A Tribute to Film Noir

March 2, 2010 7:46 PM

The Endless Night: A Valentine to Film Noir [slyt] A montage of scenes from classic film noir.

The Noirs:

THE LETTER (1940, William Wyler. Bette Davis)
THE MALTESE FALCON (1941, John Huston. Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor)
SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943, Alfred Hitchcock. Joseph Cotten)
DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944, Billy Wilder. Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray)
MURDER, MY SWEET (1944, Edward Dmytryk. Dick Powell)
SCARLET STREET (1945, Fritz Lang. Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett)
LAURA (1945, Otto Preminger. Gene Tierney)
DETOUR (1945, Edgar G. Ulhmer. Ann Savage)
NOTORIOUS (1946, Alfred Hitchcock. Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman)
GILDA (1946, Charles Vidor. Rita Hayworth)
THE KILLERS (1946, Robert Siodmak. Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster)
THE BIG SLEEP (1946, Howard Hawks. Humphrey Bogart)
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946, Tay Garnett. John Garfield, Lana Turner)
THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1947, Orson Welles. Rita Hayworth, Welles)
OUT OF THE PAST (1947, Jacques Tourneur. Jane Greer, Robert Mitchum)
BRUTE FORCE (1947, Jules Dassin. Burt Lancaster)
FORCE OF EVIL (1948, Abraham Polonsky. John Garfield, Marie Windsor)
THE SET-UP (1949, Robert Wise. Robert Ryan)
THE THIRD MAN (1949, Carol Reed. Orson Welles)
CRISS CROSS (1949, Siodmak. Burt Lancaster, Yvonne de Carlo)
GUN CRAZY (1950, Joseph H. Lewis. John Dall, Peggy Cummins)
IN A LONELY PLACE (1950, Nicholas Ray. Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame)
THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950, Huston. Sterling Hayden)
NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950, Jules Dassin. Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney)
SUNSET BLVD. (1950, Billy Wilder. Gloria Swanson, William Holden)
ACE IN THE HOLE (1951, Billy Wilder. Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling)
ANGEL FACE (1952, Otto Preminger. Jean Simmons)
PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953, Samuel Fuller. Richard Widmark)
THE BIG HEAT (1953, Fritz Lang. Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin)
KISS ME DEADLY (1955, Robert Aldrich. Gaby Rodgers)
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955, Charles Laughton. Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish)
THE KILLING (1956, Stanley Kubrick. Sterling Hayden)
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS (1958, Louis Malle. Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet)
TOUCH OF EVIL (1958, Orson Welles)
THE NAKED KISS (1964, Samuel Fuller. Constance Towers)

posted by marxchivist (9 comments total)

Quite nice, thanks. Although it oughtta be a federal crime to mention people involved with Double Indemnity and leave out Raymond Chandler. That dialogue!

I'm happy to see that he included Night of the Hunter. That movie is sincerely one of the greatest ever made, a beautiful, creepy film about American religion, the searing lies at its foundation, and the dying hope that the next generation can overcome them. It's an insane fairy tale about children running from a psychotic preacher who wants to murder them for cash. And yet, of course, it was too weird for 1955 audiences, and though it was actor Charles Laughton's directorial debut he was never allowed to direct another film. I highly recommend it to all and sundry.
posted by koeselitz at 8:51 PM on March 2, 2010 [5 favorites]

A bunch of these can be found on Warner Brothers' Film Noir Classic Collection, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Not only are they dirt cheap, they've been painstakingly restored and include insightful commentaries and other extras. Seriously, if you have any interest in film noir, or film in general, you should really pick these up.
posted by Rangeboy at 9:04 PM on March 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

I liked this. It just needs more Marlene Dietrich.
posted by nola at 9:48 PM on March 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

That video gave me several chills up my spine. Perfect editing and timing! Oh man, I need to rewatch a bunch of these movies.
posted by clockworkjoe at 9:58 PM on March 2, 2010

Night of the Hunter is a wonderful film, but I don't consider it a film noir. The setting is rural (not in itself a deal-breaker, but non-standard), there's no femme fatale, and it doesn't share the gritty B-movie flavour, tough guy dialogue, and brassy sountrack of most noir. It stands alone pretty effectively for all that, and is well worth seeing.
posted by Wolof at 10:25 PM on March 2, 2010

I'm really looking forward to looking at this. Thanks, from an obsessive noir fan. Especially pleased to see "The Killers" on there, which has one of the greatest opening 10-15 minutes on film, period.

The setting is rural (not in itself a deal-breaker, but non-standard), there's no femme fatale, and it doesn't share the gritty B-movie flavour, tough guy dialogue, and brassy sountrack of most noir.

I think "Night of the Hunter" is definitely a noir. It may be an outlier, but it's a noir. Noir doesn't have to have all of those elements to be noir. (Brassy soundtrack? If that were a criterion, almost every French noir would be disqualified.)
posted by blucevalo at 8:40 AM on March 3, 2010

Pretty amazing indeed. They showed this at all of the Noir City screenings in SF this year and turns out that the creator of the short is only 20 or so.
posted by dizzymisslizy at 11:32 AM on March 3, 2010

Really great. Thanks.
posted by chocolatetiara at 11:49 AM on March 3, 2010

Nice little video.

All my faves are there including the underrated "Out of the Past".

Brings back some memories - the wacky ending of Kiss Me Deadly! the uber femme fatale, Anne Savage in Detour! The guy with the balloons in The Third Man!...
posted by storybored at 3:01 PM on March 3, 2010