Laura (1944)
The Noir
Gene Tierney is Laura – a beautiful advertising executive who takes a shotgun blast to the face as soon as the film starts. Luckily, the story is told in flashback, with detective McPherson (Dana Andrews) picking through her boyfriends and becoming increasingly obsessed with the dead victim.
Coolest Moment
Otto Preminger might have directed the film, but it’s David Raskin that leaves the most lasting impression – earworming his way into legend with one of Noir’s greatest scores.
The Killers (1946)
The Noir
Ernest Hemingway wrote the short story that Richard Siodmak fleshed-out (the first of two brilliant adaptations) – with two hitmen waiting for their mark in a diner, and the mark not really caring one way or the other.
Coolest Moment
The rest of the film adds a proper story (and Ava Gardner), but the opening fifteen minutes looks like a mini-masterpiece all of its own. Think Tarantino knows how to do ‘hitmen-in-a-diner-dialogue’? He’s good, but he’s no Hemingway…
Night And The City (1950)
The Noir
A British Noir?! Showing Hollywood that America isn’t the only place with dames to kill for, Jules Dassin set his racketeering chase movie in post-war London – following a two-bit hustler (Richard Widmark) through a series of underground wrestling clubs as he tries to outrun his fate.
Coolest Moment
London is the real star of Dassin’s film, with the opening and closing set-pieces weaving in and out amongst the shadows of bombed-out streets and houses – beautifully framed by Max Greene’s camera.
The Killing (1956)
The Noir
Stanley Kubrick’s third film plays like a straight, violent Ealing comedy – with Sterling Hayden leading a gang of crooks in a racetrack heist. Planning it for 70 minutes, pulling it off in 10 and losing everything in the final shot.
Coolest Moment
The actual heist scene (which looks suspiciously like the one at the start of The Dark Knight ...)
Gun Crazy (1950)
The Noir
All the ‘lovers on the run’ movies ( Bonnie And Clyde, Badlands, Natural Born Killers ) owe a debt of gratitude to Joseph H. Lewis’ 1950 classic – breaking the mould with a decidedly psychotic B movie about a gun nut couple. Peggy Cummins and John Dall star as the two crazy kids who love each other almost as much as they love ammunition.
Coolest Moment
Setting up their backstory, the opening scene shows Bart (Dall) stealing a gun, killing a chicken and practising his aim in the army before he bumps into Annie (Cummins) at a circus sideshow (shooting a gun, of course).
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Noir
The hardest boiled egg of the Film Noir canon, John Huston’s masterly adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s novel is pretty cynical stuff. Humphrey Bogart is PI Sam Spade, a man on the trail of a priceless bird statue. Not that he really cares…
Coolest Moment
As ever, it’s not really about the plot – with Bogart spitting and snarling Hammett’s whip-sharp dialogue with a forked tongue and a look of complete indifference. Only in the final line does Huston allow Spade a touch of class – quoting Shakespeare in reference to the Falcon (and the plot) “this is the stuff dreams are made of…”
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
The Noir
PI Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) stops his car to pick up a semi-naked woman running down the motorway – waking up the next morning to find her dead. Picking up the case, he finds himself getting in over his head in a twisty conspiracy story.
Coolest Moment
Another Noir moment that Tarantino nicked. The contents of Pulp Fiction ’s mysterious suitcase have their roots in Kiss Me Deadly ’s black box – with the final reveal remaining just as powerful, and just as enigmatic, as ever.
They Live By Night (1950)
The Noir
Nicholas Ray’s astonishing debut came out the same year as Gun Crazy – helping to found the lovers-on-the-run genre with a film that many have tried to copy, and few have bested. Cathy O’Donnell and Farley Granger play the outlaw couple actually trying to go straight.
Coolest Moment
No one knew kids in the ’50s like Nicholas Ray (the director of Rebel Without A Cause ), and it was his ironic use of contemporary music that made the opening – with ‘I Know Where I’m Going’ adding a sly question mark to the idyllic introduction.
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
The Noir
Billy Wilder’s ugly, vicious portrait of Hollywood opens with a guy face down in a swimming pool. Narrated, in flashback, by a dead man, the story concerns a lowly screenwriter (William Holden) who pulls into the driveway of a reclusive old silent star (Gloria Swanson) and finds himself unable to leave. Wrung through with as much pathos as bleak tragedy, Wilder holds a cracked black mirror up to his own industry.
Coolest Moment
Descending a staircase with horrific grace, Norma (Swanson) looks like a delusion of grandeur in a dress – funny, if it wasn’t so sad, beautiful, if it wasn’t so close to Swanson’s own persona, it’s one of cinema’s great moments.
Touch Of Evil (1958)
The Noir
(Literally) stolen from Orson Welles by studio heads hungry for a quick B-movie, what remains of Welle’s re-cut, re-hashed masterpiece is remarkably coherent. Murder, Mexican corruption and Marlene Dietrich all play a part in the twisty, sordid story set south of the border – with Charlton Heston’s straight laced DEA clashing with Welles’ bloated, bent police chief over a bomb plot.
Coolest Moment
Whatever happened in the editing room after the film was finished, Universal Studios thankfully left the opening intact – a single, unbroken, three-minute tracking shot that follows a car, raises up over a crowd and pulls in tight on Heston as a bomb explodes. Alfonso Cuarón was obviously taking notes…
