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Post by teleadm on Dec 2, 2018 2:16:49 GMT
Take it easy london777 !!!, health comes first! Thanks. Nothing life-threatening. Just an array of different minor health problems but put together I felt miserable for a bit. Much better now thanks. Finally gained my official residency last week so I cannot be summarily deported as an illegal immigrant. After eleven years! That cheered me up a bit. Since I know you don't like sweet cudly things: To cheer you up!
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Post by london777 on Dec 6, 2018 23:12:26 GMT
Since I know you don't like sweet cuddly things: Not very seasonal, teleadm! I see you lot have moved on from Ikea. But you are right, I would rather sit on that sofa than watch most movies with cute animals, cute kids, or sweet old ladies (especially from the 1930s). There are exceptions, and an exception to the last category crops up in my next post.
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Post by london777 on Dec 7, 2018 2:17:51 GMT
I better make an effort with this Brit Noir thread before I get any more menacing posts from near the Arctic Circle. Fortunately, hitchcockthelegend has done most of the work for me. I cannot improve on his review of Cast a Dark Shadow (1955) dir: Lewis Gilbert so I will just add a few random thoughts. hitchcockthelegend's review of Cast a Dark ShadowLewis Gilbert rose from a humble East End background to become the epitome of the British film establishment, as writer, director and producer. Although he could turn out very competent, sometimes very good (but never great) movies in various genres, he thought his three Bond films represented the pinnacle of his career. His character dramas, like Alfie, Shirley Valentine, or Educating Rita, were marred by sentimentality, while his war films were too reverential. I do not think he had it in him to make a Film Noir. The genre is inherently subversive but Gilbert was an establishment figure, eventually a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. I see the present movie as a continuation of the Agatha Christie tradition of murder stories, though darker and edgier than was allowed in pre-war movies. Janet Green had written two very fine and innovative "social problem" noirs, Sapphire (1959), which tackled racism, and Victim (1961), also with Dirk Bogarde and which dealt with homosexuality, but the director of those two was the brilliant Basil Dearden. Gilbert was no Dearden so maybe the conventionality of our movie was down to him. There are hints that there may have been a lot more in the story originally. For example, when someone finally gets round to investigating our hero's past, they find that he was accused as a child of an (unspecified) assault upon a younger boy, but the script hastily moves on. Sunbathing on the beach, Bogarde is enjoying a muscle-building magazine with near naked male models. But he is clearly capable of performing his marital duties satisfactorily, because when he attempts to move to the spare room, his (older) wife (Margaret Lockwood) stops that, saying "I did not marry you for your company". The script was by John Creswell from Janet Green's play "Murder Mistaken". Curiously, The BBC made a TV movie the very next year under that title, in which Margaret Lockwood played the same part. How odd. I wonder if she played it just the same? Green must have been aware of Emlyn Williams famous play "Night Must Fall", filmed in 1937 with Robert Montgomery. It concerns a young, charming, working-class psychopathic murderer who worms his way into the trust of an old lady. It was remade in 1964 with Albert Finney in the lead and Karel Reisz directing. Mona Washbourne played the part of the old lady, as she does in Cast a Dark Shadow, while Kathleen Harrison appeared in the 1937 version as the cook. Cast a Dark Shadow has a bravura opening before the titles with Edward and Monnie on the ghost train. This is in horror movie style and one shot where Edward's eyes shine in the otherwise pitch-blackness is brilliant, making him seem demonic. But the rest of the film shows that, to misquote Monty Python, he is not the Devil, just a very naughty boy. The film takes another course, as a drawing-room murder mystery which too often reveal its stage origins. All very predictable until Margaret Lockwood enters the story. She is terrific, surely her best-ever role. And she has all the best lines: Lockwood: We buried my poor Albert six months ago.Bogarde: What was the matter with him?Lockwood: He was dead!In the original play the victim and the nemesis were played by the same actress. I presume they were sisters and that the nemesis combined the roles played by both Lockwood and Kay Walsh. I guess that would work better on the stage than on the screen, where the much older sister would have to wear a lot of make-up. And the film provides great parts for three actresses rather than one. At times the film seems more black comedy than Noir. We enjoy Edward's ingenuity and single-mindedness but there is little sense of danger. The interplay between Bogarde and Lockwood is electric as they manoeuvre for position, but the denouement is banal and absurd. I take off a mark for that. 6.5 I loved the seaside scenes (Brighton and the South Downs) with Britain still looking seedy and impoverished some time after the war. Although the titles "introduced" Lita Roza, sadly she never appeared on screen again. She was the UK's top band singer for a decade and could sing torch songs as well as any American, but it must have been a terrible burden to her that her best-selling record remained "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?". Odd how movies of that period would pause events to feature a night-club number, especially when, as here, the singer is not otherwise a character in the story. Who noticed that her song "Leave Me Alone" is an English version of the theme song from the French Noir classic "Touchez Pas au Grisbi" (1954) dir: Jacques Becker, from the previous year? Lockwood was wise not to fall for Bogarde's property scam supposedly based on a new cinema to be built. Cinemas were closing hand over fist in that decade as working families could now afford television. During the decade the two major cinema chains had embarked on a programme of cinema closures. The Rank Organisation closed 79 of its cinemas in 1956 and Associated British Picture Corporation closed 65 a year later. In 1951, cinema admissions had stood at 1,365 million in Britain; by 1960, the figure was down to 500 million.I guess Edward's con-man skills were confined to wooing.
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Post by london777 on Dec 10, 2018 2:42:49 GMT
**** SPOILERS ****Mikef6 has brought me up to affirm that The Maltese Falcon (1941) is the first true Film Noir. If so, On the Night of the Fire (1939) dir: Brian Desmond Hurst is unlucky to be disqualified. An ordinary guy, a barber (Ralph Richardson), with generous impulses but impatient with his lot in life, commits an opportunistic theft in order to buy gifts for his much-loved but over-worked wife, then gets sucked into a vortex of blackmail and murder, with a bleak conclusion ("suicide by cop"). Most scenes are nocturnal or in murky confined spaces and the picture of his working-class neighbors is far from sentimental or sympathetic. The spreading of malicious rumors and the eventual hue and cry scenes are surely modeled on Fritz Lang's "M" (1931) and "Fury" (1936). The portrait of the huddled masses is a generic one. The predominant accent is Estuary or Cockney, but some of the outdoor locations are stock footage of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Richardson's accent could pass for artisan-class but his wife's, Diana Wynyard's, is bafflingly upper-middle class. I do not know if that is to suggest she has fallen low in society, or whether the film-makers were so keen to cast her that they just did not care. Wynyard was an absolute star of London theater in the 1930s and made few movies. I think she was too mannered for the big screen. She was great in "Gaslight" (1940) but her somewhat stilted manner suited the part of a "gaslighted" (or should it be "gaslit"?) upper-middle class female but here she is over-eager to keep her best profile to the camera (as in the poster below ). There is no real femme fatale in this movie (a possible disqualifier for Film Noir status) but Wynyard, who first appears to be a humble and supportive spouse in the sentimental tradition of silent movies, is actually an enabler of her husband's destruction, for it turns out that she has recklessly got into debt (during what we might now term "post-natal depression"), and this triggers events. The film is based on the novel by F.L. Green who also wrote the novel (and in that case also the screenplay) on which "Odd Man Out" (1947) was based. The score is by Miklós Rózsa and the DP was Günther Krampf (Murnau's "Nosferatu" and Pabst"s "Pandora's Box"). The cinematography is more reminiscent of German Expressionist and French Poetic Realism ("Quai des Brumes") than the forthcoming wave of American Film Noirs with their sharp chiaroscuro and black/white contrasts, although I might have to revise that comment were I to see a restored print. One shot of the street gossips' talking heads against a black background is pure Caravaggio. Another thing which makes it less "Film Noir" is the naivety of the protagonist. We are used to our anti-heroes being a little street-wise, even the born losers. Having grabbed a lot more cash than he at first realized, Richardson starts on a shopping spree and handing out banknotes to friends and the deserving poor, all in his own small neighborhood, walking distance from the crime scene. Surely he would have noticed that they were new, and consecutively numbered, banknotes? He is several times referred to as a clever man by his neighbors, but I guess all things are relative. Strange that there was no examination of fingerprints, which was standard police practice by the 1930s. His surname was Kobling, which is not at all English. It sounds Scandinavian, but I wonder if it was meant to suggest Jewish? He was already viewed as "not one of us" by his neighbors because he was a cut above. If he was thought to be Jewish (even if wrongly so) this would further explain how quickly people turned against him. Romney Brent plays an idler (Jimsey Jones) whom Richardson befriends but who betrays him. (I was not clear at the end whether he tries to undo his betrayal). Brent was a new name to me. Born as Romulo Larralde in Mexico, he was a playwright and producer who worked in numerous countries. He wrote a successful musical with Cole Porter, volunteered for the Canadian Army in WWII and made Captain, then toured the world acting and teaching before returning to Mexico for his final seven years. Interesting guy! The film had the misfortune to appear just as WWII broke out, and the public were not in the mood for such pessimistic fare so it disappeared from sight. It was released in the US as "The Fugitive". Please watch this movie and tell me why it is not a Film Noir.
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Post by Aj_June on Mar 27, 2019 12:08:58 GMT
Dual Alibi (1947) directed by Alfred Travers, stars with a dynamic dual role Herbert Lom, striptease dancer in a rare film appearance Phyllis Dixey and Terence De Marney. An excellent British film noir, treachery, deceit a gorgeous femme filmed with a very dark tone, with an original courtroom twist. highly recommended... Hi Planet,
Trusting your recomendations as I always do I went for Dual Alibi (1947). What a dark themed exciting movie that you think you figured out 10 mins before the ending but that finally still tricks you with the final twist. I would consider there were actually 3 deaths in the movie. Must say the acting perforamance of Herbert Lom was commendable. Never a dull moment in the movie. As always thanks a ton for coming up with such unique movie suggestions. Next one on my list among your recommendations is Még kér a nép (Red Psalm) 1972.
Interesting Info
The director of Dual Alibi Alfred Travers is still alive at 113 years of age.
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Post by london777 on Oct 4, 2019 19:03:59 GMT
It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) dir: John Hamer The opening titles are accompanied by a mini-overture by Georges Auric. We expect to see something dramatic. Then the music modulates to something more forgiving and intimate, and there is the movie already in a nutshell. The first shot is of a cul-de-sac ending in a church. The church has had the upper part of its spire removed, as thousands did. As a child I was told that this was the reduce the chances of it being hit by a doodlebug (flying bomb) and even then I thought it was not very Christian. After all, a church was more likely to be unoccupied at night than the surrounding terraced houses which would otherwise take the hit. Then in succession we see the closed Tube station, that it is starting to rain, and the patrolling copper dons his rain-cape. We focus on one house in the street. The father (Edward Chapman), sees his daughter (Susan Shaw) coming home at dawn in a smart open-tourer and he looks concerned. The car drives off past three men in trilbies sheltering at a coffee-stand. They move off and the stall's owner does the football pools. In the stop-press of his evening edition it says that a prisoner has escaped from Dartmoor (England's harshest prison). Now the real action of the movie commences. In one of the few scenes set outside the East End location we see the escapee tumble down a railway embankment. Next we view the morning Sunday paper where the escape is the main headline. So within three minutes we have enjoyed the opening titles and the main plotline (the prison escapee) and two subsidiary plotlines (the wayward daughter and the three petty crooks) have all been established. This pace is maintained throughout the movie. What genre is this film? I have seen it called both a Film Noir and a soap. Certainly the main plotline is Noir, but the mis-en-scene owes more to French poetic-realism (Carne, Renoir, Duvivier) than to American crime dramas. The plot trigger is Tommy Swann's (John McCallum's) prison break. It took me a few viewings to really appreciate the "black hole" at the heart of this film. What drove Swann to break out? Because he had been flogged, and was terrified of being flogged again. Flogging is judicial torture and was abolished in UK prisons in 1948, a year after our movie was released. It may thus be seen as a "protest" movie, though only implicitly so, at a time when the public mood had changed and the time was ripe for reform. In our "prison" thread we have discussed several UK films that were explicitly or implicitly against hanging, and I have seen one which implicitly appealed for more sympathetic treatment of war-time deserters, but I am not aware of any other UK anti-flogging movies. As I say, this theme is not labored, but it is there at the core of the plot. When Swann violently knocks down Rose (Googie Withers), who has bravely been sheltering him at great risk, in his haste to flee, she excuses him because she knows he is "terrified". Her passion for him is long dead. She is helping him out of pity. At the end she is resigned to her dull marriage with Edward Chapman. They are the working-class equivalent of Celia Johnson and Cyril Raymond in "Brief Encounter" two years earlier. In UK prisons, visitors have been known to smuggle sharp blades into the prison buried in a bar of soap. (I suppose they have x-ray scanning these days?). Here we have a sharp Noir theme buried in a different sort of soap. Our movie is a soap because it is a forerunner (and maybe a direct inspiration) of later TV soaps, especially the long-running "Eastenders", still going on BBC TV after more than 6000 episodes since 1985. Both are about working-class families, petty crooks, and other colorful characters in London's East End. Much more of the movie's time is spent with their romances, frustrations, and reconciliations, than with our Noir main plotline. The family stories are touching, but with John Hamer directing, never sentimental. The villains are more pathetic than evil. This is a great movie, realistic and humane. Hamer was a master director who, because of alcoholism, made few films and died prematurely in poverty and neglect, as did Arthur La Bern, who wrote the novel on which it was based. (La Bern also wrote the novel on which Hitchcock's Frenzy is loosely based). Other Hamer films which I would recommend are Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Loves of Joanna Godden (1947) and The Long Memory (1953), which is a more straightforward Noir.
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Post by mikef6 on Oct 5, 2019 1:51:03 GMT
Dual Alibi (1947) directed by Alfred Travers, stars with a dynamic dual role Herbert Lom, striptease dancer in a rare film appearance Phyllis Dixey and Terence De Marney. An excellent British film noir, treachery, deceit a gorgeous femme filmed with a very dark tone, with an original courtroom twist. highly recommended... Terence De Marney stars as Johnnie Thompson, a veteran and popular boxer known as "The Croucher" . When he finally faces life outside the ring, life spirals out of his control. Unable to satisfy his demanding wife Jonnie becomes involved in criminal activity and finds himself with No Way Back (1949) Stefan Osiecki If you check out the user comments on this film at the Internet Movie Database, you will see several from people who saw “Dual Alibi” years ago in the theater or on U.K. television and it has stuck with them ever since. It is easy to see why. Herbert Lom plays twin brothers who are star trapeze artists with a traveling circus. As with many movies about twins, no one can tell them apart, not even their closest friends or even their lovers. (In my own experience with “identical” twins, once you get to know them it is easy to tell them apart.) One of the brothers falls in love with a double-dealing dame who, with her manipulative boyfriend, robs them blind. This leads to a unique revenge scheme and a very dark ending. Speaking of dark, every scene in “Dual Alibi” takes place either indoors or at night. No one ever sees the sun. Lom is great as is Phyllis Dixey as the femme, Terence de Marney as the crooked mastermind, and Ronald Frankau as the kindly circus owner.
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Post by nutsberryfarm 🏜 on Oct 5, 2019 6:16:45 GMT
got this on hold at the library: www.criterion.com/films/28001-the-lodger-a-story-of-the-london-fogWith his third feature film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, Alfred Hitchcock took a major step toward greatness and made what he would come to consider his true directorial debut. This haunting silent thriller tells the tale of a mysterious young man (matinee idol Ivor Novello) who takes up residence at a London boardinghouse just as a killer known as the Avenger descends upon the city, preying on blonde women. The film is animated by the palpable energy of a young stylist at play, decisively establishing the director’s formal and thematic obsessions. In this release, The Lodger is accompanied by Downhill, another silent from 1927 that explores Hitchcock’s “wrong man” trope, also headlined by Novello—making for a double feature that reveals the master of the macabre as he was just coming into his own.
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Post by manfromplanetx on Oct 5, 2019 6:52:03 GMT
No Orchids For Miss Blandish (1947) directed and adapted by St. John Legh Clowes from the novel of the same name by James Hadley Chase. Starring wonderfully wooden Jack La Rue as ruthless gangster Slim Grisson with lovely Linden Travers as the manipulative femme Miss Blandish, with a terrific supporting cast the film caused much controversy upon release for the portrayal of strong violence and sexual content, despite some cinemas banning screenings No Orchids became a huge commercial success... What the official critics have said... " one of the worst films ever made." " the most sickening exhibition of brutality, perversion, sex and sadism ever to be shown on a cinema screen" " repellent piece of work" that scraped up all the droppings of the nastier type of Hollywood movie" "No Orchids for Miss Blandish is not only a disgrace to the studio that made it, but it also reflects on the British industry as a whole...the entire production is unpardonable"... So Bad its Good ... Make of it what you will , a should see experience for all classic Brit noir fans...
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Post by london777 on Oct 5, 2019 17:22:43 GMT
No Orchids For Miss Blandish (1947) a should see experience for all classic Brit noir fans... Sure, but how?
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Post by teleadm on Oct 11, 2019 21:01:18 GMT
While searching for something else, I stumbled upon this title Miss Tulip Stays the Night 1955, Miss Tulip is played by Cicely Courtneidge and her real life husband Jack Hulbert is in it too. The Poster made it look interesting, but maybe it's just a lighthearted who-done-it in the Miss Marple territory.
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Post by london777 on Apr 3, 2022 1:10:19 GMT
No Orchids For Miss Blandish (1947) a should see experience for all classic Brit noir fans... Sure, but how? Easy, It is now available on YouTube in an adequate print. This is not "so bad. it's good." It is very uneven, but is a quite original concept with a half-decent budget. I enjoyed it. All the hysteria about its depravity is mystifying. In fact it has now been classified as PG (Parental Guidance).
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Post by marshamae on Apr 3, 2022 1:24:18 GMT
Has anyone mentioned VICTIM?
I read the posts, but am not sure if I missed it.
The theme of menace, the urban setting and Dirk Bogard seem to qualify it.
Films like Dulcimer Street and Green for Danger , not noir because of the comic elements?
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Post by london777 on Apr 3, 2022 4:32:01 GMT
Has anyone mentioned VICTIM? Yes, in my post of 20 Dec 2018 above I called it a "social problem" Noir, like another Basil Dearden movie: Sapphire.Films like Dulcimer Street and Green for Danger , not noir because of the comic elements? Green for Danger is certainly Noir. The need to include supposedly comic sequences to make serious or menacing thrillers more palatable dates back to Shakespeare ( Macbeth for example) and earlier. It is one of the achievements of mature Noirs that they educated the public in this respect (no goggle-eyed black servants or tipsy Irish cops in Out of the Past or Double Indemnity). And in my OP I said that Brit Noirs are rarely "pure" noir.
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Post by timshelboy on Apr 3, 2022 11:01:39 GMT
I'll second This one was the RESERVOIR DOGS of 1954 Sydney Tafler makes a great spiv in this one Known as COSH BOY in UK
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Post by politicidal on Apr 3, 2022 18:53:18 GMT
Though it’s set in Vienna, I would pick The Third Man. Green for Danger and Sapphire are both excellent. Brighton Rock is good too. Cast a Dark Shadow (1955) is pretty solid as well.
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Post by Penn Guinn on Apr 10, 2022 13:06:02 GMT
I watched The Upturned Glass this morning .... because anything with James Mason seems to be worth watching and, when reading User Reviews after seeing the film was struck by this one as being particularly well written and only after reading it saw the name upon it !'
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Post by london777 on Jun 15, 2023 21:15:29 GMT
I feel very guilty for starting this thread with much bravado, but then allowing it to peter out, despite the loyal contributions of certain stalwart posters. The topic deserves someone more energetic than myself. As a lazy quick-fix to jump-starting it, I refer to this YouTube video by one Michael Bartlett: The 10 Essential British Film NoirsIt is a poorly produced video. Although the presenter has much the same accent as myself, I find him difficult to follow when he lowers his voice or whispers into the mike, and his slovenly posture is unappealing. His list is idiosyncratic and his comments are sometimes absurd, but he can also show great insight into the context of the films. I will list his choices from 1 to 10, although he presents them in the opposite order. 1) Night and the City (1950) dir: Jules Dassin. No arguments from me about making it No.1. One quibble might be that it is half an American movie, but stylistically it is Brit Noir. 2) They Made Me a Fugitive (1947) dir: Alberto Cavalcanti. A decent movie but in no way deserving of a Top Ten place, let alone No.2. Trevor Howard is hopelessly out of place among these lowlifes, and Griffith Jones lacks menace as the evil Mr Big, while his cohorts are buffoonish. This is exactly the sort of soft-centred story which gave British crime thrillers the reputation of not being tough enough compared with their US counterparts. 3) It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) dir: Robert Hamer. Our guide calls this 'the ultimate British movie'. I agree. The bleak Noir theme at its core is so bundled up with domestic sub-plots that some have called it the first British soap. Mixed-genre movies are hard to pull off but Hamer was a genius. 4) The Small Back Room (1949) dir: Powell and Pressburger. I like this film very much but I am not sure it is a Noir. I would call it a 'revisionist war film' and Bartlett has perceptive comments on this, stating correctly that bureaucrats ran WWII in the UK. (Personally, I am very relieved they did. Handing control to the generals or the politicians would have been fatal). 5) Brighton Rock (1947) dir: John Boulting. No problem there. I understand it has recently been remade. I wonder if the new version brings out more of the squalor and sadism of Graham Greene's novel which was toned down in Boulting's version, even though that was quite edgy for its time. 6) Hell Drivers (1957) dir: Cy Endfield. OK. 7) Noose (1948) dir: Edmond T. Gréville. I am all for bringing forgotten movies to our notice, but as Bartlett himself says 'it is a very silly fluffy comedy film'. Hardly a qualification to feature in a Top Ten Noir list. For a comedy it is unamusing, and it is not at all Noir. Worse, it reminded me that I had once watched it, and had immediately forgotten it. It had thus failed my litmus test in judging movies. 'Do they hang about in my head for a day or more afterwards?'. This sort of bizarre inclusion undermines any faith in his recommendations. 8) Pool of London (1951) dir: Basil Dearden. Good choice. 9) Waterloo Road (1945) dir: Sidney Gilliat. 'Noirish' at best and nowhere near Top Ten status, but our guide speaks so well about it that I may give it another look. A more deserving John Mills vehicle would have been The Long Memory dir: Robert Hamer and a better Gilliat one would have been Green for Danger. Both of those are real Noir. It is strange that Mr Bartlett, who is clearly a Londoner, more than once refers to Waterloo Road as being in the East End. 10) The Third Man (1949) dir: Carol Reed. Most of us might have included this film in our top three, but our guide admits he does not much like it, and refused to include it in a previous iteration of this list. He only squeezed it in at the bottom to avoid all the hassle this time round. I think it is a great movie, but at the same time I sympathise with some of his points. No, it is not typical Brit Noir, but that is no reason to exclude it. Maybe you will look at Michael Bartlett's quirky video. He does make some good points.
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Post by timshelboy on Jun 15, 2023 22:37:12 GMT
I feel very guilty for starting this thread with much bravado, but then allowing it to peter out, despite the loyal contributions of certain stalwart posters. The topic deserves someone more energetic than myself. As a lazy quick-fix to jump-starting it, I refer to this YouTube video by one Michael Bartlett: The 10 Essential British Film NoirsIt is a poorly produced video. Although the presenter has much the same accent as myself, I find him difficult to follow when he lowers his voice or whispers into the mike, and his slovenly posture is unappealing. His list is idiosyncratic and his comments are sometimes absurd, but he can also show great insight into the context of the films. I will list his choices from 1 to 10, although he presents them in the opposite order. 1) Night and the City (1950) dir: Jules Dassin. No arguments from me about making it No.1. One quibble might be that it is half an American movie, but stylistically it is Brit Noir. 2) They Made Me a Fugitive (1947) dir: Alberto Cavalcanti. A decent movie but in no way deserving of a Top Ten place, let alone No.2. Trevor Howard is hopelessly out of place among these lowlifes, and Griffith Jones lacks menace as the evil Mr Big, while his cohorts are buffoonish. This is exactly the sort of soft-centred story which gave British crime thrillers the reputation of not being tough enough compared with their US counterparts. 3) It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) dir: Robert Hamer. Our guide calls this 'the ultimate British movie'. I agree. The bleak Noir theme at its core is so bundled up with domestic sub-plots that some have called it the first British soap. Mixed-genre movies are hard to pull off but Hamer was a genius. 4) The Small Back Room (1949) dir: Powell and Pressburger. I like this film very much but I am not sure it is a Noir. I would call it a 'revisionist war film' and Bartlett has perceptive comments on this, stating correctly that bureaucrats ran WWII in the UK. (Personally, I am very relieved they did. Handing control to the generals or the politicians would have been fatal). 5) Brighton Rock (1947) dir: John Boulting. No problem there. I understand it has recently been remade. I wonder if the new version brings out more of the squalor and sadism of Graham Greene's novel which was toned down in Boulting's version, even though that was quite edgy for its time. 6) Hell Drivers (1957) dir: Cy Endfield. OK. 7) Noose (1948) dir: Edmond T. Gréville. I am all for bringing forgotten movies to our notice, but as Bartlett himself says 'it is a very silly fluffy comedy film'. Hardly a qualification to feature in a Top Ten Noir list. For a comedy it is unamusing, and it is not at all Noir. Worse, it reminded me that I had once watched it, and had immediately forgotten it. It had thus failed my litmus test in judging movies. 'Do they hang about in my head for a day or more afterwards?'. This sort of bizarre inclusion undermines any faith in his recommendations. 8) Pool of London (1951) dir: Basil Dearden. Good choice. 9) Waterloo Road (1945) dir: Sidney Gilliat. 'Noirish' at best and nowhere near Top Ten status, but our guide speaks so well about it that I may give it another look. A more deserving John Mills vehicle would have been The Long Memory dir: Robert Hamer and a better Gilliat one would have been Green for Danger. Both of those are real Noir. It is strange that Mr Bartlett, who is clearly a Londoner, more than once refers to Waterloo Road as being in the East End. 10) The Third Man (1949) dir: Carol Reed. Most of us might have included this film in our top three, but our guide admits he does not much like it, and refused to include it in a previous iteration of this list. He only squeezed it in at the bottom to avoid all the hassle this time round. I think it is a great movie, but at the same time I sympathise with some of his points. No, it is not typical Brit Noir, but that is no reason to exclude it. Maybe you will look at Michael Bartlett's quirky video. He does make some good points. Thanks for the bump Agree with your appraisal of NOOSE and THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE and THE SMALL BACK ROOM the 5 I;d recommend BRIGHTON ROCK IT ALWATYS RAINS ON SUNDAY THE THIRD MAN NIGHT AND THE CITY POOL OF LONDON Missing THE GOOD DIE YOUNG CAST A DARK SHADOW
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jun 16, 2023 3:16:11 GMT
Director John Gilling wrote and directed a number of quality second feature British crime dramas throughout the 1950s, The Voice of Merrill (1952) is a favourite with Valerie Hobson. For a recommendation here, I would go with his excellent noirish drama Three Steps to the Gallows aka White Fire (1953). Starring two American leads Scott Brady and Mary Castle who are supported with a great cast of English character actors, the story which I will not spoil, is a tense, fast-paced atmospheric thriller with some fabulous London location filming... Gregor (Scott Brady) getting serious
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