Film Noir HoF - Part 2

On one of those 'free' movie sites.

I guess he is all right in "The Sweet Smell of Success", too, but the other two movies that I really like him in are "Birdman of Alcatraz" and "Field of Dreams". Of course his role in FOD isn't necessarily a big one, but it is a very significant one, and I really like how he almost doesn't put much effort into that role. That is exactly the way that I think Doc Graham should be portrayed and he does it so well.

Well, she's been my girl crush since I was a kid. I would say that my favorites of hers would definitely include "The Killers", but the rest of the list would have to be:
The Barefoot Contessa
Mogambo
One Touch of Venus
The Great Sinner
Show Boat (I don't care if this is kind of incorrect casting - if a person wants to be that picky - I still like her in it)
Night of the Iguana (I don't recall whether or not this was on my 60's list. I want to say that it was, but I am just not sure - maybe it was one that I removed from the list just before I sent it in)

CR, did I tell you that I went to the Ava Gardner museum in Smithfield, North Carolina? I think I did. Her gravesite is also in that town.

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I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity - Edgar Allan Poe

Face in the Crowd (1957)

I love this film, I loved it the first time I watched it and even more so after a rewatch. It's a hard hitting expose about the sleazy world of media, advertising and power...with a megalomaniac drifter who has no real talent except in self promotion. I couldn't help think just how prophetic this movie was. In 1957 it might have seemed far fetched and indeed it bombed at the box office, but in the 21st century, I couldn't help thinking about another American media mogul who has risen to dizzying heights of political power, all the while promoting himself as he insults those around him.

Anyway I regress, so back to this wonderful film. Elia Kazan was on a role in the 1950s. For most of that decade he was America's number one director with some big movie hits under his belt (until he testified before congress members in the infamous McCarthy Commie hunt.) Kazan liked doing social commentary, especially about injustices....And A Face in the Crowd is full of self reflection at our unbridled love of media celebrity. The bigger the hype the more we swallow it. Kazan and his script writer Budd Schulberg knew this and together give us one helluva powerful movie...The movie is constructed differently than most films, which is why I say it's an expose film.

Kazan was big on casting unique and new talent in his films. Here he introduces for the first time, Andy Griffith and Lee Remick. Griffith was anything but subtle in this role and had mainly worked in theater as a sort of comic personality...which suits the character of Lonesome Rhodes to a tee. I couldn't see any other actor doing this part, Griffith owns it. And Kazan and Schuberg thought so too, they searched for a long time until they found the one actor who they thought could pull off this role.

In the 2005 documentary Facing the Past, that was included on the DVD extras, Andy Griffith said Kazan encouraged the actors to use method acting and to visual their roles as if they were living them. Griffith says he became so emotionally involved in becoming Lonesome Rhodes that he suffered emotional difficulties for it. In a nutshell the man owns the character!

Gosh, I'm long winded! Sorry! But I'm excited about this film!....I'll wrap it up by saying the writing is excellent as is the directing. Patricia Neil is perfectly cast...and Lee Remick choose a damn fine film to make her movie premier in. BTW did anybody think of the media agent Joey (Anthony Franciosa) as a younger Paul Giamatti? I swear he reminded me of him.

Oh and I loved the whole Vitajex scene, very different than the rest of the film, but it works wonders....and how naughty for the 1950s!

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A very solid film.
I loved the script and how it was written! The plot was very complex and always trying to mislead the viewer. I knew who shot Miles right when he was killed but I guess that's because there is 70 years of filmmaking getting influenced by this film and films like it
The soundtrack has some ups and downs and the acting was quite nice from almost everyone. I hated the femme fatale but I guess that's because of the character and not the way Mary Astor played it.
I liked Bogart for most of the time, but I still think he can't act whenever he has a girl around! I simply cannot believe him when he says he loves someone even knowing his character is supposed to be a cold one. And his reaction on the moment he picks up the phone to know his colleague got killed is laughable. He couldn't show less surprise if he was dead. On the other hand, noone looks better on a Fedora spitting those oneliners and playing with the bad guys' minds.
To me, the actor that made the film was Sydney Greenstreet. I loved every single scene he was in especially those last 20 minutes on the apartment.

He's good! and that was Greenstreet's first movie performances and he reportedly was very nervous about it.

I'm watching Face in the Crowd and after 15 minutes this promises to become a all time favourite for me.

Friendly Mushroom, just told me he's unsure if he can finish the Hof by the deadline. So his nomination, Spellbound is On Hold and is no longer required watching. If he's able to finish this HoF his movie will go back to being required to watch. It's a great film BTW so you can still watch it if you want. And thank you to Friendly Mushroom for taking the time to PM, I appreciate it

Also

I haven't heard a thing from Pelicula Pelican. So his movie, The Maltese Falcon is also On Hold for now. If he shows up and completes the Hof it will be required to watch.

Kiss Me Deadly

I know two things about this movie.
1 – This was the first film noir that I’d ever seen. That was over 20 years ago now, and that was the only time that I’d seen it.
2 – It is a Mike Hammer story.
Those are the only things that I could tell you about this. I remembered nothing else about it (except that I do kind of remember her doing her ballet workout - of all things. )

I can’t say that I was overly fond of this one. While its take on the Cold War helped to make this a little different for a Noir story, I didn’t think the story was particularly interesting.

The acting was so-so for me. Ralph Meeker was very good as Mike Hammer. Everyone else was OK. Except for Maxine Cooper. I just thought that she was bad. She spoke so softly. I could barely hear her. And when I did, it wasn’t too impressive. I really just could’ve completely done without her character.

Even though this wasn’t a movie that I’m too enthusiastic about, there were some things that I enjoyed. I got a kick out of the violence. Especially the scene with the car. So, it had that going for it.

Since I have seen this movie before, and now I have watched it again, I will probably give it one more watch sometime in the future. I don’t know why, but I want to like this one. So I will definitely give it another try again.

I Confess

I thought that I maybe saw this one, but I’ve never seen it before. I have, however, seen the ending. I didn’t know how this movie would end, but I remembered what I’d seen as it went along.

I really liked this movie, and I liked the idea of the storyline a lot. There were some issues that I had with it, but they were issues more with certain aspects of a particular character than the movie itself.

And there were 2 other things that kind of bothered me, too. Two little things, but still they weren’t little in connection to the crime.


But as long as I am talking about Inspector Larrue, I HATED him!! I hated him so much! I hated him to the point where I was kind of started to REALLY dislike Karl Malden! Malden was good in the movie. I just absolutely could not stand who he was playing.

I thought Clift was fine as Father Michael Logan. He wasn’t given a lot to work with. He was quiet and reserved. That is exactly how I think he should’ve been portrayed. I wasn’t too crazy about Anne Baxter, though. I don’t know if she just didn’t seem right for the role, or if she didn’t seem right paired with Montgomery Clift. Something seemed “off” about her being cast in that film.

The ending wasn’t what I expected at all (of course, it would’ve helped me if I’d remembered that I’d already seen the ending!).

But I liked this movie a lot. I kind of think it is one of Hitchcock's more underrated pictures. And it was good that I finally saw it from the beginning of the movie this time so that it could all be connected to the ending that I saw once before.

Did you watch this on the Criterion Collection DVD? If so there should have been a different ending included as a DVD extra. It probably wouldn't change your view on the film. I just think it's neat when a movie has more than one ending. Did you like the glowing box scene? Supposedly it inspired Tarantino to do the glowing brief case in Pulp Fiction.


So true!

What you said up there, I find very interesting...So now I'm curious what about Inspector Larrue rubbed you the wrong way?

I've only seen four of the 11 so far, but I'll crank a few more out later this week.

Yes, that is the one that I watched. Criterion is the one that never provides subtitles. And you know I need my subtitles. They definitely would've helped me with being able to understand what Maxine Cooper was saying. I never even thought about looking at the extras that night. I think I read somewhere recently that there was a different ending. Did they actually show the scene or was it just discussed?

I quite enjoyed that scene. I'd heard that before about Tarantino. That moment reminds me of something else, though, and I can't really think of what it could be. I don't know if I saw something similar in another movie at some point or not. I don't know.

I don't know if it was his attitude. Or maybe it was the attitude mixed in with his need to prove that Logan did it that aggravated me so much. All I know for sure is that whenever he opened his mouth, I just wanted to reach through the screen and punch him in the face.



I watched "Kansas City Confidential" and "A Face In the Crowd" a few nights ago. I have "The Night of the Hunter" (another re-watch) and "Touch of Evil" (I want to say it is a re-watch but I am not really sure) here to watch within the next few days.

I know I said I was planning on a marathon of these films this weekend but it didn't happen. It should have but it didn't. Yes, I have another library tale to tell! ALL of the rest of the movies were in at the library. I had to get there by Thursday evening. But something came up and I knew I wasn't going to make it. So I did something that I have done before. I went there AS SOON AS IT OPENED to get my requested items off the shelf and check them out. It works! I have done it before! I get into that library and the woman was already stacking all of the requested items on the cart that weren't picked up. I said to her "Oh, I made it here so that I could make sure I would check those out today". With some sort of superior tone to her voice she said "I'm sorry. We only hold them for 5 days". I said "Yes, but I have been able to get here early enough to still check them out before". And all she did was say "I'm sorry" and turned away with the cart full of my movies! They were RIGHT there! She could've let me check them out! I hate it when people have that little bit of "power" that they can use over others.

So I requested all of them again, and they are all in transit. Hopefully by next weekend I will be able to so what I said I would do this weekend and get the rest of these watched. That just made me so mad, though.

[QUOTE}I quite enjoyed that scene. I'd heard that before about Tarantino. That moment reminds me of something else, though, and I can't really think of what it could be. I don't know if I saw something similar in another movie at some point or not. I don't know.[/quote]Could it be Repo Man with the glowing car trunk?


Ha, I agree. I think he was annoyingly confident and yet stupid in his police work. A bad combination. I liked the movie, but I think everyone was poorly cast (except the German couple, I like them and I believe they were German actors brought in just to do the part). I'm not sure who would replace the detective, the girl and the priest?


Oh man that's wasn't really cool of her at all!

Sorry I am late. Been a hell of a month. Time for me to catch up on some of these movies. Luckily I have seen the majority of them.

The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)

This was one of the first Noirs I sought out when I was first getting interested in this film genre. It has all the trappings of a classic Noir. A grizzled gumshoe, a femme fatale, a murder / caper, and Humphrey Bogart as an added plus. It is essential viewing. Very good overall. I admit some of the more sudden twist in the film (which are normal for Noir movies) did jar me a little at first, but after getting more exposure to the genre I got used to it. Still a fantastic film. And truly the stuff dreams are made of.

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Fear and Loathing in MoFo... The Gunslinger 45's Top 50 Favorite Films

In the 10 Ring: Gunslinger45's reviews

Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)

One of the very first Noirs I saw. And also one of the earliest to knock me on my ass. I saw this movie after I saw Citizen Kane. Kane is great and deserves it's praise, but it failed to wow me. This movie did what Kane did not. I was hooked from the first uncut sweeping segment of the movie and my eyes were fixed to the screen for the rest of the movie. Actors include Wells himself as a the crooked police Captain and Charlton Heston as a drug enforcement agent. And while I thought one drugging scene was going to go one way, (and it probably didn't due to it being the 50's) and it felt just a little off. But nonetheless a great flick. Probably my favorite Orson Wells movie.

Hey Gunslinger good to see ya! If you've seen these before and can remember them then you don't have to watch them again. Hopefully there's some hidden treasure Noirs here you haven't seen. I've seen them all before, except I Confess, that was a first watch for me.

BTW, I love Kiss Me Deadly, it might not be the most cinematic or polished film, but it's raw, like listening to a garage band. Just something satisfying about it, it feels like pulp fiction style of writing, as done in True Detective and other pulp fiction mags.

The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946)

Noir is a genre where sometimes the plots are played with very quick and loosely. Sometimes to the point where they might get a bit convoluted. The Big Sleep is no different. In fact it might be the shining example. But it is also one of the very best Noirs out there. You watch this movie and you are in for a great ride. The two biggest reasons are for Humphrey Bogart and the other reason is for Lauren Bacall. You want chemistry with all the heat of a Cold War nuke this is the flick to watch. Didn't exactly hurt that these two were real life lovers. Only adds to the realism. Bogie plays the legendary gumshoe Phillip Marlowe. Marlow dives into a scene of rich dames, crime, sleazy, pornography (or what they could pass as porn in those days), and various pieces of street walking scum.

Don't wrap your brain about trying to keep the story straight. Sit back, relax and enjoy.

Already on it. I will catch up with the flicks I have seen then watch Kansas City Confidential tonight.

I thought Kansas City Confidential was cool. Oh I have links to all the reviews/write ups done by us on the first page, so if you want to see what anyone else thought of one of the noms, the links are there on the 1st post.

Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)

My favorite Noir. I love Noir, and I love the Cold War. Put the two together and you have a recipe for pleasing my cinematic G spot. And no do not ask me to explain that last sentence.

Mike Hammer is a sleazy LA private detective with a VERY familiar relationship with his assistant. Hammer encounter a very young Cloris Leachman who asks him to "remember her." He digs deeper into her life and leads down a very dangerous rabbit hole that is way above the pay grade for a guy who does divorce cases. Particularly when it comes to the final scene. I fell in love with this movie when I saw it on Blu Ray from the Criterion collection. Has made me love the genre all the more, and gives me more excuses to buy the occasional Noir DVD.