
Both Fury and The Oxbow Incident stand up well, despite their age.

Be sure to catch The Set-Up coming on right now. Robert Wise was a skilled and very versatile director. Cinematographer Milton Krasner also shot last week's Scarlet Street and he makes the seedy boxing world portrayed in the film look, well, beautiful, at least to my eye.

As I said previously, this film is an example of a film noir which is missing an element that is almost essential to the style. I don't want to give it away, do I'll point it out afterwards.

quote:

As I said previously, this film is an example of a film noir which is missing an element that is almost essential to the style.

OK, time to give it up Para ... drop a dime.

Oh, hai!

In The Set-Up, something didn't happen that happens in almost all other films noir. What is it?

OK, you made me watch it again. I'd see it somewhat recently and put off watching it thoroughly this past week.

Here are my guesses of what was missing, in order of which I thought might be correct:


#1: No murder/ Dead body
#2 No presenting of a .38 spec/gun
#3: No Feme Fatale
#4: No Booze
#5 No Shamus
#6: No DA/prosecutor
#7: No Cop car


Reading your question again though - I might have been on the wrong tracks ...

Also, did you see the sign on the wall of the ring that re: "Over 35 try Via…" [view blocked by some crowd/people]. lol

OK, the answer tomorrow.

quote:

Originally posted by SIGnified:
#1: No murder/ Dead body
#2 No presenting of a .38 spec/gun
#3: No Feme Fatale
#4: No Booze
#5 No Shamus
#6: No DA/prosecutor
#7: No Cop car

Pick any element associated with film noir and you can find examples in the canon which lack that particular element. Flashbacks within the film? No. A private detective? No. A Prosecutor/trial scenes/jailhouse scenes? No. The presence of firearms? No.

In some films noir, the setting is not contemporary, as in the case of Blood on the Moon (Hey, look! It's Robert Mitchum again[/i]), which is set in the 19th American West. So, this is a film in the Western genre done in the film noir style.

Black & White cinematography? Come on, that's gotta be it. Nope. Leon Shamroy won an Oscar for his gorgeous Technicolor cinematography in the 1945 film noir Leave Her to Heaven.

So, what's the element that's almost always present in film noir?

Homicide

The schedule for Noir Alley makes a good example. Take a look at all the films on that list. Of all those films listed, The Set-Up is the only one without a homicide.

If homicide is not a truly essential element of film noir, then what is the one essential element that makes a film, film noir? It's nothing you can latch onto. Hang on to your hat: It's the atmosphere of the film.

Yep

Please, please do not throw things at your screen.

If you'll allow me...

These are two excerpts from the introduction of English translation of the first book on the subject of film noir- Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton 's Panorama du Film Noir Américain published in France in 1953:

empahasis added:

It was during the summer of 1946 that the French public experienced
he revelation of a new kind of American film. In the course of a few weeks,
from mid-July to the end of August, five films followed one another
on the cinema screens of Paris, films which had an unusual and cruel atmosphere
in common, one tinted by a very particular eroticism: John Huston's The Maltese Falcon,
Otto Preminger's Laura , Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet, Billy Wilder's
Double Indemnity, and Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Window.

.....

That for years there might have been a noir series within
Hollywood production is seemingly beyond question. It’s an-
other thing to define its essential traits.

We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir oneiric,
strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel. All these qualities
are present in the series, but sometimes it's the oneiric quality
that predominates — and we get The Shanghai Gesture; sometimes
eroticism — and we get Gilda; sometimes the cruelty of a strange
act. Often a film's noir side has to do with a single character, a
single scene, a single decor. The Set-Up is an excellent documen-
tary on boxing: it becomes film noir in the sequence of the
final showdown, that terrible beating at the end of a blind al-
ley. The spellbinding sadism of a psychological film like Rope
links It per se to the noir series. On the other hand, The Big
Sleep, This Gun for Hire, and The Lady in the Lake seem to be
typical thrillers. This problem of definition will be evoked first,
by referring to productions the critics have most often deemed
to be "film noirs."
________________________________

"films which had an unusual and cruel atmosphere in common". A "cruel and unusual atmosphere." That's it. That's what makes film noir, noir.

I know, I know. What are you supposed to do with an idea like that? It sounds like film buffs are just making shit up as they go along.

But, it's true. This is why film noir is a style and not a genre. It's all about the attitude of the film. Homicide is almost always there, but it's not an essential element.

The Set-Up "becomes film noir in the sequence of the final showdown, that terrible beating at the end of a blind alley."