A Film Noir Dossier For #Noirvember.
November means only one thing for fans of classic film culture: Noirvember. An annual celebration of all things Film Noir, Noirvember seeks to bring film fans from across the world together in praise of that most American of film genres.
As a primer and celebration of my own I’ve put together the following dossier of what I feel to be the key Noir pictures. I’ve had a bit of fun with it, as you’ll see with some of the sub-genre headings. To avoid overwhelming I’ve selected 3 films from each subgroup of Noir (outside of the canon), and attempted to keep it to 1 film per director in order to keep the range of films as broad as possible.
The Canon.
The Maltese Falcon. John Huston, 1941. USA
The Big Sleep. Howard Hawks, 1946. USA.
In A Lonely Place. Nicholas Ray, 1950. USA.
Pickup On South Street. Sam Fuller, 1953. USA.
Kiss Me Deadly. Robert Aldrich, 1955. USA.
Neo-noir.
The Long Goodbye. Robert Altman, 1973. USA.
Chinatown. Roman Polanski, 1974. USA.
The American Friend. Wim Wenders, 1977. Germany/France/USA. Comment: How apt that the Axis and the Allies came together to reinvent the greatest of genres to be spun out of the Second World War?
Post-Millenial Noir.
Mulholland Drive. David Lynch, 2001. USA/France.
Miami Vice. Michael Mann, 2006. USA.
Inherent Vice. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014. USA.
Euro-Noir.
Pierrot Le Fou. Jean-Luc Godard, 1965. France.
Le Samouraï. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967. France.
The Passenger. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975. Italy/France.
Carnival noir.
Nightmare Alley. Edmund Goulding, 1947. USA.
Woman On The Run. Norman Foster, 1950. USA. Comment: A film that closes on the ultimate symbol for mid-century chaos; the fairground rollercoaster.
The Tarnished Angels. Douglas Sirk, 1957. USA.
Film Soleil.
Comment: Often shot in technicolor (though not always), these films are aesthetic and tonal counterpoints to traditional film noir, with the sun a key supporting player, that maintain the dark undertone of traditional noir.
Bad Day At Black Rock. John Sturges, 1955. USA.
Violent Saturday. Richard Fleischer, 1955. USA.
Touch Of Evil. Orson Welles, 1958. USA.
Horse and Cow tinged.
The Ox-Bow Incident. William A. Wellman, 1943. USA.
Duel In The Sun. King Vidor, 1946. USA.
Man Of The West. Anthony Mann, 1958. USA.
The Esoteric.
Shadow Of A Doubt. Alfred Hitchcock, 1943. USA.
It’s A Wonderful Life. Frank Capra, 1947. USA. Comment: In his Film Noir-influenced novel Suspects David Thomson decrees that Frank Capra’s film is “an exceptional excursion into noir” and chooses to frame his entire book around it.
The Night Of The Hunter. Charles Laughton, 1955. USA.
The Foundation Blocks.
The work of F.W. Murnau.
The Blue Angel. Josef von Sternberg, 1930. Germany.
The early sound films of Jean Renoir, particularly La Chienne (1931).
