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In the introduction filmed for the beginning of The Asphalt Jungle, director John Huston made a comment along the lines of “you may not admire these characters, but I think you’ll find them fascinating.” That sums up so much of the experience of noir. Aside from the remarkable visual flair that often marks the genre, there is more importantly a vein of pessimism, cynicism, and moral darkness that runs through these films. Even when our main characters are on the straight and narrow (a rare occurrence), the action still revolved around the misdeeds of another. When the films were working, it was rarely because there was a character on screen we could admire, but more often because there was a fascinating character study into the darkness common to our souls. The sorts of murder and thievery these characters engaged in were most often an ordinary sort, the sort anyone could find themselves tempted toward if things got desperate enough.

Often, these were ordinary people, who through a series of bad decisions found themselves in a dark world that threatens to destroy them. Even with the censors hovering, making it hard to have characters get too evil or unsavory, especially women, these storytellers still managed to share a window into the parts of ourselves we pretend don’t exist, the evil we pretend we aren’t capable of, and this genre more than any other paved the way for the brilliant transformation of cinematic storytelling that would follow in the 1970’s.

The common assumptions about film noir are often true. Lots of femme fatales, although often in a subversive way that isn’t nearly as sexist as most descriptions make the trope sound; lots of fast talking characters who may just be too clever for their own good; lots of shadows and darkness to tell the story visually; a great many lead characters or ensembles who illustrate that a descent into destruction can hinge on a single bad decision. These things I expected, and found. It was a really great month, and many of the films far exceeded my expectations. I’m not sure why I’ve gone so long without doing something like this.

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26. Out of the Past

“And then I saw her, coming out of the sun, and I knew why Whit didn’t care about that forty grand.”

One of the most common tropes of film noir that I was unfamiliar with heading into the month was how often stories are told in flashback form. At least 1/5 of the time (off the top of my head), we start at the end or near-end, and then work back to see what led our characters to their current state of events. Out of the Past is another flashback story.

Similarly to The Killers, this story’s action begins because a guy recognizes a man from his past while getting gas. You’d think that perhaps people trying to keep a low-profile because they are hiding from past events wouldn’t take a job that requires them to see every person who passes through town, but alas, that is exactly what two characters figuring into noir month did, contributing to their downfalls.

This one was solid, Mitchum was great, Jane Greer made me really want to believe she could change her evil ways, and Kirk Douglas in his second film role showed a subtle hint of the greatness he would find in his career.

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27. The Lady from Shanghai

“There’s a fair face to the land, surely, but you can’t hide the hunger and guilt. It’s a bright, guilty world.”

More Orson Welles, more great filmmaking. I could have done without Welles’ fake Irish accent, but that’s probably my only complaint. This film is the story of a man, a sailor by trade, who saves a beautiful woman one night in a park from a group of hoods, after which she invites him to join her and her husband as part of their yacht’s crew. As is the case in noir, not all is as it seems, and things take a sinister turn before you can bat an eye. Well, actually they were sinister to begin with.

The movie is filmed much more brightly than most other noir films, which is really fitting when you place that quote above in that context. Yachts, swimming, sunshine, wealth, song, parties… but all in the context of a bright, guilty world.

The film also features a really great, trippy ending in a funhouse. Thumbs up.

Also, Rita Hayworth is much prettier as a brunette, but I still wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers. Remember that phrase?

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28. The Naked City

“There are eight million stories in the Naked City; this has been one of them.”

The film features an iconic closing line, but in the context of narration that just felt lazy. Your high school English teacher, the one who told you to show instead of tell, that teacher would have hated it. It made for awkward transitions and strange moments that would have been stronger as pure visuals.

The film certainly had its charms, especially the primary detective on the case, Muldoon. It felt to me like the sort of movie that had impressive parts that were influential in cinema, while failing to engage me on the whole. However, perhaps that’s just noir fatigue. Who knows.

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29. Night of the Hunter

“Not that you mind the killings. There’s plenty of killings in your book, Lord.”

This movie is really good, but not as good as I expected it to be with how celebrated it is. There are some moments that are just so over the top and silly that it took me out of the tension of the moment.

Still, Mitchum’s preacher is mostly effective. A terrifying monster terrorizing two children who know where there father left the loot from a robbery. He’s a serial killer who preys on rich widows, baptizing the whole thing in a crazy religion. We all know that’s farfetched, right? People using religion to excuse otherwise deplorable behavior… wait… that’s not farfetched at all!

It’s pretty fucked up when the murderer on your trail continually fills the darkness with his solid rendition of ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.’

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30. Strangers on a Train

“I have a theory that you should do everything before you die.”

Certainly not perfect, but still pretty wonderful Hitchcock goodness.

Two men meet on a train, and one steers the conversation toward murder. What follows leaves a man trapped in a nightmare. The film’s villain is the worst sociopath ever. I don’t mean most extreme sociopath, I mean he is really bad at being a criminal mastermind. He’s less than 1/3 as clever as he likes to think he is. Still, the film’s tension is real and enjoyable, even if the payoff is underwhelming and a bit too tidy in the end. From what I understand, the book ends more believably, but then the book is hugely different than the movie, in large part because censors wouldn’t have allowed the movie to film as it was in the book. Ugh. What a ridiculous era in American history.

As is often the case with Hitchcock films, there are four or five shots that will stick with me for a while, just thinking either about how perfect the shot was, or thinking about how much it has been emulated since.

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31. The Killing

“It isn’t fair. I never had anybody but you. Not a real husband. Not even a man. Just a bad joke without a punch line.”

A Kubrick film from early in his reign. It’s a really influential movie, with really heavy influences on Tarantino. It has an off-kilter, non-chronological timeline that I can only imagine was pretty groundbreaking at the time. It doesn’t work quite as well as it did in later films, since the broken chronology didn’t seem to carry much weight in shifting the meaning of the story as it did in Pulp Fiction, and it only had one easily connected narrative as opposed to unconnected, intertwining stories. Still, it’s fun to see someone play with a new idea in a medium.

An important movie, both in the formation of the heist genre, and in the formation of indie filmmaking in general. Thumbs up.

This post was getting a bit long for one post, so here is 20-25, which will be followed by one more concluding the month with the final six movies. I only have four more movies to watch, which is crazy. I can’t believe it went by so fast.

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#20 – White Heat

White Heat brings James Cagney in on the noir month fun. I actually expected Cagney to be a bit of a John Wayne type situation, where I watch a particular sort of megastar from the past and can’t get into it at all. Yet, that wasn’t the case. He was actually pretty fun most of the time. White Heat is a great crime film, and far more violent than most movies from the time. There is violence in all these films, but it is more casual in this film. Four people are dead in the early moments just to show how bad the gang of thieves is.

It was tense, had an enjoyably intelligent cop as the hero, and Cagney was a wonderfully deranged villain. This is also a film with an iconic movie moment from film history, with Cagney’s final line, “”Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” It was a pretty great moment for our insane bad guy. It’s also pretty early on in heist film history, influencing those which came after. The heist film is something near and dear to my heart (even though it is so rarely done well).

Thumbs up all around!

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#21 – The Sweet Smell of Success

This movie is damned near perfect. The dark story of a press agent trying to get back in the good graces of a powerfully influential, maniacally egotistical columnist. It works on every level: it’s a small, realistic, perfectly acted noir film; it’s an engaging time capsule of 1950’s New York; the jazzy score is far and away the best soundtrack so far this month; and it is a gripping and tense look at the interaction between corruption and innocence, power and weakness.

After a week or so of underwhelming films earlier in the month, the recent string of great movies has noir month back in a big way.

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#22 – Scarlet Street

It was hard to watch this film much of the time, because I wanted to punch all of the characters in their faces regularly, especially the young paramour of the film’s leading lady. The plot developments didn’t feel particularly believable to me, and much of the time there wasn’t much basis for how characters were getting away with their stupid and immoral decisions.

I enjoy immoral characters who are complex, complicated, interesting. These characters just felt like stupid people to me.

However, the last fifteen minutes were much better than the rest of the film.

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#23 – Touch of Evil

Ramon Miguel Vargas is a Mexican drug cop on a honeymoon with his American bride. A car bomb explodes, killing two people, just across the border into America. Worried about what this could mean for Mexico and border relations, Vargas uses his status (he’s kind of a big deal) to become involved with the case as an observer, but finds both his own life and that of his wife in danger as events continue taking one sinister turn after another.

To get the negative out of the way first: Right off the bat, the primary problem is that this movie was made in a time where a studio wouldn’t cast an actual Mexican-American actor to play the Mexican hero, so Charlton Heston painted brown did it instead. This is odd, because the movie actually has a pretty solid stance against racism, with the truly noble, heroic, honest, brave character being a Mexican police officer who spends most of this working hours trying to take down a major drug ring in Mexico, as well as a villain who was casually racist throughout. Also, the inclusion of an interracial marriage was no small matter at the time. It’s just disappointing this was the route they took. Charlton Heston playing a Mexican will always be absurd, and an embarrassing mark on American history, regardless of how strong his performance was.

However, beyond that, Welles takes over. He reworked the screenplay, directed the film, and costarred as the film’s villain. Right away, with the film’s three minute and twenty second single shot to open the film, you know this is turning into something special. It’s truly an amazing bit of filmmaking, with so many moving parts.

Welles was so remarkable. Even shots I didn’t like were impressive, they were all so bold and decisive. Also, Welles is a master of the noir style, so it was fun to watch him play in it for the duration of Touch of Evil. This film is a visual delight throughout.

The narrative was compelling, albeit with a few weak links here and there. I was genuinely worried for characters several times.

Another great example of what noir could be as a film style. As is the case with many of these movies, I haven’t seen Touch of Evil for the last time.

I’ve embedded the opening crane shot, because it’s worth just over three minutes of your time to see one of the greatest shots in film history.

#24 – The Asphalt Jungle

For the most part, The Asphalt Jungle is a solid, ordinary film noir. The story centers on a group of men who plan and carry out a jewel heist. Watching it from the lens of 2012, everything in it is pretty boilerplate, but this film was influential in the 50’s, thus it is largely responsible for what stands as boilerplate these days, especially in heist films.

Each character had their eye on something that the payday of this massive jewel take would provide. A way out, a way home, or a way to Mexico for retirement, each had a reason to undertake the venture, while each also had a vice that handicapped them from realizing their dream. At times, it goes a bit too far in hammering home a point. I also think more could have been done to increase the tension and desperation we felt in the characters, but this film really stands out for its cinematography anyway. Huston fit right in with that noir tradition that no shot should be ordinary. He would throw off an angle, or change the framing, or alter things just a bit to add noticeable style to each shot. I’d say it’s worth watching just for that, and the engaging story adds an extra bonus.

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#25 – Mildred Pierce

Another great film, this one was recently remade as a miniseries for HBO starring Kate Winslet, Evan Rachel Wood, and Guy Pearce.

It begins with a murder, then the story unfolds from there as we learn what led up to the murder. It features a woman who is quite possibly the most hate-worthy character in the history of film. She is awful! Effectively so, of course, the character is supposed to be awful.

Great acting all around, as well as a compelling story which offers an enjoyable slant on noir tropes, make for a really great noir film.

There is no more important noir film than Double Indemnity. It is the story of an insurance salesman who works with the married woman he is seeing to plot her husband’s death, in such a way so that they both cash in on an accidental death payout.

It contains all of the themes that best represent noir, full of darkness, cynicism, passion, lust, betrayal, dishonesty, murder, and tragedy. The fast-talking characters are a joy to watch and listen to, each major character (and actor) electric with intelligence and wit. Barbara Stanwyck plays the ultimate femme fatale, a ruthless woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants, with little care for human life, who uses her sexuality as a weapon. And Fred MacMurray, as the film’s protagonist, gives a performance upon which countless noir characters would be based moving forward. A noir protagonist is most often either an anti-hero (very frequently with a heart of gold), or a morally ambiguous character who does some truly evil things. MacMurray’s insurance man falls into the latter character, a man who doesn’t need much of a push (or really any push at all) from the femme fatale to make the transition into becoming a murderer.

I hadn’t seen this one since college, somewhere around 10 years ago. Watching it again, with different sensitivities and sensibilities, was really great. This film deserves all of the attention and praise which is lavished upon it. It pushed boundaries and challenged content codes, combining with the great filmmaking on display to earn its place firmly in the Hollywood canon.