Film Noir thread

[Leplaya]

The thread for private eyes, gritty cities, murders, dames, and mysteries. The film noir thread. Talk about video games, books, as well as movies that focus on the genre of storytelling.

One of my favorite film noir stories is Frank Miller's Sin City: The Yellow Bastard.

[Noname215]

I love film noir. I love the works of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, those kinds of guys. I recently just finished reading The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy. Pretty good.

[Secret Fawful]

I don't remember the part where Sam Spade strip searches Brigid O'Shaughnessy in a bathroom in the movie version.

[Noname215]

Of course, you wouldn’t, because they didn’t film that scene. Do you really think they could have gotten away with something like that in those days? Alfred Hitchcock almost didn’t get away with the shower scene from Psycho.

Anyways, another great noir movie is The Big Sleep, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Amazing movie.

[Secret Fawful]

The movie is one of my favorites of all time. I rewatch it over and over. So, my basic point is that, the book follows it so close.....SO CLOSE....reading it was just replaying the scenes in my head basically. So tonally, the book was pretty tame in regards to sex, so when that part came up, it was really jarring. Really, really jarring.

[Noname215]

If you’ve read The Big Sleep, then you’ll know it’s mostly about a murder surrounding a pornography scandal. Writers could get away with things directors couldn’t.

[tobar]

One of my favorites has always been Kiss of Death.

[BlankCanvasDJ]

Originally Posted by Noname215

Anyways, another great noir movie is The Big Sleep, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Amazing movie.

One of my favorites, despite the fact that it doesn't make a lick of sense.

I love noir films. I think my favorite may be The Third Man, though it sometimes has to compete with The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, Chinatown and Miller's Crossing. There hasn't been a truly great noir film in a while. I think L.A. Confidential may have been the last great one.

[Noname215]

Another great one is The Naked City. And to understand The Big Sleep, you need to have read the book.

[Secret Fawful]

Originally Posted by Noname215

Another great one is The Naked City. And to understand The Big Sleep, you need to have read the book.

Then why not read the book and skip the movie. It's how I handle 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[Juicius Maximus]

Scarlet Street by Fritz Lang. The downward spiral is so epic it's almost like a horror film! Lang came out of German Expressionism, which informed the whole aesthetic of noir.

The funny thing about film noir is that the name and rules of the genre were invented and codified after the fact by a bunch of French critics in a magazine called Cahiers du cinema. These guys also invented auteur theory and became filmmakers themselves, paying homage and subverting noir's tropes in their work. Critics and academics still argue today about whether or not noir constitutes an actual genre, and if so, what films belong in it. It's amazing to me, how much the French obsession with the American gangster film has influenced the world's attitude about films and filmmaking, to this day.

[Noname215]

If you haven’t seen Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, get the hell out of my country.

[Secret Fawful]

Rather Dashing needs to come in here and make a post about Singapore Sling.

[Noname215]

I never cared for Chinatown.

[BlankCanvasDJ]

Blasphemy!

[Noname215]

But I love L.A. Confidential.

[Leplaya]

Originally Posted by Secret Fawful

Rather Dashing needs to come in here and make a post about Singapore Sling.

Singapore Sling? Who can forget that?? Someone get RD in here stat!