The MoFo Top Film Noir Countdown - Preliminary Thread

Oh behave.

I almost included Blast of Silence because it's phenomenal but wasn't sure if I considered it part of the proper film noir movement (glad I have a pretty narrow definition of the genre because I didn't look up any of the parameters before voting).

Huge recommendation and it's the connective tissue between the likes of This Gun For Hire to Le Samourai and Taxi Driver.

Blast of Silence is a suberb dark noir both directed and starring Allen Baron on a minuscule budget. It's not so much that the story of a hitman is particularly noir, but the mood and photography definitely are. I'm of the school that it's possibly the first, and one of the best, neo-noirs. I think you'd like it, CR.

Blast of Silence is worth watching if only for its deliciously noir narration. I’d consider one of the first neo-noirs.

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I may go back to hating you. It was more fun.

I say this not to litigate the eligibility based on release dates, but just with the acknowledgement that with any strict classification, there are probably going to be some edge cases that are going to break those rules, but if I were to try to name post-1960 movies that I would probably classify as classic-noir, Cape Fear is the first one that comes to mind.

If I were to try to pick up on one of the subtle differences between what would get lumped in with neo-noir as opposed to noir, would probably the presence of the classic Hollywood acting as opposed to method acting which started to rise in the 50s.

Ultimately that's how I'd consider Blast of Silence too.

I wouldn't consider Cape Fear a noir. It's pure thriller and a fore funner to modern horror films with a boogie man Mitchum chasing helpless victims throughout the movie.
I see what you're saying but I've seen so many 40s-50s film noir that I can say that many if not most have actors delivering their lines as if they were living the character.

I agree that the strict lines kinda hurt certain films...I think Cape Fear is one of the last noir's while Elevator to the Gallows is the first neo-noir. But because one film came out in 58 and the other in 62 I ended up putting them on different ballots.

Imagine my disappointment when I couldn't vote for Strange Days. I watched it just for the games.

I'd say that doesn't sound mutually exclusive with being a noir, seeing as how noir overlapped with a number of different genres. One of the characteristics of noir is often the use of light and shadow. It's been a while, so it's possible my memory is super-imposing a number of different things onto the movie that weren't actually as present as I remember them being there, which might cause me to revise that assessment whenever the time comes that I rewatch it (fwiw, the first line of wikipedia does describe it as a noir psychological thriller, so my recollection doesn't sound completely off-base).

Possibly. I was just trying to mentally pick apart one reason why the neo-noirs feels different than the noirs (not factoring the retro-noirs, which are a different beast). Wouldn't be surprised if the guess was off.

I'm sure a lot of people would agree with you about Cape Fear and of course it's totally fine for us to have a different viewpoint on what is and isn't noir...The more noir I watch the more I realize that the noir definition is ambiguous at best and my opinion is just that an opinion and open to change. BTW what Cape Fear were you talking about? I just remembered there was a remake of that movie.

I've said this before and I'll say it again...Thriller isn't a genre. Cape Fear isn't a Thriller because Thrillers don't exist on their own. Any and all Thriller's have to be something else they don't stand on their own as a singular genre. They can be action films, horror films and dramas but a Thriller that is just a thriller...that's only Michael Jackson.

...And no one's gonna save you from the beast about to strike.

Right, Cape Fear is not a noir, nor a neo-noir It's a psychological suspense film, nearly horror. It's at best reminiscent of noir due to its black & white filming, many night time scenes, along with Bernard Herrmann's excellent score. It was a pretty shocking film for its day. Reportedly many cuts were necessary in order to keep the censors from giving it an "X" rating.

I didn't know until recently that the picture was directed from storyboards originally made by Alfred Hitchcock, the first director on the film.

Strange Days was eligible for the neo-noir countdown

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Re: Cape Fear, I haven't seen the original but there are some places and sources that do cite it as a noir or neo-noir. As we are getting ready to start this countdown soon, I think it's better to acclimate ourselves to that notion regarding many films.

Also the loosening and eventual elimination of the Hays Code in 1968 changed the ways these stories were told, so that also led to newer films feeling like they had a similar, but at the same time different, flavor.

Was the Cape Fear remake eligible for the Neo Noir countdown? I've not seen it either, just curious.

You needed two of the three websites to get it eligible. It was only eligible on one website.

Yes. Through and through:

• identified as an "American noir psychological thriller film" on Wikipedia
• "neo-noir" is the first keyword listen on its IMDb page
• it is included under "Noir and Dark Dramas" themes on Letterboxd
• it has a "film noir" tag on TheMovieDB

I'm planning on watching all of Gregory Peck's films, though I'm still very much watching noir but I will get to Cape Fear. I did just see an Ida Lupino film which she co-wrote and starred in that was tagged noir but really to me seemed more like Cape Fear...it's Woman in Hiding (1950) and Ida is stalked by her conniving husband and she goes on the run pretending to be dead and making more stupid choices than a teen in a slasher horror film. I wasn't impressed.