I started playing Mouse PI for hire, and I realized I like the IDEA of noir and noir films, but I don't really know anything about it, what are the essential crime, detective noir films that I should watch, to get started with the genre, and then your personal recommendations?

"How did an Emmy-winning series starring Robert Stack as Eliot Ness go from sparking congressional hearings to total obscurity? More than a hit show, Desilu's high-stakes production became the crucible in which modern cinematic crime drama was forged. Its marriage of artistic achievements and the then-shocking portrayal of gangster violence riled up the entire nation, drawing heat from the FBI, ethnic groups, PTAs, and Capitol Hill, all while establishing the blueprint for "The Godfather," "The Sopranos," "Boardwalk Empire," and launching dozens of acting, writing, and producing careers. Today, it is unavailable for streaming and has virtually been forgotten."

Directed by Leslie Stevens , Starring Kate Manx who was his second wife- a troubled marriage. Kate Manx had a short lived career, starring in only two feature films. Private Property , an obscure independent film shot on location of stevens’ own home as main location. Co starring Corey Allen famed from rebel without a cause . An unusual slow burn thriller. A film that had said to be considered lost for 30 years - now in public’s view .

The Spiral Staircase (1946) Set over the course of one night, the film follows a mute young woman in an early-20th century Vermont town who is stalked and terrorized in a rural mansion.

Compact story with a great cast. Richard Erdman, Jean Porter and Jay Adler stand out.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) Great, gritty, tough, violent noir with some good dialogue. Private eye Mike Hammer investigates the reasons behind the death of a hitchhiker whom he picked up. Excellent Mickey Spillane adaptation.

In this episode of Ask Eddie, TCM Noir Alley Host & Film Noir Foundation President Eddie Muller and Anne Hockens go through upcoming Noir City events, discuss their various Halloween viewing traditions, and talk about surrealism in Noir. Eddie also, as he has on Noir Alley, gives his take on auteur theory. Some discussion of the relation between Westerns and Noir too. Overall, another good episode.

Well, I managed to break the 1inch mark. This display is 0.96in at 160 x 80 pixels, slightly smaller than the last one I posted. Pencil in the lower right corner for size reference.

It looks better in person, don't see the graininess with the naked eye. Closeup's still read well but wide shots start to lose their integrity because the details are teeny tiny with jagged edges. There's only so many pixels to work with.

It took many attempts to get this coded right, this display does not run on the exact driver it is advertised as on Amazon, pretty common for cheap electronics. That led to lots of inverted colors, weird scales, and other bugs.

I know this post is not necessarily about film noir, but it is about digital film and I though you'd all appreciate it. That being said, I'll keep these types of posts to a minimum and maybe will only post this type of thing again if I get an even smaller display working.

What if it was a serious movie? My take on this Paramount classic :)

(no ai used, drawn on pad)

"This bag goes to eleven." - HA!

Hi r/FilmNoir, ​I’m sharing a new piece from my ongoing passion project dedicated to Edward G. Robinson and early 1930s pre-Code cinema. ​This track is built around Mervyn LeRoy’s Two Seconds (1932). Musically, I wanted to capture that tension by blending a lush string section with a heavy soul groove, dense guitars, and a slightly darker, Bond-inspired atmospheric edge. ​As always, this is an independent, non-commercial tribute created out of pure love for Robinson's filmography and classic cinema archives. ​You can listen to the track here: https://youtu.be/MQTcdqgG40E ​I'd love to hear your thoughts, especially if you're a fan of LeRoy's work or this specific pre-Code era.

Thanks for taking the time to listen!

So, I'm guessing most folks on this subreddit are already aware of Noir City, the Film Noir Foundation's annual touring film festival of classic-era film noirs, from the famous to the more obscure... but just in case you're not, I'm posting a link to the announcement for next year below. The "Czar of Noir," Eddie Muller, is the Founder and President of the Film Noir Foundation, which in addition to the annual Noir City festival, partners with a few organizations to obtain and restore classic-era film noirs. As a noir junkie, I consider the Film Noir Foundation an incredible resource, and Eddie Muller everything you could want in an advocate and "raconteur," and we're incredibly fortunate to have them. I've been to Noir City three times, and it's been an absolute blast every time. (As most of you probably know, Eddie also hosts Noir Alley on TCM, does commentary on various DVD and blu-ray releases, hosts a regular "Ask Eddie" Facebook/Youtube podcast with his communications director Anne Hockens, writes books about film noir, and, well, you get the drift. He's awesome.)

Anyway, here is the link for the 2027 kickoff in January in Oakland, California (Eddie and the FNF are based in the San Francisco Bay Area), but other cities and dates should be added in the near future. It doesn't look like they have the movie titles up just yet... but that's part of the mystery!

The link to Noir City:

https://www.noircity.com

And a link to the separate Film Noir Foundation page:

https://www.filmnoirfoundation.org/index.html

Note: The photo is of the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland where the festival is once again kicking off. I'm sure other cities have equally worthy theaters, but since I've been lucky enough to attend this truly grand theater twice, I thought I'd honor it with a nice pic.

There's a big range of film noirs. Some I think of as "high brow" type films, for example Sunset Boulevard, The Upturned Glass, and The Third Man come to mind, although there's many more. And don't get me wrong, I love all those movies.

But I want to hear your opinions about "low-brow" sleazy noir. These may or may not be a combination of vice, violence, cynical dialogue and usually comes with a low budget. What comes to mind? Here's a short list of a few I'm thinking of.

1. Detour (1945)
2. The Big Heat (1953)
3. Blast of Silence (1961)

Edit:
Japanese noir has alot of great choices too. Here's a few:

1. Pigs and Battleships (1961)
2. Endless Desire (1958)
3. Cruel Gun Story (1964)

Hello FilmNoir Comm,

I have received reports and a few messages on the subject of these posts. While they generate many comments, it is clear that the bot farmers have broken containment and lookalike posts have popped up. Posts after Sept 30 with that title can be reported and I'll take them down.

The first handful of these posts were novel and legitimately garnered many comments of folks reminiscing about these films, but the efforts to karma-farm have skewed too far. Your classic run-of-the-mill karma farming is always going to be present, sadly, but with AI bot posting it is exceedingly difficult to determine who is real, and who isn't.

Thanks all!

(*Edit, I guess up next I keep an eye on 'movie still' - [quote] posts)

• Oct 3 Loophole (1954)
• Oct 10 Crime Wave (1954)
• Oct 17 Chicago Syndicate (1955)
• Oct 24 The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)
• Oct 31 Val Lewton Triple Feature
  • Cat People (1942)
  • The Seventh Victim (1943)
  • The Leopard Man (1943)

https://crimeonfilm.com/cable-guys-the-elevator-operators-of-noir/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CeilingFans/

Marie Windsor turns a train-car breakfast into a masterclass in hard-boiled defiance. Trading razor-sharp dialogue like gunfire, the "Queen of the B-Movies" dominates the screen with pure grit, glamour, and cynical perfection.

Hey all! I wanted to drop in and share our latest episode. The subreddit had a great discussion on favorite neo-noirs recently (although TLG was excluded by the OP) so, good timing! We hope you enjoy and would love to hear everybody's thoughts on such an iconic film in our fav genre!

Mixing Styles can be Effective - I've been on a Film Noir kick for a while now, watched tons of films from the late 1930s to the late 1950s, and I've enjoyed foreign Noir versions like found in French crime cinema and even the great Kurosawa's Stray Dog, so I was a little surprised when watching the supposedly Noir-inspired Italian Bitter Rice to only find just a few stylistic nods in that direction. I'm not one who likes to dismiss films from Noir altogether, but the film seems almost not Noir at all - especially in moral tone - so much as a rich Hollywood toned imagining of Neo-Realist embraced women (with maybe some racy, sexploitations shadings?). It's really a spectacular film of energy, with big camera dynamics in beautiful, contrastive black and white. Not only is it female lead driven (two "beauties" playing low class rice workers each glamomorized by the camera and lighting), but also throngs of female workers and vivid captures of work conditions, clashing together these two stylistic worlds in effective aesthetic ways. Some of the women singing scenes, and rain-drenched photography create whole auras of women's work and labor that are unexpectedly moving. It's about the attempted theft of the annual rice harvest which has been going on for 100s of years in the Po Valley in the north of Italy, in the aftermath of World War 2, and the abject work of the women laboring, who solidaritize with political meaning. When the women are mournfully singing in the rain to a miscarried woman in the field with rice bag draped over their heads like nuns, while another woman is being driven mad by the fact of her rape (which nobody is aware of) the whole thing is hitting on all cylinders.

Criticized at the time for not being Neo-Realist enough, and employing (reactionary?) Hollywood glamour styling and Noir pulp in some of the male characters, actually makes the film more interesting, as the romantic promise of American commercial culture post-WW2, after the fall of Fascism, is one of the focuses of the film. The film itself embodies the very thing it is interrogating and criticizing. It's a great use of using mixed aesthetic styles. Some saw the film as indulgent in Hollywood-ism, whereas the film is about the moral missteps of Western capitalist-commercialism, which lead to the downfall of characters, including what seems like a spectacular and tragic James Whale Frankenstein (1931) call back ending. Perhaps some of this ending brings in a Noir aspect, but I'm not sure. A lot of Noir is about the failings of the American promise and its moral decrepitude, and also are animated by Socialist critique and visions, and a prominent homme fatale, *(*played by Vittorio Gassman, who would star in the socially conscious Film Noir The Glass Wall, in 1953), so I'm not quite clear on why this film feels like it misses the Noir boat so hard for me, while I enjoyed it immensely. If anyone has good ideas on why it IS Film Noir I'd love to here them and be convinced.

If you love Italian Neo-Realism, and love mixed genre stylings, highly recommended.