Film-Noir Discussion/DVD Review Thread

[Novecento]

Potentially very interesting:

http://www.tcm.com/this-month/movie-news.html?id=412909&name=The-Maltese-Touch-of-Evil-Film-Noir-and-Potential-Criticism

[dave jenkins]

thedgitalbits.com is reporting this for release on September 20:

Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer: The Complete Series on DVD only. Mike Hammer is the late-1950s series starring Darren McGavin. It'll be a 12-disc set (SRP $89.95).

UPDATE: amazon is offering it for $61.99.

[cigar joe]

thedgitalbits.com is reporting this for release on September 20:
 

UPDATE: amazon is offering it for $61.99.

I hope I can check it out on Netfix ;-)

[dave jenkins]

Mister Buddwing (1966) Director, Delbert Mann, with James Garner as Mister Buddwing, Jean Simmons as The Blonde, Suzanne Pleshette as Fiddle, Katharine Ross as Janet, and Angela Lansbury as Gloria. (It begins with a POV camera portrayal we see the sky and tree branches, then Central Park as our perspective changes, then we see hands searching finding clues, we don't see who we are until we enter the Plaza Hotel and look in a mirror).  A well-dressed man (Garner) wakes up on a bench in New York's Central Park, with no idea of who he is, or how he got there. All he can find in his pockets are a train schedule, a couple of drug capsules, and a piece of paper with a phone number on it. On his right hand: a ring with a cracked stone; engraved on the inside of the band is the inscription, "From G.V." Armed with these meager clues, the man, adopting the name "Buddwing" (inspired by a passing Budweiser beer truck and a plane flying overhead), sets out to learn his true identity. Along the way, he encounters a variety of people, including three different women (Simmons, Pleshette, Ross) who each reminds him in some way of someone named "Grace." With each of the three women he meets he has flashbacks to his life with Grace at different stages of their relationship. Great New York locations abound, the Plaza Hotel, The Queensboro Bridge, Times Square Arcades, and a excellent crap game sequence in Harlem.

Very surreal film Noir-ish in style, I would call it a Near-Noir it would fit in a list of those darker, sleazier, Black & White Films of the Fifties and Sixties that didn't necessarily have a crime angle involved, films like "Requiem For a Heavyweight", "Somebody Up There Likes Me", "Marty", "A Streecar Named Desire", "The Fugitive Kind", "On The Waterfront", "The Hustler", "Baby Doll", "Walk on the Wild Side", "Anatomy of a Murder", "To Kill a Mockingbird", "The Defiant Ones", "Your Cheatin' Heart", "I Want to Live!", "A Face in the Crowd ", etc., etc.  I should start a new thread on these.

Two interesting past and future character actor appearances in it, first one was the 2nd cab driver, Billy Halop from the old Dead End Kids. The second is the lady dice player who is played by Nichelle Nichols, the lovely Lt. Uhura of Star Trek. I like it, 7.5-8/10

Just watched this. Interesting, but no masterpiece. And not a "noir" to my way of thinking (although it begins with a noir premise and uses some noir techniques). The idea of using the three women he meets to not only trigger the flashbacks but also to have them stand-in for the wife--whom we never meet--at different stages in their relationship is a conceit I don't remember seeing before. As you say, the Manhattan locations (circa 64-65) were cool, but I really got a kick out of the fact that the solution to the guy's problem was to be found in Mt. Kisco. Ha!

[cigar joe]

not a noir but a near noir 

[titoli]

Ossessione (1943)  The Visconti's debut it is still the best version of The Postman Always Rings Twice. I don't like Girotti (no relationship to Terence Hill): too slick for the part. But Clara Calamai, whatever you may think of Turner and Lange, is by far the sexiest of the three. There's a lot of gay not so (sub-) text (of course, being a Visconti) that I don't think was in the other two versions, as far as I can remember. 8\10

[dave jenkins]

Ossessione (1943)  There's a lot of gay not so (sub-) text.

You will go on about this. Ossessione indeed!

[titoli]

You will go on about this. Ossessione indeed!

  Apparently you didn't watch the movie. Or maybe you haven't found yet any written statement by some critic to produce here. But the fact that Gino and lo Spagnolo have a homosexual relationship is undeniable. And the fact that Gino is bisexual is reinforced by the scene at the Ferrara's public garden when he is accosted by a man with the excuse of lighting him a cigarette.   

[dave jenkins]

titoli, if you had a sense of humor, you'd have realized I was only needling you.

The Killing (1956) - 8/10. First Blu-ray viewing. The quintessential heist-gone-wrong flick with the quintessential film noir cast: Sterling Hayden, Elisha Cook Jr., Marie Windsor, Coleen Gray, Jay C. Flippen, Vince Edwards, Jay Adler, Timothy Carey, Joe Turkel, Dorthy Adams . . . In a new interview on the disc, producer James Harris confirms that Kubrick was responsible for the casting (with the exception of Edwards, who was Harris's friend). Kubrick went to movies and he knew who to go after. He also knew enough to get Lucien Ballard for the photography and Jim Thompson for adapting the source novel (in another interview extra, Thompson's biographer explains how Kubrick screwed Thompson out of his proper screen credit). The thing that attracted Kubrick and Harris to the material was the way the story was told, so the shuffled chronology was retained even against later objections by the studio (there was a last-minute attempt, quickly adandoned, to re-order the story in linear form). Somebody get Tarantino on the horn--In 1956, Harris-Kubrick were able to organize their time-displaced scenes without the use of chapter headings!

[titoli]

titoli, if you had a sense of humor, you'd have realized I was only needling you.

So you haven't watched the movie...

[dave jenkins]

I have watched the movie, but it's been a while. What you are saying about it may be true. I'm just pointing out that you're the guy who didn't want to acknowledge the gay subtext in X-Men. I've never had a problem seeing a gay subtext when it's warranted.

[dave jenkins]

Nice article on my fave femme fatale, here: http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2011/08/noirs-hard-luck-ladies-peggie-castle

[cigar joe]

Nice article on my fave femme fatale, here: http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2011/08/noirs-hard-luck-ladies-peggie-castle

Nice article.

[cigar joe]

A Question for Noir heads, any one recall any Film Noirs that featured gangsters in Zoot Suits. This style of clothing was popularized by Mexican-Americans, African Americans, and Italian Americans during the late 1930s and 1940s.

I can't think of a single period film that displayed that style of clothing. I CAN remember "The Zoot Cat"  a 1944 one-reel animated cartoon, and possibly Tex Avery's "Wolfie" character in "Red Hot Riding Hood" may have worn a Zoot Suit. There may have been musicals that featured them but I don't watch many musicals.

More recent depictions:

Who Framed Rodger Rabbit had the Toon patrol in zoot suits & Jim Carey in The Mask wears one.

[titoli]

I have watched the movie, but it's been a while. What you are saying about it may be true. I'm just pointing out that you're the guy who didn't want to acknowledge the gay subtext in X-Men. I've never had a problem seeing a gay subtext when it's warranted.

Warranted by whom? And by what? In X-Men the presumed gay subtext was warranted by the fact that you should have known something about the biography of the actors. I didn't know anything about it and so this completely eluded me. In Ossessione  you don't need to know anything about V.'s personal sexual preferences to read between the lines of the dialogues, of situations (the night in bed together, the fact that the Spaniard goes looking again for Gino).  And this is not even a "subtext"; it is the clear text of a subplot. What you should know maybe is that in 1943 censorship wouldn't allow something more explicit.