The MoFo Top 100 Film Noir Countdown

Noir Time

03-05-24

Originally Posted by seanc

..
You are going to hear a few things a lot from me in this countdown due to Noir being a plot heavy genre. Here is the first of one of those things, just saw Le Corbeau a couple years ago. Based on my star rating is was mid for me, but I don�t remember it at all. I said in my short review that I wish it had been fleshed out more. That it didn�t hold my interest with the mystery.

I've seen both of today's reveals. I started my film interest with a yin for all Barbara Stanwyck films

Sorry, Wrong Number is a good one for Hitchcock fans as it falls into the Hitch-thriller film trope. It's a good movie but I don't like thrillers per se if it involves a helpless victim being tormented for the duration of the film as they fight for their lives...and some noirs especially Hitch 'noirs' fit into that category.

John-Connor

Registered User

03-05-24

Months of preparation and somehow Sorry, Wrong Number starring Lancaster and Stanwyck (of all actors) slipped under my radar?

Watchlisted! Seen 0/2, good start.

Reveal presentation art work looks good, nice job hosting team!

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Citizen Rules

Noir Time

03-05-24

Originally Posted by dadgumblah

Of the 1-pointers, I've only seen They Drive By Night and that was so long ago I can't remember too much about it, so I need to catch it again. I'm really looking forward to seeing Crime Wave because I dig me some Sterling Hayden. And we're off!

I'm a big fan of Sterling Hayden and Crime Wave is my favorite Sterling Hayden performance, he's just so Sterling Hayden in that film!

Originally Posted by CosmicRunaway

Same! I love noir, but my mind just lumps it all together and it's really hard to keep films straight. I also have a feeling there are going to be a lot of films on this Countdown that I've actually seen but just don't remember.

Me too, even when working on the ballots I'd say to myself, here's one I haven't seen, then I'd look it up on IMDB and realize I just watched a few weeks ago. Noirs have crazy similar title.

Originally Posted by Allaby

I've seen both Le Corbeau and Sorry, Wrong Number. I thought they were just okay and rated them a 6/10.

Batting a 1000!

CosmicRunaway

Winner by Default

03-05-24

As others have already said, I love the format for the reveals, so great job there CR!

Le Corbeau was nominated in the 3rd Noir HoF, and this is what I wrote about it at the time:

Originally Posted by CosmicRunaway

Le Corbeau (1943)
Directed by: Henri Georges Clouzot
Starring: Pierre Fresnay, Pierre Larquey, Ginette Leclerc

At the time of Le Corbeau's release, most films in France featured some form of escapism for its citizens, as audiences did not need to be reminded that informants were everywhere, and that you could even be betrayed by those closest to you. Instead of supplying any kind of relief, Clouzot took an incredibly daring chance with this dark, scandalous thriller that is steeped in paranoia. A film like this could not have been made in America, since it contains a lot of content that the Hays Code would have simply forbidden.

Le Corbeau provides a scathing view of the bourgeoisie, and contains social commentary that is still applicable to this day. Rumours and slander can forever alter a person's reputation regardless of their merit, and sometimes truths can have unintended consequences. The dangers of mass hysteria are also ever relevant, and hit particularly hard during the current global pandemic. So it's a shame that many perceived this film as an explicit condemnation of the French, and went as far as banning Clouzot from working in the country. It's scope is not that narrow.

While the film doesn't contain many of the elements that have since become synonymous with noir, its bleak vision of the world certainly fits into the genre. No character, not even the children, remain unblemished. Some of the lightning effects, especially those in the later scenes, do provide a touch of that familiar aesthetic as well. The mystery surrounding the titular Corbeau is quite intriguing, though its final revelations are not that shocking. I did find the conclusion satisfying regardless, and am glad that the film was nominated.

I liked it well enough, but it didn't manage to make my list. I think I saw part of Sorry, Wrong Number on tv ages ago, but don't remember anything about it.

Seen: 1/2

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John W Constantine

Alias: John Utah

03-05-24

Two good selections to start us off. Watched both a while ago, remember positive things for both. Le Corbeau may have been one of the first noirs I remember watching and really enjoying.

Citizen Rules

Noir Time

03-05-24

We also watched Le Corbeau in the Noir III HoF, that's where I seen it and was impressed. I might have voted for it but it's been so long since I last watched it I hardly remember it, other than liking it.

An excerpt of my old review:

Le Corbeau (1943)

Very interesting seeing a film that was made in occupied France under the watchful eye of the Nazis, that alone makes this worth watching.
The plot of someone writing 'poison pen' letters in a small town and causing all sorts of mayhem and suspicion, made for lots of tension, especially in occupied France were suspicion could end one up in front of a Nazi firing squad.

Wartime propaganda? After WWII the free French claimed this film made by a German film company in occupied France was demeaning to the French people and the French resistances....Nah, that's not what the film is doing. It's telling a real event than occurred in a small French Town in 1917. If Le Corbeau had been made immediately after the war it would've been hailed as a homage to the French resistances...and the movie's suspicious & spying town's people akin to the French collaborators who worked with the Germans. But sometimes a movie is just a movie with no hidden agenda as is the case here with Le Corbeau.

Thursday Next

I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

03-05-24

Seen Le Corbeau but it didn't make my list. I wonder how much foreign noir will make the countdown.

Siddon

Registered User

03-05-24

Originally Posted by Siddon

Le Corbeau (1943)

A cynical doctor is torn apart by mysterious letters in occupied France in Le Corbeau (1943). Henri-Georges Clouzot is a master of suspense and storytelling he's one of my favorite film-makers. While noir wasn't officially defined until a few years later Le Corbeau might be the first deconstruction of the genre. In 99% of noirs focus around a murder or a theft but Clouzot's work is more focused the elements of a crime rather than a major crime. In a lot of ways it builds towards what should be the film rather what we get is a prequel to a story we don't need to be told about.

Our lead is a doctor accused of sexual and moral crimes in a small town. He's giving women abortions and cheating on housewives, I'd imagine two huge crimes for the 40's. Germain is a strange man in himself a pitiless individual who is a stranger coming into town. Is this a man on the run (another theme in noir's)...well I'm not going to spoil that for you but for a subplot that's a pretty good one. Our narrator is unreliable which is really smart in a poison pen story.

Clouzot also refuses to give the audience any violence, all the death occurs off-screen we are only left with the results. Clouzot doesn't want you get tension from who lives or who dies it's more who's going to open and read a letter. It's subversion at it's best.

And yet even though it subverts and deconstructs it also does something even more important. The best noir's use metaphors that stand the test of time and in this film you can't help but see the comparisons to Nazi's taking in undesirables during this era. The film was funded by German's during the war and banned by the French after it...guess they missed the subtext. Fortunately the film and film-maker helped launch the French New Wave.

One of two foreign noir's to make my list...and my nomination for a previous Noir Hall of Fame. I adore Clouzot and this is one of his more complicated and brief films.

beelzebubble

Registered User

03-05-24

I haven't seen Le Corbeau. I have seen Sorry, Wrong Number, but it didn't make much of a dent on my consciousness.

Holden Pike

One Ornery Sumbitch

03-05-24

The Crimson Kimono (1959) was my one-pointer.

Sam Fuller made several classic Noirs, one or two of which will almost surely show up on the countdown. The Crimson Kimono isn't one of the better known Fuller flicks, but I have always loved it. Well ahead of its time culturally, it opens with a very memorable sequence where a stripper, stage name Sugar Torch, witnesses a murder in the backstage dressing room and is chased into the busy neon night where she is gunned down in the street. Those headline-making murders draw a pair of Detectives, Charlie (Glenn Corbett) and Joe (James Shigata), co-workers and friends despite their racial differences, working the Little Tokyo beat of Post-War Los Angeles. A portrait of Sugar Torch in a kimono seems to point to a new geisha theme she was working on for her act and their investigation leads them to a pretty artist (Victoria Shaw), who Charlie is instantly drawn to. While she likes Charlie just fine, she feels a much stronger connection to Joe. This love triangle brings tension between the two friends and complicates the investigation.

Much like Robert Towne a generation later with Chinatown, Fuller knew a Los Angeles cop who worked that area, a man like Joe who was Nisei, Japanese born in America, who struggled to deal with racism while mired in the clash of cultures for his seedy job. Shigata, who you all know as the ill-fated Mr. Takagi in the Christmas classic Die Hard, is strong playing the conflicted Joe. Strippers and interracial lovers would have been dicey material for a Hollywood movie in the 1980s, so you can imagine how Fuller's Crimson Kimono must have played in 1959!

I just may have at least one more Sam Fuller movie on my ballot. Stay tuned.

HOLDEN'S BALLOT
25. The Crimson Kimono (DNP)

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mrblond

Society ennobler, last seen in Medici's Florence

03-05-24

None of the first reveals is in my portfolio of seen film-noirs.

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Citizen Rules

Noir Time

03-05-24

The Crimson Kimono (1959)...I watched this back when Holden sent in his ballot. I had never seen it before but the premise sounded interesting and it was directed by one of my favorite directors, Sam Fuller...so I watched it. Enjoyed it too. The Crimson Kimono has a fresh feel about it when compared to other late 1950s noir. I'd say it was ahead of it's time and that's thanks to Fuller who never forces scenes though staging, composition and blocking but allows his actors to dominate the scenes which feels more like how many good indie films today are made. I thought the racism angle was very balanced as it never gets preachy and is seen from both sides so that it's not an agenda film. My wife liked this movie too.

Wyldesyde19

The trick is not minding

03-05-24

They Drive by Night was my 1 pointer. Big fan of Walsh.

Of the reveals, Le Corbeau was on my list. Somewhere in my top ten but I don�t remember where.

Haven�t seen the other one.

1/2

Kaplan

A genuine idiot!

03-05-24

I remember Le Corbeau as excellent but never thought of it for the list, and I would have had to watch it again remember it for sure.

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SpelingError

AKA Popcorn Reviews

03-05-24

I watched Le Corbeau and enjoyed it, but it didn't make my ballot. Here's something I wrote on it in Takoma's thread:

I watched this last week or so. Not at all what I was expecting, which might have colored my rating for the film somewhat, but it still managed to move me as the ruminations on the various ways gossip can impact people were very moving. I also liked how the tension of the poison pill letters was depicted. It didn't result in a conventional thriller so much as their normal lives being occasionally disrupted by the letters to varying degrees.

I haven't seen Sorry, Wrong Number.

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cricket

Registered User

03-05-24

I don't believe I've seen Sorry, Wrong Number because I don't recognize the title, great cast though.

Seen the other and liked it.

GulfportDoc

Registered User

03-05-24

Originally Posted by Citizen Rules

#100 Le Corbeau (1943)

Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Production: Continental Films
Cast: Pierre Fresnay, Ginette Leclerc, Micheline Francey

20 Points, 3 List

'A French village doctor becomes the target of poison-pen letters sent to village leaders, accusing him of affairs and practicing abortion.'

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A little commentary from 4 years ago:

Le Corbeau (1943)

I had never seen this film before an older HOF, so it was interesting to see how the French were doing it in 1943�at least how director Henri Clouzot was. It�s a bit of a jumble of a film, more a melodramatic mystery than a film noir.

Having seen no French films from the war era, the way this film was done might have been typical of its type, but I have nothing to compare it to. Translated �The Raven� or �The Crow�, the story relates how certain people in a French town start receiving threatening or accusatory anonymous letters which put them into compromising situations and even death. Various suspects are accused before the culprit is dealt with in the end by a subject�s spouse.

There seemed to be a lot of yelling in the film, which was contrasted by some provocative sexual seduction moments. There was a very nice Hitchcockian scene where a letter is dropped from the rafters onto a church congregation whose attention is drawn upward as the letter flutters to the floor. There were some themes that would have been censored in the U.S. involving prostitution, abortion, and the like. Shot during the Occupation, reportedly the film was produced by Germans in France for two reasons: One, those themes would not have been tolerated in Germany, and, two, the themes were likely meant to show the disdain for, and immorality of the French people.

The film put me in mind of a cinematic presentation of a radio drama�something similar to pictures commonly seen in the early 1930s U.S. Le Corbeau is worth a watch, and has a few nice elements, but it�s really more of a B movie, not in the same league of some of the better noirs of the 1940s.

Iroquois

Welcome to the human race...

03-05-24

no votes. haven't seen either.

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Harry Lime

BANNED FROM VIENNA

03-05-24

I like Le Corbeau but it's been a while. And sorry but I haven't seen Sorry, Wrong Number but with Stanwyck and Lancaster seems like I need to add it to the watchlist.

The reveals look great, CR. Loving the idea of including stills from the films.

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