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TSPDT
TSPDT

1,000 Noir Films (B)

Introduction
The 1,000 Noir Films: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - Y - Z
View by: Title / Director / Year / Country
More Noir(ish) Films / 50 Key Noir Directors / Updates / Links
Baby Face Nelson
Baby Face Nelson
1957, USA, 85m, BW, Crime-Gangster Film-Biography
Screenplay Irving Shulman, Daniel Mainwaring Producer Al Zimbalist Photography Hal Mohr Editor Leon Barsha Music Van Alexander Cast Mickey Rooney, Carolyn Jones, Cedric Hardwicke, Leo Gordon, Anthony Caruso, Jack Elam, John Hoyt, Ted De Corsia, Elisha Cook Jr., Robert Osterloh.
"One of Siegel's most vigorous crime-thrillers, and a key study of the gangster as psychotic. Rooney is surprisingly and superbly cast as the Depression desperado increasingly unable to control his outbursts of irrational violence, while the supporting cast - including Gordon as John Dillinger - is expertly deployed. But it is the sheer pace and economy of Siegel's direction that lend the film its anarchic energy; recreation of period is almost ignored in favour of an emphasis on actions exemplifying the anti-hero's sexually-insecure neuroses. A superior example of the way B-movie conventions may be transcended by wit and a fertile imagination." - Geoff Andrew (Time Out)
Backfire
Backfire
1950, USA, 91m, BW, Mystery-Crime-Thriller
Screenplay Ben Roberts, Ivan Goff, Larry Marcus (from a story by Larry Marcus) Producer Anthony Veiller Photography Carl Guthrie Editor Thomas Reilly Music Daniele Amfitheatrof Cast Virginia Mayo, Gordon MacRae, Edmond O'Brien, Viveca Lindfors, Dane Clark, Ed Begley, Frances Robinson, Richard Rober, David Hoffman, Monte Blue.
"Another crime drama featuring men who had lost their way after the war. Bob Corey (Gordon MacRae, The West Point Story) and Steve Connelly (Edmond O'Brien, D.O.A.) shared combat from inside a tank, and they dreamed of being civilians again, when they'd get a ranch or some other business full of open spaces… Backfire was directed by Vincent Sherman (The Damned Don't Cry) from a story by Larry Marcus (Dark City). It's told efficiently enough that it holds one's interest. The lead men are kind of starchy, but Ed Begley has some fun ranting and raving as a homicide detective, and Sheila MacRae turns in a fine comic performance as the singer's goofier roommate. All in all, a B-movie that earns its B." - Jamie S. Rich (DVD Talk)
Backlash
Backlash
1947, USA, 66m, BW, Mystery-Crime-Police Detective Film
Screenplay Irving Elman Producer Sol M. Wurtzel Photography Benjamin Kline Editor William Claxton Music Darrell Calker Cast Jean Rogers, Richard Travis, Larry J. Blake, John Eldredge, Leonard Strong, Robert Shayne, Louise Currie, Douglas Fowley, Sara Berner, Richard Benedict.
"Weirdo little noir programmer, featuring endless "it's so boring it's fascinating... nope, it's boring" dialogue, a cast of familiar "B" faces, and one or two inexplicably good scenes, god knows how… Not a noir jewel waiting to be uncovered, not a meat-and-potatoes entry that can be enjoyed for its impersonal-yet-solid professionalism, and not crappy or inept enough to be enjoyed as a "so bad it's good" number, Backlash is an exceedingly pedestrian, perfunctory low-grade "B" programmer that produces only brief, momentary flashes of interest." - Paul Mavis (DVD Talk)
Bad Boys
Bad Boys
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1983, USA, 123m, Col, Thriller-Crime-Prison Film
Screenplay Richard Di Lello Producer Robert H. Solo Photography Bruce Surtees, Donald Thorin Editor Antony Gibbs Music Bill Conti Cast Sean Penn, Reni Santoni, Jim Moody, Eric Gurry, Esai Morales, Ally Sheedy, Clancy Brown, Robert Lee Rush, John Zenda, Alan Ruck.
"For O'Brien (Penn) street life is preferable to listening to his mother entertaining men beyond the paper walls. During a bungled robbery O'Brien's speeding car kills the brother of another petty criminal who opens a private war by beating and raping O'Brien's girlfriend. Unemphatic about plot development, director Rosenthal prefers to develop our understanding of his characters and their living spaces, linking without undue insistence the cramped apartments and juvenile detention cells. In the one scene where O'Brien is seen in a bright light, in his girl's bedroom, he seems as pale and bewildered as a baby. Even the borstal staff are presented as compassionate but hopelessly weary. An oxygenated, thoughtful alternative to the usual run of gangs-in-the-slammer movies." - Derek Owen (Time Out)
Bad Influence
Bad Influence
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1990, USA, 99m, Col, Thriller-Drama
Screenplay David Koepp Producer Steve Tisch Photography Robert Elswit Editor Bonnie Koehler Music Trevor Jones Cast Rob Lowe, James Spader, Lisa Zane, Marcia Cross, Rosalyn Landor, Tony Maggio, Palmer Lee Todd, Kathleen Wilhoite, Sunny Smith, Susan Lee Hoffman.
"One of Curtis Hanson's earlier directorial efforts, Bad Influence hints at the visual flair and sharp intelligence that would emerge in L.A. Confidential and 8 Mile, but lacks the heart and substance of his later work. In part this is thanks to its late '80s sensibilities, with Rob Lowe's psycho charmer and James Spader's yuppie geek (again!) only interested in the pursuit of big money, shallow highs, empty sex and hard liquor. That said, as Lowe systematically dismantles Spader's antiseptic existence, Hanson and writer David Koepp handle the thriller plot well, with Lowe effective as the plastically beautiful but deeply dangerous bad influence of the title." - William Thomas (Empire)
Bad Lieutenant
Bad Lieutenant Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1992, USA, 98m, Col, Police Drama-Crime
Screenplay Abel Ferrara, Zoë Lund, Victor Argo [uncredited], Paul Calderon [uncredited] Producer Edward R. Pressman, Mary Kane Photography Ken Kelsch Editor Anthony Redman Music Joe Delia Cast Harvey Keitel, Victor Argo, Paul Calderon, Leonard Thomas, Robin Burrows, Frankie Thorn, Victoria Bastel, Paul Hipp, Brian McElroy, Frankie Acciarito.
"A relentless odyssey of a New York City detective on a violent, drug-fueled downward spiral, Abel Ferrara's free-form descent into the depths follows the sort of law-enforcement antihero who isn't above swiping dope from a murder scene or publicly masturbating during a routine traffic stop. So far, so Ferrara – and then this scuzzfest begins to reveal itself as a stations-of-the-cross spiritual inquiry, at which point the surreal episodes emanating from the Lieutenant's pickled mind suddenly take on a serious gravitas. Aided and abetted by Harvey Keitel's gone-nuclear performance (that howling Man v. Christ vignette!), the director's take-no-prisoner's tale of redemption is one of the most religious movies of the decades – a perfect melding of the poetic and the profane, the agony and the ecstasy." - Steven Boone (Rolling Stone)
The Bad Sleep Well
The Bad Sleep Well Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru (original title)
● LATE NOIR (1960s) / JAPANESE NOIR
1960, Japan, 151m, BW, Drama-Crime-Thriller
Screenplay Akira Kurosawa, Eijirô Hisaita, Hideo Oguni, Ryûzô Kikushima, Shinobu Hashimoto Producers Akira Kurosawa, Tomoyuki Tanaka Photography Yuzuru Aizawa Editor Akira Kurosawa Music Masaru Satô Cast Toshiro Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Kyoko Kagawa, Tatsuya Mihashi, Takashi Shimura, Ko Nishimura, Takeshi Kato, Kamatari Fujiwara, Chishu Ryu, Seiji Miyaguchi.
"Kurosawa's first venture for his own short-lived production company, a revenge tragedy (employee of big housing corporation marries the boss' daughter while simultaneously seeking the truth of his father's 'suicide') which attempts to indict the corruptions that go hand-in-hand with big business, ultimately hinting that even the government cannot be said to have clean hands. Freed from immediate box-office pressures, Kurosawa rather loaded the film on the side of social significance, while neglecting to capitalise on the noir aspects that underlie it. Even so, his use of the 'scope screen is masterly." - Tom Milne (Time Out)
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Badlands Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1973, USA, 95m, Col, Crime Drama-Road Movie-Americana
Screenplay Terrence Malick Producer Terrence Malick Photography Tak Fujimoto Editor Robert Estrin Music Carl Orff, George Tipton Cast Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates, Ramon Bieri, Alan Vint, Gary Littlejohn, John Carter, Bryan Montgomery, Gail Threlkeld, Charles Fitzpatrick.
"Terrence Malick based his peerlessly poetic debut on the real-life story of Charles Starkweather, a teenage James Dean wannabe who fled across the midwest on a killing spree, his 14-year-old girlfriend in tow. But the film couldn't be further from a pulpy true-crime tale, or a hip New Wave homage like Bonnie and Clyde. It's a true original: eloquent about the intersection of crime, romanticism and myth-making in America, and highly innovative in its use of colour, editing and voice-over… The film's dislocated emotional effect arises almost entirely from Holly (Spacek), whose banal narration goes starkly against the grain. Traditionally, a voice-over fills in the blanks, but Badlands is defined by the contradiction between what we see and what we hear." - Ryan Gilbey (The Guardian)
Bait
Bait
1954, USA, 79m, BW, Drama-Crime-Action
Screenplay Samuel W. Taylor (based on his own story) Producer Hugo Haas Photography Eddie Fitzgerald Editor Robert S. Eisen Music Václav Divina Cast Cleo Moore, Hugo Haas, John Agar, Emmett Lynn, Bruno VeSota, Jan Englund, George Keymas, Cedric Hardwicke.
"Take one of the basic set ups of Charlie Chaplin's immortal The Gold Rush, namely two haggard prospectors trying to survive in an isolated snowbound cabin, and mix in a potent dose of ménage à trois, and you may have at least a bit of an idea of the underlying plot dynamics of Bait, an intermittently interesting 1954 opus that serves as a showcase of sorts for Hugo Haas, who stars as one of those aforementioned prospectors, but who also produced, directed and co-wrote this film… That old adage about best laid plans may have a euphemistic undertone here, but the film has some interesting psychological elements, even if it never really is very suspenseful." - Jeffrey Kauffman (Blu-ray.com)
Bande à part
Bande à part Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
Band of Outsiders (English title)
● FRENCH NOIR / LATE NOIR (1960s)
1964, France, 95m, BW, Crime-Drama-Romance
Screenplay Jean-Luc Godard (based on the novel Fools' Gold by Dolores Hitchens) Producer Philippe Dussart Photography Raoul Coutard Editors Agnès Guillemot, Dahlia Ezove, Françoise Collin Music Michel Legrand Cast Anna Karina, Claude Brasseur, Sami Frey, Louisa Colpeyn, Chantal Darget, Michel Delahaye, Danièle Girard, Jean-Luc Godard (narrator), Claude Makovski, Ernest Menzer.
"Godard's 1964 classic has the same garrulous, genial, almost insolent effortlessness of A Bout de Souffle, the same feeling of jumping for joy and almost defying gravity on the way down. Anna Karina, Claude Brasseur and Sami Frey are Odile, Arthur and Franz: a beautiful girl and two would-be criminal desperados she meets at an English class. It's a zeitgeisty scoot round 1960s Paris, with the three of them improvising a dance number in a bar and breaking the record for running round the Louvre - thus arguably providing DNA for all pop culture life forms since. Finally, the movie becomes a petty, squalid crime story but Godard never relinquishes his sense that these are essentially children play-acting, and always conveys the impression that his film has been brilliantly, if eccentrically, improvised from whatever ideas and locations came to hand." - Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian)
Basic Instinct
Basic Instinct
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1992, USA, 127m, Col, Erotic Thriller-Drama
Screenplay Joe Eszterhas Producer Alan Marshall Photography Jan De Bont Editor Frank J. Urioste Music Jerry Goldsmith Cast Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone, George Dzundza, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Denis Arndt, Leilani Sarelle, Bruce A. Young, Chelcie Ross, Dorothy Malone, Stephen Tobolowsky.
"This is one charged-up erotic thriller — gory, lurid, brutally funny and without a politically correct thought in its unapologetically empty head. Still, director Paul Verhoeven's cinematic wet dream delivers the goods, especially when Sharon Stone struts on with enough come-on carnality to singe the screen… What makes Basic Instinct a guilty pleasure is the shameless and stylish way Verhoeven lets rip with his own basic instinct for disreputably alluring entertainment. The film is for horny pups of all ages who relish the memory of reading stroke books under the covers with a flashlight. Verhoeven has spent $49 million to reproduce that dirty little thrill on the big screen. You can practically hear him giggling behind the camera. His audacity makes you giggle along with him." - Peter Travers (Rolling Stone)
The Beast of the City
The Beast of the City Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● NOIR-PRECURSOR
1932, USA, 87m, BW, Drama-Crime-Police Detective Film
Screenplay John Lee Mahin, Ben Hecht [uncredited] (from the story by W.R. Burnett) Producer Hunt Stromberg Photography Norbert Brodine Editor Anne Bauchens Cast Walter Huston, Jean Harlow, Wallace Ford, Jean Hersholt, Dorothy Peterson, Tully Marshall, John Miljan, Emmett Corrigan, Warner Richmond, Mickey Rooney.
"This is a very elaborate production for an early 30's film. The camera was surprisingly fluid with some strong cinematography. The Beast of the City was the precursor to many modern crime drama films that pit the gangsters vs. the diligent cops - eventually in a courtroom setting. I couldn't help but think of Basic Instinct as the police ogled Harlow in a 'line-up'. This was a better, or should I say - 'more sophisticated', film than I was anticipating. It was also certainly racy for it's time - made a couple of years before enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code (also known as the Hays Code)." - Gary W. Tooze (DVD Beaver)
The Beat Generation
The Beat Generation
1959, USA, 95m, BW, Crime-Drama-Detective Film
Screenplay Lewis Meltzer, Richard Matheson Producer Albert Zugsmith Photography Walter Castle Editor Ben Lewis Music Albert Glasser Cast Steve Cochran, Mamie Van Doren, Ray Danton, Fay Spain, Louis Armstrong, Maggie Hayes, Jackie Coogan, James Mitchum, Cathy Crosby, Ray Anthony.
"In the tradition of the classic High School Confidential, producer Albert Zugsmith brings us another utterly-unrealistic 'expose' into '50s youth culture. This time taking his dimwit viewers into the then-scandalous world of the beat poets and their coffee house ilk. And what a far-out cast he pulls together for the trip! We get sultry platinum blonde hussy Mamie Van Doren; Louie Armstrong blowin' his horn and growlin' the theme song; Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester) as a cop who has to dress up in drag for a Lovers' Lane stakeout; plus Irish McCalla (TV's Sheena, Queen of the Jungle), Charlie Chaplin Jr.; and Vampira as a horrible free verse poetess who lugs around a pet white rat. It's just too bad that the film isn't really about the beats and their lifestyle--instead it turns out to be your ordinary grade-B detective flick, hopped up with some cool cat trappings." - Steven Puchalski (Shock Cinema)
Beat the Devil
Beat the Devil
● COMEDY NOIR / BRIT-NOIR (ITALY-USA CO-PRODUCTION)
1953, UK-Italy-USA, 89m, BW, Action-Adventure-Comedy
Screenplay John Huston, Truman Capote (based on the novel by Claud Cockburn) Producer John Huston Photography Oswald Morris Editor Ralph Kemplen Music Franco Mannino Cast Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, Ivor Barnard, Edward Underdown, Marco Tulli, Marion Perroni, Alex Pochet.
"This sophisticated international romp (co-scripted by Truman Capote and John Huston) must have been more fun to make than to watch. Nevertheless, the splendid cast ensures that the jokes play and the romance works. The spoof on Huston's masterpieces The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is there for those who recognise it, tipped off by the casting of Peter Lorre as well as Humphrey Bogart working again here with Huston… Not terribly well appreciated in its day, this quirky one-off has achieved something of a cult status, and is well worth catching up with. Trivia buffs may like to note that the uncredited production runner on this film was a young Stephen Sondheim." - Tony Sloman (Radio Times)
Beautiful Stranger
Beautiful Stranger
Twist of Fate (USA title)
● BRIT-NOIR (USA CO-PRODUCTION)
1954, UK-USA, 89m, BW, Drama-Crime-Romantic Mystery
Screenplay Carl Nystrom, Robert Westerby (based on a story by David Miller and Rip Van Ronkel) Producers John R. Sloan, Maxwell Setton Photography Edward Scaife Editor Alan Osbiston Music Malcolm Arnold Cast Ginger Rogers, Herbert Lom, Stanley Baker, Jacques Bergerac, Margaret Rawlings, Eddie Byrne, Coral Browne, Lisa Gastoni, Lily Kann, Ferdy Mayne.
"Producer Maxwell Setton's first solo venture, Beautiful Stranger, was co-financed by United Artists and directed by the American David Miller. But Robert Westerby's and Carl Nystrom's script for this Anglo-American melodrama was incoherent. The film, which is set in the South of France, deals with the emotional vicissitudes of an ex-actress (Ginger Rogers) and her bohemian (Jacques Bergerac) and criminal (Stanley Baker) lovers. Miller's fast-paced direction does little to rescue the incoherent plot and the film did poorly at the box office." - Sue Harper & Vincent Porter (British Cinema of the 1950s: The Decline of Deference).
Bedelia
Bedelia
● BRIT-NOIR
1946, UK, 83m, BW, Drama-Crime-Mystery
Screenplay Herbert Victor, Isadore Goldsmith, Vera Caspary (based on the novel by Vera Caspary) Producer Isadore Goldsmith Photography Freddie Young Editor Michael Truman Music Hans May Cast Margaret Lockwood, Ian Hunter, Barry K. Barnes, Anne Crawford, Jill Esmond, Beatrice Varley, Louise Hampton, Barbara Blair, Olga Lindo, Ellen Pollock.
"Director Lance Comfort’s 1946 British thriller Bedelia stars Margaret Lockwood, who leads a novelettish, splendidly trashy murder mystery that was a big success of the day, perhaps surprising so given its lack of real quality. It is 1938, and Bedelia Carrington (Lockwood) has an obsession with money that knows no bounds. She has killed three husbands for their money already and is living in Monte Carlo with her new husband Charlie Carrington (Hunter)… Bedelia is campy fun but its box office success is really a testament to the huge popularity of the star who had just played another infamous wicked lady in The Wicked Lady (1945), and very good at it she was… The screenplay by Vera Caspary, Herbert Victor and Isadore Goldsmith is based on the novel by Vera Caspary, the author of Laura (1944), but, entertaining though it is, Bedelia is not nearly in that film’s league." - Derek Winnert
Before the Devil Knows You
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
2007, USA, 117m, Col, Crime-Drama-Thriller
Screenplay Kelly Masterson Producers Brian Linse, Michael Cerenzie, Paul Parmar, William S. Gilmore Photography Ron Fortunato Editor Tom Swartwout Music Carter Burwell Cast Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei, Rosemary Harris, Aleksa Palladino, Michael Shannon, Amy Ryan, Brian F. O'Byrne, Blaine Horton.
"Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, directed by Sidney Lumet from a script by Kelly Masterson, is a chronicle of destruction - physical, spiritual and moral. That most of the victims and most of the perpetrators are members of a single family gives the story some of the suffocating fatalism of an ancient tragedy. But the workings of fate figure far less in the narrative than bad choices and unlucky accidents. The evil in this world arises not out of any grand metaphysical principle, but rather from petty, permanent features of the human character: greed, envy, stupidity, vanity. There are no demons on display, just small, sad, ordinary people. The filmmakers rigorously tally the results of their sins, minor lapses made monstrous by the failure of love and the corruption of ambition. Simple, familiar desires - for money, sex, status, respect - end in murder." - A.O. Scott (The New York Times)
Behind Green Lights
Behind Green Lights
1946, USA, 64m, BW, Crime-Mystery-Detective Film
Screenplay Charles G. Booth, W. Scott Darling Producer Robert Bassler Photography Joseph MacDonald Editor Stanley Rabjohn Music Emil Newman Cast Carole Landis, William Gargan, Richard Crane, Mary Anderson, John Ireland, Charles Russell, Roy Roberts, Mabel Paige, Stanley Prager, Charles Tannen.
"A robust B crime drama, that packs a lot into its one-hour time frame. Otto Brower (Dixie Dugan/Youth Will Be Served/The Gay Caballero) directs. The clever screenplay is by Charles G. Booth and W. Scott Darling. One night a car parks in front of the 33rd precinct and inside is the dead body of a shady private detective, Walter Bard (Bernard Nedell), known as a blackmailer. Politics plays a part in the ensuing murder investigation since Janet Bradley (Carole Landis), the daughter of Luther Bradley, the reform candidate for mayor, was seen coming out of the victim's apartment just before his death was discovered." - Dennis Schwartz (Movie Reviews)
Behind Locked Doors
Behind Locked Doors
1948, USA, 62m, BW, Thriller-Drama-Crime
Screenplay Eugene Ling, Marvin Wald Producer Eugene Ling Photography Guy Roe Editor Norman Colbert Music Irving Friedman Cast Richard Carlson, Lucille Bremer, Douglas Fowley, Ralf Harolde, Thomas Browne Henry, Herbert Heyes, Gwen Donovan, Trevor Bardette, Dickie Moore, Tor Johnson.
"An early low-budget film from boxer turned matador turned filmmaker Oscar "Budd" Boetticher (best known for his '50s westerns with Randolph Scott), Doors turns its lack of funds to its advantage, using a small cast, a few small sets, and creative noir lighting to suggest the claustrophobia of its sanitarium setting. There, a corrupt judge has chosen to hide out from the law, an arrangement that works until a jocular private eye (Carlson) goes undercover as a mental patient after he's hired by a pretty journalist (Bremer) in search of a scoop and some reward money... A probable inspiration for Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor, Doors suffers in comparison; Fuller made transcendent B-movies, and this isn't one. In just about every other respect, however, it's everything it should be: fast-paced, stylishly shot, a little lurid, a little topical, and thoroughly entertaining." - Keith Phipps (A.V. Club)
Behind the High Wall
Behind the High Wall
1956, USA, 85m, BW, Crime-Drama-Escape Film
Screenplay Harold Jack Bloom (based on a story by Richard K. Polmer and Wallace Sullivan) Producer Stanley Rubin Photography Maury Gertsman Editor Ted J. Kent Music Joseph Gershenson Cast Tom Tully, Sylvia Sidney, Betty Lynn, John Gavin, Don Beddoe, John Larch, Barney Phillips, Ed Kemmer, John Beradino, Rayford Barnes.
"When a bunch of cons break out of stir, they murder a guard and take with them as hostage fellow con Johnny Hutchins (Gavin) and prison warden Frank Carmichael (Tully). Not long after they've rejoined their loot, they and their accomplices are killed in a shootout and traffic accident. Seeing $100,000 there for the taking, Carmichael - who has a crippled wife, Hilda (Sidney) - decides to steal it and put the blame for the prison guard's murder on Johnny… A by-the-numbers narrative is enhanced by a fine cast and especially Gertsman's cinematography." - John Grant (A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir)
Berlin Express
Berlin Express
1948, USA, 86m, BW, Thriller-Drama-Spy Film
Screenplay Harold Medford (based on a story by Curt Siodmak) Producer Bert Granet Photography Lucien Ballard Editor Sherman Todd Music Frederick Hollander Cast Merle Oberon, Robert Ryan, Paul Lukas, Charles Korvin, Robert Coote, Reinhold Schunzel, Roman Toporow, Peter von Zerneck, Otto Waldis, Fritz Kortner.
"The nondescript title hides a really tense suspense tale from talented cult director Jacques Tourneur, in his film noir period before he hit his swashbuckling stride with The Flame and the Arrow and Anne of the Indies. Paul Lukas plays a suave German democrat who's kidnapped by an underground group of Nazis opposed to the unification of their country. Merle Oberon and the impressive Robert Ryan star as the fellow travellers who become involved in the plot. The Nazis are strictly clichéd, but the view of postwar Germany rings very true and Tourneur keeps up the tension throughout." - Tony Sloman (Radio Times)
Best Seller
Best Seller
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1987, USA, 110m, Col, Thriller-Action
Screenplay Larry Cohen Producer Carter DeHaven Photography Fred Murphy Editor David Rosenbloom Music Jay Ferguson Cast James Woods, Brian Dennehy, Victoria Tennant, Allison Balson, Paul Shenar, George Coe, Anne Pitoniak, Dean Abston, Dennis Acree, Obaka Adedunyo.
"This Larry Cohen-scripted thriller reworks the old idea of the symbiotic relationship between cop and killer, adding a new twist. LA Detective Meechum (Dennehy) is a burnt-out wreck whose sideline as a crime novelist has dried up since his wife's death. Sleazy, amoral hit-man Cleve (Woods) steps out of Meechum's past and offers him the dirt on his ex-boss… Tough action, hardboiled dialogue and a tightly constructed script keep the action brisk and bloody, while the jaundiced sideswipes at American capitalism are laced with cynicism. Sadly, the potentially explosive confrontation between Dennehy and Woods never quite lives up to expectations; but Flynn's lean direction achieves a gritty B movie edge as the sparks fly and Dennehy moves towards a grudging respect for his manic alter ego." - Nigel Floyd (Time Out)
La Bête humaine
La Bête humaine Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● NOIR-PRECURSOR / FRENCH NOIR
1938, France, 99m, BW, Crime Drama-Psychological Drama
Screenplay Jean Renoir, Denise Leblond [uncredited] (based on the novel by Emile Zola) Producers Raymond Hakim, Robert Hakim Photography Curt Courant Editors Marguerite Renoir, Suzanne de Troeye Music Joseph Kosma Cast Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, Fernand Ledoux, Julien Carette, Blanchette Brunoy, Jean Renoir, Gerard Landry, Jenny Helia, Colette Regis, Jacques Berlioz.
"Stunning images of trains and railway lines as a metaphor for the blind, immutable forces that drive human passions to destruction. Superb performances from Gabin, Simon and Ledoux as the classic tragic love triangle. The deterministic principles of Zola's novel, replaced by destiny in Lang's remake Human Desire, are slightly muffled here. But given the overwhelming tenderness and brutality of Renoir's vision, it hardly matters that the hero's compulsion to kill, the result of hereditary alcoholism, is left half-explained." - Tom Milne (Time Out)
Between Midnight and Dawn
Between Midnight and Dawn
1950, USA, 89m, BW, Crime-Drama
Screenplay Eugene Ling (based on a story by Gerald Adams and Leo Katcher) Producer Hunt Stromberg Photography George E. Diskant Editor Gene Havlick Music George Duning Cast Mark Stevens, Edmond O'Brien, Gale Storm, Donald Buka, Gale Robbins, Anthony Ross, Roland Winters, Tito Vuolo, Grazia Narciso, Madge Blake.
"Looking back at Between Midnight and Dawn, a 1950 crime drama of radio patrolmen and gangsters on the streets of Los Angeles, we would likely classify it as film noir. But that term was coined by French film critics in the late 1950s as they looked back at the dark strain of American crime pictures in the past decade. In Hollywood's mind, this was a classic cop picture, a policier about partners on the beat who put their lives on the line every day… While Between Midnight and Dawn doesn't offer any surprises to its story of cops, crooks and vengeance, it's a sturdy crime picture with a solid performance grounding the story and a hard, gritty attitude when it comes to life on the beat.” - Sean Axmaker (Turner Classic Movies)
Beware, My Lovely
Beware, My Lovely
1952, USA, 77m, BW, Thriller-Crime-Drama
Screenplay Mel Dinelli (based on his play and short story The Man) Producer Collier Young Photography George E. Diskant Editor Paul Weatherwax Music Leith Stevens Cast Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Taylor Holmes, Barbara Whiting, O.Z. Whitehead, James Williams, Dee Pollock, Brad Morrow, Jimmy Mobley, Shelly Lynn Anderson.
"A Poverty Row picture shot by a journeyman filmmaker, Beware My Lovely stands apart from its B-movie brethren thanks to it being a forerunner of that perennially popular thriller sub-genre, the stalker movie. British-born actress Ida Lupino stars as Helen Gordon, a widow who seeks to stave off loneliness by hiring Howard Wilton (Ryan) to help out around the house... Tame by today's standards, Beware My Lovely must have caused the odd pulse to race in the pre-Psycho 1950s. That the film still generates the odd shiver is entirely down to its leading lady and her barking mad nemesis." - Richard Luck (Film4)
Bewitched
Bewitched
1945, USA, 65m, BW, Thriller-Drama-Crime
Screenplay Arch Oboler Producer Jerry Bresler Photography Charles Salerno Jr. Editor Harry Komer Music Bronislau Kaper Cast Phyllis Thaxter, Edmund Gwenn, Stephen McNally, Henry Daniels Jr., Minor Watson, Addison Richards, Kathleen Lockhart, Gladys Blake, Virginia Brissac, Sharon McManus.
"Considering many viewers don’t seem to care for Bewitched, there’s a lot of ink floating around out there about this slick little second feature from MGM. I find myself in the minority, because I think it’s a gem. Make no mistake, in one important way (depending on your point of view) it hasn’t aged well: it’s a rather crude look at schizophrenia in its most sensational form — multiple personality disorders… Be that as it may, the problems are easily forgiven, and what remains is a well-made and inventive thriller with a few great moments." - Mark Fertig (Where Danger Lives)
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1956, USA, 80m, BW, Mystery-Courtroom Drama-Crime
Screenplay Douglas Morrow Producer Bert E. Friedlob Photography William Snyder Editor Gene Fowler Jr. Music Herschel Burke Gilbert Cast Dana Andrews, Joan Fontaine, Sidney Blackmer, Philip Bourneuf, Shepperd Strudwick, Arthur Franz, Edward Binns, Robin Raymond, Barbara Nichols, William Leicester.
"The surprise-filled thriller Beyond a Reasonable Doubt may have been director Fritz Lang's final American film but it's certainly not one of his lesser ones. Analytically inclined viewers can still find Lang's familiar themes of guilt and innocence but anybody else will delight in trying to out-guess the various twists in the engaging story. Critic Derek Malcolm wrote, "It is a film of great economy and precision (it lasts only 80 minutes), with the terrifying inevitability of Greek tragedy and a pervading sense that man is his own worst enemy." - Lang Thompson (Turner Classic Movies)
Beyond the Forest
Beyond the Forest Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1949, USA, 96m, BW, Melodrama
Screenplay Lenore Coffee (based on the novel by Stuart Engstrand) Producer Henry Blanke Photography Robert Burks Editor Rudi Fehr Music Max Steiner Cast Bette Davis, Joseph Cotten, David Brian, Ruth Roman, Dona Drake, Regis Toomey, Minor Watson, Frances Charles, Sarah Selby, Mary Servoss.
"Rosa Moline (Davis) is a twelve o'clock girl in a nine o'clock town. Loyalton is the burg in question, and Rosa doesn't like it one bit: 'What a dump... like sitting in a coffin and waiting to be carried out!' Her personal rebellion takes the form of adultery, miscarriage and murder, in King Vidor's most demented film from his most frenzied period, immediately after Duel in the Sun and The Fountainhead and before Ruby Gentry. Davis, done up for all the world like Jennifer Jones, is too old for the part, but gives it her all (she used the film for her own rebellion, escaping a Warner Bros contract that still had ten years to run). She's like a caricature of herself, and the movie, too, is soap gone into lather. Laugh it off, by all means, but American melodrama at this pitch of alienation is quite fascinating." - Tom Charity (Time Out)
The Big Bluff
The Big Bluff
1955, USA, 70m, BW, Drama-Crime-Thriller
Screenplay Fred Freiberger (from a story by Mindret Lord) Producer W. Lee Wilder Photography Gordon Avil Editor Terry Morse Music Manuel Compinsky Cast John Bromfield, Martha Vickers, Robert Hutton, Rosemarie Stack, Eve Miller, Max Palmer, Eddie Bee, Robert Bice, Pierre Watkin, Beal Wong.
"A suave grifter latches on to a dying woman with dough, only he is impatient to see her gone. His evil machinations are his undoing. The sheer perversity of the scenario and its relentless immorality leave you stunned. Don’t go figuring this is a cinematic experience. It has the bitter flavour of festering reality, and is played out in a fetid LA where evil ambition and a conniving race to the bottom suck you down into a putrid swamp. The homme-fatale is tripped-up in a quintessential noir dénouement, twisted and out of left field. A b-movie par-excellence that is so compelling it feels much longer than the economical 70 minutes it takes to go from melodrama to perdition." - Tony D'Ambra (FilmsNoir.net)
The Big Clock
The Big Clock 100 Essential Noirs (or the 100 films most often referred to as noir) Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1948, USA, 95m, BW, Crime-Psychological Thriller
Screenplay Jonathan Latimer (adapted by Harold Goldman based on the novel by Kenneth Fearing) Producer Richard Maibaum Photography John F. Seitz Editor Eda Warren Music Victor Young Cast Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan, George Macready, Rita Johnson, Elsa Lanchester, Harold Vermilyea, Dan Tobin, Harry Morgan, Richard Webb.
"John Farrow directed this tasteful film noir, which is something of a contradiction in terms; it's reminiscent of Fritz Lang without Lang's hysteria. Ray Milland stars as a crime reporter working for a magazine run by Charles Laughton, and his investigation of a murder leads him right to the boss's office. Farrow creates a coldly threatening atmosphere, mainly through his expert use of the styles and shapes of modern architecture. Not a great thriller, but not bad. Based on a novel by Kenneth Fearing; it was remade almost 40 years later as No Way Out." - Dave Kehr (Chicago Reader)
The Big Combo
The Big Combo 100 Essential Noirs (or the 100 films most often referred to as noir) Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1955, USA, 89m, BW, Crime-Thriller-Police Detective Film
Screenplay Philip Yordan Producer Sidney Harmon Photography John Alton Editor Robert S. Eisen Music David Raksin Cast Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Jean Wallace, Brian Donlevy, Lee Van Cleef, Earl Holliman, Robert Middleton, Helen Walker, Jay Adler, John Hoyt.
"Terrific gangster movie, although - despite the syndicate shenanigans promised by the title - it's more of a film noir focusing on the private, obsessional duel between Wilde's cop and Conte's gangster, each variously haunted by a woman and virtually becoming the other's alter ego during the course of their deadly vendetta. A film structured by viciousness and pain (amplified by two peculiarly hideous torture scenes involving a hearing aid), it's a dark night of several souls perfectly visualised in John Alton's extraordinary camerawork. Even better than Lewis' earlier - and remarkable - Gun Crazy." - Tom Milne (Time Out)
The Big Easy
The Big Easy
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1987, USA, 108m, Col, Thriller-Crime-Romantic Mystery
Screenplay Daniel Petrie Jr. Producer Stephen Friedman Photography Alfonso Beato Editor Mia Goldman Music Brad Fiedel Cast Dennis Quaid, Ellen Barkin, Ned Beatty, Ebbe Roe Smith, John Goodman, Lisa Jane Persky, Charles Ludlam, Tom O'Brien, Jim Garrison, Carol Sutton.
"The least personal and most commercial of Jim McBride's theatrical features, this 1987 film reworks a hackneyed crooked-cop story by Daniel Petrie Jr. (Beverly Hills Cop). McBride gets tense, sexy performances from Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin, makes the most of his New Orleans locations, and conjures up lots of good vibes and atmosphere. But as in some Cajun cooking, it's the spices rather than the meat that impart the essential McBride flavor: offbeat secondary casting (the great Charles Ludlam as an eye-rolling defense attorney) and a use of props ranging from the surreal (Mardi Gras floats in a warehouse) to the homey (Quaid's squeaking gator doll)." - Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader)
The Big Heat
The Big Heat 100 Essential Noirs (or the 100 films most often referred to as noir) Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1953, USA, 90m, BW, Drama-Crime-Police Detective Film
Screenplay Sydney Boehm (based on the novel by William P. McGivern) Producer Robert Arthur Photography Charles Lang Editor Charles Nelson Music Daniele Amfitheatrof Cast Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby, Lee Marvin, Carolyn Jones, Jeanette Nolan, Peter Whitney, Willis Bouchey, Robert Burton.
"The Big Heat is the ultimate angry cop noir, its tale of vengeance rendered with almost tantalizing perfection. Uptown critics dismissed it at the time as just another crime potboiler, signifying Fritz Lang's demise as an A-list director. They missed the cold brilliance that electrified genre conventions, and the exhilarating union of brooding Germanic fatalism and Wild West ass-kicking... With The Big Heat, Lang shook off several desultory years, inspired by the crisp geometry of Boehm's script – and perhaps by its ferocious outrage." - Eddie Muller (Film Noir of the Week)
The Big Knife
The Big Knife Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1955, USA, 111m, BW, Showbiz Drama-Melodrama
Screenplay James Poe (based on the play by Clifford Odets) Producer Robert Aldrich Photography Ernest Laszlo Editor Michael Luciano Music Frank De Vol Cast Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Shelley Winters, Wendell Corey, Jean Hagen, Rod Steiger, Everett Sloane, Wesley Addy, Ilka Chase, Paul Langton.
"A dynamite portrait of a man on the verge of total psychological and moral collapse, Robert Aldrich's 1955 indictment of Hollywood stars Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, and Rod Steiger. Adapted from a series of plays by Clifford Odets, Aldrich's film focuses on the ways in which a man's freedom is systematically denied him by the forces that control his world, whether that world is the arts, business, or politics. Palance is superb as the Hollywood star who now has to be blackmailed to continue starring in the dreadful films produced by Rod Steiger (in a magnificent portrayal of Harry Cohn, Louis B. Mayer, and Jack Warner rolled into one). Electric, exciting, and ultimately very depressing." - Don Druker (Chicago Reader)
The Big Lebowski
The Big Lebowski Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● COMEDY NOIR / NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1998, USA-UK, 113m, Col, Comedy-Crime-Buddy Film
Screenplay Ethan Coen, Joel Coen Producer Ethan Coen Photography Roger Deakins Editors Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Tricia Cooke Music Carter Burwell Cast Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, David Huddleston, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tara Reid, Peter Stormare, John Turturro, David Thewlis.
"There are few films that genuinely get better with each successive viewing. The Big Lebowski is one of them. This is owed not only to its near-infinite quotability, which itself grows with time, given how much of the film’s humor is self-referential, but also because its tangled plot requires a substantial amount of unraveling before it can be fully understood and appreciated. The Coen brothers use the noir framework of such films as The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye as a starting point and apply it to a wonderfully trivial case sparked by a micturated-upon rug which, we’re reminded ad infinitum, “really tied the room together.” From there the Coens lead us on a tour involving White Russians, bowling, nihilists (read: not Nazis), a faux-kidnapping set up to mask an embezzlement scheme, and more White Russians." - Michael Nordine (Slant Magazine)
The Big Night
The Big Night Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1951, USA, 75m, BW, Drama-Thriller-Coming-of-Age
Screenplay Joseph Losey, Stanley Ellin (based on the novel Dreadful Summit by Stanley Ellin) Producer Philip A. Waxman Photography Hal Mohr Editor Edward Mann Music Lyn Murray Cast John Barrymore Jr., Preston Foster, Howland Chamberlain, Joan Lorring, Howard St. John, Dorothy Comingore, Philip Bourneuf, Myron Healey, Emile Meyer, Mauri Lynn.
"Among Losey's most powerful and personal films are those that deal, like The Big Night, with youth and the difficult passage into the adult world. John Barrymore, Jr. gives the performance of his tragically foreshortened career in this story of a young man shaken to the core by the sight of his father's humiliation at the hand of a sadistic mobster. Wandering through seedy nightspots, the boy encounters a frightening and fascinating nocturnal world that he has never known. By carefully refusing expected stereotypes, the refreshingly awkward and unpredictable characters in The Big Night reveal the complexity and nuance of character and motivation that stands among the important achievements of Losey's cinema." - Harvard Film Archive
The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep 100 Essential Noirs (or the 100 films most often referred to as noir) Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1946, USA, 114m, BW, Mystery-Crime
Screenplay William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman (based on the novel by Raymond Chandler) Producer Howard Hawks Photography Sidney Hickox Editor Christian Nyby Music Max Steiner Cast Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Elisha Cook Jr., Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone, Regis Toomey, Louis Jean Heydt, Sonia Darrin, Bob Steele.
"The big sleep of the title may be death, but it may also be just slumber, and dream. Few thrillers are as mesmerically dream-like... Cameraman Sid Hickox's wet, foggy night scenes make the film less noir than perplexingly grey and hazy, like the damp tweed of mobsters' overcoats. As the plot thickens like narcotic vapour, no one is more fascinated than Bacall's Vivian: her awkward slumped posture in Marlowe's car suggests that she's ready at any moment to subside into sleep, or into his bed. The closing title card features as overt a post-coital metaphor as any ever seen in film: two cigarettes and an ashtray... The Big Sleep is as fresh and perverse as ever, and remains one of Hollywood's most entrancingly strange bedtime stories." - Jonathan Romney (The Independent)
The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep
● BRIT-NOIR / NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1978, UK, 99m, Col, Mystery-Crime-Drama
Screenplay Michael Winner (based on the novel by Raymond Chandler) Producers Elliott Kastner, Jerry Bick, Michael Winner Photography Robert Paynter Editor Frederick Wilson Music Jerry Fielding Cast Robert Mitchum, Sarah Miles, Richard Boone, Candy Clark, Joan Collins, Edward Fox, John Mills, James Stewart, Oliver Reed, Harry Andrews.
"The residue of Chandler in Winner's remake of The Big Sleep might just con audiences unfamiliar with the novels and who haven't seen the 1946 Hawks/Bogart version. Otherwise, it's on very shaky ground indeed. Spuriously relocated in London (Winner's facility with luxurious location set pieces is anything but masterful), and with Marlowe dressed by Savile Row (Mitchum seems to sleepwalk through the part), the film sorely lacks any of the seediness and menace which made the 1973 remake of Farewell My Lovely at least watchable. Winner's insistence as a director on making everything as explicit as possible is often stultifying beyond belief." - Rod McShane (Time Out)
The Big Steal
The Big Steal Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1949, USA, 71m, BW, Crime-Thriller-Chase Movie
Screenplay Daniel Mainwaring, Gerald Drayson Adams (based on the story The Road to Carmichael's by Richard Wormser) Producer Jack J. Gross Photography Harry Wild Editor Samuel E. Beetley Music Leigh Harline Cast Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, William Bendix, Patric Knowles, Ramon Novarro, Don Alvarado, John Qualen, Pascual Garcia Pena, Dorothy Mitchum, Carmen Morales.
"The Big Steal was one of Don Siegel's first directorial efforts and it stands as a good preview of what was to become his specialty in the fifties - taut little B-movie thrillers and melodramas like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Baby Face Nelson (1957), and The Lineup (1958). While the plot of The Big Steal was fairly derivative of numerous other chase thrillers - an army lieutenant and his female companion race across Mexico in pursuit of a man who stole a $300,000 army payroll - it was the re-teaming of Mitchum and Jane Greer, his co-star from the film noir classic, Out of the Past (1947), and Siegel's breathless direction that elevated this melodrama above the standard B-movie." - Jeff Stafford (Turner Classic Movies)
The Bigamist
The Bigamist Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1953, USA, 80m, BW, Marriage Drama
Screenplay Collier Young (based on a story by Larry Marcus and Lou Schor) Producer Collier Young Photography George E. Diskant Editor Stanford Tischler Music Leith Stevens Cast Edmond O'Brien, Ida Lupino, Joan Fontaine, Edmund Gwenn, Jane Darwell, Kenneth Tobey, John Maxwell, Peggy Maley, Mack Williams, James Todd.
"Ida Lupino is the great director of noirs, thrillers and message pictures from the 1950s – an inspired film-maker to compare with Nicholas Ray and Robert Siodmak. She combined it with being a producer, a distributor and, most importantly of all, a star, directing herself in this fierce, extraordinarily potent drama, which candidly delivers its subject matter right up front in the title. It tells us a lot about the sexual politics of the age… Is The Bigamist really a noir? Maybe it doesn’t have the cynicism, the open sexuality or the violence to count… Yet The Bigamist is certainly about a serious criminal offence, and it is certainly about sexual infidelity – that driving force of the noir… The Bigamist is a taut, muscular, controlled picture, and Lupino shapes all three performances (herself, O'Brien and Fontaine) with pure mastery." - Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian)
The Black Angel
The Black Angel 100 Essential Noirs (or the 100 films most often referred to as noir) Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1946, USA, 80m, BW, Mystery
Screenplay Roy Chanslor (based on the novel by Cornell Woolrich) Producers Roy William Neill, Tom McKnight Photography Paul Ivano Editor Saul A. Goodkind Music Frank Skinner Cast Dan Duryea, June Vincent, Peter Lorre, Broderick Crawford, Wallace Ford, Hobart Cavanaugh, Constance Dowling, Freddie Steele, Ben Bard, John Phillips.
"Not exactly a pristine Cornell Woolrich adaptation, since the brooding subjectivism (so lovingly preserved in a real poverty row quickie like Fear in the Night) has been partly pruned to leave a moody thriller along the lines of Phantom Lady, beautifully crafted with the sort of unpretentious skill Neill brought to the Rathbone-Bruce Sherlock Holmes series. The authentic tang of noir is lent by Duryea, superb in (for once) a sympathetic role as the tormented musician with the faithless wife who finds the solution to the mystery of her murder surfacing through the alcoholic haze of his memory. Lovely supporting cast too." - Tom Milne (Time Out)
The Black Dahlia
The Black Dahlia
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
2006, USA-Germany-France, 121m, Col, Crime-Police Drama-Mystery
Screenplay Josh Friedman (from the novel by James Ellroy) Producers Art Linson, Avi Lerner, Moshe Diamant, Rudy Cohen Photography Vilmos Zsigmond Editor Bill Pankow Music Mark Isham Cast Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Mia Kirshner, Mike Starr, Fiona Shaw, Patrick Fischler, James Otis, John Kavanagh.
"The world of The Black Dahlia is beyond bleak, beyond film noir. Based on the novel by James Ellroy, it takes place during the postwar era, which gave birth to noir, but shows crimes more gruesome and corruption more endemic than the noirs ever depicted. Director Brian De Palma invests careful attention in creating this world, building lush tableaux that impart an aura of glamour and doom. But, with the exception of Aaron Eckhart, De Palma's actors can't live up to the period or the atmosphere. Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank -- talented people who've done good work in the past -- ultimately come off like lightweights, like kids playing dress up." - Mick LaSalle (San Francisco Chronicle)
Black Hand
Black Hand
1950, USA, 93m, BW, Crime-Thriller-Drama Screenplay Luther Davis (based on a story by Leo Townsend) Producer William H. Wright Photography Paul Vogel Editor Cotton Warburton Music Albert Colombo Cast Gene Kelly, J. Carrol Naish, Teresa Celli, Marc Lawrence, Frank Puglia, Barry Kelley, Mario Siletti, Carl Milletaire, Peter Brocco, Eleanora Mendelssohn.
"Gene Kelly in a rare dramatic role is an Italian-American out for revenge on the Black Hand, the Mafia-like organisation of extortionists who murdered his lawyer father. Training in the law himself, he enlists the help of New York police inspector J. Carrol Naish, who makes a courageous trip to Sicily to retrieve the information they need to crack the organisation. Although the two Irish-American leads aren't ideally cast, they both give a decent account of themselves in an unusual, neatly plotted little thriller." - Trevor Johnston (Time Out)
Black Rain
Black Rain
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1989, USA, 125m, Col, Thriller-Crime-Action
Screenplay Craig Bolotin, Warren Lewis Producers Sherry Lansing, Stanley R. Jaffe Photography Jan De Bont Editor Tom Rolf Music Hans Zimmer Cast Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia, Ken Takakura, Kate Capshaw, Yusaku Matsuda, Shigeru Koyama, John Spencer, Guts Ishimatsu, Yuya Uchida, Tomisaburo Wakayama.
"Scott's best films (Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down, Alien) are an effortless fusion of style and substance, but here, as in Hannibal, he's saddled with material that barely rises to the level of risible pulp. Black Rain is puffed full of so much macho posturing, mindless aggression, and witless profanity that it risks a fatal case of testosterone poisoning. The film's hypnotic orgies of neon, shafts of light, moody shadows, and ubiquitous clouds of steam offer a nonstop feast for the eyes, while the laughable script invites the mind to indulge in a two-hour-long catnap." - Nathan Rabin (A.V. Club)
Black Tuesday
Black Tuesday
1954, USA, 80m, BW, Crime-Drama-Thriller
Screenplay Sydney Boehm Producer Robert Goldstein Photography Stanley Cortez Editor Robert Golden Music Paul Dunlap Cast Edward G. Robinson, Jean Parker, Peter Graves, Milburn Stone, Warren Stevens, Sylvia Findley, Jack Kelly, Hal Baylor, James Bell, Vic Perrin
"Black Tuesday positively crackles. No pun intended. It’s a mean movie — cynical, cold-blooded, and hardboiled as hell. The title refers to the day when death row inmates are fated for their turn in the electric chair… As the level of activity in the prison reaches a fever-pitch, Black Tuesday takes on a documentary tone — denizens on both sides of the law scramble through eleventh-hour preparations for the looming event… The final twenty minutes are talky, but worth it — in the hands of a lesser screenwriter the film would have ended quickly and disappointingly under a hail of rote gunfire. Instead Boehm uses the claustrophobic tension of the warehouse to further develop his characters, and in the end offer one of them a sort of redemption." - Mark Fertig (Where Danger Lives)
Black Widow
Black Widow
● COLOUR NOIR
1954, USA, 95m, Col, Crime-Mystery-Detective Film
Screenplay Nunnally Johnson (based on the novel by Patrick Quentin) Producer Nunnally Johnson Photography Charles G. Clarke Editor Dorothy Spencer Music Leigh Harline Cast Van Heflin, George Raft, Gene Tierney, Ginger Rogers, Peggy Ann Garner, Reginald Gardiner, Otto Kruger, Virginia Leith, Cathleen Nesbitt, Skip Homeier.
"An adaptation of Patrick Quentin's fine thriller which starts promisingly with Heflin's distinguished Broadway producer, meeting a sweetly aspiring young playwright (Garner), helplessly bemused when (actually vampirically ambitious) she virtually takes over his apartment on the excuse that the surroundings are conducive to inspiration. When she is subsequently found murdered there and he becomes the prime suspect, the film degenerates into a routine whodunnit. Worth seeing for the fine cast, Raft (dreary as ever as the investigating cop) and Rogers (unexpectedly overdoing it as a bitchy actress) excepted." - Tom Milne (Time Out)
Black Widow
Black Widow
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1987, USA, 103m, Col, Mystery-Crime-Thriller
Screenplay Ronald Bass Producer Harold Schneider Photography Conrad L. Hall Editor John Bloom Music Michael Small Cast Debra Winger, Theresa Russell, Sami Frey, Dennis Hopper, Nicol Williamson, Diane Ladd, Terry O'Quinn, James Hong, D.W. Moffett, Lois Smith.
"From its opening shot - Theresa Russell's split reflection in a make-up mirror - both the theme and the over-schematic symbolism of Rafelson's thriller are immediately apparent. For Russell plays a homicidal psychopath whose killings of various wealthy husbands are investigated by a Justice Department workaholic (Winger), who slowly but surely becomes a kind of mirror-image of her Protean prey. The story and treatment are familiar from '40s noir thrillers, but it's clear that Rafelson is attempting something more than mere homage… There are things to enjoy - committed performances, Conrad Hall's elegant camerawork, a script that becomes pleasurably tortuous towards the end - but the film finally offers far less than meets the eye." - Geoff Andrew (Time Out)
Blackmail
Blackmail
1947, USA, 67m, BW, Crime-Drama-Detective Film
Screenplay Royal K. Cole, Albert DeMond (based on a story by Robert Leslie Bellem) Producer William J. O'Sullivan Photography Reggie Lanning Editor Tony Martinelli Music Mort Glickman Cast William Marshall, Adele Mara, Ricardo Cortez, Grant Withers, Stephanie Bachelor, Richard Fraser, Roy Barcroft, George J. Lewis, Gregory Gaye, Tristram Coffin.
"The all-purpose title Blackmail was again revived for this breezy Republic comedy-mystery. William Marshall (not the African American star of Blacula) plays private eye Dan Turner, assigned to shield playboy Ziggy Cranston (Ricardo Cortez) from a pair of clever blackmailers (Adele Mara, Richard Fraser). As a result of Turner's interference, the extortionists up the ante from $50,000 to three times that amount. A few murders and plot twists later, Turner emerges triumphant; still, one wonders if Cranston wouldn't have been better off handling his persecutors by himself." - Hal Erickson (Allmovie)
Blade Runner
Blade Runner Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● SCI-FI NOIR / NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1982, USA, 118m, Col, Science Fiction-Thriller-Drama
Screenplay David Peoples, Hampton Fancher (based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick) Producer Michael Deeley Photography Jordan Cronenweth Editor Martha Nakashima Music Vangelis Cast Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh, Daryl Hannah, William Sanderson, Brion James, Joseph Turkel, Joanna Cassidy.
"This is still the most remarkably and densely imagined and visualized SF film since 2001: A Space Odyssey, a hauntingly erotic meditation on the difference between the human and the nonhuman. Set in a grungy LA of the 21st century characterized by nearly constant rain and a good many Chinese restaurants—yielding textures worthy of Welles or Sternberg—the plot involves a former cop (Ford) hired to track down and kill a series of androids. The results are largely a triumph of production design, but as in Forbidden Planet and 2001, it's often hard to determine where production design leaves off and direction begins." - Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader)
Blast of Silence
Blast of Silence Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● LATE NOIR (1960s)
1961, USA, 77m, BW, Drama-Crime-Thriller
Screenplay Allen Baron, Waldo Salt Producer Merrill S. Brody Photography Merrill S. Brody Editor Merrill S. Brody, Peggy Lawson Music Meyer Kupferman Cast Allen Baron, Molly McCarthy, Larry Tucker, Peter Clume, Danny Mechan, Dean Sheldon, Charles Creasap, Bill DePrato, Erich Kollmar, Joe Bussico.
"Allen Baron’s stark, moody Blast of Silence is a movie of many strange distinctions. It’s among the last of the true film noirs, those fatalistic black-and-white urban crime dramas that darkened the American screen so gloriously in the years after World War II. It was, along with John Cassavetes’s Shadows (1959) and Shirley Clarke’s The Connection (1960), one of the first of the low-budget independent movies that suggested the existence of a uniquely New York style of filmmaking, documentary-like and expressively unpolished. It’s among the very few works in the history of cinema to boast a voice-over narration in the second person. And it is, hands down, the best movie ever made about a common, important, and unjustly neglected American experience: the really bad business trip." - Terrence Rafferty (The Criterion Collection)
Blind Alley
Blind Alley
● NOIR-PRECURSOR
1939, USA, 69m, BW, Crime-Drama
Screenplay Albert Duffy, Michael Blankfort, Philip MacDonald (based on a play by James Warwick) Producer Jack Fier Photography Lucien Ballard Editor Otto Meyer Music George Parrish Cast Chester Morris, Ralph Bellamy, Ann Dvorak, Joan Perry, Melville Cooper, Rose Stradner, John Eldredge, Ann Doran, Marc Lawrence, Stanley Brown.
"Interesting but somewhat ramshackle chunk of Freudiana adapted from a stage play, in which an escaped convict (Morris) and his associates hold a remote household hostage while waiting for their getaway transport. The house happens to belong to a psychiatrist (Bellamy), and the process by which he gradually asserts his dominance, realising that the convict is a compulsive killer who is afraid he's going mad, is persuasively done; the miracle analysis he achieves within hours is ludicrous, to say the least. The best sequence details the killer's recurring nightmare of cowering from a relentless shower of blood under a perforated umbrella, simply but very effectively staged in negative; and throughout, Lucien Ballard's deep focus compositions enhance the otherwise routine tensions. Remade in 1948 as The Dark Past." - Tom Milne (Time Out)
Blind Date
Blind Date
Chance Meeting (USA title)
● BRIT-NOIR
1959, UK, 95m, BW, Mystery-Drama-Crime
Screenplay Ben Barzman, Millard Lampell (based on the novel by Leigh Howard) Producer David Deutsch Photography Christopher Challis Editor Reginald Mills Music Richard Rodney Bennett Cast Hardy Kruger, Stanley Baker, Micheline Presle, John Van Eyssen, Gordon Jackson, Robert Flemyng, Jack MacGowran, Redmond Phillips, George Roubicek, Lee Montague.
"This usually overlooked entry in the Joseph Losey canon is actually quite a daring and sophisticated investigation into British attitudes towards sex, class and the establishment in the late 1950s. Adapted from Leigh Howard's novel, the story is pretty unremarkable, but Losey's assured handling of character and location forces you to share the plight of Dutch painter Hardy Kruger, as he becomes embroiled in a political scandal after the mistress he shares with the French ambassador in London is murdered. Stanley Baker investigates with quiet efficiency." - David Parkinson (Radio Times)
Blind Spot
Blind Spot
1947, USA, 73m, BW, Mystery-Crime-Drama
Screenplay Martin Goldsmith (from a story by Harry Perowne) Producer Ted Richmond Photography George Meehan Editor Henry Batista Music Paul Sawtell Cast Chester Morris, Constance Dowling, Steven Geray, James Bell, William Forrest, Sid Tomack, Paul E. Burns, Harry Strang, Steve Benton, Paul Bryar.
"Taking a break from Columbia’s Boston Blackie series, aging matinee idol Chester Morris stars as a vividly alcoholic author of pulp novels who falls under suspicion when his penny-pinching publisher is murdered by a method described in one of his stories. With a screenplay by Martin Goldsmith, the author of the novel that became Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour, this casually sordid, micro-budgeted noir features some inventive staging by the director Robert Gordon, including a one-shot, subjective camera scene strikingly similar to a famous sequence in Ulmer’s film, as well as a rare sympathetic performance by the professional femme fatale Constance Dowling, whose romantic rejection of the Italian poet Cesare Pavese contributed to his suicide." - The Museum of Modern Art
Blonde Ice
Blonde Ice
1948, USA, 73m, BW, Crime-Drama-Mystery
Screenplay Kenneth Gamet, Dick Irving Hyland [uncredited], Raymond L. Schrock [uncredited] (based on the novel Once Too Often by Whitman Chambers) Producer Martin Mooney Photography George Robinson Editor Jason H. Bernie, W.L. Bagier Music Irving Gertz Cast Robert Paige, Leslie Brooks, Russ Vincent, Michael Whalen, James Griffith, Emory Parnell, Walter Sande, John Holland, Mildred Coles, Selmer Jackson.
"Among even the hardiest of film noir fans, the movie title Blonde Ice isn't likely to bring many looks of recognition. It's a relatively obscure film, cranked out in 1948 by Film Classics, which only produced a grand total of 12 films… The acting is merely adequate and the direction is severely hampered by the low budget (although director Jack Bernhard and cameraman George Robinson do manage a few surprising camera angles). But the screenplay is a deliciously nasty and audacious exposé on the twisted psyche of a truly lethal femme fatale. Claire Cummings (Brooks) is a gold digger with no conscious whatsoever… Director Jack Bernhard is mostly known for directing the sci-fi disaster Unknown Island. Here he occasionally channels the stylistics of film noir, particularly chiaroscuro lighting." - Gary Johnson (Images Journal) 
Blood on the Moon
Blood on the Moon Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● WESTERN NOIR
1948, USA, 88m, BW, Psychological Western-Drama
Screenplay Lillie Hayward (adapted by Luke Short and Harold Shumate from the novel Gunman's Chance by Luke Short) Producer Theron Warth Photography Nicholas Musuraca Editor Samuel E. Beetley Music Roy Webb Cast Robert Mitchum, Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Preston, Walter Brennan, Tom Tyler, Harry Carey Jr., Phyllis Thaxter, Frank Faylen, Tom Tully, Charles McGraw.
"The film weaves a classic noir scenario into a western with all the motifs of the genre: the mysterious drifter with divided loyalties, the virginal rancher’s daughter in britches, the conniving proto-gangster, the crooked Indian-Reservation agent, hired-guns, shout-outs, bar-room brawls, and the Arizona backdrop, while organically integrating the noir elements of the redeemed noir protagonist, doom-laden atmospherics, outbursts of violence, and vengeance into the story. Mitchum as the drifter is classic Mitchum, and Barbara Bel Geddes truly engaging as the rancher’s younger daughter… But the movie belongs to director Wise and cinematographer Musuraca. From the opening frame of the drifter’s silhouette riding over a mountain pass in driving rain in the day’s gloaming, you know you are in noir territory." - Tony D'Ambra (FilmsNoir.net)
Blood Simple
Blood Simple Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1984, USA, 97m, Col, Thriller-Drama-Crime
Screenplay Ethan Coen, Joel Coen Producer Ethan Coen Photography Barry Sonnenfeld Editor Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Don Wiegmann Music Carter Burwell Cast John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, M. Emmet Walsh, Samm-Art Williams, Deborah Neumann, Raquel Gavia, Van Brooks, Senor Marco, William Creamer.
"The genius of Blood Simple is that everything that happens seems necessary. The movie's a blood-soaked nightmare in which greed and lust trap the characters in escalating horror. The plot twists in upon itself. Characters are found in situations of diabolical complexity. And yet it doesn't feel like the film is just piling it on. Step by inexorable step, logically, one damned thing leads to another... It is one of the best of the modern films noir, a grimy story of sleazy people trapped in a net of betrayal and double-cross. When it uses cliches like the Corpse That Will Not Die, they raise it to a whole new level of usefulness. The Coens are usually original, but when they borrow a movie convention, they rotate it so that the light shines through in an unexpected way." - Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert.com)
Blow Out
Blow Out Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1981, USA, 107m, Col, Mystery-Paranoid Thriller
Screenplay Brian De Palma Producer George Litto Photography Vilmos Zsigmond Editor Paul Hirsch Music Pino Donaggio Cast John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz, Peter Boyden, John Aquino, Curt May, Ernest McClure, Dave Roberts, Maurice Copeland.
"In the enthralling Blow Out, brilliantly crafted by Brian De Palma, John Travolta gives one of his greatest performances, as a film sound-effects man who believes he has accidentally recorded a political assassination. To uncover the truth, he enlists the help of a possible eyewitness to the crime (Nancy Allen), who may be in danger herself. With its jolting stylistic flourishes, intricate plot, profoundly felt characterizations, and gritty evocation of early-1980s Philadelphia, Blow Out is an American paranoia thriller unlike any other, as well as a devilish reflection on moviemaking.." - The Criterion Collection
The Blue Dahlia
The Blue Dahlia 100 Essential Noirs (or the 100 films most often referred to as noir) Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1946, USA, 99m, BW, Mystery-Drama-Crime
Screenplay Raymond Chandler Producer John Houseman Photography Lionel Lindon Editor Arthur Schmidt Music Victor Young Cast Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, William Bendix, Howard da Silva, Doris Dowling, Hugh Beaumont, Tom Powers, Howard Freeman, Don Costello, Will Wright.
"Ladd's returning war veteran stalks stoically down those mean streets once more in search of the killer of his wife (Dowling), a faithless floozie undeserving of his concern. Raymond Chandler's script never quite recovers from the Navy Department's objection to having Ladd's war-wounded buddy Bendix, wandering around with a steel plate in his head and intermittent amnesia, turn out to have done the killing (out of outraged loyalty to his friend, then blanking it out in his memory). The plot rewrite involves one or two arbitrary connections and a much less satisfactory conclusion. A fine hardboiled thriller for all that, with excellent dialogue and performances, and much more apt direction from Marshall than one might expect." - Tom Milne (Time Out)
The Blue Gardenia
The Blue Gardenia 100 Essential Noirs (or the 100 films most often referred to as noir) Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1953, USA, 90m, BW, Crime-Drama-Thriller
Screenplay Charles Hoffman (based on the short story Gardenia by Vera Caspary) Producer Alex Gottlieb Photography Nicholas Musuraca Editor Edward Mann Music Raoul Kraushaar Cast Anne Baxter, Richard Conte, Ann Sothern, Raymond Burr, Jeff Donnell, Richard Erdman, George Reeves, Ruth Storey, Ray Walker, Nat King Cole.
"Relatively minor but still gripping film noir, in which Baxter, jilted by her soldier fiancé, goes on a blind date with Burr, gets drunk... and awakes to discover that the pushy playboy has been murdered, quite possibly by herself. The story, which continues with news-reporter Conte's attempts first to get the killer to come forward and then to clear Baxter's name, is not altogether original, but Lang, his cast, and cameraman Nic Musuraca manage to inject the proceedings with a grimly compelling atmosphere. And the title? It's the name of the nightclub where Baxter's fateful encounter with Burr occurs, and where Nat King Cole contributes a welcome musical cameo." - Geoff Andrew (Time Out)
The Blue Lamp
The Blue Lamp
● BRIT-NOIR
1950, UK, 84m, BW, Crime-Drama-Police Detective Film
Screenplay T.E.B. Clarke (based on a story by Jan Read and Ted Willis) Producer Michael Balcon Photography Gordon Dines Editor Peter Tanner Music Ernest Irving Cast Jack Warner, Jimmy Hanley, Dirk Bogarde, Robert Flemyng, Bernard Lee, Peggy Evans, Patric Doonan, Bruce Seton, Meredith Edwards, Clive Morton.
"The film that spawned George Dixon, of Dock Green fame, here presented as the perfect friendly bobby, teaching new recruit Hanley the rules of the game, until halfway through he is shot and killed by Bogarde's reckless delinquent. Thereafter the film details the search for the killer, but it's less interesting as a thriller than as a cosy, rosy depiction of both the police and the society in which they function, ever ready to help the bobbies in their quest for justice. Very, very British, and not a patch on its far tougher, darker Hollywood counterparts." - Geoff Andrew (Time Out)
Blue Velvet
Blue Velvet Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1986, USA, 120m, Col, Mystery-Crime-Drama
Screenplay David Lynch Producer Richard Roth Photography Frederick Elmes Editor Duwayne Dunham Music Angelo Badalamenti Cast Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern, Hope Lange, Dean Stockwell, George Dickerson, Priscilla Pointer, Frances Bay, Jack Harvey.
"Jeffrey (MacLachlan) is the contemporary knight in slightly tarnished armour, a shy and adolescent inhabitant of Lumberton, USA. After discovering a severed ear in an overgrown backlot, he embarks upon an investigation that leads him into a hellish netherworld... Grafting on to this story his own idiosyncratic preoccupations, Lynch creates a visually stunning, convincingly coherent portrait of a nightmarish substratum to conventional, respectable society. The seamless blending of beauty and horror is remarkable - although many will be profoundly disturbed by Lynch's vision of male-female relationships, centred as it is on Dorothy's (Rossellini) psychopathic hunger for violence - the terror very real, and the sheer wealth of imagination virtually unequalled in recent cinema." - Geoff Andrew (Time Out)
Bluebeard
Bluebeard
1944, USA, 73m, BW, Thriller-Crime
Screenplay Pierre Gendron Producer Leon Fromkess Photography Arthur Feindel Editor Carl Pierson Music Leo Erdody Cast John Carradine, Jean Parker, Nils Asther, Ludwig Stossel, George Pembroke, Teala Loring, Sonia Sorel, Iris Adrian, Henry Kolker, Emmett Lynn.
"It's incorrect and too easy, given what he had to work with, to overstate Ulmer's skill: He doesn't always spin gold out of straw, but he rarely winds up with mere straw. Bluebeard, in which Ulmer transforms his protagonist from a creature of folklore into a Jack The Ripper-like serial killer in 19th-century Paris, has the odd habit of vacillating between a police procedural and a horror film in the Universal mold. But to compensate for its unevenness, Ulmer offers a pervasive stylishness, particularly in the form of creepy lighting, and several unforgettable moments, such as a puppet production of Faust. It may not be enough to elevate Bluebeard to the status of a classic, but it's more than enough to make it worth watching.” - Keith Phipps (A.V. Club)
A Blueprint for Murder
A Blueprint for Murder
1953, USA, 77m, BW, Thriller-Mystery-Drama
Screenplay Andrew L. Stone Producer Michael Abel Photography Leo Tover Editor William B. Murphy Music Lionel Newman Cast Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters, Gary Merrill, Catherine McLeod, Jack Kruschen, Barney Phillips, Freddy Ridgeway, Joyce McCluskey, Mae Marsh, Harry Carter.
"A Blueprint for Murder is a moderately entertaining crime thriller… Despite trying to sow some seeds of doubt along the way, the identity of the killer is established early on, which means that clever plotting and neat tricks are needed to add suspense and keep the story moving. Blueprint falls short in this area, both in the writing and in the directing… Andrew L. Stone's direction is also a bit too by-the-book. A bit more imagination would have brought a higher level of excitement to the film. However, Blueprint does benefit from a fine cast." - Craig Butler (Allmovie)
Blues in the Night
Blues in the Night Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● MUSICAL NOIR
1941, USA, 88m, BW, Crime-Drama-Musical
Screenplay Robert Rossen, Elia Kazan [uncredited] (based on the unproduced play Hot Nocturne by Edwin Gilbert) Producer Henry Blanke Photography Ernest Haller Editor Owen Marks Music Heinz Roemheld Cast Priscilla Lane, Richard Whorf, Betty Field, Lloyd Nolan, Jack Carson, Wallace Ford, Elia Kazan, Peter Whitney, Billy Halop, Jimmy Lunceford.
"The movie tends to be listed as a musical, which was also how it was treated (none too favorably) on its release. And, in a sense, it is a musical, in that we see lots of musical performances, but it’s a film noir more than in it’s anything else, and a fully formed one at that. We have criminals, a sap or two, a memorable femme fatale, amnesia, hallucinatory sequences, violent deaths… and, although our heroes do find a happy ending of sorts, in the eyes of the world they’d be seen as losers, as consignees to the abyss of nonentity." - John Grant (Noirish)
Bob le flambeur
Bob le flambeur Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
Bob the Gambler (English title)
● FRENCH NOIR
1955, France, 102m, BW, Crime-Caper-Gangster Film
Screenplay Auguste Le Breton, Jean-Pierre Melville Producer Jean-Pierre Melville Photography Maurice Blettery, Henri Decaë Editor Monique Bonnot Music Eddie Barclay, Jo Boyer Cast Roger Duchesne, Isabel Corey, Daniel Cauchy, Guy Decomble, André Garet, Claude Cerval, Simone Paris, Howard Vernon, Gérard Buhr, Colette Fleury.
"The French have made some first-class crime pictures, which Americans have been given too few opportunities to see. Luckily, we have Bob le Flambeur, one of the greatest caper movies in any language. Non-Francophones might not understand its crackling and untranslatable slang dialogue by Auguste le Breton, who also wrote the incomparable Rififi, but they will feel its rhythm, which is sufficient. And the picture was directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, who might as well have invented the French crime movie... Bob le Flambeur may be the most elegantly rigorous movie ever made about a cockeyed heist. It is also one of the most elegiac, with a twilight mood about it... There is not a breath of falsehood about Bob le Flambeur. Its tenderness is every bit as strong as its dramatic irony, and its romance can outshoot any lesser picture’s cynicism." - Luc Sante (The Criterion Collection)
Body and Soul
Body and Soul 100 Essential Noirs (or the 100 films most often referred to as noir) Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1947, USA, 104m, BW, Sports-Drama
Screenplay Abraham Polonsky Producer Bob Roberts Photography James Wong Howe Editor Robert Parrish Music Hugo Friedhofer Cast John Garfield, Lilli Palmer, Hazel Brooks, Anne Revere, William Conrad, Joseph Pevney, Canada Lee, Lloyd Gough, Art Smith, James Burke.
"There’s a claustrophobic concentration of mood and dialogue, of characters and performances, that makes Body and Soul not only the bleakest — and, perversely, the most exhilarating — of postwar fight movies but also one of the best and blackest examples of film noir. The climactic bout, which cinematographer James Wong Howe shot by circling the boxers on roller skates, is so exciting and involving that it explains our hero’s fascination with “the game” and nearly makes us regret that he has to give it up. After the fight, Charlie tells the crime boss who has Svengalied his career that “everybody dies” — a declaration of independence for a tough guy who had to put his body on the line before he could pick up the chips of his soul." - Richard Corliss (TIME)
Body Double
Body Double
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1984, USA, 109m, Col, Thriller-Mystery-Drama
Screenplay Brian De Palma, Robert J. Avrech (based on a story by Brian De Palma) Producer Brian De Palma Photography Stephen H. Burum Editors Bill Pankow, Jerry Greenberg Music Pino Donaggio Cast Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, Gregg Henry, Deborah Shelton, Dennis Franz, Guy Boyd, Jerry Brutsche, Barbara Crampton, Lane Davies, Alexandra Day.
"Brian De Palma has gotten a bad rap on this one: the first hour of his 1984 thriller represents the most restrained, accomplished, and effective filmmaking he’s ever done, and if the film does become more jokey and incontinent as it follows its derivative path, it never entirely loses the goodwill De Palma engenders with his deft opening sequences. An unemployed actor, invited to house-sit a Hollywood Hills mansion, becomes voyeuristically involved with his beautiful neighbor across the way and witnesses her murder. Those who have seen Vertigo will have solved the mystery within the first 15 minutes, but De Palma’s use of frame lines and focal lengths to define the hero’s point of view is so adept that the suspense takes hold anyway." - Dave Kehr (Chicago Reader)
Body Heat
Body Heat Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1981, USA, 113m, Col, Erotic Thriller-Crime
Screenplay Lawrence Kasdan Producer Fred T. Gallo Photography Richard H. Kline Editor Carol Littleton Music John Barry Cast William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Richard Crenna, Ted Danson, J.A. Preston, Mickey Rourke, Kim Zimmer, Jane Hallaren, Lanna Saunders, Michael Ryan.
"Kasdan's scripts for Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back paid reverent homage to adventure and science-fiction serials, respectively. More importantly, Kasdan helped resurrect the shadowy world of film noir, and he set off a neo-noir boom with his justly acclaimed directorial debut, 1981's Body Heat. Set during a Florida heat wave so viscerally conveyed that the film stock itself seems to be perspiring, Kasdan's loose Double Indemnity redux casts William Hurt as a low-rent lawyer unencumbered by excesses of intelligence or integrity. When Hurt meets unhappily married sexpot Kathleen Turner, his already shaky sense of morality takes a dive... Kasdan's moody tribute to cinema's dark past set a gold standard for neo-noirs that has seldom been equaled." - Nathan Rabin (A.V. Club)
Bodyguard
Bodyguard
1948, USA, 62m, BW, Mystery-Crime-Drama
Screenplay Fred Niblo Jr., Harry Essex (from a story by Geo. W. George and Robert Altman) Producer Sid Rogell Photography Robert De Grasse Editor Elmo Williams Music Paul Sawtell Cast Lawrence Tierney, Priscilla Lane, Phillip Reed, June Clayworth, Elisabeth Risdon, Steve Brodie, Frank Fenton, Charles Cane, Erville Alderson, Bobby Barber.
"Lawrence Tierney (whose brother was the equally tough actor Scott Brady) pushes his way through Richard Fleischer’s Bodyguard with the same brutal assurance he brought to such films as Max Nosseck’s Dillinger (1945)… Tierney is one of the cinema’s unique characters, indelibly identified with violent roles, and in real life, just as much of a loose cannon as he was on the screen. Bodyguard is a distinctly down-market affair, with a running time of a mere 62 minutes, and was produced by RKO’s B unit, but it still packs a punch; in many ways, the noirs that Fleischer directed for RKO in the first days of his career, such as Follow Me Quietly (1949), Armored Car Robbery (1950), and The Narrow Margin (1952) are his best work.” - Wheeler Winston Dixon (Film Noir of the Week)
Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● LATE NOIR (1960s) / COLOUR NOIR
1967, USA, 111m, Col, Drama-Crime-Gangster Film
Screenplay David Newman, Robert Benton Producer Warren Beatty Photography Burnett Guffey Editor Dede Allen Music Charles Strouse Cast Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Denver Pyle, Dub Taylor, Gene Wilder, Evans Evans, James Stiver.
"Reclaiming the American gangster movie after it had been stolen by the Nouvelle Vague, Penn's film was so successful (and so imitated) that it inevitably met with some grudging devaluation. But it's still great: half comic fairytale, half brutal fact, it reflects the essential ambiguity of its heroes (faithfully copied from history and the real-life Barrow gang which terrorised the American South in the early '30s) by treading a no man's land suspended between reality and fantasy. With its weird landscape of dusty, derelict towns and verdant highways, stunningly shot by Burnett Guffey in muted tones of green and gold, it has the true quality of folk legend." - Tom Milne (Time Out)
The Bonnie Parker Story
The Bonnie Parker Story
1958, USA, 79m, BW, Crime-Biography
Screenplay Stanley Shpetner Producers James H. Nicholson, Samuel Z. Arkoff Photography Jack Marta Editor Frank P. Keller Music Ronald Stein Cast Dorothy Provine, Jack Hogan, Dick Bakalyan, Joseph Turkel, William Stevens, Ken Lynch, Douglas Kennedy, Patricia Huston, Joel Colin, Jeff Morris.
"The Bonnie Parker Story is an obscure oddity that exists in the shadow of the far better known Bonnie and Clyde, but this little film is also able to stand on its own legs. Dorothy Provine gives an electric performance as Bonnie Parker, the notorious Depression-era outlaw who went on a murderous multi-state crime spree with Clyde Barrow; in this telling, however, Parker is firmly in charge and her partner, renamed Guy Darrow, is reduced to supporting player. From its opening shot of Parker undressing through a window, it is clear that this is ultra low-budget, sensationalist filmmaking, but this is also top-of-the-line pulp storytelling." - Bob Mastrangelo (Allmovie)
Boomerang
Boomerang! Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1947, USA, 88m, BW, Mystery-Crime-Drama
Screenplay Richard Murphy (based on an article by Anthony Abbot) Producer Louis de Rochemont Photography Norbert Brodine Editor Harmon Jones Music David Buttolph Cast Dana Andrews, Jane Wyatt, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur Kennedy, Sam Levene, Ed Begley, Karl Malden, Cara Williams, Taylor Holmes, Robert Keith.
"Kazan's third film, a semi-documentary thriller loaded with social conscience (it was produced by Louis de Rochemont, the man behind The March of Time). Shot on location in a small New England town, it follows State Attorney Andrews' attempts to prove that a tramp (Kennedy) accused of murdering an elderly priest may, despite the town's prejudices, be innocent. The unemphatic presentation of details, the use of locations, and strong performances from a largely non-professional supporting cast, lend the film authenticity and power." - Geoff Andrew (Time Out)
The Border
The Border
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1982, USA, 108m, Col, Drama-Crime-Thriller
Screenplay David Freeman, Deric Washburn, Walon Green Producer Edgar Bronfman Jr. Photography Ric Waite Editor Robert K. Lambert Music Ry Cooder Cast Jack Nicholson, Harvey Keitel, Valerie Perrine, Warren Oates, Elpidia Carrillo, Shannon Wilcox, Manuel Viescas, Jeff Morris, Mike Gomez, Dirk Blocker.
"Director Tony Richardson delves into the complex symbiosis between border guards and illegal aliens on the U.S./Mexican border in a film that's often engrossing, but finally too sprawling and diffuse to be compelling. The film takes a somewhat detached view of both guards and aliens, in laying out an ethnography of tastelessness and obsessive materialism among the Border Patrol that fuels the shady deals that exploit the desperate Mexicans. Jack Nicholson, whose characters have often ridiculed the kind of minor official he plays here, is surprisingly straight as the weary, cynical guard who finally tires of Harvey Keitel's venal boss, and the conflict between them gives the film what energy it has." - Michael Costello (Allmovie)
Border Incident
Border Incident 100 Essential Noirs (or the 100 films most often referred to as noir)
1949, USA, 92m, BW, Drama-Crime
Screenplay John C. Higgins (based on a story by John C. Higgins and George Zuckerman) Producer Nicholas Nayfack Photography John Alton Editor Conrad A. Nervig Music Andre Previn Cast Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy, Howard da Silva, James Mitchell, Arnold Moss, Alfonso Bedoya, Teresa Celli, Charles McGraw, Jose Torvay, John Ridgely.
"A dark, gripping film noir about illegal immigration on the Mexican border, the picture doesn't overly concern itself with politics. Instead, it depicts the plight of the immigrants, the ruthless cruelty of the smugglers, and the crime genre dramatics of the agents assigned to infiltrate the smuggling ring and bring it down. Gorgeously shot by the great cinematographer John Alton - who worked with Mann many times - Border Incident is also a fine example of a film which makes its cheap budget an advantage, using shadows and lighting effects to involve an audience." - Jeremy Arnold (Turner Classic Movies)
Borderline
Borderline
1950, USA, 88m, BW, Crime-Drama-Comedy
Screenplay Devery Freeman (based on a story by Devery Freeman and Norman Krasna) Producer Milton H. Bren Photography Lucien Andriot Editor Harry Keller Music Hans J. Salter Cast Fred MacMurray, Claire Trevor, Raymond Burr, Jose Torvay, Morris Ankrum, Roy Roberts, Don Diamond, Nacho Galindo, Pepe Hern, Grazia Narciso.
"Director William A Seiter’s 1950 black and white film noir crime drama Borderline stars Fred MacMurray and Claire Trevor as undercover cops Johnny Macklin and Madeleine Haley looking for drug smugglers down Mexico way, who do not know whether to trust each other, and they certainly should not trust Pete Ritchie (Burr), as he is involved in smuggling drugs into the US. Borderline has good stars, giving reliable performances, and there is plenty of interest in the story and screenplay, but there is a tone problem of a film falling between adventure, film noir thriller, crime drama, detective movie, chase film and comedy." - Derek Winnert
Born to Be Bad
Born to Be Bad Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1950, USA, 94m, BW, Melodrama
Screenplay Charles Schnee, Edith Sommer (based on the novel All Kneeling by Anne Parrish) Producer Robert Sparks Photography Nicholas Musuraca Editor Frederic Knudtson Music Frederick Hollander Cast Joan Fontaine, Robert Ryan, Zachary Scott, Joan Leslie, Mel Ferrer, Harold Vermilyea, Virginia Farmer, Kathleen Howard, Dick Ryan, Bess Flowers.
"It doesn't have any reputation, probably because Nicholas Ray isn't known for his women's pictures, but this is a lively, vicious, and daring film—perhaps the most stylistically audacious of Ray's films before his delirious Johnny Guitar. Joan Fontaine is the apparently innocent girl who marries millionaire Zachary Scott while continuing her passionate affair with novelist Robert Ryan (excellent as always under Ray's direction). Meanwhile, waspish Mel Ferrer hovers around the action, threatening to expose Joan's true character. Ray insistently cuts on movement, giving the whole film an effective instability; every sequence seems volatile, every exchange of looks a threat." - Dave Kehr (Chicago Reader)
Born to Kill
Born to Kill 100 Essential Noirs (or the 100 films most often referred to as noir) Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1947, USA, 92m, BW, Crime-Drama
Screenplay Eve Greene, Richard Macaulay (based on the novel Deadlier Than the Male by James Gunn) Producer Herman Schlom Photography Robert De Grasse Editor Les Millbrook Music Paul Sawtell Cast Claire Trevor, Lawrence Tierney, Walter Slezak, Phillip Terry, Audrey Long, Elisha Cook Jr., Isabel Jewell, Esther Howard, Kathryn Card, Tony Barrett.
"The usually meek Robert Wise trades his chameleonic tastefulness for full-on, jazzy misanthropy in this nasty melodrama. The main vipers on display are Lawrence Tierney's blithely murdering thug and Claire Trevor's randy socialite, braided together by each other's lowdown wiles. The action shoots from seedy Reno to moneyed San Francisco, where Tierney marries Trevor's newspaper heiress sister as a way to stay within screwing distance of his perverse "soul mate," whose lust scarcely diminishes upon discovery of his throttling, stabbing past. Wise swims in the genre's amorality, scoring a kitchen brawl to big-band radio tunes, terrorizing a soused matron at a nocturnal beach skirmish, and leaving the last word to Walter Slezak's jovially corrupt detective." - Fernando F. Croce (Slant Magazine)
Bound
Bound Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1996, USA, 108m, Col, Thriller-Crime-Drama
Screenplay Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski Producer Andrew Lazar, Stuart Boros Photography Bill Pope Editor Zach Staenberg Music Don Davis Cast Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon, Joe Pantoliano, John P. Ryan, Christopher Meloni, Richard Sarafian, Barry Kivel, Mary Mara, Peter Spellos, Susie Bright.
"Bound is one of those movies that works you up, wrings you out and leaves you gasping. It's pure cinema, spread over several genres. It's a caper movie, a gangster movie, a sex movie and a slapstick comedy. It's not often you think of The Last Seduction and the Marx Brothers during the same film, but I did during this one--and I also thought about Blood Simple and Woody Allen. It's amazing to discover all this virtuosity and confidence in two first-time filmmakers, Larry and Andy Wachowski, self-described college dropouts, still in their 20s, from Chicago… Bound is shocking and violent, and will offend some audiences. It's that kind of movie. But it's skillful filmmaking, setting a puzzle that involves time, space, money and danger, and seeing how many different ways it can be solved." - Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert.com)
Brainstorm
Brainstorm
● LATE NOIR (1960s)
1965, USA, 114m, BW, Crime-Thriller-Drama
Screenplay Mann Rubin (based on a story by Lawrence B. Marcus) Producer William Conrad Photography Sam Leavitt Editor William Ziegler Music George Duning Cast Jeffrey Hunter, Anne Francis, Dana Andrews, Viveca Lindfors, Stacy Harris, Kathie Browne, Phillip Pine, Michael Pate, Robert McQueeney, Strother Martin.
"A Double Indemnity for the psyche-scarred Sixties - Brainstorm works from, modifies, and darkens that film's murderous-love-triangle template - while never sacrificing it's essence. Stripped of Indemnity's sultriness and first-person narrative technique (our protagonist remains elusive throughout - whether from Hunter's interesting, guarded performance, or his slim-to-none character development, or both) the film nevertheless succeeds at updating one of noir's most identifiable themes; boy meets girl - boy falls for girl - boy and girl plot to kill girl's husband. Thankfully though, director William Conrad eschews pastiche, and keeps his film fresh, linear, and free of needless frills." - Dave (Film Noir of the Week)
Branded to Kill
Branded to Kill Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
Koroshi no rakuin (original title)
● LATE NOIR (1960s) / JAPANESE NOIR
1967, Japan, 91m, BW, Crime-Action-Gangster Film
Screenplay Hachiro Guryu Producer Kaneo Iwai Photography Kazue Nagatsuka Editor Akira Suzuki Music Naozumi Yamamoto Cast Jo Shishido, Koji Nanbara, Isao Tamagawa, Anne Mari, Mariko Ogawa, Hiroshi Minami, Hiroshi Cho, Atsushi Yamatoya, Takashi Nomura, Tokuhei Miyahara, Akira Takahashi.
"Branded To Kill remains a mesmerising experience. It’s an exploitation art movie comedy rooted in B-movie conventions as dependable and crowd-pleasing as completely gratuitous nudity, endless gunplay, cool cars, suave outfits and tons of bloodshed. But it’s as as visceral, audacious and hysterical as Sam Fuller, as punchy and tightly paced as Don Siegel, as archly, ridiculously satiric as Russ Meyer and as moody and fatalistic as Jean-Pierre Melville. It’s as if the plot of a hitman movie was storyboarded on a gigantic mirror that was then shattered on the ground. Branded To Kill comes at you fractured, in flying shards of shorthand noir narrative, bravura action set-pieces and self-conscious genre cliches." - John Patterson (The Guardian)
The Brasher Doubloon
The Brasher Doubloon
1947, USA, 72m, BW, Mystery-Thriller
Screenplay Dorothy Bennett (adapted by Dorothy Bennett and Leonard Praskins from the novel The High Window by Raymond Chandler) Producer Robert Bassler Photography Lloyd Ahern Editor Harry Reynolds Music David Buttolph Cast George Montgomery, Nancy Guild, Conrad Janis, Roy Roberts, Fritz Kortner, Florence Bates, Marvin Miller, Robert Adler, Jack Conrad, Al Eben.
"Usually shrugged aside as a negligible Chandler adaptation, but Brahm has other fish to fry. The tone is set by the opening shot of an old dark house as Philip Marlowe's offscreen voice complains about the wind blowing eternally off the Mojave. That wind continues throughout, stirring the mood of malaise as swaying branches set shadows flickering in dim-lit rooms where the heroine is being slowly driven mad... The middle stretches, with Kortner outstanding in the Lorre role, produce as vivid a set of grotesques as The Maltese Falcon. But what keeps the last third afloat owes less to Chandler or Hammett than to the sense of brooding Gothic melodrama in which Brahm specialised. Forget Philip Marlowe, enjoy a fine companion piece to The Lodger, Guest in the House, Hanover Square and The Locket." - Tom Milne (Time Out)
The Breaking Point
The Breaking Point Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1950, USA, 97m, BW, Drama-Crime
Screenplay Ranald MacDougall (based on the novel To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway) Producer Jerry Wald Photography Ted McCord Editor Alan Crosland Jr. Music Ray Heindorf Cast John Garfield, Patricia Neal, Phyllis Thaxter, Juano Hernandez, Wallace Ford, Edmon Ryan, Ralph Dumke, Guy Thomajan, William Campbell, Sherry Jackson.
"Hawks messed around with Hemingway and made To Have and Have Not (1944); six years later Curtiz played it straighter and wound up with this thoroughly competent smuggling drama, which, without Bogey and Bacall on board, has faded into the celluloid woodwork. Garfield works hard though as the Southern California boat-owner who puts himself in danger when he agrees to take on illegal cargo to pay his debts, and even if you know and love the Hawks' movie there's still much to intrigue here. (Don Siegel directed a third version, The Gun Runners, with Audie Murphy in 1958)." - Trevor Johnston (Time Out)
Breathless
Breathless Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
À bout de souffle (original title)
● LATE NOIR (1960s) / FRENCH NOIR
1960, France, 89m, BW, Romance-Drama-Crime
Screenplay Jean-Luc Godard (based on a story by François Truffaut) Producer Georges de Beauregard Photography Raoul Coutard Editor Cécile Decugis Music Martial Solal Cast Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Jean-Pierre Melville, Van Doude, Liliane Robin, Henri-Jacques Huet, Claude Mansard, Michel Fabre, Jean-Luc Godard.
"Modern movies begin here, with Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless in 1960. No debut film since Citizen Kane in 1942 has been as influential. It is dutifully repeated that Godard's technique of "jump cuts" is the great breakthrough, but startling as they were, they were actually an afterthought, and what is most revolutionary about the movie is its headlong pacing, its cool detachment, its dismissal of authority, and the way its narcissistic young heroes are obsessed with themselves and oblivious to the larger society." - Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert.com)
Breathless (1983)
Breathless
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1983, USA, 100m, Col, Romance-Drama-Crime
Screenplay Jim McBride, L.M. Kit Carson (based on the screenplay for À bout de souffle by Jean-Luc Godard, and story by François Truffaut) Producer Martin Erlichman Photography Richard H. Kline Editor Robert Estrin Music Jack Nitzche Cast Richard Gere, Valerie Kaprisky, William Tepper, John P. Ryan, Art Metrano, Robert Dunn, Gary Goodrow, James Hong, Waldemar Kalinowski, Jack Leustig.
"Jim McBride’s Breathless, in its use of purposefully anachronistic process shots and Wild West nostalgia, could easily be mistaken for auto-critique, wearing influences and jollies so visibly on its red, ruffled sleeves that it buckles under the weight of its own excesses… Much like Body Heat, which valorized noirish archetypes instead of examining their original social contexts, Breathless simply has a hard-on for Hollywood lore, as convertibles, rockabilly, and monochromatic lighting are utilized to enshrine dominant legacies rather than invert or, at least, probe them. That’s the fallacy in constant play here, where an actress like Kaprisky has clearly been cast for her breasts, which McBride proudly studies in extended sex scenes, as if offering her supple flesh as the film’s revisionist tactic." - Clayton Dillard (Slant Magazine)
The Bribe
The Bribe
1949, USA, 98m, BW, Thriller-Mystery-Crime
Screenplay Marguerite Roberts (based on the short story by Frederick Nebel) Producer Pandro S. Berman Photography Joseph Ruttenberg Editor Gene Ruggiero Music Miklos Rozsa Cast Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price, John Hodiak, Samuel S. Hinds, John Hoyt, Tito Renaldo, Martin Garralaga, Fernando Alvarado.
"While not a great crime thriller, The Bribe is a very good one and one worth seeking out. The basic elements of Bribe have been seen before, but that's to be expected. Most of the fun in these kinds of films are in the details, the variations on the basic elements, and Bribe does a more than decent job here. True, it does fall down in the "MacGuffin" aspect; the reason that Robert Taylor is sent into this mess in the first place doesn't ring true. But that aside, Bribe takes its familiar playing pieces and arranges them in a pattern that is fairly entertaining... Robert Taylor and Ava Gardner -- both in fine form physically -- do very well with their parts, but it is Charles Laughton and Vincent Price that walk off with the film." - Craig Butler (Allmovie)
Brick
Brick
● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
2005, USA, 110m, Col, Crime-Mystery-Drama
Screenplay Rian Johnson Producers Mark G. Mathis, Ram Bergman Photography Steve Yedlin Editor Rian Johnson Music Nathan Johnson Cast Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nora Zehetner, Noah Fleiss, Matt O'Leary, Noah Segan, Meagan Good, Emilie de Ravin, Brian J. White, Richard Roundtree, Lukas Haas.
"Students in a contemporary California high school t talking and butting heads like characters out of the 1940s crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. It's a stunt, but a good one, so it should be duck soup for you yeggs. Debuting director and screenwriter Rian Johnson stakes his claim to a potent future in film based on the passion and craft he pours into Brick. A spoof would have been easy. Instead, Johnson plunges off the deep end, risking ridicule by shaping this spellbinder with grit and gravitas. There are times when Johnson loses his balance and his pitch, but in cookie-cutter Hollywood you have to admire a young filmmaker with moxie… Cinematographer Steve Yedlin gives the film a seductive gleam of danger — just the thing to draw us into Johnson's tantalizing web.” - Peter Travers (Rolling Stone)
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The Bride Wore Black Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
La Mariée était en noir (original title)
● LATE NOIR (1960s) / FRENCH NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1968, France, 107m, Col, Mystery-Drama-Thriller
Screenplay François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard (based on the novel by Cornell Woolrich) Producer Marcel Berbert Photography Raoul Coutard Editor Claudine Bouche Music Bernard Herrmann Cast Jeanne Moreau, Claude Rich, Jean-Claude Brialy, Michel Bouquet, Charles Denner, Michael Lonsdale, Daniel Boulanger, Alexandra Stewart, Sylvine Delannoy, Luce Fabiole.
"What begins as a French cinephile's almost obsessive tribute to Alfred Hitchcock becomes progressively weirder, wittier and more Continental in François Truffaut's 1968 The Bride Wore Black… With its summery, Mediterranean surface, Jeanne Moreau as the ultimate femme fatale heroine and a knife-twisting tale of murderous revenge and unexpected romance, The Bride Wore Black is well worth rediscovering… Moreau plays a woman named Julie Kohler, who leaves home after a failed suicide attempt and begins hunting down a list of apparently unconnected men, whom she has never met… Julie's plot is ridiculous, and the tragedy she's avenging is even more so, but as in many Hitchcock pictures, those things are excuses for a cinematic exploration of the war between the sexes that is ambiguous, more than a little mean-spirited and ultimately surprising." - Andrew O'Hehir (Salon)
Brighton Rock
Brighton Rock Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
Young Scarface (USA title)
● BRIT-NOIR
1947, UK, 86m, BW, Crime-Drama
Screenplay Graham Greene, Terence Rattigan (from the novel by Graham Greene) Producer Roy Boulting Photography Harry Waxman Editor Peter Graham Scott Music Hans May Cast Richard Attenborough, Carol Marsh, Hermione Baddeley, William Hartnell, Harcourt Williams, Alan Wheatley, Nigel Stock, Wylie Watson, George Carney, Charles Goldner.
"If nothing else, 1947's Brighton Rock marked the first time Graham Greene was pleased by an on-screen rendition of his work—but it's much more than a Third Man dry run. A seedy noir, equal parts concealed-camera atmosphere and tense set pieces, director John Boulting's adaptation primarily concerns itself with the last days and maneuverings of young psychopath Pinkie Brown (Richard Attenborough, before the suffocating kindliness and prestige projects)... More Dickensian than usual for Greene, there's colorful, larger-than-life supporting players aplenty, and the location shooting is even stronger than in Rialto Pictures' last British exhumation, It Always Rains on Sunday." - Vadim Rizov (The Village Voice)
The Brothers Rico
The Brothers Rico Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1957, USA, 92m, BW, Crime-Drama-Gangster Film
Screenplay Ben Perry, Lewis Meltzer (based on the novelette Les Freres Rico by Georges Simenon) Producers Lewis J. Rachmil, William Goetz Photography Burnett Guffey Editor Charles Nelson Music George Duning Cast Richard Conte, Dianne Foster, Kathryn Grant, Larry Gates, James Darren, Argentina Brunetti, Lamont Johnson, Harry Bellaver, Paul Picerni, Paul Dubov.
"After a series of classic films noir, the great "B" movie filmmaker Phil Karlson (Kansas City Confidential, 99 River Street) returned with the terrific gangster picture The Brothers Rico. Richard Conte stars as the oldest Rico brother, Eddie. He runs a legitimate cleaning business, hopes to adopt a baby with his wife, and believes that his ties to the mob are a thing of the past... Based on a story by Georges Simenon (Monsieur Hire), it's a fairly complex setup, to be sure, but Karlson lays it all out very clearly, so that even the absent characters have a kind of presence. Conte must carry most of the burden himself; the script requires him to be a little bit clueless, and he can't quite pull this off. But otherwise, this is an excellent crime picture." - Jeffrey M. Anderson (Combustible Celluloid)
Brute Force
Brute Force 100 Essential Noirs (or the 100 films most often referred to as noir) Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1947, USA, 98m, BW, Prison-Drama-Crime
Screenplay Richard Brooks (based on a story by Robert Patterson) Producer Mark Hellinger Photography William Daniels Editor Edward Curtiss Music Miklos Rozsa Cast Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford, Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth, Sam Levene, John Hoyt, Whit Bissell, Art Smith, Howard Duff.
"Despite a loss of temperature through the flashbacks which let in some female interest, this is one of Dassin's best films. Less coherent than Siegel's Riot in Cell Block 11 in its challenge to prison conditions, it draws on WWII experience to draw a powerful analogy between the prison (where Cronyn's sadistic chief guard beats up prisoners to the strains of Wagner) and a fascist state. With brutality breeding brutality in this world which the dialogue defines as an existentialist hell from which there is no escape, Brute Force was a notably violent film in its day. The scene in which an informer is herded by blow-torches to execution in a steam press still chills." - Tom Milne (Time Out)
A Bullet for Joey
A Bullet for Joey
1955, USA, 85m, BW, Crime-Drama-Spy Film
Screenplay A.I. Bezzerides, Daniel Mainwaring (based on a story by James Benson Nablo) Producers David Diamond, Samuel Bischoff Photography Harry Neumann Editor Leon Barsha Music Harry Sukman Cast Edward G. Robinson, George Raft, Audrey Totter, George Dolenz, Peter Van Eyck, Toni Gerry, William Bryant, John Cliff, Steven Geray, Joseph Vitale.
"As a movie, A Bullet for Joey isn't much. But for film buffs, its genre fusing of film noir and ‘50s anticommunism themes with ‘30s Warner Bros. style gangster melodrama featuring "the screen's top ‘tough guys'" (so said the posters) makes for a fascinating if deeply disappointing mix… Despite the promise of the cast, key creative personnel, and the basic set-up, A Bullet for Joey's disparate elements never ever gel. Raft and his motley crew are real throwbacks to an earlier type of American cinema, though Robinson transitions well to the postwar (and Canadian) setting." - Stuart Galbraith IV (DVD Talk)
Bullitt
Bullitt Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
● LATE NOIR (1960s) / COLOUR NOIR
1968, USA, 113m, Col, Crime-Action / Action-Thriller-Chase Movie
Screenplay Alan R. Trustman, Harry Kleiner (based on the novel Mute Witness by Robert L. Fish) Producer Philip D'Antoni Photography William A. Fraker Editor Frank P. Keller Music Lalo Schifrin Cast Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, Don Gordon, Robert Duvall, Simon Oakland, Norman Fell, Carl Reindel, Georg Stanford Brown, Justin Tarr.
"A thriller which begins, as it means to go on, with a bang. Only minutes after the preliminaries are over, a door bursts open, a shotgun is fired, and the victim is blasted clean off the bed into the wall behind him. The plot, concerning the battle of wits between an honest cop and an ambitious politician for possession of the key witness in a Mafia exposé, is serviceable but nothing special. But the action sequences are brilliant, done without trickery in real locations (including a great car chase which spawned a thousand imitations) to lend an extraordinary sense of immediacy to the shenanigans and gunfights." - Tom Milne (Time Out)
The Burglar
The Burglar Recommended Viewing (by TSPDT)
1957, USA, 90m, BW, Crime-Thriller-Drama
Screenplay David Goodis (based on his novel) Producer Louis W. Kellman Photography Don Malkames Editor Paul Wendkos Music Sol Kaplan Cast Dan Duryea, Jayne Mansfield, Peter Capell, Martha Vickers, Mickey Shaughnessy, Wendell K. Phillips, Phoebe Mackay, Stewart Bradley, John Facenda, Sam Elber.
"Pulp existentialist David Goodis brings his own crime novel to the screen in classic hardboiled fashion. A botched jewel heist sparks sexual tension, incestuous childhood guilt, and treachery among thieves and crooked cops—and who can blame them, with voluptuous Jayne Mansfield at the center of it all? Eagerly making his feature debut, Wendkos employs various Wellesian devices including a newsreel prologue, a climax in a fun house on Atlantic City’s Steel Pier, and a profusion of sweaty, deep focus close-ups. The Burglar represents a transitional, self-reflexive noir made at the twilight of the studio system in the late 1950s." - The Museum of Modern Art
Bury Me Dead
Bury Me Dead
1947, USA, 68m, BW, Mystery-Crime-Drama
Screenplay Dwight V. Babcock, Karen DeWolf (based on the radio play by Irene Winston) Producer Charles Reisner Photography John Alton Editor W. Donn Hayes Music Emil Cadkin Cast Cathy O'Donnell, June Lockhart, Hugh Beaumont, Mark Daniels, Greg McClure, Milton Parsons, Virginia Farmer, Sonia Darrin, Cliff Clark, John Dehner.
"Bury Me Dead opens with the intriguing premise of a woman (June Lockhart) attending her own funeral, and subsequently wondering who is really buried in her grave, how they got there and who the murderer was. The rest of the film is comprised of strangely comic flashbacks as the woman works her way through the likely suspects. Director Bernard Vorhaus effectively integrates these bits of clowning into the story without killing the suspense or the terror. He also keeps the lid on a very tight cast, including future TV star Hugh Beaumont (Leave It to Beaver) and the once blacklisted Cathy O'Donnell, who had given an acclaimed performance in The Best Years of Our Lives. The film is blessed with cinematography by the great John Alton… His work lends an air of desperation that definitely helps Bury Me Dead from sliding off into farce." - Jeffrey M. Anderson (Combustible Celluloid)
100 Essential Noirs (or the 100 films most often referred to as noir) The 100 Most Cited Noir Films
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