Down These Mean Streets A Man Must Go - The Film Noir Thread
 

Any fans of film noir or hardboiled crime fiction? Post your recommendations, views and thoughts here.

My favourites films are:

"Kiss Me Deadly"
"Double Indemnity"
"The Postman Always Rings Twice"
"The Big Sleep"
"Farewell, My Lovely"
"The Woman in the Window"
"Mildred Pierce"
"In A Lonely Place"
"Gun Crazy"

Fave writers:

Raymond Chandler
David Goodis
Hammett
Charles Williams
James Ellroy
James M.McCain
Jim Thompson
Cornell Woolrich

I have all the films you list MTDS, except Mildred Pierce, never seen that.

All classics of course, i think my personal favourite of the list is In a Lonely Place. Bogart is outstanding.

Other great ones you haven't mentioned are -

Gilda
This Gun For Hire
Out of the Past
The Blue Dahlia
the Killers

Hello Dem, "In A Lonely Place" is my favourite too, have you read the book it's based on, completely different ending to the film.


I forgot "Sunset Boulevard" from my list, and how did I forget "Gilda".

I just wanted to mention Sunset Boulevard... ;)

Sorry to say i have never read any noir fiction. :blush::tsk:

I thought This Gun For Hire and The Big Sleep were great films, Personal faves are Key Largo, The Killers and The Big Sleep but i'd rate Kubrick's The Killing, which i see as Film Noir above alot of them.

Although it is due to its characters, i never really see Key Largo as a noir. Probably due to its beach front hotel settings.

Saw Kiss Me Deadly earlier in the year - blew me away (like a nuclear blast ;)...)!!! Grabbed the Criterion straight after the first viewing. I'm on the lookout now for noir as nutty as that :shocked: . . .

A few of my faves that haven't yet been mentioned...

Chinatown
High and Low
The Maltese Falcon
Sweet Smell of Success
The Third Man

L.A. Confidential is a decent modern noir, too.

I really want to get into watching more noir, as it's fast becoming a favourite sub-genre of mine.

There are a few mentioned here that I haven't seen, that I'm definitely going to seek out. :nod:

There's a "new" James M. Cain book found, heard about it on NPR last week:

Lost novel by noir giant James M Cain discovered | Books | guardian.co.uk

I thought the original theatrical version of Blade Runner was certainly noirish...
Future Noir? ;)

But I'm getting a bit off-topic...

I can't think of any film that is as barmy as "Kiss Me Deadly" but the last book in James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet, "White Jazz" has the relentlessness of KMD.

The four books in the series are:

The Black Dahlia
The Big Nowhere
L.A. Confidential
White Jazz

I can't praise these books enough, Ellroy was on fire when he wrote them.

I'd also recommend Ellroy's autobiographical work, "My Dark Places" which is a heady mix of Ellroy's memoirs and an investigation into his mother's murder. Ellroy comes across as a complete madman, openly confessing to breaking into women's homes to steal drugs and sniff panties in his youth, to ruthlessly exploiting his mother's murder to gain publicity as he started out as a writer.

@bdc, Future Noir sounds cool, you can see the visual influence of FN in a lot of films, though not so much the main themes.

@Demdike, the James Ellroy books mentioned above are a good place to start on modern hardboiled fiction but for older stuff I'd go for Charles Williams, "Dead Calm" is one of his, James .M McCain, "The Postman Always Rings Twice" is a great sparse read, and Jim Thompson.

In a kinda on topic way, may I recommend the BBC radio versions of Raymond Chandler's novels with Ed Bishop(Cmdr Straker himself) as Marlow, at 90mins each they bring 40s America to life in grand style. Radio 4xtra repeats em every so often, think there is six in total.

No love for Detour?;)
this is a belter by Jacques Tournier.

I do like a bit of Noir myself too. I have about 30 or so and that barely skims the surface. The film that got me into it though was seeing Double Indemnity on TV many many years ago and that probably still remains my favourite, although it's closely run by Sunset Boulevard and The Maltese Falcon. To be honest, I can't think of one I've seen that I haven't enjoyed in one way or another, even the ones that border more on melodrama in parts.

Good to see Out Of The Past get a mention because that's a corker!

One of it's most notable aspects as a film genre though and one of the reasons why there are so many good ones is the wealth of directorial talent that dabbled in it's prime. Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Otto Preminger, Jacques Torneur, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Robert Wise, Stanley Kubrick...

That's one formidable list!

:lol: Laughing to myself here.

When i said i had never read any noir i was thinking authors from the early 20th century, Chandler etc.

I actually have all Ellroy's books up to The Cold Six Thousand which i got signed at an instore book signing at Waterstones in Manchester. :lol:

His signature is like a 3 on its side, (not an E) with a long tail. A bit poor really. :nod:

I think Narrow Margain is one of the best and most under-rated film noire out there.
Anyone who hasn't picked up the Warner film noire sets or the fox film noir DVDs really should.

I've seen the 1990 version of Narrow Margin starring Gene Hackman & Anne Archer. I assume its kind of based on the original film anyway. It was decent but pretty derivative, more of a thriller than a noir.

One early 90s film to check out is China Moon. Stars Ed Harris, Charles Dance and Madeline Stowe; three of Hollywood's best. Very much a modern noir, similar to Body Heat. Fantastic atmosphere via locations and the score. Highly recommended to noir fans.

Unbelievably I haven't seen Chinatown before despite claiming to be a huge Polanski fan. That's one I'm definitely picking up soon. I've been meaning to watch more Bogart films too, he's a cracking actor. Dead End, Key Largo, Dead Reckoning, The Big Sleep, etc are films I must watch when I get the chance.

The 1990 remake has absolutely nothing on the brilliant original. If you haven't seen the 1952 Film you owe it to yourself to do so. Definitely one of the best of the genre. Listen to the commentary track as well and hear about just well regarded this film is by film noir enthusiasts.

Comparing it to its remake is like trying to compare Kiss of Death to its remake or Psycho to its.

Frankie, just remembered I started this thread for noir and hard boiled crime fiction and films.

MTDS - Yeah, the Raymond stuff - I've never read any, but I was aware of him "at the time" (I guess I mean around back when he did the Gallon Drunk collab). He always seemed like an intriguing character - sounded like he had a 'literary' career, kind of, went a bit underground in a post Aristocratic low level crim kind of way then resurfaced with that really bleak neo-noir quartet before he checked out. I've been meaning to get some of work for ages, but for some reason never have. Intrigued to learn about the potential TV adaptions, although that would make sense in a post David Peace kind of way.
(Good thread BTW)

Anyone read Andrew Vachss? The Official Website of Andrew Vachss : The Zero 5.0laf

The problem I imagine at the time with the alleged TV series would have been some of the imagery, some very sexual and graphic. It would also be hard to capture the very British seediness of the books and the bleakness.

This is a real good book on American hard boiled writers of the 80s when the genre had a bit of a resurgence.

Probably end up quite diluted, as you suggest. But you know, 'grim seediness' is selling those novels to me. As well, prose is prose - you can never really ever adapt, because very often the feeling is in the texture of the language.

Are they still in print?

What, Derek Raymond? Yeah, looking at what's on Amazon. A lot of his old stuff too by the looks of it.

Bugger!!

I thought you meant Paul.

I'd just ordered a load of 70's editions of Mayfair so i could join in the chat. :doh:

I might have to get them too. I had to get rid of all my crime novels, over 1000 of them when the boy MTDS was born as I had them in what would be his bedroom.

A thousand?

Wow!!! Were they all pulpy paperbacks or hardback similar to the Sci-Fi book club ones doing the rounds in the sixties and seventies?

Good job I don't have any real human attachments. I get to keep everything. Including carrier bags.

Paperbacks. This was in the days when charity shops still sold books over a year old and you could pick up loads of reprints from the 60s of older crime novels that hadn't been republished in years. Also there was a fantastic resurgence in noir/hardboiled writing in the 80s/early 90s. I also used to collect a lot of American imports.

I'm gonna get rid of the boy to make way for the books.

You could always use your cellar for books rather than your 'other' hobbies.

All this noir talk has made this book pop into my head, "The Dogs of Winter" by Kem Nunn...mystical surfer noir. I first heard of him on the inner sleeve of Sonic Youth's "Sister" lp where they reference his first book "Tapping the Source" and James Ellroy's Lloyd Hopkins novels.

Well, my folks always told me that nothing will illuminate one's real priorities like having kids.
'Joking' aside, you're making me nostalgic for that golden age of charity shops and dodgy market stalls when everywhere was rammed to the rafters with knackered second books that you could browse for days and never truly get your head round. No more, it seems.

There used to be an excellent second hand shop in Manchester which was a real mix of academia, crime novels, comics, vintage porn and sci fi. The bloke who run it had no hands and was fitted with two fixed plastic hands that looked like he'd stolen them from a mannequin.

I like it!
Thinking back to that time (it does feel like an era that's gone), you used to get book shops that'd spring up for a few weeks, months at a time, then disappear. In cellars and knackered buildings, back when Leeds had a grimmer, nastier edge. And they'd all be run by really strange men. I can't remember any striking prosthetics, just people with slimy looking gums who maybe just stood a bit too close or something. I remember bits of porn and bits of Marxism on the same shelves, all garbled together. It all seemed to die out with the coming of the 21st century.

There was another shop near to where I used to live run by a huge fat man who didn't bother with shelves having everything stacked floor to ceiling. Also he stacked books in rows in front of each other so you couldn't get to them without causing a paper avalanche. This place was like a warren with only space for one person to walk at any given time or place. How the owner managed to squeeze his way through the shop still puzzles me to this day.

I presume the internet killed off these type of shops, that and the phase when shops, especially charity shops, would mark up the price of anything older than five years and class it as collectable. My local Oxfam did just that with loads of 60s garage punk reissues I gave them. They had them in the window priced as original releases! And yes it was the boy who again played havoc with my vinyl collection too. Bastard.