Just finished Cry of the City. (Actually the German DVD Schrei der Grossstadt got it for a fraction of the cost of the UK DVD) Not one of the greats but very enjoyable. Richard Conte and Victor Mature are both very convincing as and a gangster and cop.
I cranked-up the ol’ VHS-player for The Movie Murderer… starring Warren Oates as a cunning, emotionless arsonist-for-hire. A mobfather is careless enough to have himself caught on-film in a street-scene of a popular movie, which is about to premier in several big-city theaters. He hires Oates to destroy every copy of the film by fire. Oates rigs things so it looks like some madman is destroying theaters. Meanwhile, an investigator (Arthur Kennedy) realizes that Oates is the one committing the arson’s because of the uniquely creative designs of the trigger-mechanisms. This is one of Oates’ best roles. He’s spectacular.
Gun Crazy, 1950… A disappointment. I was expecting a variety of guns used in a variety of crimes. Not the same 1-or-2 models. That ruins the film’s title, for me. A more appropriate noir-title should’ve been .45 Auto, or Ammunition. It may be Dalton Trumbo’s weakest script. There’s no way they would’ve avoided a sneak-attempt into Mexico.
[b][size=10pt]THE MOB[/size]/b D:Robert Parish(Broderick Crawford, Richard Kiley).
Just finished watching this.
B.Crawford is quite good as a police detective who fakes a suspension so he can go undercover to track down waterfront mobsters in this Noir-ish crime drama. Not as good as the classic “On the Waterfront”, but it’s much grittier and tougher. Good suspence and dialogue and the film moves along, with a cast of familiar(ugly) faces, Neville Brand, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson from that time. Worth a look IMO. 6.5/10
1956, Timetable… A fabulous train-robbery takes place, but the aftermath begins to go haywire due to human-nature and meticulous over-planning. Made with the female-audience in mind, the script is laced with complex melodramatics but stays logical. So does the testosterone. It’s director/star, Mark Stevens’ masterpiece. Also featuring the great, eyebrow-expressive Wesley Addy ( Hammer’s pal, Lieutenant Pat Murphy in Kiss Me Deadly) as the suave train-thief.
Black Angel, 1946… It’s refreshing to see Peter Lorre as a stereotypical, debonaire Los Angeles nightclub-owner… dashing, shady, chain-smoking. But the film centers-around Dan Duryea as an alcoholic piano-player who’s helping the wife of a wrongly-convicted murder-suspect. Co-starring Broderick Crawford as an easy-does-it homicide-detective. The film is gorgeous, but the plot strangely misfires on suspense and romantic-impact.
I probably asked somewhere further back in the thread.
What’s a Neo Noir?
[quote=“Yodlaf Peterson, post:627, topic:1786”]I probably asked somewhere further back in the thread.
What’s a Neo Noir?[/quote]
Movies of John Dahl.
That doesn’t really explain it for me.
Well think of it as Noir in color.
All the characteristics of classic noirs are there, femme fatales, backstabbing partners, cynical anti-heroes etc., done in color with slightly modern feel (more graphic sex and violence).
Dahl’s Red Rock West or Last Seduction are exemplary examples (but of course there were others before and after him).
So would Polanski’s Chinatown be a prime example?
@So would Polanski’s Chinatown be a prime example?
Yeap… I would say so! Also films like, (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, THE BIG EASY, MARLOWE, THE NICKEL RIDE) just to give you an example.
From what I understand, and grew-up believing, noir meant ‘dark’… as in depressive plots featuring flawed characters, leading-to tragic outcomes. By 1960-ish, film noir meant ‘crime-drama’, or ‘psychological crime-drama’.
So, yeah, Chinatown is film noir.
But by the dawn of the internet, a classification of all post-1930 ‘black and white’ films was more popularly known as noir for some reason. -Based on lack of colour, I guess. Then the film-purists’ tag; neo came-in to narrow crime-dramas/psychological crime-dramas into their own classified niche again.
Mystery Street, 1950… splendid John Sturges effort, co-written by Richard Brooks. -Starring Ricardo Montalban as a Boston homicide-detective who’s investigating the origins of human-bones discovered on a Cape Cod beach. The audience already knows who they belong to, and the events leading to them being there. It’s enjoyable to watch Montalban grimly work-the-case, with help from the Harvard University forensics-lab, while he articulates his way through an assortment of pertinent side-dramas.
Any noir fans left here? Anyway, I just read that the UCLA film archives are restoring and will be screening The Great Flamarion with Erich Von Stroheim in January. Really excited about that!
That’s good news - The Great Flamarion is an interesting early work from Anthony Mann; no masterpiece, but a film noir that’s worth viewing, and preferably in better quality than the very poor public domain DVD release I have.
Gunman In The Streets, 1950… Moderately spellbinding Dane Clark-vehicle, as a lethal black-marketeer on the run in Paris. Co-starring Simone Signoret as his honest-but-ruthless girlfriend. The script stays in-the-moment, and is peppered-with a plethora of razor-edged " Shut-up! "'s uttered by Clark in his signature malicious monotone as he slashes-thru dialogue and scenery alike. The ending’s like a premature-ejaculation though. -All promise and not much more than a tight-lipped kiss as a reward. 7-out-of-10.
Dahl's Red Rock West
Man, did I ever like that movie. I haven’t seen it in forever, though. I might need to dig that sucker out…
Highway Dragnet, 1954… It starts out great, with Richard Conte as an honorably-discharged Marine hitting-on a drunken bombshell in a smoky Las Vegas bar, with the appropriate tough-talk, slapping, kissing, and fade-out (to hint at sex). But then it cuts to Conte hitchhiking in the desert with the State-cops picking him up for murdering the chick… and the film essentially falls-apart, on the premise that the police, collectively, are a flawlessly efficient crime-busting machine, yet individually they’re puppeteer’d buffoons. Everything is resolved too unrealistically. It needs another 20-minutes of road-action to give it authentic viability.
The Outfit, 1971… with Robert Duvall, Joe Don Baker, Robert Ryan, and a dozen familiar noir-baddies. Writer, Donald Westlake (as Richard Stark) reworks his Point Blank screenplay a bit, having bank-robbers, Duvall and Baker suddenly becoming targets of Ryan’s crime-outfit. So they begin hitting Ryan’s various enterprises in a cross-country quest to kill Ryan before he kills them. A very rewarding and highly re-watchable film. Richard Jaeckel is brilliant in a brief role as a stolen-car mechanic.