The only memorable part of this flick was watching Sean Penn getting his loathsome ass kicked.
Posted on 01/15/2023 4:27:11 AM PST by Rummyfan
There's a temptation once you've started sorting anything into a genre to start making lists, of the most typical, the most essential, or simply the best. Film noir, a genre whose tangled roots begin somewhere in the early '40s and ends – by general critical acclaim, though your mileage may vary – with Orson Welles' A Touch of Evil in 1958, begs for these kinds of rankings, if only because its hardboiled subject matter tends to attract a male fandom, and everybody knows how much men love lists.
If you were making a list of most typical noir films, you'd have to include Out of the Past or The Asphalt Jungle; for most essential noirs, The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity would make most lists. As for the best film noir, the competition would be more heated, not to mention subjective, but you'd probably find Detour or The Killers on a lot of those lists. From where I'm sitting, though, you could grit your teeth and put The Big Combo on any three, perhaps all of them. And then sit back and wait for the shouting to start.
Released in 1955, The Big Combo was directed by b-picture stalwart Joseph H. Lewis, whose Gun Crazy (1950) would probably be an essential noir, but hardly a typical one. It was made for half a million dollars in twenty-six days and includes countless iconic shots that end up in nearly every documentary about noir ever made. It was the first picture made by a production company started by Cornel Wilde and his wife Jean Wallace, and released by Allied Artists, which had recently changed its name from Monogram Pictures, a fixture on Hollywood's Poverty Row.
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Film Noir has to include “Chinatown”.
“Cleaning Woman!!!...”
Thank you very much.
I’ll have to plan out an evening to rent it.
One of the best is “Angel Face,” with Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons. I still remember the score by Dimitri Tiomkin...just gets the emotions rolling and you knew something bad was going to happen...but, what and when?
“Night of the Hunter” with Mitchum can still send chills down my spine....Shelley Winters in the river, sitting dead in the car with her hair flowing back, hate and love written on his fingers, grandma sitting at night in the rocker on the front porch with a rifle on her knees, Mitchum slowly walking by the picket fence singing “Leaning, Leaning leaning on the ever lasting Lord...leaning... Chills I tell you, that’s for sure.
Bump for later. Film noir is one of my favorite movie genres.
The original “Postman Always Rings Twice” with Lana Turner and John Garfield is my favorite film noire.
The only memorable part of this flick was watching Sean Penn getting his loathsome ass kicked.
The Killing , by Stanley Kubrick is a winner.
A gang’s plot to rob a horse track goes wrong.
The lovely Delores Del Rio in a dual role as twin sisters watched it on YouTube with subtitles. .
It’s a very good movie. And seeing it through the eyes of the protagonist, Robert Montgomery, is an unusual and fun experience.
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