Year 12 - 5 Film Noir films

Late one night, successful insurance salesman Walter Neff breaks into his office building in Los Angeles.  Bleeding and in pain, he begins to recite his story into a Dictaphone for his colleague Barton Keyes to find the next morning.  His story is one of deception and betrayal.  So begins Billy Wilder’s gritty masterpiece, based on the book by James M Cain.  As we sit and watch, we learn how Walter began an affair with the captivating Phyllis Dietrichson, played by the ultimate femme fatale actress, Barbara Stanwyck.  It isn’t long before she convinces him to help her murder her husband, Mr. Dietrichson, in order to collect his life insurance money.  The trouble is, the murder must look like an accident in order for them to collect on his insurance’s double indemnity clause.  The murder is done sloppily and it isn’t long before the authorities are on his trail.  Is it possible that he was betrayed?  As more details come to light, it becomes evident that Phyllis isn’t who she claims she is.  Double Indemnity is one of the most influential film noirs ever made for its pioneering use of the femme fatale character archetype.  With one of the cinema’s greatest plot twists and a performance by Stanwyck that would make Phyllis Dietrichson one of the greatest villains of all time, Double Indemnity has inspired countless imitators and remakes, including the superb 1981 neo-noir Body Heat.

To sum up the plot of The Big Sleep in one paragraph is almost impossible.  It has what could very well be the most compliated plot in film noir history.  Even Raymond Chandler, the author of the book that it was based on, once famously admitted that he didn’t know the answer to all of the plot twists and holes.  But despite the nearly incomprehensible plot, The Big Sleep is universally regarded as one of the definitive masterpieces of the genre.  This time Humphrey Bogart plays the famous hardboiled detective character (this time the famous Philip Marlowe). He finds himself in the employ of the sick and dying General Sternwood, who asks him to keep an eye on his daughter Carmen who has fallen in with a bad group of people.  Too bad he is distracted by her beautiful older sister Mrs. Vivian Rutledge (played by the amazing Lauren Bacall).  Things begin to get out of control as people start dying all around Marlowe and he gets involved with powerful criminals, an underground pornography ring, and several nasty cases of blackmail.  With some of the greatest sexual chemistry ever captured on screen with Bogart and Bacall, The Big Sleep is an intoxicating affair that will keep you fascinated long after the story has stopped making sense

Based on the famous short story by Ernest Hemingway, The Killers is a tragically brutal film that leaves an impression that lasts long after it has ended.  It starts with one of the most famous opening scenes in film noir history where two hit men invade a small town and kill Ole Anderson (aka The Swede) who puts up no resistance.  The original short story was fairly short, so The Killers takes great pleasure in extrapolating the story and exploring the characters and their pasts.  We learn that the Swede (played by Burt Lancaster) used to be a member of a gang of thieves whom he was pushed into betraying by femme fatale Kitty Collins Colfax (played by Ava Gardner).  Like so many film noir characters, the Swede is fully aware of his transgressions and knows that he cannot escape his fate.  And so he greets his punishment like a man instead of trying to escape from it, as so many other film noir characters would.  We then follow an investigator and a police detective as they struggle to track down his killers and bring them to justice.  The Killers is a powerful story that fully deserves it reputation as a classic film noir.

A perennial favorite by film critics and directors alike, Out of the Past is universally regarded as one of the definitive examples of film noir.  It has all of the bells and whistles of great noir: stunning chiaroscuro cinematography, a beautiful femme fatale, and an intricate storyline.  But key to its charm is the lead, Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum), who like the title indicates, is running from a past that he cannot escape from.  At the start of the film, we find Bailey as the operator of a small town gas station.  But one day, he is forced to meet with a gambler named Whit Sterling.  On the way to the meeting, he confesses his past to his girlfriend.  It turns out that he was once a private eye who was hired by Sterling to find his mistress Kathie after she shot him and stole $40,000 from him.  Bailey managed to track her down to Acapulco.  Too bad he ended up falling in love with her.  But one murder and terrible discovery later, he decided to leave her.  Now, his past has caught up with him as he travels to meet the man that he betrayed.  The only problem is that when he confronts Sterling, Kathie is there.  What do they want?  Why is she there?  Have Sterling and Kathie gotten back together after she shot and betrayed him?  And what do they want with Bailey?  Just as questions beget more questions, one man’s past will lead him to an uncertain future.  It is up for the audience to make the final judgment concerning the sad, strange case of Jeff Bailey.

On a crowded subway in New York City, a small time pickpocket named Skip McCoy steals a wallet.  To him, it’s no big deal.  After all, it’s just another job for him.  Unbeknownst to him is the fact that the woman he robbed was carrying a microfilm of stolen top-secret government information that was destined for a group of Communists.  With the incredibly vital information in the hands of a common thief, both the police and the Communists start to track him down.  Too bad Mr. McCoy doesn’t care about the welfare of his country or his civic duty.  To him, it is an opportunity to make a bundle from the highest bidder.  As he slips away from the police and the Communists, it is up to Candy, the woman he robbed, to find him and get the microfilm back.  To many, this plot may seem too political to justify it as film noir.  But politics are not the focus of this film.  Instead, it is the conflicts and motivations of the characters that make it a genuine film noir.  One of the distinguishing characteristics of film noir are characters who have murky morals or who don’t play by the rules set by their profession, such as corrupt cops or noble criminals.  Here in Pickup on South Street, we have a thief who cares more about money than his country, a prostitute (Candy), as a love interest, and a snitch named Moe (played by the delightful Thelma Ritter) as a noble martyr who dearly loves, and dies for, the people that she sells out to the cops.  Filmed during the height of McCarthyism, the idea of a protagonist who would willingly sell out his country to the Reds was unheard of. Yet we come to love and sympathize with him and the other dregs of society who inhabit his seedy world of crime and vice.  It is the characters who make Pickup on South Street as genuine a film noir as the other entries on this list

 (Top 10 Film Noir Movies) (http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-film-noir-movies.php)