Ace in the Hole is noir? I’ve never heard that one before. I never even heard of the film until Criteron released it and I took a film noir class in college! I suppose maybe that says more about my class but having recently seen the film, I don’t see the classic noir elements at all. To me the movie was an indictment on media, journalism, etc. and not a moody, stylish crime flick. At the very least, it certainly wasn’t a dark film, in terms of lighting, which seems to me to be a prerequisite to call a film “noir”.
Bobby Wise – please elaborate as I must have missed something.
don’t bother.
Bobby Wise considers Vertigo to be film noir, despite being very knowledgeable on the subject.
I was given a crash course on Melville this summer and I’m very glad. My knowledge of the crime/gangster genre had a big blank spot where the 50s and 60s should have been, but getting caught up on Melville filled in the blank nicely and helped me understand the leap from Lights of New York and Little Ceasar to The Godfather. I think there’s certainly something to be said for that.
Christianne, you might want to check out the 1949 film Portrait d’un assassin directed by Bernard-Roland. It has Arletty, Eric Von Stroheim, and Maria Montez supporting Pierre Brasseur who plays a motorcycle daredevil who rides the Wall of Death in a small circus. The film opens with him lying in wait to shoot his wife and becomes more complicated and somewhat surreal from there. It isn’t a crime thriller, but it is dark and odd in a very French style.
FRITZ !
Re:
“Try naming a director/auteur with more than 3 “classic”/“famous”/what have you Noir films.
Even more so, try naming Auteur driven film noirs”.
I can only try.
Directors:
Robert Aldrich
Sam Fuller
Henry Hathaway
Jules Dassin
Orson Welles
Alfred Hitchcock
Robert Siodmak
Fritz Lang
Anthony Mann
Nicholas Ray
Joseph H. Lewis
Auteur-driven films noir:
Phantom Lady, Criss Cross, The Killers (Siodmak)
Touch of Evil, The Stranger (Welles)
Woman in the Window, Ministry of Fear, You Only Live Once (Lang)
Railroaded, T-Men, Border Incident (Mann)
In a Lonely Place, They Live by Night (Ray)
Key Largo (Huston)
Double Indemnity (Wilder)
Night and the City (Dassin)
Kiss of Death, The Dark Corner (Hathaway)
Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich)
Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock)
well, lets remember. not all noirs must be “stylish crime flicks” (read: gangster films), but they must all be moody. and they certainly must be dark. but that darkness refers to mood and tone and characterization as much as lighting. what makes a classic film noir? the intersection of separate myths, conventions, and iconography, in varying degrees of abundance, in the body of a film text from the years 1940-1960. key words, “varying degrees of abundance”.
now, lets treat “ace in the hole”, keeping in mind this theorem of varying degrees of abundance. it certainly had a cynical, hard-boiled tone, with the matching dialogue. it depicted a seamy underside of life. it painted a picture of dark motivations and obsessions in the bright lights of the desert. and it had a downbeat conclusion. i think it classifies as noir. but we can argue it the opposite way and see.
yes, ive gone on the record on numerous occasions here that i consider “vertigo” to be classic film noir. but i understand and agree that it somehow transcends the limitations of any rigid grouping or coding, even in the context of hitchcock’s body of films. yet and still, it seems to me that “vertigo” contains a wide variety of the myths, conventions, and iconography that make up the classic film noir. whether thats argreeable or not, at the least, it gives us one more unique frame in which to view one of the most interesting films ever made.
after thinking long and hard about noir, and studying it for years, it seems to me that there are only two true prerequisites for a film to be classified as such. the first, and probably the most important, is a dark, moody tone and atmosphere (but not necessarily dark cinematography). the second is the convention of crime. if a crime of some kind hasnt been committed by the conclusion of the film, i find it really hard to say it belongs to the noir style. id love to hear potential examples that buck this trend though.
Ugh, I wish I would provide some solid counter arguement but it’s been so long since I studied classic noir that I honestly don’t remember the classic conventions. Off the top of my head, b&w photography, femme fatale, double crossing, crime, voice over – these are some of the elements that remind me of noir. I don’t think all of these are requirements for a noir (certaintly there are noir films that don’t have a VO) but if I’m not mistaken, some elements are not up for a debate. It’s pretty easy for me to list of a bunch of classic noir films and you can see what they have in common. But then throw Ace in the Hole and even Vertigo into the mix and you screw up my whole system.
I really just don’t know – my own personal feeling is that I wouldn’t label either of these films noir. Vertigo certainly has plenty of noir elements but it’s also in color (and is also straddling the line since it came out the same year as Touch of Evil which was supposedly the final classic noir film). Can you give me a better, more obvious example of a classic noir film that is in color? Because I always associate classic noir as b&w. And what I’m talking about is CLASSIC film noir: from The Maltese Falcon to Touch of Evil.
I don’t know. I’d be interested to hear what other people have to say about this; maybe I’ve been making the wrong assumptions as to what films are to be classified with this label.
“cherish anomalies. ask why, why, why? never give up trying to figure out what they mean. if you can come to grips with the anomaly, you may have something big.” – henry mintzberg
everythings up for debate. no need to be dogmatic, especially about something as mysterious and resistant to simple categorization as film noir.
“a system does not regulate everything. it is a bait for something.” – bresson
dont hold on to your system at the expense of new discoveries. another quote from mintzberg, if i recall it correctly: “if the evidence blows holes in the theory, so much the better for it.” dont prize the theory over the evidence.
“touch of evil” was supposedly the last classic film noir. key word: supposedly. but wise’s “odds against tomorrow” disproves that theory (and for my thinking, “vertigo” does to). besides, who has the honor of getting to decide what is the last of the classic films noir? and should that opinion not be challenged and disproven if it can be?
the classic example of a classic film noir in color is “leave her to heaven.” but also, we can look at fuller’s “house of bamboo”. and there are a few other anomalies popping up here and there.
the boundaries of classic film noir probably need to be expanded. we should allow “stranger on the third floor” on the front end, and “odds against tomorrow” on the back end.
Oh yes, I’m the first one to call out labels and “rules” as bullshit. At the end of the day, a film is a film – call it what you want – regardless of genre or whether it’s following/not following standard conventions. I tend to fall in the group who believe this categorizing is more for the ease of anaylsis and critical pontification and less about some absolute truths. The boundaries of cinema are endless and it’s human nature to be unable to deal with such limitlessness – which is why, I believe, the auteur theory was created. Because like you say, who gets to decide what is and what isn’t? Who is this special person or group of people that gets to pick what film begins something and what ends it? Honestly, it does seem to get a little silly.
Film Noir has become a catch-all phrase distributors now use for releasing DVDs.
but dont get me wrong. analysis is important. and if that analysis picks up on patterns and trends, they have to be talked about. and boundaries do exist. thats something that must be analyzed and talked about as well. its just that boundaries arent as rigid as we would like them to be.
I’ll throw out Allan Dwan’s Simply Scarlett as a color noir, and I’ll further make the argument that, alone among films noir, it tries to find a cinematic equivalent of the pulp fiction paperback cover. Hence the saturated reds and greens and the red-headed actresses. I think it largely succeeds. John Alton strikes again.
Greg X: thanks for the tip. I’ll have to check that out.
Whoops. Meant to say “Slightly Scarlet”. I type too fast sometimes. Sheesh.
Rich Uncle Skeleton
I’ve got to agree with Kimberly Lindbergs, definitely Huston and Suzuki.