Film Noir

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.film/post/1636501

🔗🐒 Hi! I'm the MovieSnob LinkMonkey™! 🔗🐒 Enjoy these Google-free links!

Link 1: A Study of Black and White Filmmaking

Link 2: Film Noir: The Case for Black and White

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Have you ever heard somebody say "I can't watch black and white movies?" I have a problem with this. Not because some of the most important movies are in black and white but because black and white can do just as much—if not more—than color.

Thanks, MovieSnob LinkMonkey™! Have a banana! And thanks to YouTube Channel Now You See It for both these videos succinctly and smartly analyzing the use and history of black and white in cinema.

Regarding the above opening quote (from the linked Film Noir video), an excellent recent example of this, forgive me if I'm repeating myself, is Robert Egger's 2019 The Lighthouse.

MovieSnob Ad Warning: as some YT vids are want to do, the first link contains promotional content (translated: advertising) fortunately at the end of the video (roughly at 00:13:14). Act accordingly.

Cross-posting here because, frankly, this was going to be a !filmnoir@lemmy.film one-link post pointing only to the second link. As you know how going down rabbitholes can be (or eating just one potato chip), it turned into a !moviesnob@lemmy.film post. Call yer lawyer. Better yet, watch Link #2 first then, if you like, watch the second more-subject-encompassing Link #1.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/9036783

Film Noir

Edmond O'Brien, Pamela Britton

Annoying whistle sound, intermittently.

MovieSnob Seal of Approval 🏆

Film Noir 101, one of the best of the genre: a near-perfect blend of melodrama, pacing, atmosphere and hard-boiled dialogue. The entire production careens just over the edge of "over-the-top". Neville Brand's Chester is iconic! If you've seen it, see it again because you've surely forgotten how good this movie is. If you haven't, well, you know what you have to do.

N.B.: The audio on this copy isn't great and suffers much like today's tone-deaf cinema: barely audible then deafening. You've been warned. The "annoying whistle sound" mentioned in the original post is a (supposedly) incidental wolf whistle in the actual movie soundtrack.

The movie in question is 2022's Marlowe. The director is Neil Jordan, who in the past has directed such memorable and powerful cinema as Mona Lisa and The Crying Game. The starring cast features Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger and Jessica Lange with supporting roles by Danny Huston, Alan Cumming, Colm Meaney and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. The screenplay was written by The Departed's William Monahan, adapted from The Black-Eyed Blonde by author John Banville. And to top it all off, the titular character is the iconic private eye, Raymond Chandler's Philip (with one "L") Marlowe.

That's an awful lot of firepower they're packin'.

And this movie is a dud. A disappointment. A damp squib. It doesn't sizzle. It doesn't smolder. There's no chemistry between any of the characters, even though two of the leading roles say they want to bed the lead. If it weren't an Irish production through and through, I'd go so far as to say something got lost in translation. Maybe somethind did—Ireland isn't Los Angeles of the late 1930s. The best I can say about this film is it has its moments.

Neeson is just plain stiff despite him being theoretically capable of pulling off the role. Kruger, Lange and Huston are, unfortunately, forced. Meaney is the only convincing one of the bunch, save Cumming and his introductory scene. If only the entire movie had the pace, repartee and style of this scene, it would have been a winner, or at least been saved.

If you haven't seen it, don't worry. You haven't missed anything.

Just saw this very movie posted over at Full Movies on YouTube, but—gasp!—colorized!

So these new AI Ted Turners wanna play with their new tech toys, well, that's all fine and dandy…but leave the noir in Film Noir, thank you. For your viewing pleasure, in the original and glorious black and white, just like the newspaper they're printin', the great Humphrey Bogart in Deadline – U.S.A.!

EXTRA! EXTRA! Link: the original trailer in 1080HD!

Starring Steve Brodie, Audrey Long and pre-good-guy Raymond Burr.

Directed by Anthony Mann

Watch Burr chillingly slice a piece of turkey while he roughs up a pair of elderly country folk.

I'm almost ashamed to admit it but until yesterday, I'd never seen this Hitchcock noir.

Stupid question: anybody else seen it? Thoughts? Opinions? Apparently Scorsese said it was an inspiration for his Taxi Driver (1976)…although I'm struggling to see the connection.

~Image:~ ~©~ ~Warner~ ~Bros.,~ ~Inc.~ ~Artists(s)~ ~not~ ~known.~ ~Public~ ~domain,~ ~via~ ~Wikimedia~ ~Commons.~

The Lady from Shanghai is a 1947 American film noir directed by Orson Welles (uncredited) and starring Welles, his estranged wife Rita Hayworth, and Everett Sloane. It is based on the novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King.

Although it initially received mixed reviews, it has grown in stature over the years, and many critics have praised its set designs and camerawork.

Limbo is directed by Ivan Sen, best known for the films Mystery Road, Goldstone and Beneath Clouds. It also stars Natasha Wanganeen as Emma, Charlie's surviving sister, and Nicholas Hope as Joseph, the brother of a key murder suspect.

The film was shot in the South Australian opal mining town of Coober Pedy, which stands in for the fictional town of Limbo.

Sen's decision to film in black and white accentuates Coober Pedy's otherworldliness, making the pockmarked desert look like a moonscape.

Collins says he can't imagine filming the story anywhere else.

"The whole place feels like a muffled scream, which worked a lot for Charlie," he says.

If you have cable or satellite TV you can catch Eddie Muller's Noir Alley presentation of the 1949 film Impact tonight at midnight Eastern and again at 10am Sunday.

Eddie provides an Intro/Outro to each of these weekly films. Sometimes Eddie is much more entertaining than the films themselves although the film tonight is a pretty good one.

Worth it just to see location shots of 1949 San Francisco & Sausalito.

The goal in our new community is to have fun discussing the directors, cast, cinematography, script, themes, etc of this genre.

Here are a few links for discovering the best films of the genre (if you're inclined to call it that) Note: some of these also include Neo-Noir

https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/film-noir/the-best-noirs-of-all-time

https://mubi.com/lists/bfi-screen-guides-100-film-noirs

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-100-best-film-noirs-of-all-time/

https://filmnoir.art.blog/essential-films-noir/

Forget about looking up how to slip arsenic into your husband's Anisette Toast on The Food Network! Let the BFI's handy (and lengthy) recipe card for the noiriest noir! Double your Indemnity, Double your fun!

The King Mongoose

!moviesnob@lemmy.film