Film noir fans, holla
mannybolone
Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
I'm teaching a course on class, race, gender and popular culture this semester and wanted to include at least one class talking about film noir and its intersection with any number of social currents running through post-WWII America: the Cold War, Communist paranoia, the budding sexual revolution, etc. The question becomes: what film BEST encapsulates this mix of anxieties? Here's a few of the classic noir titles I'm toying with (* = movies I've actually seen):The Third Man*Double Indemnity*Manchurian Candidate*Maltese FalconTouch of EvilGildaI'm also open to some more neo-noir films:Chinatown*LA Confidential*The Last Seduction*I'd prefer to go with classic noir, if only to reflect the cultural product of that era but I have to say: I wasn't really in love with any of the films I had seen already though, of the trio, I'd lean most closely to going with either "The Third Man" or, more likely, "Manchurian Candidate". Of the neo-noir films, I'd most definitely put "Chinatown" ahead of the pack if only because I could spin a good lecture about the LA history that's nodded to in there. However, I know some of you have seen a lot more noir than I have and wanted to see if there's anything else I should consider? The challenge is that I ideally want something that really highlights the larger social context in which noir emerges but also is "watchable" for the sake of student interest. Any suggestions?
Comments
Besides the issues addressed in Noir you have to take heed to cinematography/direction styles.
peep this too....
Yeah but the movie was just average in my book, much as I love my man Jimmy Shigeta.
The Killing
Great movie, and it's Kubrick, so you've got plenty to work with.
that's sounds cool oliver. i would love to take a class like this. too bad you don't live in the bay anymore because the best noir fest (Noir City) starts this friday.
i like The Third Man and Touch of Evil for what you listed.
some other titles you should check out:
DOA
The Killers (the one with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner)
here's the big film noir thread. i'm sure SoulonIce can drop some knowledge in this department for you
Thanks for the book recommendation - I'll definitely check it out.
"Devil in a Blue Dress" is a solid choice for neo-noir though I'm still not sure I'm going to go in that direction. If I did, I'd sooner go with "LA Confidential" just b/c I like that film better (even though Don Cheadle was great in DIABD).
youve seen shock corridor? hardly average.
I was talking about "Crimson Kimono." I haven't seen "Shock Corridor."
Yeah, DOA is the first one I thought of as well. Another suggestion would be Sunset Blvd.[/b] which is one of the more meta Noir films in that its plot is about the film industry and that it deals with change. Plus it has a dead narrator.
Double Indemnity, Laura, and Out of the Past for just canonical picks that help define the style.
second, as far as college courses go, i mean, there will always be a general overview of noir films in relation to post wwii america. to me, it seems somewhat played out and irrelevant. especially in light of films from as current as the early to mid 90s and their social implications. and im not talking about neo-noir. i mean, im not a professor or nothing, but there was a pretty noticable trend among women filmmakers making films about the male fatale, if you will. and that trend stretches into current cinema. a good hard look at that would not only be more relevant, but prolly more interesting.
You have to see Orson Welles' Lady From Shanghai, classic noir. Definately some juicy stuff in there as far as gender and ethnic identity is concerned.
The real deal, however, is Shanghai Gesture; its early noir, but there's some priceless characters, most notably the infamous "Mother Gin Sling", played by Ona Munson. You could pick this movie apart for days.
Yeah, this was what I was planning to post but was beat
to it - the titles you listed, while most are considered
classics of the genre, don't really fit the paranoia you
were looking for in your initial post. These two are probably
the best combination of Cold War paranoia and hardboiled
atmospherics. "Phantom Lady" is a great noir that touches
on elements of male dominance and the loss of a certain masculine
mystique in post-war America, as well.
They have similar themes about post-war women and corruption in the big cities, the way I see it. Race is in both, but plays a much larger role in Devil.
The comparison I try to stress at the end is that Devil shows an LA that would rather ignore its problems and sweep them under the rug, while LA Confidential (even though they re-write history about the corrupt cops at the end to preserve the image of LA) still has a more uplifting finale and leaves the impression that LA could in fact solve its problems.
There's also a great comparison of the female characters and post-war gender roles. After WWII, CA and America in general launched a huge campaign to move women out of the work-force and war jobs and back to traditional domestic roles leaving many women with few ways to advance themselves. In Devil Daphne not only wants to pass as white, but marry a rich white man so that she can move up, while in LA Confidential Kim Bassinger's character had come to LA for the CA Dream as an actress, and ended up as a prostitute instead. At the end, Daphne can neither marry her rich boyfriend, nor stand the fact that some people have found out that she's part black and left town. Hence, she's being punished for trying to cross the class/race/gender line. In LA Confidential however, Bassinger is redeemed by Bud White (Crowe) and finds a happy domestic ending going back to Arizona where she will presumably marry White and become a housewife with kids thus returning to the traditional role women were suppose to embrace again after the war.
Devil also has all kinds of great little hints about the changes for blacks in LA and CA after the war. Easy lives in a middle class black neighborhood where he owns his own car and house that he got from the GI Bill after the war. He like the rest of the residents are all recent immigrants to CA from the South in what was called the 2nd Great Migration of blacks in the U.S. There's also the tree cutter in the neibhborhood who I interpreted as trying to cut down the dreams of the black residents. There are black families leaving CA to go back to the South because CA is too expensive and different. Easy lost his job at the aircraft plant just like many blacks were the first fired along with women after the war, etc. etc.
Neither story deals with the Cold War however.
Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake touches on some interesting issues
regarding returning GI's - Ladd comes home from the war to find
his wife has been partying and running around with a nightclub crowd...
she's hosting a big bash in their apartment when he unexpectedly arrives,
and finds her in the arms of a nightclub sharpie, and learns their
young son was killed by her reckless drunk driving.
Also, his friend and fellow GI is suspected of being a murderer,
based on his post-combat stress episodes, usually set off by hearing
jazz music, which causes him to freak out and yell about "monkey music"
in fact, his character was SUPPOSED to turn out to be the killer, based
on his rages, but the War Department actually made them change the
ending so that this (very real) problem wouldn't come off as so
dangerous or legitimate.
Yes. Director Carl Franklin's commentary states the Tree Cutter's symbolism.
I would tend to bunch First Blood w/ all the Post-Vietnam movies.
for this subject, Edward Dmytryk's Crossfire(1947),
with a plot involving 3 soldiers just returned from the
war, and a murder that exposes anti-semitism among the
very men credited with having "liberated" the Jews of
Europe. Fascinating film, and a true Noir, with all the
photography, dialogue and character actors that make a
film a "Film Noir."
Also, Across The Pacific[/b] reunites the cast and director of the Maltese Falcon set in wartime Pacific. That maybe useful, although I found it fairly routinely pulpy but enjoyable. It stars Bogart as a guy named Rick in an overcoat and fedora right before he shot Casablanca.....hmmmmm.
Budd Boetticher's existentialist 50s noirwesterns resonate with the vibe you're looking for.
You also get the strange postwar paranoia vibe from Nicholas Ray's "Bigger Than Life". Cortisone, the new wonder drug, drives James Mason crazy...