r/filmnoir

Gloria Swanson deserved the academy award for Best Actress for her performance. Outstanding

Usually Film Noir femme fatales are couched in storylines, sometimes a side character in relation to a "good girl" and the "hero", sometimes given motivations or reasons for why she has to take the path, but this film from the beginning goes all in maybe more than any other. The opening scene has two workmates, both of whom are jilted lovers, arguing over her merits, in her wedding reception, and it goes from there. The purity of it all is quite good.

At first glance you wouldn't think this is a literary adaptation. But indeed it is based on the true crime book "Zodiac" by Robert Graysmith - and this is why it was controversial - not for the average movie goer but for amateur sleuths who disagree with the theory given by Graysmith about the identity of the serial killer. They think it was someone else. (The case is by the way not solved until today.)

The plot follows the cartoonist Graysmith on his stubborn search to identify and find the killer (he heard about the case when he worked for a newspaper in the early seventies). He gets help from the policeman Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) who at least listens to the cartoonist.

Fincher's movie has lots of noirish elements, unusual camera angles and intense sequences that could have been imagined by Hitchcock. A strong piece of cinema.

With Jake Gyllenhaal.

Just picked this up, and I can hardly wait to dig in. I frankly wasn't sure whether to post this on the filmnoir subreddit or the Westerns subreddit – so I'm doing both! That is, I have the idea that Anthony Mann is best known for directing five westerns in the 1950s with star James Stewart, and maybe rightfully so. But he also directed some pretty fantastic noir movies in the late 40s, and I'm not sure I don't like some of those even more than the great Stewart westerns. (Maybe I'll call it a tie.) In fact, Mann's career is sometimes broken up into three phases since he turned to a pair of historical epics in the early 1960s.

In case you don't know, here are just some of the movies on Mann's very impressive resume:

Desperate (1947) (noir)

Railroaded! (1947) (noir)

T-Men (1947) (noir)

Raw Deal (1948) (noir)

He Walked By Night (1948) (noir; Mann was uncredited as director)

Reign of Terror (aka The Black Book) (1949) (period noir)

Border Incident (1949) (noir)

Side Street (1949) (noir)

Winchester '73 (1950) (western)

The Furies (1950) (western noir?)

Devil's Doorway (1950) (western noir?)

The Tall Target (1951) (period noir)

Bend of the River (1952) (western)

The Naked Spur (1953) (western)

The Far Country (1954) (western)

The Man from Laramie (1955) (western)

Men in War (1957) (war)

The Tin Star (1957) (western)

God's Little Acre (1958) (comedy/drama)

Man of the West (1958) (western)

El Cid (1961) (historical epic)

The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) (historical epic)

The Heroes of Telemark (1965) (war epic)

That, to me, is one of the most amazing filmographies of any director from the classic era. (Then again, my favorite genres are film noir and westerns!) I've seen most of them, and most of them are very good to fantastic.

Anyway, I just wanted to celebrate one of my favorite directors. Do you have any thoughts about Anthony Mann and his movies?

I just picked up this book by Kevin Grant, and glad I did. (It's a $40 book, but Amazon is currently listing it with a 30% off coupon.) The bulk of the book is an alphabetical listing of 90+ movies that Grant has chosen as precursors to the style we now call film noir. The Introduction is short but incisive: Grant expands the list of oft-cited influences on film noir – German Expressionism, the hard-boiled American crime stories and novels, the gangster movie – to include some early silent Hitchcock thrillers, Hollywood pre-Code "bad girl" movies, French poetic realism, British espionage thrillers, and so-called women's melodramas (etc.). Grant identifies elements of subject matter, style, or tone in these movies – for instance, an aura of fatalism in French poetic realism – that render them in some ways either "proto-noir" or close siblings of the noir style.

I haven't yet read all of the movie synopses and commentaries, but for me, the Introduction had the effect of making me realize to a somewhat greater extent than I had that our sometimes overweening tendency to (try to) categorize isn't all that important in the long run: ultimately, it's the individual movies themselves and their power to entertain, engage, and maybe even enthrall us that matters, and if one movie is, say, more Gothic melodrama than film noir, that might very well be just as wonderful. (But yeah, of course, I love film noir! But I also like how this book celebrates the roots of and the edges around the noir style.)

Has anyone else checked this out?

Hint -> https://redd.it/1qqqfem

Hello cinema buffs and film lovers. I have been posting in this reddit group for over a year with my favorite scenes or quotes, & rare photos. I've learned so much about some of the biggest stars from back in the day, ohh and Lucille Ball....friends they knew.....or were introduced to during the time...and other fun behind the scenes tidbits that make me know I've found my happy place on the internet....and as long as I have this space I will never hunger for a modern television series or film.

This being said, I am attempting something major in my local community, motivating others with face to face conversations about how the films that touched us so deeply, will always have a fundamental impact on us. I really don't want to promote myself here, but wanted to share this update in case others were interested in discovering a world (in addition to this beautiful reddit group) that wasn't social media.....and didn't require you to drink or entertain.

Right now it's a tiny discord chat mixed with a local town library meetup so everyone involved has a safe and quiet place to connect.. Although this started at a local level in Michigan, there are a lot of active participaters and discussion encouragers from all around the world. I'd love to open the map up a little more and expand the conversation to anyone who could benefit from it.

How I see our days ahead: waking up to fun memes of bette davis or playing chess virtually together as we chat about the details of the Desilu/RKO takeover.

or punny chats like "drop your hypothetical star trek usernames"

Please let me know if this at all sounds intriguing and I can follow up with a invitation to this additional little corner of the internet.

Have a wonderful weekend you hip' happening people.