The ten best English-language noirs (with links to reviews)
Jul 23 '05 (Updated Jul 14 '06)
The Bottom Line Ten essentials for film buffs, not just noir fans!
Lke all human categorizations "cinema noir" has fuzzy boundaries, especially the ones between "gangster picture" and "cinema noir" and between "spy picture" and "cinema noir." For me, one criterial feature is black-and-white photography. Another is urban setting, and the third is being primarily set in the City of Night. Not criterial, but a recurrent feature is either trusting a woman who is untrustworthy or mistrusting one who is trustworthy. Misjudgment is central to the world of noirs.
The label was coined by the French critic Nino Frank in 1946 and popularized by French auteurists in the mid-1950s. Nathaniel Rich encapsulates the noir mood in trying to specify what he calls a "foggy term" as "American films made during World War II and in the years following, punctuated by violence and pervaded with a profound sense of dread and moral uncertainty. The heroes tend to be cynical, tough, and overwhelmed by sinister forces beyond their control. Stylistically, film noir is distinguished by its stark chiaroscuro cinematography, influenced in large part by German expressionism. Films are shot in black and white, lit for night, favor oblique camera angles and obsessive use of shadows, and, most importantly take place in a city. Film noir tries to make sense of the complexities and anxieties of the postwar urban experience by exploring the rotten underside of the American city, the place where the American dream goes to die" (San Francisco Noir, 2005, p. 8).
If I were making a list of my favorite noirs, rather than aspiring for some objectivity, the top picks would be "Dark Passage" (1947, directed by Delmer Daves) in which a young Lauren Bacall rescues San Quentin escapee Humphrey Bogart and has to save him from a Fury played by Agnes Moorhead). That I love its ending may cast doubt on my nihilistic noir sensibility. My other choice should provide some relief on that score. "Pepe le Moko" (1937, directed by Julien Duvivier with Jean Gabin in the title role is a seminal despairing (existentialist après la lettre) movie. It was remade as "Algiers" (1938, directed by John Cromwell) (with camera setups often copied) in Hollywood with Charles Boyer as the doomed gang lord and doomed romantic Pepe le Moko and with Hedy Lamarr as theideal ideal/idol of his yearning. To me, they fit the roles better, and there is also has the wonderfully ironic Joseph Calleia as Slimane, the patient policeman, to recommend the remake as superior..
And my favorite noir title is "Kiss the Blood Off My Hands" (1948), although the movie itself is compromised by having Joan Fontaine as the leading lady. (A young Burt Lancaster fits far better.)
I am not egocentric enough to make a case that these are among the ten best noirs made in English. There are some other movies that I regret not being able to fit into my top ten, including Panic in the Streets (1950, directed by Elia Kazan with Jack Palance as a very nasty piece of work, Paul Douglas as a grumpy policeman, and Richard Widmark as an army physician determined to save the country; Kazan also directed the 1947 "Boomerang!" (which is way too noble to be a noir, in my opinion, with a prosecutor seeking to prove someone's innocence) and Lord knows there is enough corruption in "On the Waterfront" [1954] to qualify it as a noir).
The canonical "Out of the Past" (1947, directed by Jacques Tourneur; it's startling to me that my list lacks anything with Robert Mitchum in it; a list of my favorites would include Macao, directed by Joseph von Sternberg and finished by Nicholas Ray).
Something or another with John Garfield: "Force of Evil" (1948, directed by Abraham Polonsky), "The Postman Always RIngs Twice" (1946, directed by Tay Garnett; undercut by censorship imposing an absurd ending) "Body and Soul " (1947, directed by Robert Rossen). The latter, I'd classify, along with Robert Wise's superlative "The Set-Up," starring Robert Ryan, as a "boxing movie," though both have major underworld connections. (Or does that make them "gangster movies" rather than "noirs"? That is a difficult line to draw!)
"The Killers" (1946, directed by Robert Siodmak, a master of dread) with Burt Lancaster and a starlet named Ava Gardner form Hemingway's short story.
"Sweet Smell of Success" (1957, directed by Alexander Mackendrick) with Tony Curtis as a toady to a vicious Burt Lancaster and great noir cinematography by James Wong Howe (but no crimes, and the corruption is not official, let along police).
"Kiss of Death" (1947, directed by Henry Hathaway) in which Richard Widmark's psychopath is till very scary (fortunately, Widmark is in a greater movie on my list; as a noir "hero" he was also quite good with Thelma Ritter in Sam Fuller's 1953 Pickup on South Street and turned in other incendiary wacko villain turns "Road House" and "The Street with No Name."
"This Gun for Hire" (1942, directed by Frank Tuttle) or "The Blue Dahlia" (1946, directed by George Marshall) both teaming Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd
"D.O.A." (1949, directed by Rudolph Maté) with Edmond O'Brien careening across San Francisco.
"Casablanca" (1942, directed by Michael Curitz) is not usually considered a noir, despite its urban and nocturnal location, lots of nightclub, corrupt police, some of the same dubious characters (Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre) from "The Maltese Falcon," and its anti-hero (Humphrey Bogart) manfully fighting love. I guess it's too noble once Rick makes up his mind to take sides. Its visuals are not flashy, but aren't abysmal. It's already #2 on my Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all list, and is not underexposed or undervenerated.
Like "Sweet Smell of Success" I'm not convinced that
House of Strangers (1949) and No Way Out, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, the latter with a particularly scary Richard Widmark turn)
"Laura" (1944, directed by Otto Preminger)
"Mildred Pierce" (1945, directed b Michael Curtiz) with the ungrateful Ann Blyth and the gallant mother Joan Crawford
"I Want to Live!" (1958, directed by Robert Wise)
They Live by Night (1949),"Knock on Any Door"(1949), "In a Lonely Place" (1950)," On Dangerous Ground (1952), all directed by Nicholas Ray
"High Sierra" (1940, directed by Raoul Walsh) with Bogart and Lupino
"Sudden Fear" (1952) with Jack Palance terrorizing Joan Crawford (another San Francisco noir)
"Cape Fear "(1962, directed by J. Lee Thompson) with one of the two scariest Robert Mitchum Turns (along with "Night of the Hunter")
"Edge of the City" (1957, directed by Martin Ritt) with John Cassaveates and Sidney Poitier as friends, and a sadistic, racist Jack Warden
"The Hustler" (directed by Robert Rossen, 1961)
are noirs, though they have noirish looks and some very dubious characters in them
I haven't seen "Where the Sidewalk Ends " (1950, Preminger), "Kansas City Confidential" (1952, Phil Karlson), "Gun Crazy" (1949) or "The Big Combo" (1955, both directed by Joseph Lewis), or most of the Anthony Mann noirs (one that I have, Desperate, has great scenes with a menacing Raymond Burr and a swinging light in one and a ticking clock in the other, plus one of those great noir stairway shootouts).
With all these caveats and also-rans and unseen candidates, finally, on to my ten-best list of noirs in English:
(10) White Heat (1949, directed by Raoul Walsh) There are a lot of women (and more than a few men) who are "bad news" in noir movies. As "Ma" Jarrett, Margaret Wycherly is one of the scariest (up there with Ann Savage in "Detour" and Shirley Stoler in "The Honeymoon Killers"). Or at least her hold on the molten James Cagney is. It has a famously explosive ending (industrial as the one from "The Street with No Name" from the same year, both descended from the opening of Fritz Lang's (1933) "The Testament of Dr. Mabuse").
(9) Touch of Evil (1958, directed by Orson Welles) has a great beginning and a very satisfying ending, and Mercedes McCambridge supervising a gang rape of a drugged Janet Leigh in between, along with Charlton Heston being determined and masquerading as Mexican. Welles provided the corruption (further along the road of bloatedness than in "The Third Man." I've already mentioned "The Lady from Shanghai" (1947) , the last ten minutes of which are my favorite noir sequence (in Playland at the Beach on the Pacific shore of San Francisco) and surpass "The Maltese Falcon" in rejecting the romantic lure of a devious but hard-to-resist dame. An argument could also be made that "The Stranger" (1946) is a noir, and some view "Citizen Kane" (1941) as one. (BTW, I prefer the opening in the original release to the one restoring Welles's intent.)
(8) The Big Sleep (1946, directed by Howard Hawks) has a plot so complicated that neither the film-makers or novelist Raymond Chandler knew who killed one of the characters. I like Hawks's "To Have and Have Not" more; it was the first teaming of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. It is nocturnal enough, but not urban enough for me to consider it a noir. They gave off sparks in "The Big Sleep," too, and in "Dark Passage," a plenty urban movie with a truly nightmarish trek across San Francisco's Russian Hill.
(7) The Maltese Falcon (1941, directed by John Huston), is often credited with being the first noir (though I don't see how it is more noirish than the earlier (1936, directed by William Dieterle) adaptation of the same Dashiell Hammett novel with Warren William and Bette Davis, "Satan Met a Lady") and it could easily be classified as a "detective movie" or even a "romance." "The Maltese Falcon" established Humphrey Bogart as an anti-romantic leading man (unlike Cary Grant, able, at least in "The Maltese Falcon" ultimately to resist the leading lady, the manipulative Mary Astor). The second version is a better movie, with memorable supporting roles by Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Elisha Cook, Jr. (Philip Marlowe is a character played well by the usually more charming Robert Montgomery in "Lady in the Lake" and Dick Powell in "Murder, My Sweet," the one Chandler declared closest to his vision of the character).
Huston also directed the prototype tough-guy heist movie, "The Asphalt Jungle," with some noirish scenes, though the big job is a daytime one... as in Stanley Kubrick's (1956) "The Killing" in which Cook returned
(6) Night and the City (1950, directed by Jules Dassin, has one of the greatest chases across the City of Night (London in this instance), along with a particularly desperate low-life (Richard Widmark, more sympathetic than in his earlier villain roles in "Kiss of Death" and "The Street with No Name"). Before fleeing HUAC, Dassin also directed a notably gritty prison melodrama "Brute Force "(1947) that has some noir flashbacks (notably to Burt Lancaster's amour, Yvonne De Carlo), the overrated "The Naked City" (with its annoying voiceover that became a staple of noirs) and the corruption and greed trucker epic Thieves' Highway (1949).
(5) The Big Heat (1953, directed by Fritz Lang) is one of the most brutal )non-B-picture) noirs, with Lee Marvin famously scarring Gloria Grahame's face with scalding coffee. Glenn Ford turns in his badge after his wife is blown up and becomes an vigilante.
I consider Lang the father of cinema noir, in particular for the 1931 "M" with an almost sympathetic child-murderer (Peter Lorre) and pursuit by the organized crime establishment. Lang also pioneered the gangster film in the Dr, Mabuse movies and directed a string of noirs in Hollywood, including Ministry of Fear, "Scarlet Street" , "Woman in the Window" "Human Desire" (also starring Ford), as well as his first American films are the noirish movie about a lynch mob, Fury (1936), and the noirishly photographed prototypical lovers on the run movie You Only Live Once.
(4) Notorious (1946, directed by Alfred Hitchcock) is one of my favorite romance movies and one of my favorite spy movies. As in many other movies, I sympathize with Claude Rains (it's his mother, played by Leopoldine Konstantin, who is the Nazi fanatic). Ingrid Bergman agrees to go way undercover (marrying Rains) for US operative Cary Grant, who made a career at trying (and eventually failing) to resist the love of glamorous costars. Bergman plays a "fallen woman," who is distraught at the callousness of Grant (and who is being poisoned, recalling her great victim role in "Gaslight," which has a noir look, misplaced trust (in Charles Boyer) and a cynical maid (Angela Lansbury in her first role), but lacks crime and official corruption.
Hitchcock also directed two of my other favorite noirish murder movies, "Strangers on a Train" (1951) and "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943) , as well as the first and best neo-noir, "Vertigo" (1958).
(3) Double Indemnity (1944, directed by Bill Wilder) has quite a flamboyant ersatz blonde femme fatale in the highly manipulative Barbara Stanwyck. She easily exploits Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson investigates the insurance policy of the husband (Stanwyck) whom she got her insurance agent (MacMurray) to have an "accidental death" which paid double on the life insurance. Wilder also directed the noirish "Sunset Blvd."(1950) "Ace in the Hole" (1951), and "The Lost Weekend" (1945), none of which seem quite to be noirs.
(2) Gilda (1946, directed by Charles Vidor) has one of the most flamboyant of all noir femmes fatale with Rita Hayworth in the title role, performing "Put the Blame on Mame" and descending a staircase, and generally driving men wild. (She and Ford had "chemistry" and reteamed in the less incadescent but underrated Affair in Trinidad, and was in the very grande finale of her then-husband Orson Welles's "The Lady from Shanghai... in addition to being Fred Astaire's favorite dance partner). In "Gilda" Ford is confused (and, I'll admit, somewhat confusing), Hayworth wearied by men's fantasies (positive and negative ones) about her, and there is a nefarious plot and some quite nasty characters, but, as in "Casablanca," it's the unquenched torch that lights up the screen.
(1) The Third Man (directed by Carol Reed, 1949). Ignorance (I mean willful American ignorance), venality and corruption, misplaced trust, beauty (Alida Valli) and the beast (Orson Welles), nocturnal cats, looming shadows, a memorable zither theme, an even more memorable chase through the sewers of Vienna: "The Third Man" has it all. The only question is whether it is British or American (or Austrian). Almost as good is the pursuit of wounded IRA official James Mason in "Odd Man Out" (1947). (and, (BTW, I prefer the David Selznick cut to the British-release version, except for the longer final scene in the British version.)
This list was gently nudged by Eplovejoy. Like him, I hope to produce a foreign-language noir list, too (some time...and maybe a neo-noir one, too?). I did not look at whose reviews he linked for the overlaps of our lists. Peter can be blamed for my making a list, but not for the choices of movies or links.
I have posted a list of French gangster/noir films. And one of my favorite movies.
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