Noir Thread:
Just watched The Big Sleep. Re-ignited my love for noir. Let's have a thread about it.
What's your favorite?
What's the best? (if not same as favorite)
Best lead?
Best spider-woman?/
Best babe?
Best neo-noir?
Noir with most kitschy 40s/50s aspects?
Most underrated noir?
Most overrated?
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Most underrated for me is always The Big Clock. It still plays like gangbusters. Frenetic pace, goat Laughton and Milland performances, and has some quirky screwball tics. Love it.
The Big Clock is definitely underrated. Unlike a lot of noir that blends together, it really had a unique(ish) story and atmosphere.
I really like how in noir, the protag usually knows the least. In the big clock, they subverted this, and i thought it wouldn't work, but it really did.
As you mentioned, i liked the pacing, but the lame 50s 'screwball' humor was a bit much for me. It felt like it would play better in a book than on screen. Milland was good in the roll but they really needed someone like Bogart to make the humor work.
>What's your favorite?
Kiss Me Deadly
>Best lead?
Robert Mitchum
>Best spider-woman?
Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Tice
>Best babe?
Lana Turner again
>Best neo-noir?
Blade Runner, with The Ninth Gate as runner-up
>Noir with most kitschy 40s/50s aspects?
Not really sure, nothing springs to mind
>Most underrated noir?
The Dark Corner
>Most overrated?
Double Indemnity
Chinatown will always be my favorite.
BTW The Dark Corner is on youtube:
youtube.com
>The Ninth Gate
What do you like about it?
I've heard nothing but bad things
It's definitely my favorite neo-noir, but it's not as good as some of the Originals IMO
What don't you like about Double Indemnity.
bump
...
Any of these on netflix?
I've just watched The Maltese Falcon, any recs?
what did you like/dislike about it
>What do you like about it? I've heard nothing but bad things
I think it has wonderful atmosphere and pacing, and Frank Langella as Boris Balkan is one of the all-time great villains in cinema. It mixes seriousness and tongue-in-cheek perfectly, and I'm just a sucker for stories having to do with The Devil/Satan. It really is Chinatown meets Rosemary's Baby and I mean that in the best way possible.
It gets criticism for Depp's performance and the ending, but I think both are great.
Nothing really, I think it's damn good. I simply don't agree with the consensus that it's one of the best noir films of all time, and this is coming from a hardcore Billy Wilder fan. Both Sunset Boulevard and Ace in the Hole are heaps better
>What's your favorite?
Rififi, it's still holding its own after all these years.
I'd also recommend The Third Man, Gaslight (only watched the British original, the male lead is phenomenal in it) and Notorious. Chinatown for the neo-noir.
Shit, I forgot about Wages of Fear.
What's your favorite?
Double Indemnity or Out of the Past
What's the best? (if not same as favorite)
Same
Best lead?
Alan Ladd, Robert Mitchum, or Fred MacMurray
Best spider-woman?
Bacall
Best babe?
Joan Crawford
Best neo-noir?
I don't really identify any films as "neo-noir," really, but I guess I like Drive
Noir with most kitschy 40s/50s aspects?
Hard to say, D.O.A. has silly wolf whistle sound effects every time he looks at a girl
Most underrated noir?
The Asphalt Jungle
Most overrated?
The Postman Always Rings Twice, great at first but turns to trash in the second half
I recommend you guys check out The Petrified Forest, Bogart's first real film role and a huge precursor to noir form 1936. The play it's based on is good as well. Also for the longest time I preferred the 31 version of Maltese Falcon to the 41, but I rewatched the 41 a couple years ago and it became one of my absolute favorites. I'm not sure what I was thinking, but the 31 is not a bad film and is interesting because it was made pre-Code and has much racier content if you like seeing that sort of thing.
DOA plays well with The Big Clock. I actually think TBC is better and that DOA is a tad overrated but they pair well.
The humor in The Ninth Gate really caught me off guard and didn't work for me at all. I'm not really a fan.
Wages of Fear is noir? I honestly haven't seen it (just Sorcerer) but I had no idea it was a noir.
I've seen it and didn't get the impression of it being noir. Then again film noir is a genre that's not very cut-and-dry and it's highly debatable as to what films are noir and what films simply have some noir elements