since november is tomorrow i’m back with one last post about film noir. i barely got through half of my list last time, so consider this…… noirvember recs 2: electric boogaloo.
aka, the deep cuts.
the big clock (1948, john farrow) - this is a fun one. it’s ray milland vs. charles laughton! there IS, in fact, a big clock! it’s also a pretty damning look at the media industry.
the narrow margin (1952, richard fleischer) - i have been recommending this one to people for literal years, and NO one has watched it yet. please consider being the first. i think this is one of my favorite films noir of all the ones i’ve seen (and i’ve seen a lot). let me entice you: it is 70 minutes long and it takes place ON A TRAIN and marie windsor is the femme fatale! what else do you want! okay, well, how about you are on a train and you cannot trust literally any other person you meet on it. it’s a real potboiler, and i promise it will be worth your time.
on dangerous ground (1951, nicholas ray and ida lupino) - i am now going to talk about ida lupino. i think she is one of the most incredible actors AND directors. she pops up in noir a lot. she plays unhinged very well, and she can also play a tough as nails noir heroine. this might be my favorite noir of hers! it’s about a los angeles cop who can’t stop brutalizing his suspects that he gets transferred up north and ends up looking for a man on the run. ida plays the man’s blind sister, and she is incredible. another thing i love about this film is that it’s a winter noir, and we don’t see that too often! a perfect november watch.
nightmare alley (1947, edmund golding) - kind of very annoyed they’re remaking this, but whatever. the ending is one of the bleakest in the genre! which is saying something here. i don’t want to say too much about the plot of this one, so go in as blind as possible.
the blue gardenia (1953, fritz lang) - a staple of the noir genre is the accused man trying to clear his name. we see this so often in this genre, and what i like about this film is it’s the same premise, but it’s got a woman at the center. imagine you go out on a date and things get a little hazy. you wake up the next morning and your date has been found dead. did you kill him? did someone else? are you a killer? or are you just paranoid? anne baxter is incredible to watch here.
phantom lady (1944, robert siodmak) - i like this film for the same reason i like the blue gardenia: it’s a play on the common “man has to clear another man’s name before he’s hanged for murder” trope we see a lot, but it centers a woman. this film is beautiful, and surreal, and strange. there’s an entire sequence involving drumming and it is intense and very sexual.
the big knife (1955, robert aldrich) - hollywood loves to make films about hollywood, and i could have easily recommended the OTHER film about hollywood. you know the one. i wanted to spotlight this take, though, because it is very brutal about the ways the film industry grinds innocent people down, chews them and spits them right out. the film was based on a play by clifford odets, who helped re-write a certain other damning expose into the ways the media industry destroys people. so, you know, it’s good!
the locket (1946, john brahm) - films noir often employ unique story structure, such as flashbacks… or flashbacks WITHIN a flashback. may i suggest this film, which somehow manages to have a flashback within a flashback WITHIN a flashback and yet it still makes sense (at least by noir standards). i caught this film on TCM on a whim a few years back and found myself struck by it. there are more notable names in noir than laraine day, but she made a compelling screen presence. also: robert mitchum has a small but fun little part here!
i never see these titles floating around on rec lists so if you want to have a bit of alternate noir programming to the ace in the holes and the sunset boulevards and the double indemnities, i highly recommend these ones. happy watching!
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