Just picked up Rififi!!!!!! in a nutshell....outstanding. thanks for the tip. :thumbsup:

Although I'm a bit surprised that I have to justify my list, your suggestion does deserve a response. In fact, it deserves a more in-depth response than I am able to give at the moment (which is why I haven't responded, yet). But since you are in a hurry.....

I do believe that film noir was an American film movement, and I am not alone in this belief. However, I opened myself up for problems when I added "The Third Man", and the list does seem a bit incomplete without "Rififi".

I agree that it's the quality of the film/story and not the language it is told in that matters. However, I still will not be making a list of foreign film noir on DVD because it is not possible for me to do so.

As I stated in my first post, I am not very knowledgable of foreign film noir. I wish that I was, and this is my loss. But since I am not knowledgeable and have no references or sources to help me add a complete list of foreign film noir, it will not be happening.

I could go back and add "Rififi" right now, but since that will introduce a lot of new requests that I cannot respond to, I will hold off on that. I don't have the time or the knowledge to respond to questions like Where is 'Shoot the Piano Player'...'Band of Outsiders' (which I would most definitely not consider film noir, anyway), etc.

If you (or anyone else) would like to create a complete list of foreign film noir on DVD, I would love to read it. I would also add the list to my original post. But I do ask that you stick to the specific criteria and guidelines that I used to keep the whole thing consistant. I also ask that you stick to R1 DVDs

jim

Thanks Gamblor! Thumbs up to you!

I'm diving into Noir, have about 20 titles, still got more to go through.


I know I will get flamed for this, but I consider FILM NOIR as nothing more than Cheap B Black and White low budget detective/crime dramas from the late 30's to the late 50's. Period.

All this critera for what Film Noir must have, nor elements of it make me laugh. Than again, I prefer Thoreau's theory of simplicity.


Netherless, I love Noir! I would recommend THE HITCH-HICKER staring two great radio actors, Frank Lovejoy (Nightbeat) and O'Brien (Johnny Dollar). A VERY creepy film.

Also just saw DETOUR for the first time last week. WOW! It's depressing to think about how Tom Neal ended up, but the female in it will drive you insane! Even my wife was impressed.


Also, what would everybody consider as Hitch's best Noir type film? I would go with Strangers on a Train.

someone will correct me if i'm wrong, but i believe Film Noir grew out of two major things

- a bleaker, post WWII view. all these GIs had come back, after seeing all this horror and inhumane behavior and some films now took on a darker, more cynical world view. especially compared to the upbeat 'positivism' that had been around to offset the depression in the 30's.
-low budgets (which translates into not having the resources to fully light a set, or not having much of a set to begin with and therefore creatively using shadow to obscure this)

i think Cashiers Du Cinema (a French film mag) was the first to coin the term Film Noir, probably sometime in the sixties

You can also add the "growing threat of the female". Society (aka dominant male hierarchy) was threatened by the new career woman, the independent female that became a visible part of culture during this same time period... hence the prominent role of the "vamp" or femme fatale.

The role of the femme fatale readily compares to the fear of the machine/technology in science fiction... or so I feel anyway.

Nick Ray's IN A LONELY PLACE (1950) was just announced for release 3/18/03. For a change Bogey is the hot-tempered head case and Gloria Grahame is the stable one (though as usual she still has to put up with a lot of crap from her man.) Supposedly the problems between the characters on screen reflected problems in Nick and Gloria's marriage. The print that shows on Turner is pretty good, so I hope Columbia does a good job with the DVD.
"Suicide Blonde" by Vincent Curcio is an interesting bio of Gloria. Its OOP but available on half or eBay, where I recently found a great lobby card of Broderick Crawford smacking Gloria around in "Human Desire." I can't get enough of that girl, she burns a hole in the screen in her five minutes of screentime in Robert Wise's late noir "Odds Against Tomorrow," also missing on DVD.

a bleaker, post WWII view. all these GIs had come back, after seeing all this horror and inhumane behavior and some films now took on a darker, more cynical world view. especially compared to the upbeat 'positivism' that had been around to offset the depression in the 30's.
-low budgets (which translates into not having the resources to fully light a set, or not having much of a set to begin with and therefore creatively using shadow to obscure this)

I'm not saying this isn't the case, but I find it hard to believe. The hard boiled detective grew out of the pulp's of the 30's (pre-WW2) and Noir is really all about Crime and Detecitves.

There were plenty of Crime comics that molded Noir, or in MY opinion influenced Noir (EC's Crime Stories being the best).

As for budget, as DVD Savant has pointed out, he has a hard time finding anybody who saw these films in the theater, so I believe the smaller budgets were mandatory, not by choice.



You can also add the "growing threat of the female". Society (aka dominant male hierarchy) was threatened by the new career woman, the independent female that became a visible part of culture during this same time period... hence the prominent role of the "vamp" or femme fatale.

Again, I'm not saying this WASN'T the case, but the idea of this is interesting to me.

The female "vamp" was all over the map in pre WW2 cinema, from Dracula's Daughter, to London After Mignight, to all of the countless silents.

And if anything, the early 20's is when this backlash would have occured after the 19th Ammendment was ratified, not in the 40's.


But hey, it is interesting to discuss, and I love Noir period.

you're right that the hardboiled school grew out of the pulps from the late 20's into the 30's.
in the 30's though, the country was deep in the depression. the main impeteus of film as entertainment was as happy escapism- thats one of the reasons the screwball comedy flourished in this decade.
most adaptations of hardboiled writers works, played up other aspects of the material, ala Philo Vance, Nick & Nora Charles, and Charlie Chan, the Saint etc (not sure, but the Saint may have been 40's)
the term Film Noir translates into Dark Cinema, or Black Film. it's meant to describe not only the look ( dark and shadowy) but also its more existential quality...a black outlook. where the protagonist is trapped by fate, undone by forces, impulses, etc that he can't escape...yadda, yadda, yadda.

in the 30's the crime film generally meant a gangster movie. a gangster as protagonist (little ceaser, Cagney, Robinson, Muni, etc).
i'm sure another factor was the heavy enforcement of the production code.

in film noir, on the other hand, many of the protaogonist were representative of the 'everyman'.
a more or less regular, law abiding joe who is seduced into crime-for whatever reasons.

you're right about the budgets. the majority of these were not put into production as A pictures. they were concieved and executed to be the lowere 1/2 of double bills and only had a fraction of the money to work with.
one of the major aspects to filming is lighting.
setting up the lighting can take hours for a single 30 second shot. these films were working on much tighter budgets and schedules so complex lighting situations were jettisoned more as efficency than for stylistic considerations (this kind of parallels the situation of Jaws to me- if that mechanical shark had actually worked as intended, the final film may have been much different, and much less effective).

thoses EC comics were great. CrimeSuspense is easily my favorite of all the books they put out (Johnny Craig is really one of the most underrated cartoonist of all time), but they were really more on the middle or hind end of the curve than the forefront( the Russ Cochran Hardbound collections have some great liner ntes after each story, and are well worth acquirring if your a fan of these).
the first film version of Postman Always Rings Twice was in '46 (i can't wait till WB releases that one!) and the glory days of EC didn't really begin until '50 ( the pre-trend crime books were more akin to 30's gangster films than the existential 'trapped by fate' syllabus of film noir and the later pre-code ECs)

you're also right about the Vamp being prevelant much earlier in film (theda Bara, anyone?) but i think that jdpatri may be onto something here.
i'm sure that the liberation of women from the household into the work-force (and consequently as competition to men, as well as all the men who came back from cheating death overseas only to find their 'true loves' had strayed) must have had some sub-concious effect in pop culture material.
that's an interesting theory that i don't find espoused to much, but it makes sense.

Thanks for the heads-up. I will add it to the list. It's one of my favorite films of the cycle, and a good film to show those who question Bogart's acting abilities.

Could this mean that we will have more of Nicholas Ray's films on DVD soon????
Bring on "Johnny Guitar"!!!!!

jim

Among the other things listed, a lot of film noir also grew out of the supposed "red menace" and fear of those evil commies.

jim

"The Killers' has been delayed until 2/18/03. List updated.

jim

The vamp was definitely around before the 40's. I'm more inclined to believe that the vamp becomes the basis for the femme fatale.

Not only did the War cause "true love" to stray (the first reason for this growing distrust of the female) but because many of the men were shipped overseas, this is the point to which many texts point for the appearance of the female in roles typically associated with men. Someone had to take these jobs... and the women were greater segment of the remaining work force.

An interesting book (if not a little redundant) is Lea Jacobs' Wages of Sin. It looks at some of the ideology behind the fallen woman pictures of the 20's and 30's and the subsequent censorship by the MPPDA-- the vamp included. Some of the characterizations she illustrates, IMHO, directly lead into the characterization of the femme fatale. It's been a few years since I've read this so some of my memories may be a bit muddled.

I like some of the points you guys raise, and can give on some of them.

I'm just not a follower of the psyudo-anayslis that is done at every level on films. Most of it IMO (which is worth less than .02!) is someone trying to justify their existence. Of note is the commenatry of silence films by "film historians" on dvds this way. And I thought Frued saw a penis everywhere he looked!

But we all love noir, and that's all that counts.

My farovite apsect of it is the dialoge. I love the Chandler type insults back and forth. It's almost like the battle is being fought at two levels, at the physical level, and at the grammer level!

Some of the radio Noir (Sam Spade, Michael Shayne, and espeically Richard Dimaond) you literally have to play the tape over to catch all of it, it's quite fun.


Ok, tonight plan on watching KISS ME DEADLY for the first time. Hope I'm in for a treat.

Don't think about it so much as justifying your list as more of a dialogue. This forum is here to discuss movies not to make people justify their beliefs or anything else.

It is also not of my choosing to come up with a "complete" list of foreign film noir - as I would have no idea when it would be complete. It is however very feasible for us (as a user forum) to recommend suggestions for user discussion. That should accomplish the same net result.

I would suggest that we don't have a criteria as noir has not been defined or described (yet). I think a definition per se would be fool-hardy, but elements within a film noir is quite possible.

So if acceptable, I will offer to come up with a list of film "elements" often found in a film noir. As few films will have all elements, it would serve as a guide more than a hard and fast definition will.

picked up a copy of Scarlet Street w/ E. Robinson and Joan Bennett in full femme fatale mode, at K-mart for $2.50.
unfortunately i can't recommend this Front Row Entertainment disc as its as bad as the price tag implies- extremely poor print with tons of damage and blurry washed out contrast.
too bad as its an essential title (along with Woman in the Window w/ the same cast) in the femme fatale sub category.

as far as a definitive list of Film noir qualities...good luck.
The preface to the excellant book Dark City mentions how hard it is to come up with a hard and fast rules to what actually is and isn't 'true' film noir.

i'd suggest listing movies by sub categories (i.e. police procedural, femme fatale, gangster, heist, foregin, etc).
no way is going to be perfect, but i'm sure a lot of people will get a lot of good ideas from this thread anyway, which is the main point after all.

fyi...I just got a call that my special orders have arrived at borders: Railroaded, Blue Gardenia, Slightly Scarlet and T-Men. they will have to wait till next week since I'm broke for now. I think I over-ordered....17 titles still waiting behind the counter..arrrgghhhhhh!!!

bump!

two essential FN titles got released this month- both w/ excellant transfers and extras & both highly recommended

•Mildred Pierce
•Criterions The Killers ('46 & '64)

the Killers ('46) is a great example of the femme fatale/man trapped by fate/heist genre. Edmund O'Brien, Albert Decker, Ava Garnder, Sam Levene, and Burt Lancaster in his first major role. that's a solid cast top to bottom, not an ounce of flab!

Thanks for the bump diacritic!

This list does need to be updated just a little bit, but I haven't had the time. I'll try to get to it in the next couple of days.

jim

FYI: dvdfile just announced an October release date for Laura. That's quite a wait!

great....Rocktober is my birthday month. I cant wait!:D

UPDATED!

"Dead Reckoning", "Harder They Fall", "The Killers", and "Mildred Pierce" have all been released.

"Laura" is set for an October 2003 release. (I'm not sure of the exact date.)

Also, if anyone has a recommendation for a good website that I can use to find out about new releases, I'd be glad to hear from you. I'm looking for a website (or mailing list) that updates maybe only once a week. (dvdfile is good, but my computer is too slow to have to look through the archives, and I can't check it every day.) I'm also looking for a site that is comprehensive in its list of releases. (A lot of sites seem to pay so much attention to DVD releases of more recent films that they neglect mentioning anything older.)

And speaking of websites....
When I finally get a new computer (shouldn't be too long now) and things calm down at work (could be a while) I will be looking in to starting my own site dedicated entirely to film noir. A place where I can post my reviews, thoughts, essays, etc. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about computers and starting a site, so if anyone has information and tips for a computer illiterate dummy like myself, I would appreciate it. (Please contact me via e-mail at [email protected]. I'd rather not clutter up this space with a "Computers 101" class.

jim

I'm looking for Repeat Performance for my mom who loved it. Any ideas where it might be officially available? (I could accept any region/format DVD and NTSC VHS)

UPDATED

"Laura" now has an official release date on 11/4/03. It looks like they actually took the time to do a nice restoration on it, and there appears to be quite a few extras.

jim

thats good news. I'll wait as long as it takes as long as it's done with a little love. thanks for the update.:D