...any other recommendations along these lines? Not sure I've watched much in this...subgenre?

Chinatown.

Devil in a Blue Dress

All of this is L.A. neo-noir. In the classic film noir period of 1941 to 1959, there is a ton of L.A. film noir. I'd have to sit down and go over a list.

Outside of Los Angeles for neo-noir, off the top of my head, there's Red Rock West, which tries almost too hard.

Double Indemnity

In A Lonely Place

That's classic period L.A. film noir, both prime choices.

If you really want In a Lonely Place as it's meant to be, read Dorothy B. Hughes' novel. It ain't pretty.

Never realized a novel was connected, I'll have to read it.

Gloria Grahame was stellar, perhaps more impressive than Bogart, IMO.

I only saw the film for the first time a couple of years ago. It is one of Bogarts best.

For old school hardcore noir, check out Kiss Me Deadly.

Millers Crossing. Also other Coen Bros films like Blood Simple, Fargo, The Man Who Wasn’t There, and Barton Fink.

The Usual Suspects is neo noir as well, but set in a modern setting rather than that 50s period. Some David Fincher films like The Game, Seven, and The Black Dahlia.

The Black Dahlia is set in that old LA setting, as are Gangster Squad and Hollywoodland. None are nearly as good as LA Confidential, though.

As for true noir, like Para says, there are hundreds of great films. He knows them all but a few of the greatest hits would be The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, The Killers, Sunset Boulevard, and Night of the Hunter.

Oddly enough, Chinatown is next on the list. I was looking for Black Dahlia after learning it's from the same author as L.A. Confidential. I'll look for DiaBD as well.

Alabama Noir, "The Phenix City Story"

TCM just showed this, I guess it's available (in parts) on YouTube.

Here's the intro --

Sunset Boulevard (1950). One of David Lynch's favorites.

quote:

Originally posted by AllenInAR:
...any other recommendations along these lines? Not sure I've watched much in this...subgenre?

Questions:

Does the story have to take place around the 1950s?

Does the movie itself have to be filmed after the 1950s?

Does the story have to take place in L.A.?

quote:

Originally posted by DonDraper:
Sunset Boulevard (1950). One of David Lynch's favorites.

This has been labeled "neo-noir" and IMO one of Lynch's best.

A Touch of Evil. With Orson Welles and Charlton Heston.

quote:

Originally posted by DonDraper:
Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Anyone who considers this film to be film noir finds themself in very good (and abundant) company. From Eddie Muller on down, they all agree that Sunset Boulevard is film noir.

Yep

However, I do not number among them. The thing about film noir is that it's a style, and not a genre, as the misinformed think it to be. Moreover, film noir is a style with no actual essential elements, and that being the case, identifying the films which belong in the canon can at times be open to interpretation.

My opinion on this film doesn't make sense, I suppose. It has many of the tropes of film noir. The entire film is told in flashback, and there is voiceover narration from the protagonist, who is murdered at the beginning of the film. (BTW, how did they get that shot? Do you know? Holden floating in the swimming pool. Pretty neat trick.)

So, homicide. Check.

Flashback. Check.

Voiceover. Check

Oddball characters. Check.

In James Naremore's introduction to the English language version of Borde and Chaumeton's seminal work, Panorama du Film Noir Americain, he says that films noir possess an "unusual and cruel atmosphere," and Sunset Boulevard has such an atmosphere, in spades.

So, what's my problem? I think it's because I associate film noir so strongly with crime. Granted, there is a murder in the film, but other than that, the greatest crime committed is William Holden trying to avoid having his car repossessed.

The same goes for The Maltese Falcon, which is identified almost universally as the beginning of the classic American film noir period. Hammett's master work establishes some of the prime tropes of the movement- the femme fatale, the cast of unusual criminal characters with undertones of sexual aberrations, the protagonist skirting the line between law and lawlessness.

But, for me, the film belongs to the Warner Brothers (barely) pre-war crime cycle.

Others point to Stranger on the Third Floor, though in my opinion, it is rightly classified as proto-noir.

No, for me, the genesis of American film noir is William Wyler's 1940 version of Maugham's The Letter.

See the opening below. Based upon the 1911 Ethel Proudlock murder case.

quote:

Originally posted by LastCubScout:

Questions:

Does the story have to take place around the 1950s?

Does the movie itself have to be filmed after the 1950s?

Does the story have to take place in L.A.?

Maybe? I dunno. I liked LA Confidential. Mulholland Falls was okay. Chinatown was good but geez....that ending. LOL I think In a Lonely Place or
Devil in a Blue Dress is next.

Some lesser seen Noirs:
The Narrow Margin.
Human Desire. (Fritz Lang)
Lured (Lucille Ball in a dramatic role)
Unsuspected (Michael Curtiz)
The Desperate Hours.
Suddenly (with Ol' Blue Eyes)
The Hitch-Hiker. (Before he became Hamilton Burger)

A couple of great examples of L.A. noir from the classic period:

He Walked by Night, 1948, directed by Anthony Mann, with Richard Basehart, whose superb acting abilities were not recognized by those of us who watched Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in syndication when we were kids.

The real star of the show, though, is the unequaled cinematography of the legendary John Alton. In this film, Alton creates a nighttime universe of inky blacks and lustrous silver, so gorgeous, that I want to live in it.


Cry Danger, 1951, starring and directed by Dick Powell, with the most fantastic dialogue of William Bowers, given to Powell and co-star Richard Erdman.

If you loved James Garner's wise-cracking in Support Your Local Sheriff and Glenn Ford's biting sarcasm in The Sheepman, thank William Bowers. Bowers also wrote the fine 1950 western The Gunfighter, starring Gregory Peck. I could go on, but you get the idea.

And many of you have seen William Bowers, though you didn't know it. He plays the Senate Committee Chairman who questions Michael Corleone and Frank Pentangeli in The Godfather Part II.



Really, Cry Danger has some of the most delightful dialogue in any film noir. The film also features some great L.A. location shooting- Bunker Hill and Union Station.

And if all that were not enough, here are both films in their entirety.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
with Richard Basehart, whose superb acting abilities were not recognized by those of us who watched Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in syndication when we were kids.

Up until a few years ago, I had never seen Basehart in a movie, only on the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea series. Along with He Walked By Night, I saw The House on Telegraph Hill, Fourteen Hours, and Tension, my favorite Richard Basehart film. Up until a few years ago, I had no idea he was a fixture in film noir movies.

I think I first remember Richard Basehart from La Strada, another fine movie.