Last Chance...Film Noir HoF V

Are we there yet...?

The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers (1946)

I wanted to nominate The Spiral Staircase which shows up on noir lists but didn't quality because of the rules. I bring this up because the film starts as a gothic horror film, a dark and stormy night where a series of children have to deal with a murder. It's an fantastic opening that sets the scene and plot along for these three chracters (Stanwick, Heflin, and Douglas).

Unfortunately aside from the opening the story takes a nose dive for me. The story actually ends up boring me...which is the last thing you want from a noir. The soliloquies in this film just gets out of hand, their is just so little to this story it felt more like actors fishing for awards rather than a fully realized film. I don't blame the actors this was the height of the prestige performance in noir for Oscar time. But at the end of the day I wasn't invested in the romance and I wasn't interested in the plot.

C-

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

And this would be the inverse of Ivers. Kiss Me Deadly starts with a man picking up a hitchhiker and ends with one of the best climaxes in noir history. This film has a bunch of characters which I must confess I had a bit of difficulty keeping track of everyone. However unlike Ivers I was never bored by this one...mostly because of the murders. This film had a decent body count and they spread it out throughout the film which I appreciate.

Visually it's a great film, great use of shadow and movements. This is actually part of a series of Mike Hammer films/TV series. Now I know Hammer from the Stacey Keatch and he's fantastic as the PI. Ralph Meeker plays the lead and he's...well he's okay but he's also the worst part of the film. Really almost everyone in this film outshows him. It's likely not that important because the journey is the point less the performances.

B+

I have a few more I need to watch (The Big Heat, The Prowler, Night and the City etc) then I'll get a list in towards the end of the week.

Double Indemnity (1944)


You've got to give Billy Wilder credit the man knew how to build suspense and tell a winding creative story with compelling characters. This is the story of Walter Neff who is drawn into a familial drama of the Dietrichsons. You have eight characters in this film each one is very well flushed out and adds something to the greater plot and complicates Neff's morals. I think the first time you watch the film you get drawn into Keyes story, Edward G Robinson who is the both the head supporting character but also the detective. We don't really need a detective because we see the crime before us, but Robinson is charismatic and has a threatening aspect to himself that plays over the other characters. But Keyes has his own inverse that you don't really notice the first time you watch it but Lola's story is almost the most compelling one and it's the plot we see the least. Her mother and father are murdered her stepmother seduces her boyfriend and she's kicked out of the home. It could be it's own noir but instead Wilder chooses to tell a different story. It's a creativity that the noir genre always a writer and director to tell.

Ace in the Hole (1951)


Ace in the hole is the story of a journalist played by Kirk Douglas. Douglas is a transient failing downwards until he ends up in New Mexico to work as a reporter in a dead end town. While in the deadend town a shop keeper ends up in a collapsed mine, Douglas uses this opportunity to make himself into a big star and regain his glory and get out of the dead end town.



The one thing you really notice about Douglas is the guy does a lot of these noirs so his chracters always feel fairly interchangeable. The good news is as the only name in the film his performance gets to breathe a bit more than in his other work. In other words he's not stifled by his typical typecasting. By having mostly character actors the ideas of the script really pop. In other films. At first I was a little annoyed by the mixing of accents but as we found out the story of Jan Sterling's character it made a bit more sense...still that's a quibble I have with these old films.


The moral elements of the plot don't really come fogether through today's eyes. Human life has very little value to politicians and media members so having a film that the central focus is a human interest story doesn't work...today. With that said I'm not going to hold that against the film...the best parts of the movie are the little scenes. When the accident causes a huge circus like environment you have a great scene where a silver mine guy talks about the right way of getting the shopkeeper out, he's then followed by a woman who shares her time stuck in an elevator. It's the little things that make this film great.


The last act of the film aren't really heartbreaking more melancholic al. I don't know if we should actually care about what Douglass didif he was the symptom of the problem or the true cause.



A-

Posting the results of the HoF in a matter of minutes. It'll be quick so hang around!

@Diehl40 @GulfportDoc @PHOENIX74 @Siddon @Wyldesyde19
@ KeyserCorleone

Congrats to GulfportDoc on Double Indemnity...It's about time it was inducted into MoFo's Hall of Fame.

And nice choices everyone, I enjoyed every single noir in this HoF! Hope you guys had fun.

2nd place and it wasn’t even close haha.
DI deserves it finally.
I’ll have my final reviews up today

Very nice of you to run this thing, CR! I'm a big classic noir fan, and I think most of the others are too. Everyone seemed to enjoy the Film Noir V HOF.


Cheers!
~Doc

Double Indemnity is one of the best films of all time - top of my ballot

Thanks a heap CR, for running another smooth, fun HoF - the best host!

__________________

I still love The Sweet Smell of Success, #1 in my profile,but of course Double Indemnity is awesome.

Thanks Doc, as always good to have you join in. And you picked a doozy too. well deserved win for Double Indemnity.

Thanks Phoenix!

Kiss Me Deadly

He meets her on a road. Almost hits her in fact. She seems scared and as if running from someone. He senses she isn’t being honest with him, although she seems to be honest about where she came from and why. She’s recently escaped a mental institution, put there against her will. He penises to take her to the bus station, despite his gruffness and his growing uncertainty. She tells him “Remember Me.” Before he knows it, they’re ambushed and left for dead. He survives. She doesn’t. *

And so begins Kiss Me Deadly. A pretty good, although slightly complicated film that gets confusing about why she was killed in the first place. What did she know? What are they after? And why are the police intent on making Mike Hammer’s life, the man who was left for dead and a PI, a living hell? They take away his PI license as well as his license to carry a gun. They make things harder on him. But he won’t let it go.

The film takes an interesting turn towards the end. Watching this made me think of the briefcase reveal in Pulp Fiction. It gets even weirder when the box (When a woman asks “What’sin the box?” I was also reminded of Seven) is revealed to have its origins tied to The Manhattan Project.

The acting is ok. No one really stands out much here. Except maybe Meeker as Mike Hammer. Still, it’s a decent film.