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I agree completely with your assessment and I also enjoyed the movie quite a bit.

The Black Stallion - This is easily one of the best family movies out there while also being just a damn good film. It's a gorgeous undertaking with first time feature director Carroll Ballard and his cinematographer Caleb Deschanel carefully setting the right mood in the first half of the film set on a deserted island. First time actor Kelly Reno is outstanding as Alec Ramsey, the little shipwrecked boy who ends up forging an unshakeable bond with a wild stallion. Mickey Rooney also turns in a solid performance as retired jockey Henry Dailey, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. Teri Garr rounds out the small primary cast as Alec's supportive mother. The racing scenes are some of the most stirring and kinetic I've ever seen committed to film. Recommended to everyone regardless of age. I hope this makes the top 100 list. 95/100

EDIT: Just two quick recommendations. If you've haven't seen Never Cry Wolf or Fly Away Home by all means take the time to do so. They're also Carroll Ballard movies and they're also pretty darn good.

I think that aptly describes it.

As I said, the term was coined to describe an era and shift in American cinema.

As a “genre,” it’s nebulous enough to essentially mean nothing except vague notions of crime, detective, mystery and thriller that only becomes more vague as it goes.

M and Man Who Wasn’t There would certainly function outside as “Proto-noir” but they are not “Classic Film Noir.” They just aren’t. No matter how much Lang’s experience in the Weimar Republic influenced his approach to the genre when he came to America.

Arguing otherwise is like arguing that Jean Vigo was a part of French New Wave. He wasn’t. No matter how much his techniques anticipated the era and movement.

There was no genre to approach when Lang came to America. It was a consistent continuation of the work he had already been working in for years prior. Isn't it weird how many of the "classic" film noirs that were made by European exiles? Lang and the others didn't just adopt noirish stylings when they landed. All of the key significant aspects of the noir aesthetic were fully apparent in British-era Hitchcock and French/German crime dramas prior to 1940. That's the fact of the matter.

Disturbingly beautiful romantic dark comedy. This Vincent Gallo is a talented dude. The film, although totally American, felt like a European art house flick at times. I like where Gallo took the film and how it ended. Christina Ricci . Also dope cameo's by Mickey Rourke and Jean Michael Vincent.

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Which is why he’s a pivotal figure in Film Noir when he comes to America.

As I said, it’s like arguing Jean Vigo is French New Wave. Film Noir describes the era of American cinema.

It’s why it’s such an opaque genre that falls into numerous sub genres with little connective tissue. One can retroactively apply the terminology and tropes to films that came before it and call it “noir” but that doesn’t change that classic Film Noir is an era of American cinema in the 40s and 50s.

That’s the fact of the matter.

Good movie.

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As I said, "All of the key significant aspects of the noir aesthetic were fully apparent in British-era Hitchcock and French/German crime dramas prior to 1940".


Setting your school books aside, if there is a key significant aspect of the noir aesthetic that you can show to be "distinctly American", then let's see it. If Film Noir is an established aesthetic, then that definition applies to those filmmakers who established the aesthetic.

I could have easily included this in my top 25, but it didn't even occur to me. Just one of those great movies you don't think about in the crunch.

I had no idea that Ballard did Fly Away Home. I remember that was playing in a bus during some trip I took and muted it. If I had known it was the guy who also did Stallion and Never Cry Wolf I might have at least pretended to be interested it.

The genre is distinctly American because it was used to describe the transition of American cinema into something more cynical and fixated on crime. It wasn’t used to describe the cynicism of films under the Weimar Republic, which have been heavily analyzed and scrutinized by film scholars for its own trends and idiosyncrasies, such as the “school book” (you serious dipping into anti-intellectualism with this one, JJ?) is From Caligari to Hitler by Siegfried Kracauer.*

In it, he denotes that one difference between the works of German Expressionism and American Film Noir is the notion of luck/chance. There’s a degree of determinism and fatalism in German cinema (including Lang’s work) that’s largely absent in Film Noir, which emphasizes choice and victim hood of chance. Detour would be a prime example of the difference.*

None of this is to say that the genre tropes are exclusive to Film Noir. Everything in film has precedent in some form or another. What I’m saying is you’re making a categorical mistake to say “well, it’s similar enough to be called noir!”*

I’m saying it’s a categorical mistake and it has nothing to do with tropes. If we’re going to go the “language evolves” route and go completely into semantics, as you’re apt to do, then it interests me about as much as saying movies shot digitally shouldn’t be called “films.” Noir as a genre is opaque enough that almost any melodrama or any crime film could be called that, which is why I haven’t indulged that area of discourse.*

It’s why I’ve been pretty overt in framing this in regards to formal and academic use of the phrase Film Noir. If you have no use for formal or academic accuracy of a phrase, then you also have no use for continuing your attempt at arguing with facts.

I don't see anything particularly intellectual about dogmatic distinctions. If Noir is a defined criteria of mood, theme and style, then those are the aspects worth discussing rather than arbitrary standards of time and nationality, especially when the designation comes from a different time and nation.


Hm. Strange that fatalism is a commonly ascribed theme in noir. There's also a book called Fatalism in American Film Noir, for example. But whatever. I guess the lack of chance in, say, You Only Live Once wouldn't count since it had the misfortune of being made in 1937.


Since I saw it on the front page, it reminds me of the similarly tenuous appelation of "slasher", a term formally coined to describe specifically American horror films of 70s and 80s. But despite the fact that the term was coined for these American films, it isn't the least bit controversial to apply the designation to the preceding Italian giallo as well as those prior landmarks, from Leopard Man to Psycho, that happen to fit the substance of the form. Saying that slashers can only be applied to American films from 1974-1989, the "classic era" of slashers, is asinine and provides little understanding of those things which make them distinct.

*shrugs*

Giallo are distinct and aren’t slashers either. Neither are Leopard Man and Psycho. So... Where do we go from here?

Try looking up from the map and viewing the territory?

Nah. I’m content in being correct.

Looks like we need to break off a conversation into its own thread.

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Being a lifelong procrastinator I kind of threw my top 25 list together at the last minute (just like I used to do with all my homework). But having reviewed it I don't think there's a clinker among them. I could have made room for The Black Stallion though.

Right you are about Bonnie and Clyde. We were living in NYC at the time. A good friend saw the movie, and was so knocked out that he took us to see it the next night. Then we were so impressed that WE went back to see it again. Talk about a film that changed horses mid stream emotionally!...

Many consider Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) to be the first true noir-- at least the first true American noir. It starred Peter Lorre, and included Elisha Cook, Jr. Directed by Boris Ingster at RKO.

But The Maltese Falcon suits me as the first noir. I love that film, and have seen it a dozen times. As far as the style, I personally favor detective noirs as the best examples. I must have watched The Big Sleep 20 times. Never get tired of it.

Right you are, John. It's a charming but off-beat film, eccentricity that was unusual for 1960, and VERY touching. My favorite Truffaut, and one of the best films of the 1960s.