/film/ - FILM

I watched the original film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon, made only a year after the book was written.

It's interesting to see how a story which spawned major noir cliches was originally depicted. The tone is much lighter, with plenty of overt pre-code sexuality. The suave lothario protagonist is a male fantasy with a ritzy apartment, not a doomed and disillusioned anti-hero. Bubbly women dress in elegant gowns as opposed to female ballbusters in boxy suits and shoulder pads.

As much as the Hays Code eventually cleaned up these detective stories, the more confrontational gender dynamics and the everpresent sense of foreboding make the traditional noir films of the 1940s more compelling than their predecessors.

TCM has scheduled 24 hours of noir on Fridays in June and July, starting tomorrow.

http://summerofdarkness.tcm.com/

What's unusual is they actually have a free online course led by a USC film professor to accompany the programming. Supposedly they're doing Google hangouts and livesteam viewings as part of the class.

https://www.canvas.net/browse/bsu/tcm/courses/film-noir

> In this nine-week course, we’ll go back in film history to investigate the "The Case of Film Noir"—the means, motives, and opportunities that led Hollywood studios to make these hard-boiled crime dramas, arguably their greatest contribution to American culture.

> This course will run concurrently with the Turner Classic Movies "Summer of Darkness” programming event, airing 24 hours of films noir every Friday in June and July 2015. This is the deepest catalog of film noir ever presented by the network (and perhaps any network), and provides an unprecedented opportunity for those interested in learning more to watch over 100 classic movies as they investigate “The Case of Film Noir.”

> Both the course and the associated films will enrich your understanding of the film noir phenomenon—from the earliest noir precursors to recent experiments in neo-noir. You will be able to share thoughts online and test your movie knowledge with a worldwide community of film noir students and fans.

>>3112

Can we talk about neo-noir as well? Drive, Killing Them Softly and Inherent Vice come to mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHVbbcHWX4k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy2JQ0HqCuk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHl6qQ3V1Mc

>>4893

i thought neo-noir was more Chinatown and The Long Goodbye and Night Moves (watch Night Moves if you haven't, for real)

and googling this image up, i found they did a remake recently so that's probably awful

https://www.criterion.com/explore/296-illeana-douglas-s-top-10

> I’ve always found Robert Montgomery to be a somewhat mysterious figure. He was in comedies, but he never seemed very funny. He played likable people but was not well liked. His right-wing politics angered many on the left. In 1947, the year this film came out, he was the president of the Screen Actors Guild. As a friendly witness for HUAC, he hurt many careers. He directed and starred in two great, innovative noirs, Lady in the Lake and Ride the Pink Horse, both made in 1947, and then stopped directing. Wanda Hendrix, who is superb in this film, really didn’t work much after Ride the Pink Horse, which is another aspect that makes watching the film curious and special. Starring as Pancho, the excellent Thomas Gomez became the first Hispanic American to be nominated for an Oscar.

> There are a couple of things that make Ride the Pink Horse art-house cool. First, it’s filled with long, complicated takes, which were innovative for the time. I remember sitting with Martin Scorsese, who turned me on to this movie. He kept trying to figure out how Montgomery had done the opening shot, where he gets off the bus and goes into the bus station, then back outside again. Scorsese said, “There was no Steadicam. I don’t see tracking. How did he do it?” So look for that! There’s sentimentality in Montgomery’s directing that contrasts with hard-boiled Lucky Gagin and that gives the film heart.

I need to watch this again sometime

Hey, I my interest in Noir genre was recently sparked -particularly in the /lit/ side of things though.

Gonna watch more than a couple, shouldn't be displeased with most since Touch of Evil might be my absolute favorite film; starting out with D.O.A which I had to settle with a subpar rip since the rutracker one was too heavy because extra audio tracks.

>>8433

Watched DOA last night, what a blast that was. Watched it with someone else and we weren't sure what had we gotten into -the whistle sound effect when the guy looks at women in the hotel at his arrival at the San Francisco hotel is pretty odd-, but once shit gets real it doesn't let up until the end.

>Which have you read?

Key word in that post was interest: didn't really settle on what to read and stumbled upon this wonderful thread.

About Charlton Heston's proficiency in Spanish I have to say I don't remember much, which should in on itself attest that the performance is great and convincing enough to not get in the way of the narrative.

The Third Man by Carol Reed is up next.

>>8448

I was joking about Heston and I thought you might notice how he can't really speak Spanish. It's not as bad as I remembered but still kind of funny.

Sorry Wrong Number is top tier phone-noir

This poster is funny. Burt Lancaster smacks around a bedridden Barbara Stanwyck

What are good noir films made outside the United States? I'll suggest Los tallos amargos from Argentina. The Film Noir Foundation has restored it, but so far the internet only has this TV rip.

https://hawkmenblues.blogspot.com/2013/03/los-tallos-amargos-fernando-ayala-1956.html

>This brilliant noir was lauded in its native country upon release, winning Argentina’s Silver Condor Award as the best film of the year, yet it remains unknown in the rest of the world. This is a crime, because LOS TALLOS AMARGOS is one of the best noir-drenched crime films of the 1950s - maybe ever. A deep-seated inferiority complex leads a Buenos Aires newspaper reporter (Carlos Cores) into a seemingly innocent correspondence-school scam with a clever Hungarian expat (Vassili Lambrinos). As the money flows in, so do rising suspicions about the Hungarian’s true motives. One man is driven to commit the perfect crime - with stunning and tragic results. Lauded by American Cinematographer as #49 of the “100 Best Photographed Films of All Time” (DP Ricardo Younis) and featuring an inventive score by Astor Piazzolla, the greatest Argentine musician of the 20th century.

19 Classic Period Noirs, One each year

20 Fine Femme Fatales (actress, year)

20 Film Noir 'Fringe/Deep Cuts'

15 Rare Non-US Noirs

>>12059

I just saw this article on Roberto Gavaldón, billed as "Mexico’s Auteur of Noir". The title might be misleading because he directed more than just noir, but I think he's worth knowing anyway (and I recall he was mentioned previously in some other thread).

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/04/27/roberto-gavaldon-mexicos-auteur-of-noir/

http://archive.is/tojIT

>Best known for directing urban melodramas that borrowed freely from their northern film noir cousins, Gavaldón was a highly accomplished craftsman. He applied himself assiduously to whatever projects came his way, rising quickly to the top ranks of his profession. Though his films are too varied to reduce to a single authorial signature, the best among them often focus on characters with hidden desires and split personalities that cut them off from society and isolate them within their obsessions.

Backfire (Vincent Sherman, 1950)

A decent second-tier noir with Edmond O'Brien. Characters jaunt around Los Angeles to sleuth a mysterious disappearance and its ensuing trail of murders. Like D.O.A., the well-known O'Brien noir released the same year, Backfire has a backdrop of WWII vets struggling to find their place in a society that has progressed without them. With limited job options, these men feel a tug toward the seedy side of life in order to make ends meet. The flashback-heavy plot takes us through dilapidated hotels, dark bungalows, smoky arenas and swanky nightclubs.

Warner Bros Swedish import Viveca Lindfors gets top billing in the opening credits despite limited screen time. Lindfors has a strong, exotic face with riveting eyes. She's prettier than Swedish icon Ingrid Bergman, and Warner brought Lindfors stateside hoping she'd become the Next Big Thing. While she's a standout in this film, Warner nonetheless declined to renew her contract. She was relegated to relative obscurity in B-movies and TV roles for the remainder of her career.

Another interesting castmember is Leonard Strong, who droops his eyelids and adopts a rather silly accent to play a Chinese butler. Strong was a Utah Mormon of Welsh heritage often cast as Asian bit characters. Although imdb claims he's an "Eurasian-American actor" he had no Asian blood. So his caricatured portrayals could be seen as mildly offensive yellowface.