Leave Her to Heaven
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sheetsadam1 — 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 03:07 PM)
Double Indemnity is your fav noir and you didn't even list MacMurray or Stanwyck in your top 5 actors?
bc at least Stanwyck would make my top 5.
Yeah, not including Stanwyck was a brain fart. MacMurray is actually a major reason why
Double Indemnity
works so well for me, but I'd never think to include him in my top noir actors. I'm not sure how much of this made it across the Atlantic, but in the U.S. he's basically associated with a long-running family sitcom and everyman type roles in Disney movies. All of this came after
Double Indemnity
, of course, but his part in that one was sort of revelatory to me the first time I saw it as a result.
for the men, i would exchange Richard Conte & Brian Donlevy for Ladd & Widmark easily.
Ladd, fair enough. Widmark, though? He'd make my list even if he'd retired after his very first film.
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HollyJollyHanukka — 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 01:08 PM)
The Third Man was excellent.
Scarlett Street isn’t a widely known movie of Robinson, and he’s so good and sad in it. Joan Bennett is so conniving along with Dan Duryea as her slimy boyfriend.
The Red House is also a lesser known film of his, and one I really like.
Never could like A Touch of Evil. A lot of bad casting, and in particular, like you mention, Heston.
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Sophienoire — 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 06:48 PM)
Double Indemnity is one of my top ten of all time
while we're at it, what's your top 5 noirs?
mine would look like this:
1.
They Live by Night
(Nick Ray, 1948)
2.
The Night of the Hunter
(Charles Laughton, 1955)
3.
Double Indemnity
(Billy Wilder, 1944)
4.
The Killers
(Robert Siodmak, 1946)
5.
Outrage
(Ida Lupino, 1950)
HMs:
Force of Evil (1948) - Key Largo (1948)
The Letter (1940) - Angels Over Broadway (1940) - Ladies in Retirement (1941) - The Shanghai Gesture (1941) - Strange Alibi (1941) - Blues in the Night (1941) - The Glass Key (1942) - Moontide (1942) - Street of Chance (1942) - The Seventh Victim (1943) - Phantom Lady (1944) - The Suspect (1944) - The Woman in the Window (1944) - Leave Her to Heaven (1945) - Hangover Square (1945) - The Lost Weekend (1945) - Scarlet Street (1945) - Detour (1945) - Mildred Pierce (1945) - The Stranger (1946) - The Big Sleep (1946) - The Blue Dahlia (1946) - Out of the Past (1947) - Odd Man Out (1947) - Nightmare Alley (1947) - Body and Soul (1947) - Born to Kill (1947) - Act of Violence (1948) - Raw Deal (1948) - Cry of the City (1948) - All My Sons (1948) - Moonrise (1948) - House of Strangers (1949) - Side Street (1949) - Tension (1949) - Impact (1949) - The Asphalt Jungle (1950) - In a Lonely Place (1950) - Whirlpool (1950) - Sunset Blvd. (1950) - Gun Crazy (1950) - Night and the City (1950) - Undercover Girl (1950) - On Dangerous Ground (1951) - Detective Story (1951) - Fourteen Hours (1951) - Strangers on a Train (1951) - Don't Bother to Knock (1952) - The Bigamist (1953) - Niagara (1953) - Girl on the Run (1953) - Human Desire (1954) - Killer's Kiss (1955) - The Killing (1956) - The Wrong Man (1956) - Teenage Doll (1957) - Touch of Evil (1958) - The Bonnie Parker Story (1958) - Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)
the sound of your racing heart -
sheetsadam1 — 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 07:03 PM)
So a top five would really be mostly a "best of Billy Wilder" lmao So I'll do a top ten
Double Indemnity
(Billy Wilder, 1944)
The Lost Weekend
(Billy Wilder, 1945)
The Big Sleep
(Howard Hawks, 1946)
Detour
(Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)
Sunset Boulevard
(Billy Wider, 1950)
The Night of the Hunter
(Charles Laughton, 1955)
Raw Deal
(Anthony Mann, 1948)
Laura
(Otto Preminger, 1944)
No Way Out
(Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)
The Big Heat
(Fritz Lang, 1953)
Any guesses who my favorite director of the era is?
I still need to watch Ida Lupino's directorial efforts though.
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Sophienoire — 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 07:06 PM)
i'm finished editing my HMs lol
yes i see your fav haha…
No Way Out
is an impressive effort given the stuff it covers and deals with at that time imo but i'm sad to say that
Laura
left me cold. aaaand i'm gonna rewatch
The Big Heat
soon, my memory needs a refresh on that! the rest i love as well.
I still need to watch Ida Lupino's directorial efforts though.
fyi her noirs are:
Outrage
The Bigamist
The Hitchhiker
and she co-directed
On Dangerous Ground
the sound of your racing heart -
sheetsadam1 — 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 07:11 PM)
Speaking of Lang, though, if we're doing a best movies that led to the creation of noir,
M
tops the list for sure. And
The Petrified Forest
. Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and a secluded diner… Too bad it wasn't made like a half decade later.
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sheetsadam1 — 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 07:26 PM)
I haven't watched that one. I mostly just know Fonda from his (decidedly un-noir) work with John Ford, plus
Once Upon a Time in the West
obviously. I did watch all of the early Robinson, Cagney, and Muni crime films I could get my hands on several years ago and
The Roaring Twenties
, directed by the great Raoul Walsh, was my favorite of all of them.
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sheetsadam1 — 7 months ago(August 19, 2025 05:33 AM)
fyi her noirs are:
Outrage
The Bigamist
The Hitchhiker
and she co-directed
On Dangerous Ground
Decided to start with
Outrage
since you rated it so highly. (And tbh because I was looking for something relatively short to watch before bed.) And, yes, this one was great. The performances Lupino pulls out of the two leads are what really sells it. I don't think I've seen Mala Powers before - maybe reruns of some of her TV guest spots when I was a kid - but she's very impressive here. Thematically, this definitely feels a bit ahead of it's time. The only unbelievable aspect is that the police would put forward so much effort to catch the rapist. I also felt like the dude at the party totally had it coming and she shouldn't have ended up in a courtroom at all, but then again that set up Tod Andrews' best scene in the film. So, yeah, I definitely liked this.
Oh, and how you mentioned that
The Naked City
was too documentary-like for your taste? Be sure to avoid
The Phenix City Story
. For the first fifteen minutes, I was literally convinced I'd turned on a very dull documentary by mistake lol
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sheetsadam1 — 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 07:21 PM)
A few major (to me) omissions I noticed from the HMs:
Gilda
(1946)
The Naked City
(1948)
Riot in Cell Block 11
(1954)
Bad Day at Black Rock
(1955)
The Man with the Golden Arm
(1955)
Otherwise, a wonderful list, of those I've seen.
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Sophienoire — 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 07:27 PM)
Gilda
is too misogynistic for my taste.
The Naked City
is too dry and documentary (for my taste).
Riot in Cell Block 11- not seen.
Bad Day at Black Rock
is not noir in my books, certainly not canon. other than that it's just pretty mid lol
The Man with the Golden Arm - i love it, but also not noir/canon.
the sound of your racing heart
- not seen.
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sheetsadam1 — 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 07:33 PM)
I haven't seen
Gilda
in years, so I'll need to rewatch it with that criticism in mind. I'd consider both Black Rock and Golden Arm noir. Where I'd draw the line is at something like Robert Wise's
Blood on the Moon
or some of Anthony Mann's later work which I've seen people try to include under the umbrella.
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sheetsadam1 — 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 07:44 PM)
Definitely watch
Riot in Cell Block 11
sometime! I know you're familiar with Don Siegel from your '70s crime film journeys and hopefully you've seen
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
as well?
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Sophienoire — 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 07:48 PM)
i have seen
Body Snatchers
, yes, but i'm not really that interested in prison movies with an all-male cast 🥱 bc there's nothing more boring than that nor am i particularly interested in the director. i've also read it's not canon noir so… that's a nah, i'm afraid
the sound of your racing heart
— 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 06:01 PM)
he's a good actor, but i just can't warm up to him.