When time permits, I may attempt to summarize the main points made, but it won't be this weekend, as we have our first show in the MIDCENTURY MADNESS series and I'll be in transit (both to/from SF) during that time.
SLANT’s “100 best noir films”
Posted by Don Malcolm on 4/14/2019, 2:58 pm
A recently published list that might provoke a sizable amount of discussion (since ratings lists tend to do that)...
I will keep the original list as presented, saving my own late-night annotations for a subsequent post. I have highlighted foreign noirs (italics) and neo-noirs (bold) for reference and present some stats for this list below. I'll wait for responses before presenting any annotations.
100-91: House of Bamboo (1955, Fuller, USA)
Stolen Death (1938, Tapiovaara, Finland)
Brighton Rock (1948, Boulting, UK)
One False Move (1992, Franklin, USA)
Caught (1949, Ophuls, USA)
While the City Sleeps (1956, Lang, USA)
The American Friend (1977, Wenders, Germany)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946, Garnett, USA)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950, Huston, USA)
The Killers (1946, Siodmak, USA)
90-81: Elevator to the Gallows (1957, Malle, France)
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959, Wise, USA)
Pepe le Moko (1937, Duvivier, France)
The Hitch-Hiker (1953, Lupino, USA)
The Breaking Point (1950, Curtiz, USA)
Inherent Vice (2014, Anderson, USA)
Ministry of Fear (1944, Lang, USA)
The Crimson Kimono (1959, Fuller, USA)
Le Deuxieme Souffle (1966, Melville, France)
La Nuit du Carrefour (1932, Renoir, France)
80-71: The Sound of Fury aka Try and Get Me! (1950, Endfield, USA)
The Big Knife (1955, Aldrich, USA)
Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950, Preminger, USA)
The Big Lebowski (1998, Coen, USA)
White Heat (1949, Walsh, USA)
L.A. Confidential (1997, Hanson, USA)
The Fallen Idol (1948, Reed, UK)
Mauvais Sang aka Bad Blood (1986, Carax, France)
You and Me (1938, Lang, USA)
La Bete Humaine (1938, Renoir, France)
70-61: Raw Deal (1948, Mann, USA)
The Stranger (1946, Welles, USA)
Quai des Orfevres (1947, Clouzot, France)
Crime Wave (1954, de Toth, USA)
The Phenix City Story (1955, Karlson, USA)
The Tall Target (1951, Mann, USA)
Ossessione (1943, Visconti, Italy)
Fargo (1996, Coen, USA)
Kansas City Confidential (1952, Karlson, USA)
Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock, USA)
60-51: Panique (1946, Duvivier, France)
The Prowler (1951, Losey, USA)
Cutter’s Way (1981, Passer, USA)
The Big Combo (1955, Lewis, USA)
Basic Instinct (1992, Verhoeven, USA)
The Naked Kiss (1964, Fuller, USA)
Side Street (1950, Mann, USA)
Mildred Pierce (1945, Curtiz, USA)
Blood Simple (1984, Coen, USA)
Gun Crazy (1950, Lewis, USA)
50-41: Act of Violence (1948, Zinnemann, USA)
Femme Fatale (2002, de Palma, USA)
Force of Evil (1948, Polonsky, USA)
Point Blank (1967, Boorman, USA)
Moonrise (1948, Borzage, USA)
The Narrow Margin (1952, Fleischer, USA)
The Killing (1956, Kubrick, USA)
Murder By Contract (1958, Lerner, USA)
High and Low (1963, Kurosawa, Japan) 100s
Taxi Driver (1976, Scorsese, USA)
40-31: Underworld USA (1961, Fuller, USA)
Mulholland Drive (2001, Lynch, USA)
You Only Live Once (1937, Lang, USA)
Breathless (1960, Godard, France)
Lost Highway (1997, Lynch, USA)
Odd Man Out (1947, Reed, UK)
Ace in the Hole (1951, Wilder, USA)
Night and the City (1950, Dassin, USA-UK)
Daisy Kenyon (1947, Preminger, USA)
The Reckless Moment (1949, Ophuls, USA)
30-21: They Live By Night (1949, Ray, USA)
Gilda (1946, C. Vidor, USA)
The Woman in the Window (1944, Lang, USA)
The Wrong Man (1956, Hitchcock, USA)
Blade Runner (1982, Scott, USA)
Night Moves (1975, Penn, USA)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976, Cassavetes, USA)
Blue Velvet (1986, Lynch, USA)
Le Samourai (1967, Melville, France)
Shoot the Piano Player (1960, Truffaut, France)
20-11: Laura (1944, Preminger, USA)
The Night of the Hunter (1955, Laughton, USA)
The Lady From Shanghai (1948, Welles, USA)
Sunset Boulevard (1950, Wilder, USA)
On Dangerous Ground (1951, Ray, USA)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Mackendrick, USA)
The Maltese Falcon (1941, Huston, USA)
Scarlet Street (1945, Lang, USA)
Pickup on South Street (1953, Fuller, USA)
Double Indemnity (1944, Wilder, USA)
10-1: Detour (1945, Ulmer, USA)
The Long Goodbye (1973, Altman, USA)
The Big Heat (1953, Lang, USA)
Chinatown (1974, Polanski, USA)
Touch of Evil (1958, Welles, USA)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955, Aldrich, USA)
The Third Man (1949, Reed, UK)
The Big Sleep (1946, Hawks, USA)
Out of the Past (1947, Tourneur, USA)
In a Lonely Place (1950, Ray, USA)
COMMENTS: This is clearly a heavily massaged list, reflecting several elements of "film school" and "hipster" hegemony that needed to be somehow combined. A statistical breakdown of this list demonstrates how neo noirs in particular were doled out in a pattern that is suspiciously uniform; this is also true to a lesser extent for the foreign films.
Of course it is a terrible idea to combine neo-noir and classic noir, which is a (mostly) unconscious effort to hide the actual paucity of recognition that foreign noir is woefully underrepresented here: when you total up the neos, you find that 19 of the 21 on the list are American, meaning that a list that places 62 classic American noirs on it really is more than 80% American, which is patently ridiculous but probably represents the "thinking" of 90-95% of those who are into film noir.
The list is awfully long on Lynch, Lang, Ray, Fuller and the Coen brothers. (Not that these fellows don't have something to offer, but their so-called "masterpiece" ratio here is almost as out of whack as the current conception of the "French film noir canon.") Separating classic and neo-noir would create a far more coherent set of lists, and might fill much of what was omitted in the latter category in the attempt to canonize some films that are clearly inferior (case in point: INHERENT VICE, a film being fetishized due to a critic's cabal over P.T. Anderson and a continuing fascination that forty-something critics like Kim Morgan have with the "dead-end" days of hippiedom vs. BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD, a film set in the present that updates and intensifies all the self-destructive impulses that flowed from classic "noirs of abjection" and reveals it all in uncompromising detail).
As for foreign noir, this list produces what is probably its greatest absurdity when it posits that the second greatest foreign noir ever is SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER. Of course this is the same type of thinking that elevates THE LONG GOODBYE to #9 overall on the list. I'm a fan of Gould's Marlowe and I think it captures a particular strain of early 70s self-absorbed decadence with both an uncanny precision and a wild throw-it-all-against-the-wall aleatory improvisational wink-nudge (making INHERENT VICE and LEBOWSKI as essentially redundant meta-pastiches), but top ten all-time? Seeing it as a top-ten neo-noir is quite defensible, however.
Of course a truly informed Top 100 list would need to include far more foreign noir, particularly French noir. But other noir nationalities are either woefully underrepresented or absent entirely. Eddie's discovery of LOS TALLOS AMARGOS is definitely a film that should be on this list; I would argue strongly for Japan's PALE FLOWER (the strangest noir love story ever committed to film) and Brazil's ASSAULT ON THE PAY TRAIN (the most politically astute and socially-conscious heist film in seventy years of such films) as deserving places in a classic world noir Top 20.
You'll find a series of interesting omissions, but I will let others bring those to our collective attention as they find them.
As for classic American noir, there's a shift in these younger critics toward the 1950s once we get into the second half of the list (38% from the 50s, 16% from the 1940s). I'd have to go back and look more carefully, however, to see if this is really a clustering effect because there are a lot of films from 1950-51 (the last "big swell" of noir before the blacklist really took effect). The pattern it suggests, however, is worth debating. We saw a full spectrum of preferences in our original Top 25 poll regarding the 40s v. the 50s, and IMO it would be worth the effort to articulate those WRT how noir changed from one decade to the other.
Though this is another flawed list, it is a very interesting and revealing one and I hope that many of you out there who don't always find time to involve yourself directly in discussions here will give it some serious scrutiny--and follow up with observations. The question of what constitutes greatness in noir remains as central to these discussions, and there is much food for thought here.
STATS:
Top 20 noirs on this list: 95% USA (10% neo, 85% classic), 21-100: 80% USA (24% neo, 56% classic)
40s/50s US noirs: 1-50 (32% 40s, 30% 50s) 51-100 (16% 40s, 38% 50s)
Neo and foreign breakdown: Neo 1-20 (10%) 21-60 (30%) 61-100 (18%); Foreign 1-20 (5%) 21-60 (15%) 61-100 (25%)
Re: SLANT’s “100 best noir films”
Posted by Mike Kuhns on 4/14/2019, 11:02 pm, in reply to "SLANT’s “100 best noir films”"
Plenty of classics on the list, although the rankings are strange. I've never seen INHERENT VICE; will have to check it out. I can't imagine BASIC INSTINCT being on the list when CRISS CROSS and MURDER MY SWEET (and the remake, FAREWELL MY LOVELY) are missing. With THE KILLERS so low on the list and CRISS CROSS absent, maybe there's some anti-Siodmak bias. I never thought of THE BIG LEBOWSKI as noir (or neo-noir or whatever).
Re: SLANT’s “100 best noir films”
Posted by Livius on 4/15/2019, 1:08 am, in reply to "Re: SLANT’s “100 best noir films”"
Yes, the apparent anti-Siodmak bias is odd, and weakens the selections a lot in my eyes.
I'm a great fan of Lang so have no issue with his strong representation but, in all honesty, YOU AND ME has no business on this list.
I also get tired of the, in my opinion, praise heaped on DETOUR; it's a good enough little movie, but position number 10? And being no fan of Altman or his version of THE LONG GOODBYE, I'm surprised to see it ranked so high.
Colin
Re: SLANT’s “100 best noir films”
Posted by Don Malcolm on 4/15/2019, 4:28 pm, in reply to "Re: SLANT’s “100 best noir films”"
Siodmak rankings in the Top 25 poll (2005)
CRISS CROSS #2
THE KILLERS #5
PHANTOM LADY #49
CRY OF THE CITY #71 (tied with 99 RIVER STREET and THIS GUN FOR HIRE)
THE SUSPECT #86
THE DARK MIRROR #110
Lang rankings:
THE BIG HEAT #20 (Slant #8)
SCARLET STREET #21 (Slant #13)
HUMAN DESIRE #61 (2 voters in poll-Grimes and Gary George--had it in their second tier, constituting all of the points it received...)
WOMAN IN THE WINDOW #82
CLASH BY NIGHT #155
No votes for MINISTRY OF FEAR, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS, YOU AND ME.
DETOUR ranked #17 in our 2005 poll.
Some (semi-)close correlations:
OUT OF THE PAST #1 for us, #2 for Slant.
DOUBLE INDEMNITY #3 for us , #11 for Slant.
THE BIG SLEEP #11 for us, #3 for Slant.
KISS ME DEADLY #15 for us, #5 for Slant.
GILDA #31 for us, #29 for Slant.
Of course the further down the lists we go, the less relevant the comparison becomes, as the neo- and foreign films enter more frequently into the Slant list.
More later--hope to hear from more of you on this...
Re: SLANT’s “100 best noir films”
Posted by ChiO on 4/16/2019, 11:33 am, in reply to "SLANT’s “100 best noir films”"
The hair on the back of my head immediately stood up at the title, "The 100 BEST Film Noirs of All Time" (emphasis added), as opposed to, for example, "Our 100 Favorite Film Noirs of All Time." We each can be idiosyncratic regarding our own picks, but I must be way out of line given that eleven (I believe) of my favorite 25 U.S. noirs are not on the list. Granted, Female Jungle, The Pretender, Cop Hater, and Dial 1119 might cause a lot of eyebrows to be raised, but to include The Tall Target instead of He Walked by Night? No room for The Friends of Eddie Coyle among the latter-day noirs?
And in the non-English, non-French language category, surely Pale Flower, The Scarlet Dove and O Drakos could have found their way into some out-of-the-way corner.
Did I count 11 French films? I would have more than 11, and would replace about one-third of those listed. I am guessing - hoping? - that ones on Slant's list are a function of having been seen because they are readily available to be seen. No Carne, Allegret and Hossein strikes me as near-criminal.
So it goes.
Re: SLANT’s “100 best noir films”
Posted by Don Malcolm on 4/16/2019, 6:10 pm, in reply to "SLANT’s “100 best noir films”"
French films:
90. Elevator to the Gallows (1957, Malle, France) over 150s
88. Pepe le Moko (1937, Duvivier, France) under 50s
82. Le Deuxieme Souffle (1966, Melville, France) over 100s
81. La Nuit du Carrefour (1932, Renoir, France) over 150s
73. Mauvais Sang aka Bad Blood (1986, Carax, France) neo-
71. La Bete Humaine (1938, Renoir, France) over 100s
68. Quai des Orfevres (1947, Clouzot, France) over 90s
60. Panique (1946, Duvivier, France) over 80s
30. Breathless (1960, Godard, France) over is it really a noir?
22. Le Samourai (1967, Melville, France) over 70s
21. Shoot the Piano Player (1960, Truffaut, France) over 100s
So the "film school approach" suggests that ten French noirs (nine, since BREATHLESS is something else) will tell you all you need to know about four decades of French noir, and holds to the dubious notion that "poetic realism" was both noir and apart from it, a "precursor" (so the films can't be as good as "fully blown" noir--got news for you, kids!--and the kowtow to the NV stays intact by inflating the "noirness" of two films that rate highly because the films are supposed to have "changed everything" (even in the face of more than a hundred noirs produced in France from 1960-66).
Where are the films from?
3 in the 30s, 2 in the 40s (satisfying the Clouzot requirement), 1 in the 50s (oddly eschewing the whole "gangster" noir thing--guess that's "proto" as well, French gangster noir apparently doesn't come into its own until Melville in the mid 60s despite RIFIFI, BOB LE FLAMBEUR, GRISBI and RAZZIA), and 4 in the 60s (all films that move away from noir into other realms, presumably due to the "predictability of genre conventions" or some other such meme memorized in film school).
Now note that I'll put TIREZ LE PIANIST (funny how some films get English titles, and others don't, isn't it?) as one that plays with tone and is carried by Aznavour (but who is actually more astringent and accomplished as a Corsican crime family member in Versini's propulsive HORACE 62, a film that has much in common with the sweaty form of verité being championed by Molinaro and Hossein in this time frame). But it's not the greatest French film noir...that's just absurd.
You don't spell it out directly, Owen, but the film that is arguably the greatest French noir and that should be up in the Top 20 somewhere is LE JOUR SE LEVE. That gets Carné on this list, and as you note, there are at least a dozen more that should populate the space between it, PEPE LE MOKO (the creation myth of Gabin's persona) and LE SAMOURAI, PANIQUE and QUAI DES ORFEVRES, which finally creates a fully satisfying use of Clouzot's Steeman fixation and lets him move on from Suzy Delair. Whither MANON? Noir as politicized amour fou opera? Or the shattering synthesis found in the collision of characters in Cayatte's LES AMANTS DE VERONE? Michel Simon mad as a hatter and his own dupe in the astonishing and harrowing NON COUPABLE?
I could go on (and on...), but toss a few more of your candidates for the Top 100 out here, Owen (and ChiBob, if you're of a mind to). Let's get it out there and collectively we might change some more minds about the "true history of film noir" (with apologies to Godard, who with more than a trace of arrogance wrote a book entitled "the true history of cinema" while most assuredly not watching Decoin's aptly named, spooky 60s noir swan song, WHERE THE TRUTH LIES).
Re: SLANT’s “100 best noir films”
Posted by Mike Kuhns on 4/16/2019, 8:13 pm, in reply to "SLANT’s “100 best noir films”"
There are several films, in addition to CRISS CROSS and MURDER MY SWEET, which I recall doing well in the Blackboard poll Don conducted about fifteen years ago that are completely missing in this top 100 list: D.O.A., THE SET-UP, NIGHTMARE ALLEY, STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS, and there may be more. Each person's list would be different, but it's difficult (nay, impossible) to justify the omission of some of these classics when you're talking 100 films.
Re: SLANT’s “100 best noir films”
Posted by Don Malcolm on 4/17/2019, 9:03 am, in reply to "Re: SLANT’s “100 best noir films”"
Following up on Mike's observation:
Films from the Top 25 poll not on the SLANT list in caps with cross-reference rankings for others, order by ranking in our poll.
Films that SLANT ranks higher than the Top 25 poll are shown in bold type.
out of the past 1 (2) CRISS CROSS #2 double indemnity 3 (11) asphalt jungle 4 (92) the killers 5 (91)
gun crazy 6 (51) maltese falcon 7 (14) touch of evil 8 (6) D.O.A #9 the killing 10 (44)
the big sleep 11 (3) in a lonely place 12 (1) NIGHTMARE ALLEY #13 night and the city 14 (32) kiss me deadly 15 (5)
raw deal 16 (70) detour 17 (10) narrow margin 18 (45) THE SET-UP #19 the big heat 20 (8)
Bscarlet street 21 (13) BORN TO KILL #22 postman always rings twice 23 (93) MURDER MY SWEET #24 sunset blvd 25 (17)
laura 26 (20) STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS #27 mildred pierce 28 (53) ace in the hole 29 (33) the big combo 30 (57)
gilda 31 (29) CAGED #32 HOLLOW TRIUMPH #33 STRANGERS ON A TRAIN #34 pickup on south st. 35 (12)
T-MEN #36 try and get me 37 (80) RIDE THE PINK HORSE #38 THE DARK CORNER #39 white heat 40 (76)
PITFALL #41 act of violence 42 (50) BRUTE FORCE #43 vertigo 44 (61) HE WALKED BY NIGHT #45
THE CHASE #46 DEAD RECKONING #47 sweet smell of success 48 (15) PHANTOM LADY #49 KEY LARGO #50
the third man 51 (4) SHIELD FOR MURDER #52 they live by night 53 (30) FALLEN ANGEL #54 KISS OF DEATH #55
HIGH SIERRA #56 odds against tomorrow 57 (89) crime wave 58 (67) SHADOW OF A DOUBT #59 force of evil 60 (48)
STATS:
Films from Top 25 omitted by range: 1-10 (2) 11-20 (2), 21-30 (3), 31-40 (6) 41-50(7) 51-60 (5)
Total SLANT omissions from 1-60 in Top 25: 25 (42%) 1-30 7 (23%) 31-60 18 (60%)
Number of films ranked higher by SLANT: 14 (24%)
Common films in Top 25: Out of the Past, Double Indemnity, Maltese Falcon, Touch of Evil, The Big Sleep, In A Lonely Place, Kiss Me Deadly, Detour, The Big Heat, Scarlet Street, Sunset Blvd.
Films sorted by amount of upward movement on SLANT list: The Third Man (+47), Sweet Smell of Success (+33), Pickup on South St. (+23), They Live By Night (+23), Force of Evil (+12), The Big Heat (+12), In A Lonely Place (+11), Kiss Me Deadly (+10), The Big Sleep (+8), Sunset Blvd. (+8), Scarlet Street (+8), Detour (+7), Laura (+6), Gilda (+2), Touch of Evil (+2). (People may wish to weigh in on whether these films should be ranked higher or not...)
Note that all of the above stats would change somewhat if we removed the foreign and neo- films from the list, as our 2005 poll was strictly American classic. It might move a few films into the "ranked higher by SLANT" category, and would certainly alter the upward movement numbers.
A key point to note is that the SLANT group doesn't like heist films much: The Killers and Asphalt Jungle drop way down, The Killing and Odds Against Tomorrow are also down, the French heist films (Rififi, Grisbi, Bob) are all missing.
Re: SLANT’s “100 best noir films” (Mauvais sang?)
Posted by Solomon on 4/17/2019, 4:38 am, in reply to "SLANT’s “100 best noir films”"
Mauvais Sang aka Bad Blood (1986, Carax, France)
I have it, but never watched it until last night. It is a neo-noir. I grant that.
Arty, slow, static, painfully slow at times. There is a wonderful running-dance in it, but 2 minutes cannot make up for the rest. "Denis Lavant leaps across the frame with his wiry seething-petite frame that reminds a bit of the old silent comedians, he's a real pleasure to watch just move."
"The guy responsible for this wants to be a little like Godard, so we have the interminable recitations, the poetry, the deliberately crude crime plot where you only need a gun and a girl, always Godard's weaker spots."
I didn't engage with this love story.
"The best thing about this French New Wave throwback certainly isn't the narrative-impaired non-story, in which an aging criminal in debt (Michel Piccoli) enlists the young son of a dead colleague for a daring robbery of a pharmaceutical company. The combination of familiar pulp fiction outline with stylishly indulgent camera technique recalls the early work of Truffaut and Godard, and in true nouvelle-vague tradition writer director Leos Carax eventually dismisses his plot altogether to concentrate, at length and to little purpose, on the visual mood of his film."
This film shouldn't be allowed anywhere within striking distance of a best noir list.
Re: SLANT’s “100 best noir films” (Mauvais sang?)
Posted by ChiBob on 4/17/2019, 12:36 pm, in reply to "Re: SLANT’s “100 best noir films” (Mauvais sang?)"
I can only echo some of what has been said already. Vertigo wedged between 61-70? Night and the City somewhere between 31-40? No Criss Cross or Une si jolie petite plage? Once I stopped laughing and scratching my head I came to realize that any 100 list of any type of film is a subjective self-indulgent enterprise, which is all well and good, but some of the rankings on this Slate list border on the willfully perverse. Being more sympathetic I can chalk it up to younger writers who haven’t been around long enough to make fully informed comparisons. Also, having read about a half dozen of the Slate reviews they seem to have been written by English and Journalism majors who had their noses stuck in Roget’s Thesaurus seeking colorful phrasing that falls into the category of being over ripe.
Owen is correct. It is nearly impossible to separate the “best” noirs from those that are our favorites that have given us comfort year after year over multiple viewings. Years ago, those four titles that I mention above, have become part of my DNA.
Multiple viewings give some of these titles time to ripen and mature. An exceedingly small group of films have that capacity, imo. The great majority are “one and done” throw aways. My top 10 domestic noirs haven’t changed much over the years. The only thing that has changed is that I can now easily (well, maybe not that easy), also compile a list of foreign noirs. The main issue is, other than the UK, the full narrative thrust of a foreign language title can get lost in translation, but since we are dealing with a visual medium, a poor translation job doesn’t really destroy the narrative thrust of an Ossessione or Le quai des brumes. Just let the despair and entrapment wash over you.
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