misswonderly3

This is how misunderstandings can happen, it's so, so easy. It's such an internet thing. james, I think zea was talking in general terms about the hyper-sensitivity around offensive depictions in old movies; I did not get the idea that she was speaking specifically about TCM and any demands or lack of same around what they air.

Oh, you're just mad because there weren't any cool cars in it.?

Interesting. I, on the other hand, dislike the look of the film, largely because of the use of colour. Now, I don't always dislike classic colour movies; sometimes it really works. And I agree with Eddie M., that even a noir can be in colour sometimes. It's not so much that "Party Girl" is in colour, it's the kind of colour stock that's used. There's something about that late '50s, early '60s type of colour film stock that is ugly to me, harsh-looking. Of course, the late '50s hairdos and clothes don't help much either. I'm with Lorna, how come they couldn't have at least tried to make the costumes etc. a little more faithful to the 1930s?

Notes on "Party Girl": Something the film has in common with "On the Waterfront" besides Lee J. Cobb is male leads wearing eye-liner. Cyd , who is a lovely woman, looks like her hair is a helmut. Oh, wait, Robert Taylor's hair, too. Anyone think the guy who played Cookie LaMotte ( gotta love that name) was cast because of a slight resemblance to Brando? He was clearly "channeling" Brando, too, in his acting style, sneering, etc. I kept waiting for him to talk about the Napoleonic Code. How long is that blissful romantic holiday Cyd and Robert T. take, after his operation? The montage was kind of fun, in a way, a recipe for romance cliches for anyone who wants to include a montage of, uh, romance cliches in their movie. How come the cops escort Cyd to that train car and then just abandon her? How come she - or the cops - hadn't locked the door? It was kind of too easy, wasn't it? The avaricious wife turns up in Cyd's dressing room and threatens to get Taylor back. Really? This scene is totally unnecessary. No one believes for one moment that this mean wife thing is going to go anywhere. Everyone's looking kind of old in this (except Cobb, who looks the same age whether he's 30 or 50.) Taylor, John Ireland, even Cyd -- but the harsh colour treatment doesn't help. you know what? Despite all of the above snark, I didn't mind this movie. It was actually kind of nice, in parts.

Ok, let's do it. Let's start a thread about movie titles that are utter misnomers, and suggest new, better titles for them. Yeah, start with "Born to Be Mildly Duplicitous". I like it.

Yes ! Absolutely, james, I did very much notice it ! In fact, unattractive - or at least, odd-looking - though Talman is, I thought the scene was quite hot. It's abundantly clear that the Talman character does indeed have a sexual hold over Lydia Biddel. I guess that's supposed to explain why she co-operates with him on his scamming her husband. But she shouldn't have snitched on him !

Lorna, don't you agree with me that, aside from anything else, it's disappointing that Cyd is so NOT a "party girl" ! She's almost a goody -goody. If ever there were a misnomer for a movie title (hey, there's an idea for a thread), it's got to be this one.

Thanks for tellling us about that sub-category, cjoe, the "film soleil". That makes sense. In fact, I have a few boxed sets of Columbia noir ( a lot with Richard Conte, but that's a good thing, I like him ), and come to think of it, most of them are very sunny. So now I can still regard them as "noirs", which I always did anyway, despite the sunny brightness of a lot of them. But I'm also replying to your post to quibble with you. You know what? I 'm thinking of starting a thread called "Ok, Just What IS a Femme Fatale? " Everyone - but especially, I think, men - seems to think that any crime or mystery film with a woman in it who isn't squeeky clean is a femme fatale. Nope. Look, I know you 'splained that because Anne Francis "lures" Tracy to that vulnerable spot where he can be offed by Robert Ryan, that makes her a f.f. But consider how reluctant she was to do this, and how in no other way does she display any of the usual f.f. qualities. A real femme fatale would have thought of the luring herself, not have to be talked into it by anyone. I think I might have to start that thread.

So, what did you end up doing, Looney? Party or pathos? (But hey, if you decided to stay home, you could have had your own private noir party with "Party Girl". Although in fact, there's not that much partying in the film...) Whichever you decided to do, hope you had a fun Saturday night !

james, I appreciate your commenting on the film I recommended and I apologize ( to all here) for getting kind of surly. But now I'm going to ruin the above bit of friendliness by saying, the Marie Windsor character in The City that Never Sleeps is not a femme fatale ! You seem to think almost every woman in a crime film who isn't a goody goody happily engaged or married woman, any female who has an affair or wields a gun or steals or does anything outside the carefully delineated boxes of acceptable female behaviour in the mid-20th century, is a femme fatale. I remember you said the Bette Davis character in The Letter was a femme fatale. I mean, aside from anything else, Marie Windsor's character isn't even in The City that Never Sleeps enough to warrant that epithet. In fact, to me it feels like they just sort of stuck her role in as an afterthought.

I guess I sounded a little petulant in that "why do I bother?" post. I was just disappointed that no one else seemed interested in the film, even though it is a bona fide noir and was, I think, the first time TCM was airing it. Also, one of the leads is William Talman, who had just been discussed a bit for his role in Armoured Car Robbery. As for the film itself - The City That Never Sleeps - I agree with those who say it's not all that great. I wasn't actually recommending it for its quality, more, just, as I said, it's kind of rare and for dedicated noir fans, still worth watching. I'm not too crazy about Gig Young either. In fact, offhand I can't think of anything else I've seen him in. And the story and characters are, as my husband would put it, "a bit daft". The main thing going for The City That Never Sleeps is it's lovely black and white noir cinematography, its location Chicago settings, the great scenes of dark alleys and mysterious stairs that seem to go nowhere, and its noir style in general.

So only cmovieviewer and Lawrence interested in The City That Never Sleeps ? (thanks, you two.) Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

HEADS UP, MY NOIR FAN FRIENDS ! Tonight TCM is airing a bunch of Republic movies. They all (well, only 4) sound interesting, but the big enchilada of the evening is on at 11:30: THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS . Interesting, we were just talking about William Talman in our "Armoured Car Robbery" discussion. Well, for anyone who wants more William Talman, he's on tonight in The City That Never Sleeps. I kept meaning to mention that film when posting about him in the ACR discussion. Funny though, how my memory often plays me false. I've seen this film at least once or twice before, and the way I remember it, William Talman played a "mechanical man" who stands in a downtown nightclub window to attract attention to the club. Well, there IS a mechanical man, but it's not played by Talman. Damn, I was convinced it was. Oh well, anyway, it's an interesting movie and definitely what I would call a "noir". Check it oot.

As others here have noted, it's Party Girl up next on Noir Alley. Again, I won't commit spoilerage, but I did want to make one or two "pre-airing" observations about this Nicholas Ray film. (And actually, the spoiler thing wouldn't happen because aside from my principled views on the unfairness of giving away plot points to those who haven't yet seen a movie, I can't remember the details of the plot well enough to do that. I think it was about two years ago I saw this - it was on TCM, natch.) Ok, so here's the thing I remember about Party Girl: maybe this is a bit of a spoiler: She's not a Party Girl ! I like Cyd Charisse, and I appreciate her performances in non-musicals (hey, she was pretty likable in "Tension", for instance). So the first time I saw this, I was hoping Cyd would be, like, you know, a party girl. Kind of wild, lots of smoking and drinking, looking for a good time, maybe picking up a lot of men, or at any rate, getting drunk and dancing on table tops at nightclubs and, well, parties. I like those badly-behaved wild things, they're fun and often interesting characters. But - ok, I guess this is a spoiler: Cyd's not like that at all ! She's very classy, very demure, very well-behaved. Disappointingly so. She's not a bad girl or much of a party girl at all. Wonder why Nicholas Ray gave the film such an intriguing title? Ain't no party girl in this movie at all. And I say, too bad.

You're referring to Le Deuxieme Souffle, right ? I really wanted to watch it, but I do not have a DVR or any other recording device at the moment, so that meant I'd have had to stay up til 2:30 a.m. or whenever it was to watch it, in real time. I know I would have just fallen asleep, not because of the film (which I imagine is quite interesting), but just because I'm not usually up to staying awake at 2:30 in the morning. Hopefully they'll air it again soon, maybe in a more accessible time slot.

Here's a pretty darn good early Who song that I don't think anyone's mentioned yet:

(facepalm) It's not a damn noir !

cmovieviewer, in that post I wrote (that I quoted) I wasn't trying to "define" film noir per sec . It's been done on these boards many times, and I myself ( I love it when people say "I myself", as who else would it be?) have contributed to the noir definition discussion. But I was not attempting to do that in the post you're referring to . I was merely responding to airbrush's comment that they thought "10 Rillington Place" was a "neo-noir". If you've seen that film, you'll know it's very good, but also very nasty. Horrid things happen in it (such as gassing a poor young woman into unconsciousness, sexually molesting her, then killing her, then setting it up to look like her husband did it), things that I do not associate with noir. I was trying to make the point that, it seems to me that in recent years a lot of people seem to think that anything with murder can be included in the definition of "noir".Nope, I disagree with this. Especially those films with psycho-killer sex murders and other horror-movie type stuff ("10 Rillington" is not a "horror" movie, though) - everyone seems to think, "Oh, some nasty murders and innocent people being executed for them, must be a film noir". I don't know how this got started. As for your comments about how noir looks, and how it's as much, or even more, a visual style as it is a narrative theme, I agree with you. But as I said, it was not my intention to get into all that in my post, I was not launching into a definition of "film noir", I was just saying, I don't know how, when, or why people started associating weirdo sex murders and the like with film noir, that's not really what noir's all about. Not to me, anyway.

Ha !, that's rich, coming from the person who responded to a comment I made with, "You are wrong about this one." And I didn't "make judgements", au contraire, I suggested there's room for fandom here for everyone. In fact, I extended an olive branch by agreeing with you about Richard Basehart and the films with him you mentioned.

I'm going to do something that's kind of in bad form (because it looks egotistical). I'm going to quote one of my own posts, one I wrote here a couple of pages back. I was surprised nobody except airbrush responded to it, since it's about my idea of what noir is and what it is not. But maybe everyone's sick of that topic, I can understand that. Anyway, here's what I said. Any thoughts? (I can't seem to reverse this - I wanted my little explanatory post to come before my quote, not after. But I couldn't get it to do that.)

I kind of don't want to get into this, but I can't seem to stop myself: I would not call "10 Rillington Place" a noir of any kind, "neo" or otherwise. I don't regard movies about psychotic sex killers as "noirs" - some of them might be good movies, and they're certainly dark, but they are in a different category from noir. You are wrong about this one. Excuse me, but 10 Rillington place was based on a true story. The murders really happened. It was not from the imagination of a fiction writer. That is why it is chilling. You have to give Fleicher credit for making the story come to life. There are noir elements in the story. First of all, the police arrested the wrong man, Evans, who was eventually convicted and executed. The police used bad investigative techniques to get a false conviction from Evans, who was a poor, working class stiff while the real killer Christie walked. He evaded police scrutiny until the mid 1960s, when the police realized that Evans was not the killer, but Christie was. This story is in a nutshell. So do not call this film, which accuritly presents the case and homicide a non Noir. A little digging about the case goes a long way. It is a nightmare that occurs more frequently in today's world. If anybody watches DISCOVERY ID,You will see these stories told in vivid detail. airprose, your posts are extremely confusing because you don't use the quote functon, so it's difficult to decipher just what in your posts is what you're saying, and what someone else has said, to which you are responding. If the quote function is too difficult to navigate ( and sometimes I too have trouble with this stuff), then please at least put quotation marks around what the other person has said, or use italics, or something. Glad we got that out of the way. So, I actually managed to figure out that you were quoting part of a comment I'd made about how I define noir, made a couple of pages back. I'm glad you responded to it, nobody else did. You don't have to say "Excuse me", everytime you disagree with someone. And I am fully aware that "10 Rillington Place" is based on a true story. I already knew that when I posted about it. I don't remember saying anything about it being from "the imagination of a noir writer". However, I stand by my earlier post - which said nothing about whether noir has to be pure fiction or not, that's a whole other topic. So what if the police arrested the wrong man and used bad investigative techniques? I already knew all that, please don't condescend to me. Just because the original actual event and the ensuing film made about it includes these features doesn't make it noir to me. And try to be a little more good-natured, we like to have fun on this thread.

You know, airprose, it doesn't have to be a case of "either" /"or". I love all three of these noirs, ie, "Armoured Car Robbery,", "He Walked by Night", and "Tension". I agree that the latter two are probably better movies and better stories, but that doesn't mean we have to diss "Armoured Car Robbery". Noir apples and oranges. I also agree with you about Richard Basehart, a truly great actor and one who's never really been given his due. Have you seen his touching performance in "La Strada"? But again, I'm not sure I see any reason to compare his acting to people like Charles McGraw or Marie Windsor. It's as if you kind of resent any credit being given to actors or movies you don't like, as though you think it takes away from the ones you do like. Not so.

I was mistaken in that it was a magazine, not a newspaper. But other than that, I think I more or less explained that seemingly problematic ending. (Not that it needed much explaining.) airprose said: ."Pardon me, but what a lame FINAL SCENE. It is attributed to poor writing." Well, I don't know about that. I was thinking a lot of the writing in ACR was pretty darn good. Eddie M. seemed to think so, too, he gave us a little bio about the screen writer. However, I'm aware that in several people's opinion, Eddie Muller is a fake, a fraud, and a foney. I'm not one of them, I enjoy his Noir Alley presentations.

It's easy to miss a minute or even a few seconds of dialogue in these movies, and then it can be confusing. Not a magazine, it's a newspaper story. So, the young partner is recovering in the hospital. McGraw (who now respects this guy) walks in and tells him something like "Hey, you're a hero, did you see you were in the paper?" Not those words, but something like that. The young partner expresses interest, and the two of them scan over the article together. And while the article is about the capture of the heist leader, and presumably a story about the whole incident, it does not mention either McGraw's character nor the partner's until the very end, where it just names them. They're laughing because there's no fame or glory at all for them in this article, just business as usual being good cops.

Now, now, Vautrin. See how many people (well, 3 anyway)think Adele bears a striking resemblance to Virginia. I know you've always liked the Mayo, and so do I. And nobody's saying Adele Jergens (wonder if she was related to that skin cream company? ) is in the same league as Virginia when it comes to acting (not that V.M. was Ethel Barrymore or anything, but she could act, and she had a lot of screen presence. I mean, I like her too...) We're just saying, they look alike. And they do. Did you take a look at the pics I posted?