Yes excellent crime film. One to watch for sure, with an excellent score by Jerry Fielding.
Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
Jean-Pierre Melville’s ‘noir in color’. I’ve filed it under Style over substance category. It goes on little bit too long for that kind of movie. It has cooler-than-iceberg Alain Delon and Gian Maria Volonte, so it was worth the time nevertheless.
[i]" What are we waiting for… ? "
" The[/i] future to become the present, and the present to become the past. "
Counterplot, 1959… with Allison Hayes and Forrest Tucker. When Hayes ‘carries’ a movie, you know it’s gonna be voluptuously vampy. And she doesn’t disappoint here, amidst languid San Juan (Puerto Rico) location-shots. It’s all about a ‘murder-frame’ and an insurance-swindle, which becomes a blackmail-scheme. Tucker kind-of flounders around smoking cigarettes, but he’s pretty-good. So’s the film.
The Frightened City (1961) …with Herbert Lom, Alfred Marks and Sean Connery.
Imo, a young and cocky Connery steals the limelight from certain actors in this fine British crime drama. The plot, such as it is, involves the extortion rackets and mob warfare in good old London town with Herbert Lom the Mastermind together with a criminal boss Alfred Marks behind the Mob’s activities and Connery a would be burglar now working for Marks collecting his money. Also in this is a lovely and sexy Yvonne Romaine who Connery gets to bed with, what a lucky guy! 
Not the best i’ve seen from this type of film, but quite jolly I must say. 6/10
Inferno, 1953…
Torrid color-noir about an eccentric mining-tycoon marooned in a remote area of Death Valley by his wife and his business-associate, after breaking his leg. The lovers fake his location, then return to civilization claiming he got drunk and disappeared. The movie becomes a series of parallel vignettes of the millionaire’s (impeccably portrayed by Robert Ryan) desert-survival and the lovers’ (Rhonda Fleming, William Lundigan) paranoia about the ‘murder’ and authorities finding the body.
The script has Ryan speaking in voiceover, which adds dimension to the intense heat of his surroundings… and the Technicolor presentation is symbolically counterpointed by the ‘evil’ Fleming’s famous red hair. 8.5-out-of-10.
Night and the City (1950)
Great British noir by Jules Dassin. During the production Dassin, who was born American, ended on the infamous Hollywood blacklist and soon left for Europe where he achieved his greatest fame directing in France (Rififi) and UK. The amazing long wrestling scene is worth the price of the admission alone.
You Only Live Once (1937)
Purists wouldn’t consider this to be a real film noir as it was made couple of years earlier than what is consider “official” noir era, but had it been made later no doubt everybody would call it a noir. Lang is in good form here, and Henry Fonda is at his hypnotic best.
Resurrecting this old thread because I’m planning on watching a bunch of Noirs during this month (a SeptemNoir maybe? Oh, please yourselves).
Last night I kicked it off with this classic 40s hardboiled crime flick.
The Big Sleep (Hawks / 1946)
Excellent fun all round with snappy banter between the two leads and twists and turns galore. Not really as dark as the classic noirs but very enjoyable none the less. A good start to the month with lots more to come.
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Yesterday’s Noir for me was more of the cheap B Movie type but was surprisingly enjoyable despite its many failings.
Detour (Ulmer / 1945)
I think Robert Ebert’s description of it fits my feelings pretty well.
“This movie from Hollywood’s poverty row, shot in six days, filled with technical errors and ham-handed narrative, starring a man who can only pout and a woman who can only sneer, should have faded from sight soon after it was released in 1945. And yet it lives on, haunting and creepy, an embodiment of the guilty soul of film noir. No one who has seen it has easily forgotten it.”
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Skipped Saturday as was on full time granddaughter babysitting duty so some Disney was more in order.
But yesterday the wife and I settled down to and thoroughly enjoyed…
Out of the Past (Tourneur/1947)
Classic Noir this, with excellent femme fatale played by Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum in full pomp. You even get Kirk Douglas in a supporting role and everybody smoking so much you feel the need to febreeze the couch in your own living room after watching it. Great stuff.
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This movie is a classic in the genre that doesn’t get nearly the respect it deserves. I read an interview with Robert Mitchum’s son Chris not long ago (not sure what year it was done but not too long ago I believe). He had recently sat down and watched this film and absolutely could not believe he’d never seen it before. Without a doubt, he said, he ranked it as one of his father’s best.
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Last night’s Noir was…
Scarlet Street (Lang/1945)
Despite all the classic tropes this film somehow doesn’t feel completely noir to me although it is very enjoyable despite that. Perhaps it’s the time setting being a bit earlier or the older central character played by Robinson or the fact that the femme fatale only really acts at the insistance of her pimp/boyfriend rather than off her own sinister motives. Whatever, it is a good film and a good inclusion in this month’s project.
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My SeptemNoir got somewhat derailed for various reasons but trying to fit a couple more in before month end so watched a double bill of early Kirk Douglas flicks.
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Milestone / 1946)
Nice little Noir with Douglas, Van Heflin and two femmes for the price of one. Nice girl Lizabeth Scott and bad girl Barbara Stanwyck. Title sounds more like a Giallo and wouldn’t be surprised if it was the starting point for at least one such title in Italy.
I Walk Alone (Haskin / 1947)
Lizabeth Scott as the good girl again but this one also gives you the one two punch of Douglas and Burt Lancaster in their first of many pictures together. Douglas still playing the bad guy in these days before he established himself as a lead.
Both well worth the effort.
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Happy viewing, Phil.
‘Kiss Me Deadly’ (1955) is the only one I have now…but it’s worth checking out.
I really need to update my film-noir library with titles…I’m so short of them. 
I used to have quite a few…‘Double Idemnity’; ‘The Big Sleep’; ‘Maltese Falcon’, plus a few with the great Alan Ladd…
They are one of a kind, and worth having…without a doubt.
Will save up my pennies, so that I can replace them someday soon… 
I have a bunch of them but never seem to get round to watching them which is daft because I love them.
I bought this set pretty cheap when it was new but seems OOP now so this seems a not bad price for it second hand on ebay.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165088946747?epid=62094070&hash=item2670116a3b:g:460AAOSwy4NhD3u~
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Phil, that’s the film noir DVD box-set set I used to have… I’ll check it out on E-bay. There are some great titles included.
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