I'm not really seeing a Conte film that's a credible top ten candidate. THIEVES' HIGHWAY is good, but not at the top of Dassin's filmography.
I don't think del Toro is into films like IN A LONELY PLACE, and I can't see him being enamored with the more straight-laced hard-boiled approach in THE BIG SLEEP. So no Bogart doesn't strike me as surprising.
He also gravitates toward sexual obsession and jealousy, and there aren't any films with that in the foreground in Ryan's noir filmography, save for something like CLASH BY NIGHT. Ryan is usually playing someone on the edge of violence, but much of it has to do with self-loathing.
Mitchum may just not appeal to him--he may not like the tendency that Sleepy Bob has to situate himself outside his characters even as he portrays them. And Mitchum really has just one top ten noir (OOTP).
Again, Stanwyck doesn't have a lot of top-shelf noirs--after DOUBLE INDEMNITY, the next one that registers on our old list is MARTHA IVERS. The next most famous in the period is probably SORRY WRONG NUMBER, and it establishes a pattern for the rest of her career--a constant search for films where her performance will be dominantly front and center, but in stories that are otherwise lacking something and require her theatrics to succeed.
I'm also wondering if he's had a fairly recent crash course in noir in tandem with Kim Morgan. It would be interesting if an interviewer delved more deeply into his early exposure with the genre; it doesn't strike me as being his first (or greatest) love. (Remember that his fascination with NIGHTMARE ALLEY seems to have begin with Gresham's novel.) Several of these films are high up in Kim's pantheon (NIGHTFALL, NIAGARA, TOO LATE FOR TEARS) and their appearance here may not be coincidental.
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