Essential Film Noir

Grim landscapes and murderous intentions make these film noirs essential viewing

by Peter Weed | Published September 22, 2006

Since French critic Nino Frank first identified it in the 1940s, film noir has evolved into a unique phenomenon. Look no further than noir themed calendars, greeting cards, martini bars and clothing lines—or at the growing array of noir subsets (neo-noir, techno-noir, cable-noir and even porn-noir) for starters. What was once a subversive, celluloid worldview is now a brand. Yet in the beginning, according to perceptive critics, noir was bracingly new. They noted the evolution of a film style devoid of whodunit formulas or simplistic depictions of good and evil. Rather, noir’s high-key streets were grim landscapes where protagonists faced vicious criminals, brutish authority figures and dangerously beguiling women. Noir’s less-thannoble leading men could be violent cops or sadistic criminals—sometimes both. In short, Hollywood was discovering life in the margins, a place much more exciting than the world of creaky morality plays. For what emerges in the best noir films are richly complex characters at war with themselves, each other and society.

Aaron Eckhart and Josh Hartnett star in Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahila (2006).

If there are any lingering doubts about noir’s allure in 2006, consider two recent releases, Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia and Allen Coulter’s Hollywoodland, each of which is firmly ensconced within noir traditions. For contemporary proof of noir’s continuing vitality and flexibility, check out Rian Johnson’s 2005 Brick—a genre-busting film that’s set in a high school and somehow still manages to out-noir most traditional tough-guy tales.

The following isn’t a definitive overview of all the genre’s mustsees, but a look at a dozen films that capture the essence of film noir’s unblinking ability to investigate our dark places.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Director: John Huston
Warner Home Video, $19.97
The quintessential noir. In his first film as a director, Huston gives us a flawed leading man operating between heavyhanded cops and shameless criminals. Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade possesses intimations of sadism as he slaps a cringing Peter Lorre, torments diminutive tough guy Elisha Cook Jr. and coldly brushes off a former paramour who just happens to be the wife of his murdered partner. Add in Mary Astor as a duplicitous lust interest and you have the stuff of classic noir. Worldviews don’t get much grimmer. Consider Bogart’s farewell to Astor before he hands her over to the cops: “If you’re a good girl, you’ll be out in 20 years. I’ll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I’ll always remember you.”

Quotable: Bogart to a gardenia-scented Lorre: “When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it.”

Double Indemnity (1944)
Director: Billy Wilder
Universal Studios, $26.98
A lesson in rapid-fire dialogue and how to bring a memorable femme fatale to the screen, Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson and Fred MacMurray’s Walter Neff play a dangerous game from the start and an inevitably grim journey unfolds. MacMurray’s no-nonsense approach to murder and Stanwyck’s coolness make for a chilling look at an amoral universe. (In general, beautiful women seeking help to dispose of doltish husbands bode ill for male accomplices in any film noir: See Body Heat, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Last Seduction, etc.) In the end, the justice, dispensed via Edward G. Robinson, seems more a victory for actuarial tables than for morality.

Quotable: MacMurray to Stanwyck: “It’s just like the first time I came here, isn’t it? We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder. And I was thinking about that anklet.”

Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart in John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941).

Detour (1945)
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Image Entertainment, $9.99
A shining light for Poverty Row studios, Ulmer improvises a no-exit riff on an illtimed hitchhiking ride. Reportedly shot in six days on a shoestring budget, Detour makes the most of a limited cast, with Ann Savage delivering a solid performance as the odious Vera, whose stab at becoming a femme fatale fails miserably on effective lead Tom Neal. This is a solid, low-budget noir—a couple of sets, ludicrous deaths, entanglements, entrapments and cruel fate. It’s all here.

Quotable: Savage: “I’d hate to see a fellow as young as you wind up sniffing that perfume Arizona hands out free to murderers!”

Scarlet Street (1945)
Director: Fritz Lang
Kino Video, $24.95
Another common noir theme is a regular Joe caught up in entanglements that lead to bloodshed. Lang’s Scarlet Street stands out for its stark ending: A redemption-free walking death for Edward G. Robinson’s hapless, hobbyist painter, who doesn’t quite have a grasp on perspective. Dan Duryea stands out as a braying hustler and Joan Bennett is seduction itself as a quasi-prostitute without a heart of gold. A thoughtful, rich movie.

Quotable: Bennett on Robinson, her mark: “If he were mean or vicious or if he’d bawl me out or something, I’d like him better.”

The Big Sleep (1946)
Director: Howard Hawks
Warner Home Video, $19.98
Humphrey Bogart is less prickly (and interesting) here than in the The Maltese Falcon, but he still shines, especially with Lauren Bacall. The film is proof-positive that film noir is far removed from whodunits, for the plot is indecipherable. Don’t worry too much about who did what to whom; one story has it that neither Howard Hawks nor screenwriter William Faulkner was able to make complete sense of the plot. However, the film does have atmosphere, inspired dialogue and a surprising level of sexual tension for the era.

Quotable: Bogart spars with Bacall about what type of horse she is. Bogart: “Well, I can’t tell ‘til I’ve seen you over a distance of ground. You’ve got a touch of class, but I don’t know how far you can go.” Bacall: “A lot depends on who’s in the saddle.”

Out of the Past (1947)
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Turner Home Entertainment, $19.98
Among the best of the noirs, Out of the Past boasts a gracefully constructed plot and employs impeccable use of flashback. One of Robert Mitchum’s finest roles as a garage owner whose past catches up with him. (The guynext- door-with-a-scary-backstory also appears in such films as The Killers, Unforgiven and A History of Violence.) Tourneur’s film stands out from the field in that Mitchum’s character is a bit more noble, therefore more tragic, than typihome cal noir protagonists, which makes for an emotionally fraught—and ultimately redemptive—ending. However, the path to that ending passes through a corrupt landscape peopled with sirens, doublecrosses and murder. Kirk Douglas chips in with a fine early performance as the smiling shark of a jilted lover.

Quotable: Mitchum’s voiceover: “I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoked. I didn’t know where she lived. I never followed her. All I ever had to go on was a place and time to see her again. I don’t know what we were waiting for. Maybe we thought the world would end.”

The Third Man (1949)
Director: Carol Reed
The Criterion Collection, $39.95
What could be more grimly atmospheric (or oppressive) than Vienna in the aftermath of World War II? Proving that noir can be transplanted anywhere, Reed brilliantly realizes Graham Greene’s script and makes corruption palpable, while somehow successfully integrating Anton Karas’ haunting zither score. Reed also surprisingly juxtaposes bright daylight scenes with some of the film’s darker moments—including Orson Welles’ famous “cuckoo clock” speech (see below) and his “exhumation.” Welles is chilling as Harry Lime, terrifying in his calmly delivered rationalizations of indefensible actions. Joseph Cotten is solid as Holly Martins, a naive American. Nazis, doctored vaccines, the black market, child victims—The Third Man is about as noir as it gets.

Quotable: Welles: “Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

In a Lonely Place (1950)
Director: Nicholas Ray
Sony Pictures, $24.95
Humphrey Bogart delivers a searing performance as a cynical, hard-drinking screenwriter with a violent temper. A strong murder suspect, he understandably falls under the spell of Gloria Grahame, who becomes his redemptive muse. But the demons return—and Bogart is pitch-perfect as a man on the edge of a violent abyss. Ray wisely decides not to explain how Bogart has evolved into the ill-mannered writer; he merely hints at Bogart’s combat experience. What’s left unsaid speaks volumes.

Quotable: Bogart’s screenwriter delivers the following prescient lines: “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”

Clint Eastwood directs and stars in Unforgiven (1992).

On Dangerous Ground (1952)
Director: Nicholas Ray
Warner Home Video, $49.98 (part of the “Film Noir Classics Collection, Volume 3”)
A fascinatingly bifurcated film, where the first half is the usual dark cityscape but the second half is a snow-whitened countryside, far from idealized, what with a damaged, knife-wielding youth and a vengeful farmer with a shotgun. Pulling it all together is Bernard Herrmann’s brilliant score. Robert Ryan is at his best as Jim Wilson, a tightly wound cop who enjoys his work a bit too much, but who ultimately softens in the presence of Ida Lupino, who is intelligent in the difficult role of a blind woman in need of an operation. George Diskant’s camera work, especially the grimly realized countryside and a first-person POV car crash, stands out.

Quotable: Ryan, before beating a suspect to a pulp: “Why do you guys do it? You know you’re going to talk. I’m going to make you talk.”

The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Director: Charles Laughton
MGM Home Video, $14.98
Think of Laughton’s only directorial effort as a noir fairytale—with Robert Mitchum in the role of the very bad wolf in minister’s clothing. A rather melodramatic opening gives way to a surreal chase downriver. Dozing children drift in a rowboat as night creatures loom large in the foreground, all beneath an eerie night sky. Mitchum, the hunter, sings in the distance. Lillian Gish is terrific as Rachel Cooper, the children’s shotgun-toting protector. Mitchum’s macabre sermon explaining the words “Love” and “Hate” tattooed on his hands is worth the price of admission. The film sets the standard for creepy malevolence.

Quotable: Gish: “It’s a hard world for little things.”

Touch of Evil (1958)
Director: Orson Welles
Universal Studios, $14.98
Famous for its breathtakingly long opening shot (compare it to the opening of Robert Altman’s The Player), Touch of Evil offers up one the genre’s defining themes: The gyrations of a protagonist caught between the criminal world and corrupt authority. In an odd bit of casting, Charlton Heston delivers an interesting performance as a Mexican cop and Janet Leigh is convincing as his uncomfortable wife. However, it’s Welles who makes the film as Quinlan, a sweating beast of a cop (an entity redefining noxious) and brilliantly creates a grotesque, lawless atmosphere.

Quotable: Welles: “Come on, read my future for me.” Woman: “You haven’t got any.”

Chinatown (1974)
Director: Roman Polanski
Paramount Home Video, $12.98
Screenwriter Robert Towne and director Polanski deliver a lesson in creating near-perfect noir. From its intelligently twisting plot involving Los Angeles water rights to Jack Nicholson’s definitively cynical, stubborn and competent Jake Gittes, Chinatown journeys into darkness—here in the form of John Huston. In Polanski’s darkest of noirs, power wins and there’s naught to be done. The final, freighted lines explain nothing and everything: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” What more can be said?

Quotable: Polanski, as a thug holding a knife to Nicholson’s nose: “You’re a very nosy fellow, kitty cat. Huh? You know what happens to nosy fellows? Huh? No? Wanna guess? Huh? No? Okay. They lose their noses.”

Unforgiven (1992)
Director: Clint Eastwood
Warner Home Video, $19.98
A noir western? All the elements are here: Brutal law enforcement, a seemingly “regular Joe” dragged back into a world of violence and an oppressive atmosphere with one of the (literally) darkest fade-outs imaginable. This is no morality play—nobility is notably absent. Clearly, Unforgiven has roots in the dark underbelly of the genre. The film is an unsparing, ultimately unforgiving view of a violent, corrupt world.

Quotable: Gene Hackman’s Little Bill Daggett: “I don’t deserve this. To die like this. I was building a house.” Eastwood, before pulling the trigger: “Deserving’s got nothing to do with it.” Fade to black. MM

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