The MoFo Top Film Noir Countdown - Preliminary Thread

You got it!

Oh my.

Yep. We're gonna neo all the noir out of you all!

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Just so you know, he contacted me for my Film Noir and you didn't for your Neo Noir, therefore only his list is valid and I will hold this grudge forever.

It's because you don't have an avatar.

sent in a list of 25 films. guess i didn't notice the rule that excluded pre-1940 films, which i'm just going to regard as a pity as that's cutting out a lot of good films arbitrarily. in any case, this meant that 6 of my picks were ineligible and, rather than choosing to keep asking me for eligible replacements after bringing my attention to 1 error they noticed, op just decided to skip the rest and give me an incomplete ballot of 20 films. don't think i've ever had an incomplete ballot for any countdown i've participated in on this website, but i guess it's thematically appropriate that it happened with the noir countdown, a film movement built around things never going right. whatever.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

I'm a man of mystery.

That happens when you disappear for a couple of months!

It was 4 films that you needed replacements for. I did message you but you hadn't responded by the next day. I needed to have all of the points compiled so that I didn't hold up Thief and Yoda, therefore I had to remove those 4 movies, but your other ballot movies were still counted.

However since Yoda has said the countdowns won't be ready to start for a few more days, you can send me replacements for those 4 movies and I will add the points into the master list. But I need your replacements within 24 hours, not in several days.

It's widely accepted for the cut-off of the film noir period to be 1940 to 1959, which is the reason why those limits were set up and detailed in the opening post of the thread. This was discussed and decided way back in the threads when we were choosing the topic for the countdown.

It's clearly stated in the rules and procedures on the first post of the thread, but I guess it's thematically appropriate that it happened with the noir countdown, a film movement about characters that don't necessarily follow the rules

You know where to find me. What do you think I am? Mysterious?

Yeah, the film noir era is usually considered as from 1941 (with The Maltese Falcon) to 1959 (perhaps with Odds Against Tomorrow).

There were certainly noir style films all the way back to the silents, but the Hollywood film noir movement was arguably launched with The Maltese Falcon (some might say 1940's The Letter), and drew to an end in 1959.

Yeah, all joking aside, I remember that being the decision back when we settled on the topic of Film Noir; to use what is the most common timeframe attributed to classic film noir. Sure, there are a lot of pre-1940 noir-ish films, but then when do we stop?

duly noted, revised ballot has been submitted.

I always considered the film noir era as being from 1941-1958. The first two Noir HoFs I ran had that criteria. For this countdown I went with 1940 to 1959 as that way it spanned a full two decades...I'm still watching noirs btw!

Thanks, I will recalculate.

An international man of mystery?

Re the noir movement: '41, with The Maltese Falcon is a good place to cite the start of the era of noir because Bogart's Sam Spade began a remarkable change: the detective not as a law keeper, but as an anti-hero that lived by his own interests and conscience. He's not a lawman, but a private eye beholding only to himself. That quickly became a trope. And the artistic decision by writers and directors to portray that circumstance was pretty distinctly American. German expressionism certainly influenced the chiaroscuro cinematography of American noir, but the noir sentiment itself was uniquely American.

You're right that film noir was an American film movement, which did of course influence other countries' film makers to do their own noirish thing. After the close of the 1950s it was like a light went off for noir and it was done and over. With the start of the 1960s the baby boomers came of age and styles, culture and film making changed to suit them. Though some say the last film noir was 1961's Blast of Silence. Which I've never seen.