Noir By The Numbers: To LIST or not to LIST

[@willieluncheonette5843]

you do love your noir.....me too. Surprising no one has commented on your post since it is obvious you've put in a lot of work and noir is probably more popular now than ever before. I like your yearly parameters too---that is the classic noir period.

[@drnoir33]

I love film noir so much, I wrote a substantive book about why I do (with other interesting stuff as well). justbearwithme.blog/2021/08/17/interrogating-memory-now-available-for-purchase/ The lack of commentary might simply reflect the plethora of numbers. While I find safety in numbers, not everyone is so inclined :)

[@willieluncheonette5843]

@@drnoir33 Congrats on your book. I finally finished a film I directed titled The Sun Behind The Sun Behind The Sun two years ago. It was heavily influenced by noir. For the record my 6 fav noirs are Touch of Evil, Kiss Me Deadly, Vertigo, Out of the Past, White Heat and The Line-up. I've written a review of Kiss Me Deadly. Will post it if you want.

[@drnoir33]

@@willieluncheonette5843 Kudos to you, as well. These are six very solid films. I have my own theories about KISS ME DEADLY, so I would be curious to read your musings.

[@willieluncheonette5843]

@@drnoir33 Just saw KISS ME DEADLY on Noir Alley for maybe the tenth time and it still has not lost a scintilla of power in 65 years. I don't see how you can make a more exciting movie. What a treat to see it for free. Ernest Laszlo, the cinematographer, did a tremendous job shooting around L.A. God, this film looks so beautiful and the pace never lets up--it completely engulfed me once again. This is what motion pictures should be all about. Robert Aldrich, the director, is not as big a name as Ford, Hawks, Hitchcock, or Welles but he made many excellent films and with Kiss Me Deadly he really put down one for the ages. This time, for the first time, I became more aware of the music on the soundtrack by Frank De Vol. It is perfect. Explosive and tough as nails, this movie is years ahead of its time, totally amazing and nasty as hell. I saw this restored print here in NYC at MOMA many years ago and the look of this movie on a big screen is a joy to behold. Kiss Me Deadly grows more relevant and greater in stature with each passing year. There are almost no sympathetic characters and absolutely no heroes in the whole film which might dismay or confuse the average film goer. No one to root for, so to speak. In KMD everyone is out for himself, trying to dominate, exploit or put one over on the next. But isn't this a reflection of our world in 2020? Just read the papers or see the news on TV. How the film unfolds---how all the nasty characters with their own agendas and the amoral, uncontrollable, brutish, egomaniac Mike Hammer seem to mesh together and lead down a spiraling path to destruction is magnificently orchestrated by Aldrich As for the plot--how a series of random, seemingly innocuous events like a man in a car giving a woman a lift can set in motion a chain of events with a horrific conclusion--could this also be a glimpse into our future? A.I. Bezzerides, the script writer, changed Mickey Spillane's pulpy novel set in New York to Los Angeles. Bezzerides said "People ask me about the hidden meanings in the script, about the A-bomb, about McCarthyism, what does the poetry mean, and so on. And I can only say that I didn't think about it when I wrote it . . . I was having fun with it. I wanted to make every scene, every character, interesting. A girl comes up to Ralph Meeker, I make her a nympho. She grabs him and kisses him the first time she sees him. She says, "You don't taste like anybody I know." I'm a big car nut, so I put in all that stuff with the cars and the mechanic. I was an engineer, and I gave the detective the first phone answering machine in that picture. I was having fun." It must be noted that Mickey Spillane, the most commercially successful American novelist of the cold war, hated the film because the whole story line was changed. Bezzerides has noted "I wrote it fast because I had contempt for it... I tell you Spillane didn't like what I did with his book. I ran into him at a restaurant and, boy, he didn't like me". Spillane’s violent thrillers, including I, the Jury; My Gun Is Quick; and Vengeance Is Mine, sold twenty-four million copies between 1947 and 1952. At one point, he was responsible for seven of the ten best-selling books in the entire history of American fiction. The first ten minutes of Kiss Me Deadly are truly remarkable. Talk about hitting the ground running, has there ever been a better opening in a noir? Cloris Leachman is terrific. Laszlo's cinematography is superb; the film looks like it was shot in 2020. And of course Aldrich's direction is beyond reproach. His cut to Leachman being tortured is one of the most brutal and startling I have ever seen. Scene after scene, everyone is perfect-- in Mike's apartment, in the gym, the Italian singer's room, the lavish mansion of the gangsters. The six minutes when Mike is tied down and forced to talk is as visceral as a punch in the stomach. Man, that is one rough scene! And of course the climax with the box is simply extraordinary. The acting is absolutely first rate too, right down to the smallest parts. Of course, Ralph Meeker, in a role that seemingly was made for him, is superb. And have to single out Paul Stewart as the head of the mafia types. His performance is so beautifully rendered you would swear he was the real thing. The film ran into all sorts of problems due to its violence. Just as the film was about to be released, the Legion of Decency condemned it, demanding “over thirty changes, cuts, and deletions.” Aldrich made minor cuts, ensuring a B rating (condemned in part). Its ads were displayed during Senate hearings on juvenile delinquency and it was under scrutiny from the Kefauver Commission, which called it a film "designed to ruin young viewers." Much had been made of the unique title roll. IMO it is gripping, perfectly foreshadowing the last explosive scene. I view it as the initial clamping down of the lid on this nasty, miserable film. By the end, the disgust is so palpable, so suffocating, so condensed that something has to blow--and it does. Considered trash, KMD was never reviewed in the New York Times and was banned in Britain. In France, Kiss Me Deadly was admired mainly by the young critics at Cahiers du Cinéma, where it was considered “the thriller of tomorrow” and Aldrich, was hailed as “the first director of the atomic age.” "Kiss Me Deadly," Claude Chabrol wrote in his passionate review, “has chosen to create itself out of the worst material to be found, the most deplorable, the most nauseous product of a genre in a state of putrefaction: a Mickey Spillane story.” Aldrich and Bezzerides “have taken this threadbare and lackluster fabric and splendidly rewoven it into rich patterns of the most enigmatic arabesques.” And Francois Truffaut, in his 1987 book "The Films of My Life" wrote," In order to enjoy Kiss Me Deadly, you must love cinema and be touched by the memory of evenings during which we discovered films like Scarface, Under Capricorn, The Blood of a Poet, The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne, The Lady From Shanghai." . Has it really been over 20 years since the restoration of this amazing film? When I was young, I remember seeing the butchered ending on TV and thinking "What the hell just happened?" I can't talk about it here without giving it away, but suffice to say it was brutally abrupt. Now I look back on that ending and think it might be just as good as the restored original ending which, in 1997, put everything back in place with a running time of 106 minutes.. (KMD does evoke strong feelings, both pro and con, and I would not be at all surprised if many did not care for this movie. A few years ago I ran into an acquaintance at a restaurant. He is a photographer who has several books published. I told him KMD was playing for a week at a theater and if he went and did not like it I would refund his ticket. A few days later I saw him at the same restaurant and asked him what he thought of the movie. He said it was the worst film he ever saw,) I only wish Eddie Muller at the end of his introduction last night had not said "And here it is, Mickey Spillane's Kiss Me Deadly." That was not Spillane's Kiss Me Deadly--it was Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly. But he announced it that way because of his guest

[@willieluncheonette5843]

@@drnoir33 Would like to hear YOUR thoughts on Kiss Me Deadly now that I've posted mine. Also would be interested in knowing how many sites listed White Heat as a noir and if this is a large or small percentage. Thanks

[@Badastro59]

Noir films are about people Braking Rules, And encompasses the seven deadly sins, plus Death, And the struggle to survive Your definition and parameters, kind of negate what film Noir is about, to me if it feels like Noir it is, just like life, "Miami Blues" is noir comedy, "fires on the plain" is Japanese horror Noir, if you drew a target L.A. 1940 would be the center, But "wages of fear" is in my top ten,and "across" the bridge which does not get a mention, I did not go to school, let alone University, But when Edmond O'Brien is firing high caliber bullets into James Cagney , and says " what's holding him up " we see Cagney hysterical laughing, yelling " Top of the world Ma" That's why I love Noir, I've had a Hard boiled life ,loved Noir at 8 Y.O. still love it at 63 I'll be 64 in two weeks ( never count your chickens) Ok I talk to much, what I'm saying is I decide what Noir is, I watch these posts looking for films I've missed, watch the film and then decide, this is not a criticism, what I'm saying do it your way, everything a calculated risk, Thanks for posting