Old Movie thread - Yes, you may have to be positive here.

Clockwork_PurBle said:
The Maltese Falcon > Casablanca
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Yeah, Maltese Falcon was pretty much the first major film noir, wasn't it? Huston was a newb at that point - George Raft turned down the Sam Spade because of that - and worked the film entirely differently from his off-hand approach a decade later for Beat the Devil. For the Falcon, Huston planned every second in the film with story boards and had the actors rehearse with a very detailed script.
 
wabbits said:
Yeah, Maltese Falcon was pretty much the first major film noir, wasn't it? Huston was a newb at that point - George Raft turned down the Sam Spade because of that - and worked the film entirely differently from his off-hand approach a decade later for Beat the Devil. For the Falcon, Huston planned every second in the film with story boards and had the actors rehearse with a very detailed script.
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Yes it was.

The film that's pretty much considered as the first ever though major or not is Stranger on the Third Floor.

And M is considered the grandfather to that genre.

All three of these films have something in common aside from being noir or noir-esque.
 
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Clockwork_PurBle said:
Yes it was.

The film that's pretty much considered as the first ever though major or not is Stranger on the Third Floor.

And M is considered the grandfather to that genre.

All three of these films have something in common aside from being noir or noir-esque.
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One of those things in common would have to be Peter Lorre, eh? His screen presence seems to have changed the way the world looked at itself.

Huston let him play against type, an evil man confident of his ability to frighten but unable to pull it off for long. Here Joel Cairo tries to intimidate Sam Spade:

By the time Beat the Devil rolled around, Lorre was even allowed to huffily inform Bogart that his character's name, O'Hara, was actually quite common among Germans living in Argentina since the war. Lorre was the soul of droll.

For curious passersby, M with subtitles is free. I couldn't find a freebie of Stranger on the Third Floor, but YT has it for $2.99 and TCM's shown it from time to time. I did find a clip with the ooo scary uplighting that Lorre never needed to be sinister. Here the protagonist is kind of an autist, annoying everybody by banging on a keyboard all night long and even managing to knock himself downstairs while snooping around with Arthur Dent's towel over his shoulder. But flawed heroes, that too is noir.
 
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I remember really liking this movie.


Of course, I haven't watched it in a long time, maybe i'll take it out this weekend. I read somewhere that over the course of the films, "the Thin Man" began to refer to William Powell's character, but in the original book it referred to the man who was murdered.
 
noirest of the noir -- touch of evil 1958


except for this (ancient, legendary, epic, ultra cheap) -- detour 1945


peeping tom (1961) which basically ruined the career of its director, Michael Powell


3 women (1977)

 
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GenderCop said:
noirest of the noir -- touch of evil 1958


except for this (ancient, legendary, epic, ultra cheap) -- detour 1945


peeping tom (1961) which basically ruined the career of its director, Michael Powell


3 women (1977)

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Touch of Evil is amazing. Detour's new to me so I'll look around for it, thanks.

In case anybody's interested, there's a good podcast discussion about Peeping Tom by Frank Conniff, Trace Beaulieu, and Carolina Hidago on the Movie Sign With the Mads site. They also did one on Orson Welles' "lost" mockumentary, The Other Side of the Wind.
 
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I have two favorite silent film actors. Nils Asther and William Haines. (An openly gay actor in the silent film era.) It annoys me that it's difficult to find their movies.
 
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Just watched Some Like It Hot starring Marilyn Monroe. WOOOOO-BOY, if modern libtards were to get a hold of this one, the REEEEEEEing that'd ensue.
 
I still think Citizen Kane is brilliant, even if it's become fashionable to bash it for being overhyped. What really stuck with me was its theme about the power of memory. How the past shapes who you are in the present. This speech by Kane's business colleague Mr. Burnstein really sticks out at me:
A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.
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The Third Man and Double Indemnity are classic noir. The Third Man has the best black and white photography you'll ever see in a movie and a film-stealing turn by Orson Welles, whose character is so charismatic that he almost makes you root for him. Until you remember he murdered people and sold bad medicine that turned a bunch of kids into vegetables. The film ends with a great sewer chase and a realistic downer ending that the filmmakers fought to stay firm on.

Double Indemnity pushed the Hayes Code as far as it could go, doing everything it could to make you like the main villain (even casting the fatherly Fred MacMurray to play him.) Fred's an insurance fraud investigator who wants to use the knowledge he's gained from his job to pull off the perfect insurance fraud. Of course, since it's a LIFE insurance fraud, that means Fred has to kill someone to collect the money. He doesn't win (you know this by the opening scene so it's not a spoiler,) and the movie does its best to give us a "criminals never prosper" message, but it rings hollow since Fred's been our viewpoint character for the whole movie and has had several "pet the dog" moments. The viewer also really wants to see if he can pull his scheme off and hook up with the hot (fake) blonde (Barbara Stanwyck,) who's married to the soon to be murdered man. There are a lot of movies set in LA that make it seem like the most sordid place on Earth (Mulholland Drive, Sunset Boulevard,) but Double Indemnity really pushes this idea to the limit. LA just seemed ridiculously unwholesome in this movie, long before it was overrun by pedos and junkies.
 
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Pokemonquistador2 said:
I still think Citizen Kane is brilliant, even if it's become fashionable to bash it for being overhyped. What really stuck with me was its theme about the power of memory. How the past shapes who you are in the present. This speech by Kane's business colleague Mr. Burnstein really sticks out at me:


The Third Man and Double Indemnity are classic noir. The Third Man has the best black and white photography you'll ever see in a movie and a film-stealing turn by Orson Welles, whose character is so charismatic that he almost makes you root for him. Until you remember he murdered people and sold bad medicine that turned a bunch of kids into vegetables. The scene ends with a great sewer chase and a realistic downer ending that the filmmakers fought to stay firm on.

Double Indemnity pushed the Hayes Code as far as it could go, doing everything it could to make you like the main villain (even casting the fatherly Fred MacMurray to play him.) Fred's an insurance fraud investigator who wants to use the knowledge he's gained from his job to pull off the perfect insurance fraud. Of course, since it's a LIFE insurance fraud, that means Fred has to kill someone to collect the money. He doesn't win (you know this by the opening scene so it's not a spoiler,) and the movie does its best to give us a "criminals never prosper" message, but it rings hollow since Fred's been our viewpoint character for the whole movie and has had several "pet the dog" moments. The viewer also really wants to see if he can pull his scheme off and hook up with the hot (fake) blonde (Barbara Stanwyck,) who's married to the soon to be murdered man. There are a lot of movies set in LA that make it seem like the most sordid place on Earth (Mulholland Drive, Sunset Boulevard,) but Double Indemnity really pushes this idea to the limit. LA just seemed ridiculously unwholesome in this movie, long before it was overrun by pedos and junkies.
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It's a genuinely great film that doesn't suffer from a lot of what actually legitimately old films suffer from where the acting is very theatrical and corny. For lack of a better expression. Compare and contrast the original and the remake of Cape Fear:



Mitchum is a legend but the acting still has that cadence to it. I'd post footage from the original to illustrate my point a little better but the only things on YT are the trailer. So either there's little interest in the original or the bots are very litigious. But the best scene that shows the difference between the two eras of movies is when the family finds out the dog is dead. In the original, there's barely any emotion from anyone and Gregory Peck just looks more annoyed than fearful. Compared to the remake (and BTW, I think overall it's a weak Scorsese movie heavily weakened by the Sideshow Bob episode of the Simpsons) where Nick Nolte is panicking and the wife is crying in a heap over the dog. It's a night and day difference. It's amazing how long it took for movies to have acting where the actors sound and behave like real people.


As an aside, fuck contrarian faggots who hate Citizen Kane and fuck David Fincher. Although I liked Mank, his attitude belittling Orson Wells just makes him a massive faggot.
 
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Car Won't Crank said:
Chinatown (1974) is a really good detective noir film about the California water wars. Mr Mulholland is played under a fictional name, but the parallels to real people and events are obvious.
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Saw that one in theaters a while ago with my parental grandma. It was great. Might have to give it a re-watch sometime.
 
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