It's funny: when I wasted a semester in college taking a film history course to satisfy an elective, I had a professor who tried to get me excited about cinema noir. At the time I didn't see what the fuss was all about, but now I am addicted to it. :smitten: I blame Turner Classic Movies - somebody clearly loves the genre over there as they show the best quite a bit. I also blame the deplorable state of modern cinema and television. In the words of the late Bob Grant, "it is sick out there...and getting sicker." Even though these movies can be dark in content, I always find it interesting how there is some sort of morally uplifting message that is woven through the plot - it really is a striking contrast to the immoral and/or vacuous content of the vast majority of contemporary film. I am also struck by the quality of these productions. The camera work, the snappy dialogue, the classy dames who were sexy without being slutty, and the wonderful fashion (men "going fishing" in three piece suits! ;D ), it all makes for an intoxicating mix unmatched by later efforts.
Anyway, not here to gush as much as to give a heads up to other noir fans: Turner Classic Movies posted an announcement on Facebook that starting in June and extending through July, TCM will be showing all the great noir movies every Friday, 24 hours straight! You can read about it here:
http://www.tcm.com/summerofdarkness/
"Summer is cooler in the shadows." 8)
They are also offering a FREE online course about Film Noir that you can sign up for here:
https://www.canvas.net/browse/bsu/tcm/courses/film-noir
There is no obligation, but if you complete the course you get a certificate! I signed up today (they just want an email address and a password).
Anyway, I just thought I would share this here if there are others who like this stuff.
BTW: The last two films I watched (Amazon Prime has tons for free viewing!) were:
I Walk Alone:
This was an excellent thriller staring Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster matching wits over control of a supper club (I wish there were still supper clubs). My favorite quote: [Stuffy woman]: "My name is Mrs. Alix Richardson." [Burt Lancaster]: "You say that like it was spelt in capital letters." LOL! ;D They just don't write dialogue like that anymore. I also loved how after the opening scene the audience never sees the sun again. A literally dark movie.
and
I Wake Up Screaming:
In the preface to a noir omnibus I was reading, it mentioned that this movie was the one that kicked off the noir craze in America. I watched it tonight and, yeah, it is great! An "old fashioned" mystery in every way, complete with the requisite haunted criminal. Only two complaints: if I had to listen to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" one more time, I would have screamed (maybe that is the origin of the title? ). Literally every time Betty Grable was on the screen, that song was played...prominently. :buck2: Secondly, just who woke up screaming? The movie never once referenced the title! LOL! Minor quibbles. Great movie.
Expecting a noir film title to make sense == setting up for disappointment. ;)
Quote from: JasonPratt on June 02, 2015, 01:50:35 PM
Expecting a noir film title to make sense == setting up for disappointment. ;)
LOL! Good point! I am starting to discover that! ;D
TCM released a cool graphic today that makes for a great wallpaper:
(https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8815/18412305331_c249e247e3_b.jpg)
Last night I checked out another noir movie called The Pretender. This was just a "B" movie, but a good one nonetheless. It almost had a Twilight Zone twist to it. It is about a financial adviser by the name of Holden who is swindling his client. In an attempt to cover his crime, he plans to marry the girl but soon learns that she is engaged to an unknown man. In desperation, he takes out a hit on the unnamed/unknown suitor by telling the mafia kingpin to check the papers for when the engagement is officially announced. Well, noir fate intervenes when the girl dumps her original suitor and agrees to marry him! Guess whose picture winds up in the paper? Holden's! He just took out a hit on himself! The rest of the movie is about his desperate attempts to cancel the hit while he slowly descends into pathological paranoia. Fun stuff!
QuoteCritic Dennis Schwartz liked the film and wrote, "Billy Wilder's lesser known elder brother William Lee Wilder...directs this striking film noir about a successful man becoming paranoiac and placing himself in entrapment. In one amazing characteristic noir scene, the protagonist is seated on the floor of his unlit, locked room eating crackers and canned food, afraid of being poisoned. This is one of the first movies to score for theremin, an effectively chilling mood music which later became a cliché for many 1950s sci-fi films about aliens. John Alton's dark film noir photography sets the proper mood for the melodrama. The film noir is absorbing despite stilted dialogue and flat direction."
Agreed!
Here is a clip:
Anybody catch any of the movies from this first noir Friday (#NoirSummer)? I managed to fill a few holes in my collection. Here are the ones I caught:
1) Journey into Fear:
This was something of a disappointment. Not a bad movie, mind you, but just by the numbers. It involves an American engineer working in Turkey to help the Turkish navy modernize for WWII. He soon learns he is targeted by the Nazis to stop his vital work. Good premise. Unfortunately, the movie never delivers any twists. Pretty much all the characters are exactly what they appear to be, something that removes some of the paranoid fun and leads to a blase ending. Still, worth seeing once.
2) Woman on the Run:
I watched this because TCM was proud that host Eddie Muller restored this film to its original condition after it was damaged in the 2008 Universal fire. Good story particularly for the twist: here we have a female playing the part of the tough-as-nails protagonist out to locate her somewhat cowardly husband who is on the run from the mob. Some good gender-bending stuff in here. This movie was partly Ann Sheridan's baby, and it shows.
3) Dark Passage:
This was interesting because it was noir meets art house. In the first third of the film we get to hear Bogart but never see him as this portion is shot almost strictly from his POV. In the second third we get to see Bogart but not hear him as his mouth is taped shut due to plastic surgery. The last third we finally get to see and hear Bogart in what will become one of his more iconic roles. Yeah, this movie plays with the audience quite a bit.
4) Johnny Eager:
This is now one of my favorite films, and I don't just mean in the genre. This was just a fantastically poignant tale of a very bad man who gets one last chance to do something good. In a way, it is like a negative print of a traditional noir tale in that it turns the formula on its head: here we start with a crime kingpin (Robert Taylor as Johnny Eager) who gets in over his head when he meets the reverse of a traditional femme fetal (Lana Turner as Lizbeth Bard - and I am finding it true: Marilyn Monroe was just a low rent Lana Turner) who gets him into trouble by getting him to do the
right thing. It is an excellent twist. But what sealed the deal for me was the unexpected tear-jerk ending where the rat became the hero for a brief, shining moment. An absolutely fantastic moral tale. I also have to compliment Van Heflin's Jeff Hartnett who acted as Eager's Virgil.
Highly recommended.
Second noir Friday is here! Woot! :coolsmiley:
The classic Detour now showing:
Rest of the day's schedule:
Quote1:45 PM DETOUR (1945)
3:00 PM MILDRED PIERCE (1945)
5:00 PM DEADLINE AT DAWN (1946)
6:30 PM JOHNNY ANGEL (1946)
8:00 PM THE GANGSTER (1947)
9:45 PM GUN CRAZY (1950)
11:30 PM TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY (1951)
1:15 AM NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947)
3:30 AM NIGHT MOVES (1975)
And the fans have spoken:
(https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/412/18740585952_852d4d1f0b_b.jpg)
Is that Ed Wood on the bar stool?
LOL! I haven't seen Double Indemnity yet, but I do find myself wondering how she could tempt a man to murder. Must be a charisma thing as Barbara Stanwyck is no Lana Turner or Lizabeth Scott.
Lizabeth Scott...yum :smitten::
(https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/502/18567442409_9bd4b32482_o.jpg)
What a difference from the half silicon freaks coming out of Hollywood these days....
NPR has a good little overview of #NoirSummer, as well as the importance of film noir to American cinema.
http://www.npr.org/2015/06/12/413438779/mystery-loves-company-and-tcms-noir-movie-marathon-has-plenty-of-both
"It's very, very important that younger people ... understand not just the value as entertainment, but its value as American history," Muller says. "I think it's very helpful and useful for people to understand all that because it will affect their appreciation for the film."
Yup.
**double post** Feel free to delete.
It can be interesting to see how a movie compares to a book. I've been putting off watching the classic noir The Big Sleep because I was already reading the novel. Well, having finished it, I watched the movie last night. Great movie! I think I even enjoyed it more than The Maltese Falcon (which is generally considered America's first real noir). To be fair, the movie kept to the text for about 75% of the story (i.e., this was no Starship Troopers ;D). However, the movie did take a big liberty with Lauren Bacall's character, Vivian. In the book, the two Sternwood sisters were two sides of the same crazy coin, even if Vivian was more restrained due to being more mature. In the movie, they cleaned up her character some to make her a suitable love interest for Bogart. Frankly, I think the movie was worse for it as it didn't really work for me, and definitely came across as forced, especially in how she would show up at places she had no business in being just so she could romance Bogart. "Ham-handed"is the word that comes to mind.
Other interesting changes:
- In the book, Phil Marlowe comes across as something of a loner. While he does have an occasional brief fling with a girl, he never stuck around for long. In the movie, they turned Marlowe into much more of a womanizer.
- In the book, Geiger was a loathsome pornographer. In the movie, you would be hard pressed to figure out what he did. While there is lots of talking about "pictures," the movie never comes right out and says what those pictures were like. :) Hays Code.
- Carmen Sternwood was a great character in the book because Chandler brought her insanity to light in a very real, very scary way. Sadly, in the movie she comes across as more of a impulsive brat. Because of this, the ending doesn't really emotionally deliver in a way the book's ending did, especially with that classic scene where Marlowe and Carmen go to a very spooky abandoned oil field.
- One particular character was murdered by the gay lover of another character. Needless to say, there was no mention of this in the movie, leaving the motivation for the character to be unclear at best.
- The movie's ending involved a showdown with the main bad guy - that never happened in the book. Typical Hollywood ending of trying to put a neat bow on everything.
- Where was the classic chess scene from the book? "I went over to a floor lamp and pulled the switch, went back to put off the ceiling light, and went across the room again to the chessboard on a card table under the lamp. There was a problem laid out on the board, a six-mover. I couldn't solve it, like a lot of my problems. I reached down and moved a knight, then pulled my hat and coat off and threw them somewhere....I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights." Classic noir. 8)
- Chandler put in some great, mood-setting weather. It was October, and SoCal was suffering from some unusually warm weather that was triggering storms. Chandler used this setting to great effect by having stormy weather present whenever something shady was going to go down. Sadly, the movie, with the exception of one early scene, just ignored the weather. >:(
Having said that, the movie is still well worth watching. Just a classic case of the book being better. :)
QuoteDaily Dose #12: Calling on Four Million Dollars (Opening Scene of The Big Sleep)
Curator's Note: Our final Daily Dose this week finishes with the impact of literary precursors on the noir style, by exploring Humphrey Bogart as the iconic noir private detective. On screen, Bogart portrayed both Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. But in the novels, their respective authors describe Spade and Marlowe differently. Hammett describes Spade as "look[ing] rather pleasantly like a blond Satan." It's doubtful many would use those words to describe Humphrey Bogart. And here are the opening lines of Marlowe's first person narration from Chandler's novel The Big Sleep: "It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my power-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars." The film The Big Sleep starts at the same point as the novel, minus the first person point of view used by Chandler (but watch for a short nod by director Howard Hawks to first person point of view in the opening seconds of the clip). As The Big Sleep opens, Philip Marlowe arrives at the Sternwood mansion, meets the valet and then Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers) in an encounter filled with double entrendres. Then the scene shifts to a hothouse behind the mansion. When Marlowe meets General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), Hawks is faithful to the way the scene is depicted in the novel as he turns up the heat. [Curated by Richard Edwards]
Further Reflections: After watching the clip, please go to Twitter (#NoirSummer) or the TCM Summer of Darkness Message Board to continue your reflections on this clip. Here are a few discussion starters (though feel free to come up with your own):
-- How does this opening sequence establish Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe? What do we learn about Marlowe in these first few moments of the film?
-- Do you see a difference in Bogart's portrayal of Marlowe compared to his performance as Spade in The Maltese Falcon?
-- In what ways can the opening of The Big Sleep be considered an important contribution to the film noir style?
[/list]
Back a year or two ago when I was on a binge collecting unusual genre silent films (some famous, some not), naturally Fritz Lang came up occasionally, leading me to look into picking up some of his lesser known sound noirs. One is While the City Sleeps -- 1956, not to be confused with another noirish film from 1950 -- which is primarily about (1) the transition of print to broadcast journalism, especially in regard to the wildly inflated new importance of the television newscaster; and (2) how investigative journalism, especially in a competitive news environment, can impact criminal cases. The framing story for looking into how these ideas mix involves a currently uncaught serial killer, and the promotion offered by a media mogul to whichever of his reporters does a better job covering the story, ideally being instrumental in catching the killer to drive up his share of the viewing market.
Which for a film hardly anyone remembers is a pretty heady high-concept story! They do a decent job of it, too. We're at a period where it might be worth trying to remake it, since internet journalism is starting to make major inroads on broadcast journalism, yet print journalism still has a high cultural regard.
This, along with the other I bought, Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, were his last American films, and close to his last films at all. (The other two-or-three-or-four, depending on how you count them, being The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse and his color remake of his own silent film duology about the Indian Tomb, originally released in two parts in 1959 and then re-released as a trimmed combine apparently in 1960.)
"Beyond" is another noirish story (both films are however somewhat light on noir), made and released the same year ('56), which also examines the interaction of press and criminal justice -- both films arguing that the interaction is quite one-sidedly negative, by the way -- from a rather more Hitchcockian angle, though also a more self-conscious one. The hero is a journalist crusading against capital punishment (essentially agreeing with the movie's thesis on this point by the way), who decides to troll the justice system to make his point (and to score big readership naturally) by framing himself for a standing cold case murder; the idea being to get himself convicted on circumstantial evidence and then reveal in detail how he faked being guilty for it. His boss, and soon-to-be-father-in-law, thinks this is a great idea -- but then complications ensue. ;)
Quote from: JasonPratt on June 26, 2015, 08:26:25 AM
Back a year or two ago when I was on a binge collecting unusual genre silent films (some famous, some not), naturally Fritz Lang came up occasionally, leading me to look into picking up some of his lesser known sound noirs. One is While the City Sleeps -- 1956, not to be confused with another noirish film from 1950 -- which is primarily about (1) the transition of print to broadcast journalism, especially in regard to the wildly inflated new importance of the television newscaster; and (2) how investigative journalism, especially in a competitive news environment, can impact criminal cases. The framing story for looking into how these ideas mix involves a currently uncaught serial killer, and the promotion offered by a media mogul to whichever of his reporters does a better job covering the story, ideally being instrumental in catching the killer to drive up his share of the viewing market.
Which for a film hardly anyone remembers is a pretty heady high-concept story! They do a decent job of it, too. We're at a period where it might be worth trying to remake it, since internet journalism is starting to make major inroads on broadcast journalism, yet print journalism still has a high cultural regard.
This, along with the other I bought, Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, were his last American films, and close to his last films at all. (The other two-or-three-or-four, depending on how you count them, being The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse and his color remake of his own silent film duology about the Indian Tomb, originally released in two parts in 1959 and then re-released as a trimmed combine apparently in 1960.)
"Beyond" is another noirish story (both films are however somewhat light on noir), made and released the same year ('56), which also examines the interaction of press and criminal justice -- both films arguing that the interaction is quite one-sidedly negative, by the way -- from a rather more Hitchcockian angle, though also a more self-conscious one. The hero is a journalist crusading against capital punishment (essentially agreeing with the movie's thesis on this point by the way), who decides to troll the justice system to make his point (and to score big readership naturally) by framing himself for a standing cold case murder; the idea being to get himself convicted on circumstantial evidence and then reveal in detail how he faked being guilty for it. His boss, and soon-to-be-father-in-law, thinks this is a great idea -- but then complications ensue. ;)
Fritz Lang was a genius. "M" was great - I would love to see that remade for the modern era - and Scarlet Street is one of my favorite noirs of all time. Lang brought the German Expressionist movement to America in a big way. I never saw While the City Sleeps nor Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, but both sound good! Thanks for the leads!
EDIT: Looks like Whole The City Sleeps is available on Amazon, but Beyond is not on Amazon or Netflix. Oh wait, it is available for rent on Youtube! O0 I think my list of films noir that I mean to watch now numbers around 75 between Amazon and Netflix ! ;D
How did you get into silent films?
Yesterday's Summer of Darkness line-up included the great film, Act of Violence. This was directed by Fred Zinnemann. I have to say this one of the most powerfully shot film noirs I have ever seen. The movie begins in the sun but soon you actually get to see the shadows close in on the protagonist as his dark secret starts to surface. By the end of the film, Zinnemann creates an absolutely nightmarish landscape using elements that remind me of French Poetic Realism. Check out this great scene:
(https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/266/18598343924_28e9a304cc_b.jpg)
It doesn't get more Escher-esque than that!
I really love this genre. Every movie, even the "Poverty Row" B flicks, seem to be filled with daring imagination and artistry. They loom over the rubbish being put out there today.
I forget how I got into the Silents... plopped a significant amount of money on picking up a respectable silent library, though.
Some of the emphasis on artistic composition in the noir films came as a weird by-product of a bit of artistic competition between North American markets which didn't have as much access to color film as the European markets did: effectively North America (especially US critics) shut down the burgeoning color film development by arguing that b/w film was artistically superior in visual composition. It sounds insane today, but it was a serious issue back then, and changed the whole face of industry development. (And it started back in the silent era, which is how I heard of it while listening to commentary tracks. O0 )
Quote from: JasonPratt on June 30, 2015, 11:35:23 AM
I forget how I got into the Silents... plopped a significant amount of money on picking up a respectable silent library, though.
Are they hard to find on DVD? I don't know much about that era, but that is what I said about film noir once, too! :)
QuoteSome of the emphasis on artistic composition in the noir films came as a weird by-product of a bit of artistic competition between North American markets which didn't have as much access to color film as the European markets did: effectively North America (especially US critics) shut down the burgeoning color film development by arguing that b/w film was artistically superior in visual composition. It sounds insane today, but it was a serious issue back then, and changed the whole face of industry development. (And it started back in the silent era, which is how I heard of it while listening to commentary tracks. O0 )
That is interesting. I wasn't aware that color was more readily available in Europe. Was there a reason why that was so?
As for critics arguing b&w was artistically superior, that might not be as crazy as it sounds. Now, don't get me wrong, I do not think color is inherently inferior to b&w, but as I watch these old films part of me suspects that they wouldn't be as engaging if they were in color. TCM's noir Fridays are interesting in that the majority of the day they run the classic b&w noirs, but the last one or two movies are neo-noirs that are color productions from the late 60s and 70s. In every case (so far), I do not find them nearly as interesting. This is partly due to what I consider the inferior writing of the neo-noirs (by the early neo-noir period, the dialogue has already been dumbed down with profanities and banalities, and the stories have swung from wry cynicism to outright pessimism and nihilism), but also due to color. I've always believed b&w film is like black words on white pages: it reminds us that we are entering a story. Color is like real life. As such, I just find it less engaging. Now, I am not saying I am planning on selling my color tvs :) but I am saying that I think dark stories like those found in film noir have benefited immensely from b&w film because of the powerful chiaroscuro that it generates so effortlessly.
A good example of this is found in Out of the Past:
QuoteCurator's Note: In our first Daily Dose this week, we will watch a key early scene from Out of the Past. Scholar James Naremore does an excellent job analyzing this scene in his book More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. As Naremore sets up: "RKO's Out of the Past…derives some of its most captivating moments from the fact that it was produced at a studio where nearly everything was composed of rich, India-ink blacks and silvery highlights. Photographer Nicholas Musuraca and director Jacques Tourneur, who had collaborated on the Val Lewton pictures at that same studio, were especially good at creating a lyrical or sensuous play of shadow, and their considerable talents are visible throughout." (175) Naremore continues: "[Out of the Past] represents…an impressive use of what had become standard Hollywood procedures. The best place to begin is with the major technical problem that affected Musuraca or any studio photographer working in low-key black and white: the need to keep the various objects on the screen from blending into one another…[A] striking example…can be seen early in the film, when Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) enters the story. Wearing a pale dress and a matching straw hat, she walks out of the Acapulco sun, moving through a dark archway, and into the cool shadows of a cantina." (175-178) You can see that full scene in today's Daily Dose, as Musuraca and Tourneur create a stunning entrance of a major character that moves from bright light into silouhette and then into a visible form against a shadowed wall. Kathie's entrance to the cantina displays the filmmakers' technical virtuosity and storytelling prowess. Out of the Past is a quintessential film noir, made at RKO, that influenced many films noir that came after it. [Curated by Richard Edwards]
You can watch the whole movie here: https://youtu.be/Gd_ow4KXn0Q
My favorite quote: "You are like a leaf that gets blown from one gutter to another." Ouch!
Rooks,
The Silents have an already-great and steadily increasing presence on DVD, and even to some extent on Blu. Kino is the main source for the silents, but not the only one; and I've run across some interesting print-on-demand offerings along the way.
I'm not gonna lie: their pacing and, well, almost everything else are usually painful by modern standards; which is why I stuck with genre entries I thought I could tolerate better. But I found it interesting to watch the directed evolution (so to speak) of modern film-making. It also gave me an appreciation for how not-very-far some of the early classic sound films are from the silents (I'm thinking specifically of the Universal horror suite). The noir genre owes a TON to how the silents worked, too, although usually noir is more interesting (and I say that as someone who doesn't usually care for 'realistic crime' stories.)
Still, it's instructive to watch totally new things which we take utterly for granted being done in film history right there. As an offhand example, there's an epic 14 hour silent film series from France (in 1914 just before the War) called Fantomas, about a police inspector trying to bring down a Parisian supercriminal -- a series that inspired a ton of things afterward, not least being the noirs -- and by modern standards it's a freaking grind. :P But it helps to listen to the commentary track at least once, where I learned how shocking a particular scene was for audiences in its day. A woman is trying to hide from the villains in a spare room, and so goes in and shuts the door behind her, and is listening at the door for a moment, then backs away with relief, and turns around --
-- and the camera follows in a pan left, and there's a dead body on the floor.
That blew people's minds.
Before then, no one had panned a camera. People had become totally, subconsciously accustomed to the idea that while other things might be happening off frame (like villains looking for a damsel for example), whatever was shown on camera was all that the director wanted you to see. Real-space off frame just didn't conceptually exist. Someone might walk on from off-stage, so to speak, but even that wasn't the same thing. It was like suddenly, casually inventing real 3D film effects by having someone throw a dead body at the audience. Only conceptually more unsettling than that. The audience could no longer feel assured that they knew from moment to moment what to expect from a scene. It was probably the single most important advance in the art of drama since whenever thousands of years ago a director (or the equivalent thereof) had the idea for characters to walk onto the stage while the scene was still going.
Also in that serial (I'm not exaggerating much about it being 14 hours): the first scene ever shot on a moving train in real-time.
Re: why color film was more available in Europe?
Because the Europeans had invented it. Specifically the French. Back in the late 1800s.
I don't just mean color photography, I mean color moving film. It was practically invented as fast, or faster, than b/w. But Pathê and the other studios closely guarded the secret of doing so. (One result being that there is surviving color French photography and film from World War 1. You can see a lot of it in the documentary, The First World War. The recent American History Channel doc Apocalypse: World War One or whatever it was called, used colorization mostly, but also a ton of film footage from the years before the war.)
But it was too expensive to make entertainment films with; Meliere (or however he spelled his name) made several dozen hours of color films while experimenting with special effects and other completely new filmmaking techniques over the years, but not many lasting more than a few minutes at a time. (You can find those collections archived on DVD by the way.) So practically all silent films use color gels with b/w "silver" film instead, some of which still survive or can be reconstructed from notes and added back in post. The prelude to the original Ben Hur is highly unusual in that the Nativity scenes are true full color, but even those few minutes were painted onto the cells by hand in post-production, not shot with color film (if I recall correctly) -- and the other scenes, during the prelude and afterward, are typical cell shading. Because it was less expensive to hire people to do that, than to shoot with color film (and risk blowing that money away on a single failed take or bad lighting.)
Naturally, color film became less expensive to produce as time went on, but to get around the French monopoly on its production North American film critics lobbied for the superior artistic merit of b/w. The reason that seems insane is because producers and directors were still executing gel coloring in post on a regular basis, which naturally undercut the whole argument about the artistic purity of b/w! Anyway, it set back color film production for about a decade, and was also the first time the North American market managed to dictate the style of world film production.
Quote from: JasonPratt on July 02, 2015, 02:56:48 PM
Rooks,
The Silents have an already-great and steadily increasing presence on DVD, and even to some extent on Blu. Kino is the main source for the silents, but not the only one; and I've run across some interesting print-on-demand offerings along the way.
That seems to be the story with films noir, too. A lot of the DVDs are either print-on-demand or part of classic collections released by the big studios. More can be found scattered around various rental and public domain streamers.
QuoteI'm not gonna lie: their pacing and, well, almost everything else are usually painful by modern standards; which is why I stuck with genre entries I thought I could tolerate better. But I found it interesting to watch the directed evolution (so to speak) of modern film-making. It also gave me an appreciation for how not-very-far some of the early classic sound films are from the silents (I'm thinking specifically of the Universal horror suite). The noir genre owes a TON to how the silents worked, too, although usually noir is more interesting (and I say that as someone who doesn't usually care for 'realistic crime' stories.)
Definitely! Fritz Lang and his German Expressionism colleagues cut their teeth in silent films before coming to America and moving into the budding noir scene of the early 40s. Likewise, a number of early horror directors brought their skills to noir, too (such as the director of Cat People - I forget his name and I am too tired to google it :) ). I think noir blossomed because you had this melting pot of diverse styles and influences.
QuoteStill, it's instructive to watch totally new things which we take utterly for granted being done in film history right there. As an offhand example, there's an epic 14 hour silent film series from France (in 1914 just before the War) called Fantomas, about a police inspector trying to bring down a Parisian supercriminal -- a series that inspired a ton of things afterward, not least being the noirs -- and by modern standards it's a freaking grind.
That sounds like a great idea for a series! Too bad it is a grind to watch. Seems ripe for a remake.
Quote:P But it helps to listen to the commentary track at least once, where I learned how shocking a particular scene was for audiences in its day. A woman is trying to hide from the villains in a spare room, and so goes in and shuts the door behind her, and is listening at the door for a moment, then backs away with relief, and turns around --
-- and the camera follows in a pan left, and there's a dead body on the floor.
That blew people's minds.
LOL! I remember the prof in my old cinema course telling us how the first time a train was filmed racing towards a camera a lot of people freaked out in the theater and left in a panic. Personally, I find that hard to believe but I suppose it is possible. :idiot2:
QuoteBefore then, no one had panned a camera. People had become totally, subconsciously accustomed to the idea that while other things might be happening off frame (like villains looking for a damsel for example), whatever was shown on camera was all that the director wanted you to see. Real-space off frame just didn't conceptually exist. Someone might walk on from off-stage, so to speak, but even that wasn't the same thing. It was like suddenly, casually inventing real 3D film effects by having someone throw a dead body at the audience. Only conceptually more unsettling than that. The audience could no longer feel assured that they knew from moment to moment what to expect from a scene. It was probably the single most important advance in the art of drama since whenever thousands of years ago a director (or the equivalent thereof) had the idea for characters to walk onto the stage while the scene was still going.
That is really interesting!
QuoteAlso in that serial (I'm not exaggerating much about it being 14 hours): the first scene ever shot on a moving train in real-time.
I imagine it would be interesting to watch that and then compare it to the French noir, The Human Beast (fantastic film!). That had a lot of scenes filmed on real trains, too. IIRC even by the time of that film, shooting on actual trains was still something of a novelty as most directors preferred the safety and convenience of a sound stage.
QuoteRe: why color film was more available in Europe?
Because the Europeans had invented it. Specifically the French. Back in the late 1800s.
I don't just mean color photography, I mean color moving film. It was practically invented as fast, or faster, than b/w. But Pathê and the other studios closely guarded the secret of doing so. (One result being that there is surviving color French photography and film from World War 1. You can see a lot of it in the documentary, The First World War. The recent American History Channel doc Apocalypse: World War One or whatever it was called, used colorization mostly, but also a ton of film footage from the years before the war.)
Wasn't aware of that! I never even suspected color film from WWI existed!
QuoteBut it was too expensive to make entertainment films with; Meliere (or however he spelled his name) made several dozen hours of color films while experimenting with special effects and other completely new filmmaking techniques over the years, but not many lasting more than a few minutes at a time. (You can find those collections archived on DVD by the way.) So practically all silent films use color gels with b/w "silver" film instead, some of which still survive or can be reconstructed from notes and added back in post. The prelude to the original Ben Hur is highly unusual in that the Nativity scenes are true full color, but even those few minutes were painted onto the cells by hand in post-production, not shot with color film (if I recall correctly) -- and the other scenes, during the prelude and afterward, are typical cell shading. Because it was less expensive to hire people to do that, than to shoot with color film (and risk blowing that money away on a single failed take or bad lighting.)
Naturally, color film became less expensive to produce as time went on, but to get around the French monopoly on its production North American film critics lobbied for the superior artistic merit of b/w. The reason that seems insane is because producers and directors were still executing gel coloring in post on a regular basis, which naturally undercut the whole argument about the artistic purity of b/w! Anyway, it set back color film production for about a decade, and was also the first time the North American market managed to dictate the style of world film production.
I am not clear on what this means. Executing gel coloring in post production? You mean adding color by hand after the film was shot?
I still think the argument that B&W is more artistic has merits. As I wrote earlier, the contrast between light and shadow is much sharper with B&W; color seems to permit more of a gradient between the two. That scene I posted above from Act of Violence would never look as nightmarish if it was shot in color, IMO. B&W works to trap the viewer into an alternate reality, while color mimics the real world too closely. I suspect that noir never would have truly been "noir" if color was more readily available.
Re: Fantomas, I was checking last night, only 5-1/2 hours not 14. But it feels like 14. >:D
Re: remaking Fantomas: it was indeed remade a few times, or rather the character was ported forward into new period-appropriate adventures, including an unfortunately rather cheap-looking series of James Bondian films in the 60s, as if Blofeld was supposed to be the star of the series and James Bond wasn't all that important despite being the nominal hero. ;) Fantomas wore a silver mask in that series. There have been some comic book adaptations over the years, too.
Re: pre-technicolor film, I was misremembering the details, but I'll give a quick summary here for anyone who doesn't want to go poking around my Library of Silence (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=14084.0) thread. (I know you've read it already. :) )
Melies only shot an hour or two of color film total, or that's all that survives -- maybe not even an hour's worth -- but it wasn't color film per se, it was painted on afterward. His associate Choma who often worked with him, though, was the first to invent that process, and it does go back into the late 1890s.
I can't recall offhand if it was Choma who invented Pathécolor, but prior to actual color film processes (i.e. Technicolor) someone at Pathé invented the best method of colorization, where instead of hundreds of women painting film cells by hand, hundreds of women cut stencils by hand for each cell of a film. Then a black and white print would be washed through a coloring process six times, married each time to six different parallel reels of stencils, matching where one of six colors should be sprayed onto the b/w print for each cell (with combinations possible obviously). It was still grossly expensive compared to doing nothing at all, or compared to using monocolor gels for various scenes (the widely preferred method, including at Pathé), but the first copy made thus could be produced not much slower than painting each cell by hand, with much better results, and then afterward color versions of a film could be quickly mass produced. This stencil process seems to be responsible for the color French films from WW1.
One of the more interesting stepping stones to 2-strip Technicolor was a sort of color optical illusion made by a special camera that shot each frame through a rotating alternating red and green filter, polarizing the b/w negative. Then when the film was developed and projected, it was sent back through a matching red/green rotating gel set. This was the most inexpensive and easy process developed that I read about, but didn't actually produce color film only an illusion of a color experience, so to speak.
It led directly to Technicolor being invented in 1915, however. At first people just experimented with it, but by the mid 20s a few actual feature films were being made, the first two being romantic travelogues of exotic lands. The third one, which is by far the most famous and often regarded (due to its fame) as the first color feature film, was Fairbanks' The Black Pirate -- which was also a romantic travelogue film but with pirates, swordfights, and Douglas Fairbanks. ;)
Re: Cat People == Val Lewtin? Something like that. Too lazy/busy this morning to check.
Thanks for the expanded explanation on pre-technicolor film! Today I watched the DVD of Double Indemnity - great movie! As they usually do with these classic movies, the DVD came with a documentary explaining the importance of the film. On of the experts who were consulted was Owen Roizman, the cinematographer of The Exorcist. He made a comment concerning the B&W of the noir era that struck a chord with me:
Quote"With black and white, the control over a range of contrasts of whites and blacks to tell a story is, to me, a true art form, a truer art form than working with color."
I agree with this. Again, not to say that color cannot be artistic as well, but I definitely think the old critics were on to something when they supported the delay of introducing color to the American cinema. Sure, I have no doubt that cost was a big factor, but I think concern over the artistry of a B&W noir film was a legitimate one. Anyway, just found that an interesting sentiment coming from a modern, accomplished cinematographer.
Other news:
Yeah, I've been watching a lot of noir recently. Really, almost exclusively. Consider it a reaction to the awful state of contemporary cinema. I think you could see this reaction building over the last few years as I started to write about lots of alternative media, from anime to web-based shows. Simply, I was being forced to find an exit from the trash that is being dumped into the theaters by the Hollywood corporations these days. It really is a sad state of affairs, something even Dustin Hoffman recently pointed out when he quipped “...I think that it’s the worst that film has ever been – in the 50 years that I’ve been doing it, it’s the worst."
I think that is why I feel really good about making a donation to the Film Noir Foundation yesterday. The FNF is run by Eddie Muller, the host of TCM's Summer of Darkness. He created this organization as "an educational resource regarding the cultural, historical, and artistic significance of film noir as an original American cinematic movement," with its purpose being "to find and preserve films in danger of being lost or irreparably damaged, and to ensure that high quality prints of these classic films remain in circulation for theatrical exhibition to future generations."
Frankly, I am amazed I actually did fork over a bit of cash for this cause as while I have always enjoyed certain genres (such as sci-fi, for example), I have never considered myself a "cinephile" or a film activist, and certainly not a film noir aficionado! But after diving deeply into the genre over the past six weeks, I have come to the same conclusion as a lot of other fans: film noir was the apotheosis of American cinema. It is just undeniable as far as I am concerned.
Of course, it is always nice to get a little something for a donation. With the FNF, a mere $20 donation gets you a year's subscription (four issues) of their in-house e-mag, NOIR CITY. Now, lots of orgs give you a free subscription to their in-house publication, but most are merely glorified newsletters. I really didn't expect anything different here. But when I got my first issue yesterday, I was shocked to see that it was a 98-page, full color, highly polished magazine! I mean, as a print edition this thing would be right at home on a newsstand. It is gorgeous and packed with great articles covering everything from the requisite latest FNF news, to reviews of new noir on stage and screen, making-of articles on classic movies, well-illustrated articles on the artistry of noir, and more (even a noir-inspired cocktail recipe section). It is a wonderful "bene" that probably would be better priced at a higher donation level, frankly.
Muller has every right to be proud of his magazine (something he has made quite clear in the past).
Anyway, just wanted to share. If you would like to register a protest vote against the slop in the cinema today, take that money that you would have spent on two overpriced tickets and give it to the FNF instead: http://www.filmnoirfoundation.org
Now I just need to get to one of their film festivals. Based on what I have read, they seem to be some raucous events. ^-^
I can now add another film to my (virtual collection): The Lady from Shanghai. I am not a big fan of Orson Welles. Yes, he was a very capable, very visionary filmmaker, but I also think he often let his technical prowess get ahead of his storytelling abilities. Well, I have to say his 'The Lady from Shanghai' is the first Welles' film where I believe both his technical abilities and his storytelling abilities were in perfect harmony. This is a fantastic noir that I highly recommend. It is a very dark tale that touches on themes of insanity, murder, suicide, and nuclear war. The ending trial dives right into the deep end of a world gone mad, something seemingly out of Camus' The Stranger. Welles brings his talents to the forefront here with wonderful cinematography such as the following scene where Hayworth and her crooked lawyer husband face off in a fun house (something later films will copy endlessly):
(https://farm1.staticflickr.com/547/19734235825_757f41af79_z.jpg)
What a great juxtaposed scene!
The chess player in me also loved this very artistic scene:
(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3795/19044175764_fa4734b1d7_z.jpg)
I love how the shadows seem to be bleeding onto the chessboard. Metaphor.
The Lady from Shanghai is one of those films that has so much going on that you need to watch it more than once to catch all the fantastic artistry, as well as great plot points and dialogue. Now, keep in mind that I am NOT saying it is better than Terminator: Genisys, but it is still a good movie. >:D Movie here:
"It is a bright, guilty world."
One complaint: Orson Welles should have been tried for crimes against humanity for cutting and dying Rita Hayworth's hair! >:(
So just what is film noir? Answering that question isn't always that easy, which is why I am taking a "light" eight week course on film noir. :) Having said that, the following "infographic"did a startlingly effective job on boiling the elements of noir down to their essentials. While I think the list of films they used is too restrictive, I understand their need to keep things manageable (original website here: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/infographic-what-makes-film-noir):
(https://farm1.staticflickr.com/365/19923056205_1c02f442db_o.jpg)
Sometimes even the stars didn't realize they were doing noir! ;D
(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3741/19916567442_c86586066f_o.jpg)
Quote from: RooksBailey on June 12, 2015, 01:26:31 PM
Second noir Friday is here! Woot! :coolsmiley:
The classic Detour now showing:
Rest of the day's schedule:
Quote1:45 PM DETOUR (1945)
3:00 PM MILDRED PIERCE (1945)
5:00 PM DEADLINE AT DAWN (1946)
6:30 PM JOHNNY ANGEL (1946)
8:00 PM THE GANGSTER (1947)
9:45 PM GUN CRAZY (1950)
11:30 PM TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY (1951)
1:15 AM NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947)
3:30 AM NIGHT MOVES (1975)
And the fans have spoken:
(https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/412/18740585952_852d4d1f0b_b.jpg)
The film Rebecca with Lawrence Olivier is one of my all time favourites . He's or was an amazing actor , I like how the suspense is built up all the way through the film . And his dead wife's presence is felt all the way through the film , even though she's dead , amazing piece of work :) I think that film was based on the book by daphne du Maurier , I could be wrong , but that author also gave us the three musketeers , soooo say no more , awesome writer !!
Quote from: EmeraldlisThe film Rebecca with Lawrence Olivier is one of my all time favourites . He's or was an amazing actor , I like how the suspense is built up all the way through the film . And his dead wife's presence is felt all the way through the film , even though she's dead , amazing piece of work :) I think that film was based on the book by daphne du Maurier , I could be wrong , but that author also gave us the three musketeers , soooo say no more , awesome writer !!
I have yet to catch this noir. Based on what you wrote, it sounds excellent! Fortunately, I see you can watch it on Youtube:
Gonna watch it ASAP!
PS: thanks for reminding me of that fan vote poster. When the noir festival started back in the end of June, I had only seen one or two of those films. Now I realize I have seen them all but for Rebecca! I am making progress. LOL! If I were to vote now, I would add Gilda, The Woman from Shanghai, Deadline at Dawn, Angels Over Broadway, and Cornered to the list.
The Musketeer books (including The Man in the Iron Mask) are from Alexandre Dumas. She did however write a novel (The Glass-Blowers) about her ancestors in the time leading up and into the French Revolution. Perhaps she imported the Musketeers as cameos?
Thanks for putting me right on that Jason , I got my authors mixed up !! I still love the three musketeers though :)
Rooks Bailey I really hope you enjoy watching Rebecca . I made my daughter watch it with me a while ago just to get her to appreciate something different , I think movies like this stand the test of time and become timeless classics because they are just so well written , acted and directed :) my daughter much to her surprise really got into it and enjoyed it O:-). I think that the movie being in black and white adds to the drama and the atmosphere of the film , I loved it :)
I need to watch it again now ! Lol ;D
Quote from: Emeraldlis on July 23, 2015, 05:50:53 PM
Rooks Bailey I really hope you enjoy watching Rebecca . I made my daughter watch it with me a while ago just to get her to appreciate something different , I think movies like this stand the test of time and become timeless classics because they are just so well written , acted and directed :) my daughter much to her surprise really got into it and enjoyed it O:-). I think that the movie being in black and white adds to the drama and the atmosphere of the film , I loved it :)
I need to watch it again now ! Lol ;D
Guess what, Emeraldlis! I finally found the time to watch Rebecca! You were right! It was a great film! Really involved plot - you could tell is what based off of a complex novel. As with all these old films, the acting was marvelous, especially by Joan Fontaine. However, I have to say that I wouldn't really consider it film noir in the strict sense. Sure, it had a lot of the elements: chiaroscuro lighting, a first person narration (at least initially), an obsession with past events, and a protagonist who gets themselves in over their head. But, as with Sunset Boulevard, I found the movie to be something other than noir. Just as I consider Sunset Boulevard more of a horror movie with noir elements, I consider Rebecca to be more of a epic romance with noir elements. But that is just me. :) Regardless, it was an excellent film that was well worth watching. Thanks for the recommendation!
Now I have seen all three of the classic chick flicks:
Gilda,
Laura, and
Rebecca. Would the universe tear in half if you could get all three demi-goddesses in a room together? ;D
Sadly, TCM's Summer of Darkness concluded the Friday before last. :-\ Those were swell times. I think that was the most time I put into television in a very,
very long time. I must have watched around 40 films over a nine week period! Then there was the additional course work I did for the tie-in online course offered by TCM! I never,
ever dug so deeply into a genre before. Sure, I have my favorite genres such as sci-fi, history, fantasy, but I never really became obsessed with a specific genre like I have with film noir. As many film historians have remarked, it really was the apotheosis of American cinema, and our unique contribution to world cinema (just as jazz is America's unique contribution to world music - and I found it interesting that jazz and film noir nurtured each other. What a happy romance!).
Honestly, I think I have related to film noir so strongly for the same reason that post-World War II America fell in love with it: due to a general cynicism concerning the state of the world. One of my favorite lines in film noir comes from a great flick called
Dark City (not the sci-fi one that is also a good example of noir, albeit sci-fi neo-noir). In it, Lizabeth Scott tells Charlton Heston about something she read in the newspaper. He replies that he does't read the paper. Shocked, Scott asks "Don't you want to know what's going on in the world?" Heston snarls: "What's going on in the world stinks." Yup. Pretty much my attitude, too. That cynicism towards the world, particularly the powers that be, is a good reflection of my attitude at the moment. Maybe that is why I am suddenly finding myself enjoying playing the part of anti-establishment criminals in games, too (it would explain my passion for Shadowrun :) ).
I hope TCM makes this a regular event. It actually made TV worthwhile for me again! Fortunately, I still have a large backload of films noir waiting for viewing on Youtube, Amazon and Netflix. This will help get me through the Friday withdrawls. I have also discovered that noir fiction, from the original inspirations of Chandler, Hammett et cetera, to some new authors I am still ferreting out, is pretty awesome, too. Looks like I have a new hobby. ::)
The other day I stumbled upon this excellent documentary on why film noir remains such a popular international phenomenon. I highly recommend watching it. It is not a dry doc, but very entertaining (Sin City's Frank Miller and the "Czar of Noir' Eddie Muller are both contributors, amongst may other cinema notables such as Pollack). It also manages to cram a lot of the essential facts about the genre into its hour running time. Hopefully it helps introduce this timeless genre to some new fans. Enjoy:
Even though SoD has sadly ended, I continue to explore the genre on my own. I came across a reference to the following movie in the Noir City e-mag and had to give it a shot as it sounded so amusing. Wicked Woman is one of those "poverty row" 'B' noirs made with a very low budget and lesser know actors. Interestingly, I have found a lot of these cheap noirs were actually quite good because they made up for their lack of budget by really ratcheting up the noir aspects. Here, it was the femme fatale that got the super-deluxe treatment with Beverly Michaels delivering a wonderfully trashy, over the top performance. I was a bit disappointed in the ending as it had a "quick fix" aspect to it, but I did appreciate seeing the movie end just like it began, which was clever. Long short, if you liked the classic Detour!, you will also love this! Call if a fitting (for noir) "guilty pleasure." 8)
Interesting "history of"article here: http://cinemasojourns.com/2015/07/27/beverly-michaels-wicked-woman/
QuoteVoluptuous vixens, murderous golddiggers and greedy femme fatales were a familiar sight in B-movie melodramas of the fifties but Wicked Woman (1953) stands out from the rest of the pack. The look and feel of the movie captures the lurid quality of trashy pulp fiction covers from the same period like Tavern Girl, Passion Has Red Lips or Any Sex Will Do. Even the minimalistic, sparsely decorated sets, that represent a confined universe of dingy boarding house rooms and the neighborhood bar, exude a sleazy authenticity and sense of claustrophobia. And scheming her way through these lower depths is Beverly Michaels in the title role of Billie Nash. Blonde, statuesque and sullen, she is the quintessential hard luck tramp, moving from town to town in a futile search for a change in luck.
And I can scratch another noir classic off my list! I was actually hesitant to watch this because I was always under the impression that this movie was primarily a steamy romance - which is not my cup of tea. However, I discovered that there is a lot more going on in this movie - A LOT more. Postman is a potent mix of adultery, murder, a court procedural, blackmail and even a meditation on God's inescapable justice. This was a truly fantastic movie that, like Double Indemnity, is must-see viewing for noir fanatics as well as for classic movie buffs. It gets a rarea 5/5 from me! Here is a clip from the movie that contains one of the most famous introductions of a femme fatale ever: Lana Turner's stunning entrance that causes Frank (John Garfield) to lose his breath. Enjoy!
One of the things I so love about classical noir is how sharp the writing is. In The Postman Always Rings Twice, a motorcycle cop remarks on a cat that was electrocuted when it stepped on a power line. Of course, this is just a metaphor for the doom approaching Lana Turner: "Cats are poor, dumb things. Killed her deader than a doornail. I never saw a prettier cat. Killed her deader than a doornail."