cigarjoe

Interesting that Williams played the memory losing sailor before in Deadline at Dawn (1946)

Check out the post Classic Hollywood 1959 noirs.

John Cassavetes is another.

The truck crash in They Drive By Night was used in another Film Noir that I've seen within the last year, though I can't recall which at the moment. It's used again in The Case Against Brooklyn (1958).

I actually watched him the other day in A Lady Without A Passport he was relegated to a very minor supporting role and did it well. (below rt)

Yea, that one is ridiculously so.

The truck crash in They Drive By Night was used in another Film Noir that I've seen within the last year, though I can't recall which at the moment.

Like her costume ?

Hell Drivers one major fault is the speed up footage for the racing trucks, other than that it's good, but i wouldn't buy it new find the lowest used price for it if you really want to watch it, I like Patrick Magoohan. The Long Haul has Victor Mature and Diana Dors, again buy used, I like Mature and Dors so that may sway my recommendations. The first four mentioned are good, but I'll always buy used, never been burned yet. ?

Thanks

I 'd rather actually go the other way, and see how some color Neo Noir films would look in Black and White. ?

A Lady Without Passport (1950) Illegal Alien Noir Havana and The Everglades. An MGM film by Director Joseph H. Lewis (My Name Is Julia Ross (1945), So Dark the Night (1946), The Undercover Man (1949), Gun Crazy (1950), The Big Combo (1955)), gives us a topic that is quite on the front burner these days. Written by Howard Dimsdale, adapted by Cyril Hume, from a story by Lawrence Taylor. The cinematography was by Paul Vogel (Lady in the Lake (1946), High Wall (1947), Black Hand (1950), Dial 1119 (1950), The Tall Target (1951), The Sellout (1952), and The Money Trap (1965)). The music was by Hal Schaefer. The film stars Hedy Lamarr (Crossroads (1942), Experiment Perilous (1944), The Strange Woman (1946)) as Marianne Lorress, John Hodiak (seven classic noir) as Peter Karczag, James Craig as Frank Westlake, George Macready (four classic noir) as Palinov, Steven Geray (six classic noir) as the Frenchman, Bruce Cowling as Archer Delby James, Nedrick Young as Harry Nordell, Steven Hill as Jack, Robert Osterloh as Lt. Lannahan, Trevor Bardette as Lt. Carfagno, and Charles Wagenheim as Ramon Santez. The long immigration route to the U.S.A. in the immediate post WWII era often passed through Havana, Cuba. The final bottleneck was the U.S. Embassy where scores of potential immigrants would wait for their interviews to see whether or not they would be granted visas. As a result, a well organized illegal alien smuggling ring arose to alleviate the problems for those with enough money. The films strengths lie in its on location Havana sequences, once the immigrants take flight to the US and crash land in the Everglades the film looses some of it's magic. All of the cast do well and are believable. Watch for a fantastic Cuban dance sequence by Nita Bieber. An entertaining enough time waster. There is a new release as of 2006. 7/10 Full review with more screen caps here in Film Noir/Gangster pages.

A Lady Without Passport (1950) Illegal Alien Noir Havana and The Everglades. An MGM film by Director Joseph H. Lewis (My Name Is Julia Ross (1945), So Dark the Night (1946), The Undercover Man (1949), Gun Crazy (1950), The Big Combo (1955)), gives us a topic that is quite on the front burner these days. Written by Howard Dimsdale, adapted by Cyril Hume, from a story by Lawrence Taylor. The cinematography was by Paul Vogel (Lady in the Lake (1946), High Wall (1947), Black Hand (1950), Dial 1119 (1950), The Tall Target (1951), The Sellout (1952), and The Money Trap (1965)). The music was by Hal Schaefer. The film stars Hedy Lamarr (Crossroads (1942), Experiment Perilous (1944), The Strange Woman (1946)) as Marianne Lorress, John Hodiak (seven classic noir) as Peter Karczag, James Craig as Frank Westlake, George Macready (four classic noir) as Palinov, Steven Geray (six classic noir) as the Frenchman, Bruce Cowling as Archer Delby James, Nedrick Young as Harry Nordell, Steven Hill as Jack, Robert Osterloh as Lt. Lannahan, Trevor Bardette as Lt. Carfagno, and Charles Wagenheim as Ramon Santez. The long immigration route to the U.S.A. in the immediate post WWII era often passed through Havana, Cuba. The final bottleneck was the U.S. Embassy where scores of potential immigrants would wait for their interviews to see whether or not they would be granted visas. As a result, a well organized illegal alien smuggling ring arose to alleviate the problems for those with enough money. a flight and death by taxi A dead man with no ID in New York is traced by N.Y.P.D. investigation of his pocket contents to a flight from Miami, the evidence collected from his shoes finds traces of sugarcane and red clay that is only found in Cuba. The potential that the man is an illegal alien triggers an investigation by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Pete (Hodiak) An operative Pete Karczag is sent undercover to Havana to try and gather evidence against Palinov (Macready) a suspected human trafficker. Pete is to pose as a Hungarian who wants to enter the USA. Palinov has based his operations out of his Gulf Stream Cafe. As part of Pete's undercover infiltration he goes to the U.S. Embassy in Havana and makes a loud enough ruckus after a presumed denial of a visa that he is noticed by many of the people awaiting interviews. He is noticed by one of Palinov's touts played by Steven Geray, who follows Pete when he leaves the embassy. When he finally makes his move he directs Pete to Palinov's Gulf Stream Cafe. At the cafe Pete meets the beautiful Marianne Lorress (Hedy Lamarr) who is an Austrian refugee from the Buchenwald concentration camp. She is broke and illegally working in Cuba as a cigarette girl, among "other" things. Palinov has been enchanted by her beauty. It's also implied very sub-textually (the film is after all made under the MPPC) that Marianne has been letting Palinov play hide the sausage with her for accommodations in the rooms above his cafe. Marianne also makes a remark that since she is not allowed to work under Cuban Law she must find her bread "on the streets." It's not hard to make the leap to streetwalker. It's all very quaint in hindsight. Anyway Palinov is head over heels infatuated enough with Marianne that he breaks with his usual demand of a thousand dollars upfront. He agrees to accompany her himself to Savannah, Georgia where her father has previously immigrated to and where she assures him he will be paid by daddy. It's a not hard to figure out why Pete decides to use Marianne to find out the day and time of Palinov's next scheduled operation. As he gets close to her he also finds himself smitten by her allure, and he too is soon also in love. Soon Pete is thinking about quitting the service and telling Marianne that he is in love with her and that she should stay with him in Havana. Palinov jealous, has Pete shadowed, and eventually his men discover that Pete is actually an immigration cop. It all goes Noirsville when Palinov exposes this information to Marianne, who decides to leave for the US on the next smuggling flight. Noirsville George Macready lt. with Marianne Marianne (Lamar) The films strengths lie in its on location Havana sequences, once the immigrants take flight to the US and crash land in the Everglades the film looses some of it's magic. All of the cast do well and are believable. Watch for a fantastic Cuban dance sequence by Nita Bieber. An entertaining enough time waster. Screen caps are from a DVDr of a cablecast, there is a new release as of 2006. 7/10 Full review with more screen caps here: Noirsville

Other good BritNoir are Never Let Go (1960), The Long Memory (1953), Terror on a Train (1953), Joe MacBeth (1955) more that come to mind are The Long Haul (1957), and Hell Drivers (1957).

What a d*o*u*c*h*e, But I guess you are entitled to your opinion..... and so am I.

Timothy Carey is of that quirky beatnik generation, you could call him a beatnik actor. There is also this quirky small sub genre of Film Noir that are basically "Beat" Noirs. Another actor of this mold was King Moody he was in The Glass Cage (1964) (a noir BTW) when I first saw him on that film I though at first it was Carey.

Actually I lived in NYC before I moved to Montana, I saw the majority of old films on NYC's local stations, WPIX, WNEW, WOR, WNET, probably a couple of more, they had to use a lot of old films for content. I saw I, Claudius the first time on CBC, and a lot of Brit Comedies, Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, Red Dwarf, The The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin , Fawlty Towers, stuff like that.

When I moved out to Montana in 1972, I owned no TV for a good 7-8 year stretch and barely went to new movies, then when we did get a TV there were 3 channels two of the networks (don't remember which ones) and CBC (Canadian) out of British Columbia, where some of the more interesting stuff was found. Didn't get cable TV till 1998. So there is a good stretch of films I've missed. Catching up now a lot are crap or so so every once in a while you find a gem.

Crime Wave is one of my faves, lots of good character actors you'll recognize from various other films, and Timothy Carry is a hoot.

You should catch the 1978 remake with Mitchum, it follows the book closer and leaves out the tacked on romance, the story is brought up to the then present 1978, and the local is switched to the UK, but it works in it's own curious way.

There may have been some at the very begining of Scarface (1932) with the neon signs in the distance.

I, the Jury (1953) Dir. by Harry Essex, a middling adaptation of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer book. Biff Elliot impresses as a lightweight, but his bull in the china shop style grows on you as the film progresses. The crappy multigeneration copy I have doesn't do justice to John Alton's cinematography, everything is shades of gray, it needs to be restored back to Alton's signature inky blacks. Spillane is one of those authors who made it before his film adaptations could be properly filmed, his subject matter would have be better suited for the post 1965 era when the MPPC had crumbled and you could actually depict what Spillane wrote. This film is devoid of his later anti card carrying commie diatribes of a lot of his later novels. The film though is also loaded with interesting character actors and features a few great locations thought they are all L.A. filling in for NYC, it's also a Christmas Noir, it needs a restoration for Alton's work at least 7/10. There's never been a decent Mike Hammer adaptation that got everything right, (that actually was shot in NYC) the best of them all is of course Kiss Me Deadly with Ralph Meeker, though it's set in L.A. also. Armand Assante did a decent job attitude wise in I, The Jury (1982) and it was shot in NYC, but he seems a bit diminutive for the part and it was updated to the 1980's, it's the wrong time period for Hammer. Four things you take away from the novels, New York City, Hammer is a fanatical personality, the Colt .45 Automatic, and the "Hammer-tomically correct" babes. Scew up any of the four and you get an imperfect Mike Hammer. My Gun Is Quick (1957) Robert Bray puts in a passable portrayal as Mike Hammer he's Hammer-esgue but again here is a case where the action is moved to California and the talent to make an acceptable Noir-ish stylized Mike Hammer film is noticeably lacking, it looks made on the cheap, it plays like a TV film and is nowhere near Aldrich's film noir masterpiece. The broads Whitney Blake, Patricia Donahue, Pamela Duncan, prostitute Jan Chaney, and stripper Genie Coree are "hammer-tommically" correct but again as in both I, The Jury (1953), and (1955) the slightly gratuitous sexuality which should be a touchstone in any Mike Hammer based film is PG-13 if even that. To put it bluntly the hammer babes (save for Velda) peal for Mike at every opportunity. The Girl Hunters (1963) Lots of New York City establishing & location shots, this was "my" city, the 1963 NY I remember as a kid the police black white & olive green squad cars (BTW they changed to todays white & blue color scheme during 1973-74), the yellow cabs, the store fronts. Mike Hammer in his correct environment. But everthing else is shot in the UK. Shirley Eaton, "hammertomically" correct in every way, is the femme fatale of the piece and a knockout. For those of you not familiar with the name she later became the iconic girl in gold in during the opening credits of James Bond flick Gold Finger. She also has a memorable final denouement. The film is not really filmed in the Noir style, Kiss Me Deadly nails this aspect beautifully. Mickey Splillane plays Hammer in The Girl Hunters, now if he was a better actor it may have been better, he looks a bit ridiculous in the pork-pie hat. I still say Charles McGraw, would have been ideal Classic Noir Era Hammer. One of the closest adaptations that used NYC location shots in close to the right time period, and had the right attitude Hammer was the Mike Hammer TV Series (1958–1959), with Darren McGavin, though the writers jettisoned Velda, combined Spillane's Hammer stories with another NYC detective series Johhny Liddell by Frank Kane, and were of course limited in what they could depict sexual wise being on TV but quite a few eppisodes are quite noirsish. All the other TV and film adaptations were in more modern time periods. The closest recent film I've seen that gets the Hammer zietgiest right though its not Hammer, is Give 'em Hell Malone (2009). Use that film as a blue print for any future Hammer adaptations.

Do you feel the same about the Jews and the Holocaust, or Blacks and the Jim Crow South and Segregation? People who get f'ed by another group of people aren't gonna forgedaboudit.

I'm with TheCid, 40% WWII is plenty, there are other wars and films about them would be interesting.

The Amazing Mr. X (1948) The Spook Trade Noir This film, aka The Spiritualist was directed by Bernard Vorhaus (Bury Me Dead (1947)) he was active in the UK during the 1930s. He was later blacklisted in Hollywood. Original story written by Crane Wilbur, with Muriel Roy Bolton, and Ian McLellan Hunter combining on the screenplay. The none other than excellent cinematography was by the great John Alton. The music was by Alexander Laszlo and that also includes two Frédéric Chopin pieces Prelude for Piano, Op. 28 Nr. 4 in E minor & Nocturne for Piano, Op. 9, no. 1, in B-flat minor The film stars Turhan Bey as Alexis the psychic consultant, Lynn Bari (Nocturne (1946)) as Christine Faber a wealthy recently widowed woman, Cathy O'Donnell (Bury Me Dead (1947), They Live by Night (1948), Side Street (1950), Detective Story(1951)) as her younger unmarried sister Janet Burke, Richard Carlson (Behind Locked Doors (1948), The Sound of Fury (1950), segueing into SiFi/ monster movies and TV The Magnetic Monster (1953), It Came from Outer Space (1953) Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)) as Martin Abbott, with Donald Curtis and Virginia Gregg rounding out a pretty small cast. Our story begins in a seaside mansion on a cliff above the Pacific. It's two years after Christine's husband Paul was incinerated in a fiery auto crackup along the Pacific Coast Highway. Christine finally is over mourning for Paul. She is convinced, by her younger sister Janet, to go out on a date with the persistent next door neighbor. He's equally wealthy, a lawyer, his name is Martin Abbott. He's in love with Christine and wants to propose. The date is for a show and later dinner at the Blue Angel. Martin calls in to Christine and tells her that he has been running late, a last minute client has caused the delay and he just arrived at his house. He offers to drive over as soon as he changes. Christine, in turn, suggests that she can walk over along the beach and meet him. On the moonlit beach walk, below the cliffs, Christine thinks she hears Paul's voice hauntingly calling to her above the turbulent breakers and the rushing sea foam. She becomes a bit rattled, then more so after the wind swept hem of her dress, suddenly catches on a protruding nail sticking up from the bow of a beached dory. She unhooks herself from it's grasp, and runs to the base of the path that climbs to Martin's house. This whole beach and seaside cliffs sequence is gorgeously filmed quite noirs-ish-ly by Alton. Near the start of the path to Martin's house, she is startled by the squawking of a pet raven sitting on a branch of driftwood. Turning and running again she accidentally bumps into a man smoking a pipe. It is a very suave and mysterious gentleman. The man is Alexis, and he immediately goes into his professional spiritualist spiel. He tells her just enough about her whole recent situation, regarding Paul's death, in a very charming way that she can't help but be convinced that this guy must be for real, how can he know all this. He kisses her hand and excuses himself. She asks if he lived around here? He's says he wishes, he lives way across town and gives her his card, he is a "psychic consultant." When she reads his title she is slightly befuddled. Christine: Oh! Alexis: I see you place me in the same category as fortune tellers, snake charmers, and magicians. Oh well, many people do. Christine: But you must know who I am, how else could you know all these things? Alexis: Perhaps because we are very much alike. You and I free spirits, like our friend here [points to the raven] you like the night, and the mist of the ocean. The wind whispers, the sand that is cool under our feet. We are not like, I hope I don't have his name wrong, Martin. Christine: There's nothing wrong with Martin, Alexis: Of course not, but if you will only understand how little he understands. Christine: Well Martin is very logical. Alexis: Yes that's why you should marry him. All free spirits must come out of the night sometime put on their shoes, pay their bills, go to the dentist, and of course family dinners on Sundays. You really shouldn't be so irritated by his little mannerisms, like when he clears his throat, announcing that he's going to kiss you in a minute. Or how he counts up all his plans on his fingers. I can't tell you how I know these things but it hardly matters. We are not going to meet again..... The hook is proverbially in. The Amazing Mr X followed right on the heals of Nightmare Alley. Other Crime and Noirs dealing with the same subject of spiritualists are Ministry of Fear, Fallen Angel, Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Confidence Girl, and later Hitchcock's Family Plot, I'm sure there are a few more out there. The story is good and the cinematography breathtaking. It's John Alton, but not in his usual milieu of cityscape's. Here he makes a rugged moon lit seacoast, a cliff side house and a spiritualist's spook parlor his subjects. Images are from the French DVD. 8/10