Noirvember!

I watch film noir year round, but Noirvember was a great time rewatch or discover some gems of the genre. I’ve listed some favorites below in honor of Noirvember.

Now, Eddie Muller has a list of his favorite noir films on his website, and I highly encourage you to take a peek. For those of you who aren’t aware of Eddie Muller, he’s been coined the “Czar of Noir” by my good friend, James Ellroy (I hope you know who he is, if you don’t, go read Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential, and everything else he’s ever written!). Back to Eddie: he’s the host of TCM’s Noir Alley and leads the charge for the Film Noir Foundation and the preservation of film noir. I had the pleasure of meeting Eddie at a Film Noir Festival held in Colorado—what a great time and what a great bunch of movies they screened.

So, after reading Eddie’s list of favorite noir films, why should you care about mine? I have some crossover with his list (how could I not?), but these are some favorites from the classic film noir era that socked me in the gut. Some of these films will be obvious and well-known, while others have be new to you. I’m also not hung up on what is pure film noir, and maybe some of these don’t check the noir box for you.

What you’ll notice is the crossover with actors and directors with these films. You’ll see actors and actresses like Robert Ryan, Lizabeth Scott, Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Ann Sheridan, Ray Milland, Dan Duryea, and others show up quite often, but I don’t mention them below—even if they’re in the films I listed!

I know I probably left off quite a few, but this is just a quick list off the top of my head. Let me know some of your favorites!

• He Walked By Night, T-Men, Raw Deal - any time you have John Alton’s lighting (also see The Big Combo), and Anthony Mann’s directing (even if uncredited as in He Walked By Night), you have instant film noir.

• The Big Sleep, Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, Murder, My Sweet, Dead Reckoning - okay, a couple of these have Bogart, and they’re close to noir. The books were written by Hammett, Chandler (Farewell, My Lovely was filmed as Murder, My Sweet), and Goodis - all hardboiled or noir-like. They may not be pure noir, but they come close.

• Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce - With James M. Cain’s novels as the inspiration—the man wrote dark and flawed characters as good as anyone—it’s film noir. Double Indemnity is right at the top of my list of the all-time best films period.

• In A Lonely Place, Ride The Pink Horse - These are great films, and the novels were written by Dorothy B. Hughes—she wrote noir as well as anyone. Dark, disturbing characters, especially in the Bogart film with Gloria Grahame (a film noir fixture) of the same name. While the film differs a little from the novel, this is one of those few instances where the film and the novel are of equal greatness.

• D.O.A. - Edmund O’Brien. A great premise, which I won’t spoil. O’Brien was in a few others like 711 Ocean Drive (and he’s in The Killers, listed below).

• The Killers, Criss Cross, Phantom Lady - Robert Siodmak is another great film noir director, and two of these films star Burt Lancaster. The Killers was based on the Ernest Hemingway short story, but don’t miss Criss Cross—it has Yvonne deCarlo who is absolutely wonderful.

• Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, Double Indemnity, Ace In The Hole - yes, Double Indemnity is listed twice, this time because it’s directed by Billy Wilder—a versatile director who did screwball comedies just as well as directing film noir. All those films are classics. You won’t be disappointed in any of those films, and they’re all so different, yet still noir!

• The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, Scarlet Street, The Woman in the Window, Clash By Night, Ministry of Fear, Human Desire - Fritz Lang. Anything directed by Fritz Lang is going to be disturbing. He casts Lee Marvin, Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, and Barbara Stanwyck to name a few—all known for their noir roles. His earlier stuff helped film noir become a thing: Metropolis and M—Peter Lorre in his creepiest of his many creepy roles.

• Gilda - directed by Charles Vidor and with Rita Hayworth in what I think is her signature role. Also has Glenn Ford, another film noir staple (see The Big Heat).

• Night And The City, Pickup on South Street - Richard Widmark’s in these, and he’s great.

• Asphalt Jungle - directed by John Huston (also on this list with Maltese Falcon), with a young Marilyn Monroe along with Sterling Hayden—another film noir regular, what a great tough guy.

• Sweet Smell of Success, Brute Force, Criss Cross, The Killers - Burt Lancaster is menacing and overbearing in Success. You could do worse than explore some of these Burt Lancaster roles. Pure noir.

• Laura - the novel was written by Vera Caspary (as was the Blue Gardenia), they are worth reading as well as watching. This is a haunting film with some cool twists and has a great cast: Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, and Vincent Price. It’s directed by Otto Preminger, who also directed The Man With The Golden Arm, starring Frank Sinatra—a noir film depicting drug addiction.

• Out Of The Past - Robert Mitchum in one of the definitive noir films with Kirk Douglas and Jane Greer. Talk about a man who could take over a film. Also check out Night of the Hunter, Crossfire, The Big Steal, Where Danger Lives, and The Racket.

• Kiss Me Deadly - Ralph Meeker was such a great Mike Hammer - Mickey Spillane was not a fan of this film, but it’s so much fun, and watching Mike Hammer get in over his head and opening Pandora’s Box is amazing and the inspiration for many many moments in subsequent films.

• The Narrow Margin - Dana Andrews and another film noir staple—Marie Windsor. Takes place mostly on a train! Trains appear in quite a few noir flicks, including a few on this list.

• The Third Man, Lady From Shanghai, Touch of Evil, Niagara, Shadow of a Doubt - okay, these are Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. The first three all with Orson Welles, and Niagara featuring Marilyn Monroe, while Shadow of a Doubt was directed by Hitchcock (not really a noir director, but a couple of his might qualify (such as Vertigo—though that one’s in color even if the overall tone qualifies). Like Gilda, it’s hard to not watch Rita Hayworth in any role!

• Gun Crazy - this is a 1950 Bonnie & Clyde or Natural Born Killers—only better! Too bad the production code got in the way of what could have been, though it makes for more creative choices.

• They Drive By Night, Private Hell 36, High Sierra, The Hitch-Hiker, The Big Knife - all of these have Ida Lupino in them. Lupino was a Hollywood pioneer, a female director in the studio system. She’s great as an actress of director. A couple of these also have Bogart.

• The Killing - great cast, caper film directed by Kubrick.

• Detour - ugly from start to finish. Horrible people doing horrible things.

• One more: Nightmare Alley - carnival noir with Tyrone Powers in, to me, his best performance.

In A Lonely Place

In A Lonely Place is one of the few films that nearly equals the novel upon which it was based. The novel of the same name, by Dorothy B. Hughes, is a masterpiece and quite daring for the time, the 1940s. Hughes compares quite favorably with James M. Cain (author of Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice) and in many ways surpasses him as a writer of noir. Her character development exceeds Cain's, in my opinion.

I highly recommend picking up a copy of Women Crime Writers - Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s. Not only do you get In A Lonely Place, but also, Laura (another wonderful film), The Horizontal Man, and The Blank Wall. There is another volume, but Suspense Novels of the 1950s. If you want both, I believe a box set is available.

I don't want to give away the novel or the film--though you'd think a novel from the 1940s and a film from 1950 should be fair game. But I've found so many people today haven't paid the classics any mind and that's a real shame. The novel is actually much darker than the film and ultimately heartbreaking and tragic (the film is also heartbreaking, but in a different way).

Criterion (I've gushed over Criterion products before on here and on social media) is releasing In A Lonely Place on 5/10/2016.  Criterion Blu-Rays are more expensive than other Blu-Rays, but if you're a film buff there are no better versions to buy. The films are restored versions and always have plenty of extras.

While the film deviates from the novel (it's a very loose adaptation), it doesn't take away from the novel. They're both equally enjoyable and tragic. So noir.
 

Where To Start: Mysteries

I've decided to start a series of posts about where to start. This could be where to start almost anything--books, movies, collecting, clothing, style, food, etc.

I'm starting with a literary genre today:  Mystery

A few years back I took a short story workshop, and then last year took a mystery workshop taught by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (if you want to kickstart your writing, or want to be tossed into the deep end with writing, I highly recommend traveling to the Oregon coast and take one of Kris's, or her husband Dean Wesley Smith's writing workshops).

Why do I bring up the workshop? Well, apparently I had some notion that most mysteries were simply Agatha Christie cozies and hadn't given much thought to sub-genres.  There are many, many sub-genres.

So back to where to start: This is a broad overview of mysteries and ultimately, you're going to have to sample the sub-genres to determine what works for you as a reader. I loved cozies growing up, but now I enjoy hardboiled, noir, detective, and police procedurals more.

Cozy:  Cozy mysteries are usually not bloody or graphic and typically take place in more confined settings. They typically have an amateur detective working toward solving the crime with the occasional cameo by some sort of law enforcement - often they're of the bumbling or not-quite-with-it variety.

Cozies are a pretty popular sub-genre right now and they have a definite look to them on the shelf. Bright colors, titles that are puns, sometimes cats on the cover as well. Also, cozies are the shortest of the genres, so they're a quick and fun read.

But where should you start?  Go ahead and start with a Christie--any old Miss Marple will do, though on television and movies I'm partial to Hercule Poirot.  Try A Murder Is Announced:  A bunch of people are summoned to a house and someone is murdered right under everyone's noses.

Detective:   Detective stories can be private detectives/investigators or law enforcement detectives.  These range from light, near cozy style to dark mystery, noir and beyond--pretty much a catch-all category. These are not police procedurals --that is a separate sub-genre. These stories focus on the detective.  Honestly, even cozies fit into this category since many of them are using amateur detectives. TV version of the standard detective story would be: Magnum P.I. for example.

But where to start?  I'd say go for Michael Connelly and his Harry Bosch series, beginning with The Black Echo.  I'd characterize the series as a standard detective series that is squarely in the middle of the light to dark spectrum (cozy being light, noir being dark).

Police Procedural:  The main character works for the police, or is an attorney, or is a federal law enforcement officer, etc.  These stories focus on the procedures in solving a crime.

Hill Street Blues is a great TV example of the procedural--in fact, the series was based off Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels which I'm going to recommend here. There were also plenty of TV movies based on these novels. But if you enjoy seeing how the justice system works or how police go about solving crimes, then procedurals are for you.

Where to start?  Ed McBain--he wrote a ton of books based around the fictional 87th Precinct. They are great reads and pretty fast.  You can start almost anywhere with them despite them having recurring characters. McBain wrote these from the mid 1950's all the way until around 2005--so, there's quite a bit of material there.

Hardboiled:  I think these are my favorites. Character driven and a lot of attitude. You feel the world, see everything from the character's point of view. The main character is cynical, but has a moral code.  The world the character inhabits is visceral, gritty, and typically urban.

There are modern examples of hardboiled, but I love the classics:  Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Mickey Spillane. If you enjoy tough, gritty guys slapping people around, but have a need to make things right, this is the genre for you.

Where to start? Here you could go with The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, or I, The Jury.  The movie versions of Sleep and Falcon are great since you get to watch Humphrey Bogart. For the Mickey Spillane I recommend Kiss Me Deadly. I wrote about the film here.

Noir:  I hadn't read too much noir before taking the Mystery Workshop. For the class we read The Ghosts Of Belfast by Stuart Neville. We were also assigned Fatherland by Robert Harris which I had read before. Fatherland  can also double as a detective genre as well as alternate history. Ghosts is straight noir. If you enjoy dark, hopeless stories and people who are really screwed up, and everything sucks, well--maybe you should seek counseling.  These aren't light books, or light reading: be prepared for an ending that isn't likely to be pretty.

Where to start?  For really dark, try The Ghosts of Belfast. If you prefer a little detective and alternate history involving Nazis then try Fatherland.  Batman can be noir by the way and science fiction has quite a bit of noir.

There is another type of crime novel--which is really what the mystery genre should be called by the way.  Thriller.  I'm not going to get into this sub-genre since it's really the least pure of the crime novels.  Though, I do enjoy a good heist movie or novel--but heists aren't always Thrillers since they can be paced slower and thrillers are definitely quickly paced with hardly a rest.

Hopefully this was a decent primer on reading the various genres of mystery--many thanks to Kris Rusch for teaching me what is required to be able to write in the sub-genres.