Top 5 film noir of 1957

Not a real good year for noir.

Baby Face Nelson
Slaughter On 10th Avenue
Plunder Road
The Girl In Black Stockings
The Midnight Story

Hmm, only got Sweet Smell of Success. Which I enjoyed immensely. 

On vacation in Utah, My Lovely Wife and I stopped off at the Parry Lodge in Kanab where “The Girl In Black Stockings” was filmed, almost, in its entirety. The sign out front, the main registration building, and the pool are virtually unchanged over the last 65 years.

The Edmund Parry played by Canadian actor Ron Randell is totally fictional. The real Parry Brothers were responsible for spearheading Hollywood’s use of the surrounding area for western locations starting in the 1930s and for southern Utah’s tourist industry. The lobby of the main building is a shine to the Brothers' success. All of the rooms are named for stars who had stayed at Parry’s. The pool which figures prominently in the film itself was fairly new when the movie was shot. John Wayne paid half to install it because he wanted a place to cool off while lodging there. Sadly, about 1970, the need for western movie locations dried up but the lodge persists, no doubt, on nostalgia seekers familiar with its history.

This picture taken during production can be seen enlarged at the Parry Lodge. That looks like Lex Barker in swim trunks on top of the van (far right).

If you want to get all technical about it, most critics and film historians who have weighed in on the question seem to have come to something like a consensus that the film noir era ended in 1959, possibly with “Odds Against Tomorrow” being the last true noir. If you go by that, any movie you saw from the 1960s would be a neo-noir.

Personally, I would like to extend the era into the mid-‘60s, or maybe even take the entire decade. Perhaps you saw:

The Girl Hunters (1963). Author Mickey Spillane plays his own creation Mike Hammer in an adaptation of one of his hard-boiled novels.

The Killers (1964) with assassins Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager on the trail of robbery loot. Ronald Reagan’s last film and his only villain (unless you count his presidency ).

The Eyes Of Annie Jones (1964). Richard Conte in the U.K. A touch of the supernatural.

Seven Days In May (1964). A famous movie about an attempted coup on the U.S. government. You would probably know if you saw this one.

Mirage (1965). Gregory Peck thinks he is one person but isn't sure. People after him think he is someone else.

Était En Noir (The Bride Wore Black) (1968) French thriller deliberately “Hitchcockian.”