Yes to “Vertigo”. Watch “Casino” closely. You’ll see references to classic film noir. “Goodfellas” is quite neo-noirish. Don’t undersell the importance of gangsters for classic film noir! In some ways they’re as indispensable as femmes fatale or hard-boiled detectives.
Has anyone mentioned The Hot Spot yet? That definitely fits the bill for me.
Also check out the Encyclopedia of Film Noir by Alain Silver et al – indispensable for noir fans and has sections on classic noir and neo-noir.
Ok thanks. How about Godfather trilogy?
“The Godfather” has something of neo-noir to it but it has such an operatic grandeur that it’s hard to put it in a simple category. Still, at the heart of all that grandeur is a pulpy crime story. That’s the genesis of noir.
I don’t really know if Scorsese would count, but if so, then he’s made some of the very best neo-noirs (altough “The Departed” could definitely count as one). David Lynch is certainly a master of it- “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive” are great examples of neo-noir. Also “Chinatown”, “Blade Runner”, and “The Long Goodbye”.
The scene in THE DEPARTED in which Dicaprio has to follow Damon out of the porn theater plays like an incredibly dense homage to classic noir. Really excellent sequence of paranoia visualized.
Alex
I am not very sure about including Scorsese’s Casino and Goodfellas in an hypothetical list of neo-noir films.
It doesn’t have the typical stuff you can see in noirs. Hell, it doesn’t have anything related with noirs except that there are gangsters.
How about Hitchcock? i would definitely say VERTIGO could be in the mix also.
Examples of neo-noirs that come into my mind: Coen’s Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn’t There or Miller’s Crossing. Chinatown (this one is obvious), Lost Highway, Le samourai, Bad Lieutenant, Drive, or even Kaurismaki’s Lights in the Dusk.