Review Tales

For November, I tried to watch as many noirs as I could. Halfway into the month, it has turned out to be one of my favourite genres. Noir basically means crime films, but it has a lot more stylistic choices that are very definitive to the image of a noir. Dare I say there isn’t any genre like noir, which has an expressive image and mood that belongs to its own world. Without further ado, let’s get into my favourites.

5) Mystic River (2003)

Clint Eastwood’s brooding crime mystery is based on the book of the same name by Dennis Lehane. Dennis Lehane wrote many books that take place in Boston and focus on the shady parts of the neighbourhood.

The film opens with a shocking scene where Dave gets abducted by a guy, and his two friends watch him as the car goes by. This incident harps back into the life of these three people again when they’re grown up. The three leads give a great performance, but Tim Robbins is the highlight who’s absolutely phenomenal as Dave.

It is an excellent exploration of evil that’s part of human nature. It has a great ending which is very complex. Much like the film’s opening scene, it ends with a disturbing and harrowing sequence. It makes you ask many questions and feel pity for its certain characters.

4) The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

This is a tense conspiracy thriller made at the height of Cold War paranoia. With this in context, the politics of the film is more apparent. The way it treats the brutality of violence and politics is bolder than an average thriller because of how personal the thrills and drama get. The film’s depiction of a bumbling politician like the John Iselin character is a treat to watch.

John Frankenheimer directed The Manchurian Candidate at the peak of his career. He is probably one of the most striking visual storytellers along with Brian De Palma and Hitchcock in Hollywood. He has a great talent at staging the scenes, and his framing of shots always feels unique, which draws the viewer closer to the film’s world.

Sinatra is a pretty good lead. But the strength of the film lies in the characters played by Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury, who really feel like the main protagonists of the film with the way the story revolves around them. 

It made the film more intimate and personal. Many elements of it make it hard not to compare with a typical Hitchcock film, but I’d avoid that to not spoil anything. I can mention the film’s excellent climax, for example, which offers a wonderful reward with its astounding amount of great suspense and surprise.

3) Le Doulos (1962)

Melville cashes in on the noir atmosphere like no other. This is quite a great script. The narrative structure, which spins a web around the familiar characters and plot, makes the story more exciting. The film has this excellent bleak mood where it’s as if there’s a tragedy looming in the shadows to hit the characters at any time.

In the life of the gangsters and small-time thieves of Le Doulos, violence is a mundane occurrence. Betrayal is a sign of normalcy in the functioning of their worlds. It makes them cautious and always look back as if they can escape their doom. But fate, as always, catches up to them. It captures violence in a similar way to the latter works of Scorsese.

2) Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)

A great hard-boiled noir that’s more of a morality tale. Though James Cagney doesn’t get any outright cool scenes as a gangster like in William A. Wellman’s The Public Enemy, he’s absolutely wonderful here. The film gets very emotional, especially right from the church scene in the beginning, which is evidence of both the film’s and Cagney’s brilliance.

There aren’t many greater images than a shot of Cagney and Bogart sitting around seriously listening to the radio while the smoke from Bogart’s cigarette fills the room. Bogart plays the small part of a crooked lawyer, but he brings a charm to his character. 

He is a contradictory personality to Cagney’s other friend, played by Pat O’Brien. The entire film revolves around the relationship between him and Cagney, whose familiarity goes all the way back to childhood.

It is a great picture filled with lots of expressionistic shots of the neighbourhood, clubs, smoke, and shadows that follow the main players of its world. Also, it’s a pretty good title, though not accurate, especially when you got both Cagney and Bogart in the picture. It is probably up there with the ranks of Elevator to the Gallows as one of the all-time great titles.

1) Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

“They? A wonderful word. And who are they? They’re the nameless ones who kill people for the great whatsit. Does it exist? Who cares? Everyone everywhere is so involved in the fruitless search for what?” – Velda

In Kiss Me Deadly, Mike Hammer gets swirled in a web of mystery when he picks up a hitchhiker. He goes on a search for the ‘whatsit’ (macguffin) and to find out the motive behind it all. Usually, when a character encounters a mystery in noirs, they get too nosy—especially if that character is a cop or a reporter. The film’s protagonist, Mike Hammer, is a private detective. God knows how deep he gets into it.

Movies make the idea of being a private detective too much fun to be considered as a job. Sure, you can easily get beat up or killed, but it doesn’t matter if you manage to say a sassy line and know how to throw a punch. At least that’s what happens to Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly at first. But it gets way too personal.

This is a wonderful noir with great dialogue and mood. Robert Aldrich basically reconstructed the book and adapted it into a subversive noir. In the book, communists are the villains. But in the film, Robert Aldrich also makes it about the fear of McCarthyism. Nevertheless, both works are primarily about paranoia—the fear of the future, especially with the emergence of dangerous technological advancements and the fear of being killed for your ‘connections.’

It is a very sensual and brutal film. Very few films in the ’50s are as bold as Kiss Me Deadly. It picks up from the opening right away with a shocking scene and ends with a bang. The third act gets quite intense where the characters go for an unpredictable wild ride. All in all, it’s a clever masterpiece that’s probably one of the best noirs of all time.