Film noir

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The Honeymoon Killers (1970) - Written and directed by Leonard Kastle

Lonely and self-conscious because of her weight, Martha Beck (Shirley Stoler) is talked into joining a Lonely Hearts correspondence club where she starts a pen pal relationship with Ray Fernandez (Tony Lo Bianco), a con man who makes his living seducing and swindling women. Martha's desperately in love with Ray, and when she becomes wise to his ways she decides to join the con. The two of them chase scores together, posing as brother and sister, but Martha's jealousy of the women Ray's seducing becomes an issue and things escalate from there.

The Honeymoon Killers is damn near perfectly perfect and a dark, dark true story. It's too late to be traditional noir, but I'm adding it anyway because...you'll see if you watch it. This is the movie Natural Born Killers aspired to be and failed.

5- (5) stars

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*The video quality of the Criterion Blu-ray needs special mention. The picture is gloriously grainy, teasing so much detail out of the film source that some of the shots look almost 3D due to texture.

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[Tommy]

Love the packaging on that one. It's a very dark film indeed!

[Theli]

I saw that on the Criterion website and had considered ordering it. There's a few films in that same sort of genre, Bonnie & Clyde arguably the most famous (and possibly best). But if you do want to see one from the heyday of noir check out Gun Crazy, also the story of Bonnie & Clyde, though with the names changed. Or if you are willing to venture into the brave new world of colour, check out Badlands from 1973. It's an absolutely beautiful impressionist film. Emotional, believable and wonderfully shot.

[Tommy]

Concur on Gun Crazy and Badlands ^

[bugen]

Adding Gun Crazy and Badlands to the netflix queue, as well as Bonnie and Clyde (which I saw a couple of decades ago but would have been too dumb to appreciate).

Thanks Theli for the recommendations and Tommy for the seconds!

[Theli]

Always a pleasure my friend.

[bugen]

The Wrong Man (1956) - Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by Maxwell Anderson and Angus MacPhail

We deal in horror on this site because we deal in horror in this world, and it comes in many forms. Every second of every day we’re just one flick or click or glance away from the infinite terrors we inflict on one another. We’re also just a random stroke of luck or bad decision away from experiencing some of that terror firsthand. We look into the dark to find out more, to ask ‘what’s wrong with us?’ so one day we might answer how it’s fixed.

When we look at a dark story like The Wrong Man, we’re confronted with one of the worst horrors imaginable—that of unjustly locking away a good man, a gentle person who caused no harm, and depriving him of his future, leaving him alive to stew in his misfortune. It’s worse than murder, and an injustice so terrible the spirit of our law must be that guilty men go free in order to keep innocent men from being convicted.

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The Wrong Man tells the true story of Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero (Manny), a nightclub musician, a father and a husband. Henry Fonda’s monstrously powerful performance as Manny gives us a quiet, polite, good-natured and warmhearted man—a man who believes in telling the truth and in the fairness of the justice system, both of which assist in wrongfully convicting him.

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The musician walks into a bank looking for information on how much money he can borrow against his wife’s insurance policy to pay for her expensive dental work. He’s falsely identified by the tellers as a recent stick-up man and the police pick him up, believing him guilty of a string of bank, liquor and convenience store robberies.

The way Balestrero is so quickly and efficiently railroaded into prison is really quite frightening and a little too easy, too simple. The police are represented as smug, disassociated, 9-to-5 men, more interested in shuffling him into the system and continuing on their way than in serving justice. They’re not bad guys really, they just don’t care. After parading him in front of potential witnesses and disallowing any contact with his loved ones, they drum up enough evidence to formally charge him with robbery and assault.

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Soon the strain put upon the sweet, harmless musician begins chipping away at his spirit. When enough money is raised for his bail and he’s let out, he and his wife work over his case with a lawyer and investigate any possible alibis for the days when the robberies took place. But as lead after lead falls through, her spirit is battered while she blames herself, and the strong, supportive woman who’d been so poised at the tragedy’s outset begins losing her sanity.

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The story of Manny Balestrero is a clear reminder of the tremendous weight accusations can carry, and in this day and age of trial by public outrage, the concept is more important than ever. We leap to conclusions without knowing the story; we hear opinions and swap them for our own; we listen to this or that voice of authority and surrender our own judgement while demanding instant, righteous retribution. We forget there is no us and them; there’s just us.

This movie unsettles, then disturbs, then terrorizes, all while quietly breaking your heart.

5 stars

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[RonClinton]

I just love Gun Crazy. Peggy Cummins is terrific and alluring, and the "long take" scene still impresses. Lots of reasons to love this one.

[Theli]

I've never seen the Wrong Man, but I will be rushing out to find it. Sounds amazing! I've actually been discovering a lot Hitchcock I'd overlooked for his big three or four that everyone knows, and finding I like them more! Thanks for the recommendation Andrew!

Also if I can add one more film to your already towering list, 12 Angry Men. It's not exactly film noir per se, but it does have some similarities. Mostly shot in one room with twelve jurors trying to make a decision on guilt while tensions rise and motives, conscious or otherwise are revealed. Beautifully shot and acted. If you've been enjoying that aspect of the legal system, the courts instead of just the cops and criminals side, I think you will enjoy this movie.

[Martin]

I've never seen the Wrong Man, but I will be rushing out to find it. Sounds amazing! I've actually been discovering a lot Hitchcock I'd overlooked for his big three or four that everyone knows, and finding I like them more! Thanks for the recommendation Andrew!

Also if I can add one more film to your already towering list, 12 Angry Men. It's not exactly film noir per se, but it does have some similarities. Mostly shot in one room with twelve jurors trying to make a decision on guilt while tensions rise and motives, conscious or otherwise are revealed. Beautifully shot and acted. If you've been enjoying that aspect of the legal system, the courts instead of just the cops and criminals side, I think you will enjoy this movie.

Not film nooir but I agree that 12 Angry Men is a great film. Watched it again last month.

[bugen]

12 Angry Men keeps showing up in different places, and I've only ever seen the remake. Some consider it noir and some don't, but since the list isn't exactly pure, I'm adding it in based on the film's apparent merit. Thanks for the recommendation and the second!

For The Wrong Man, I wasn't hit by the full weight of the film until a few hours after completing it. I'd kind of felt like taking a break from the reviews and wasn't planning on writing anything about it, but it just got too heavy to ignore. Not many films continue gaining momentum offline like that.

[bugen]

Speaking of questionable noir, what do you guys think of Payback? I absolutely loved it back in the day, including the washed-out presentation.

It turns out the director, Brian Helgeland, originally wanted the film in black and white but was overruled by the studio, so he drained a lot of the color out and gave it that blue tint. When filming completed he turned in a rough cut but was again overruled by the studio for his vision of the story being too dark. He was then fired, 30% of the film was re-shot, it was given a complete re-edit, and that's the version we saw.

About 10 years ago the Director's Cut was finally released, and that's actually the only Blu-ray available domestically in the U.S. (If you want both versions, you have to go for the UK import, pictured below). So having loved the original, I checked out the (significantly) darker Director's Cut and loved it too. There's no more sympathy for Porter, not even a little bit; he throws his wife around, his torture scene has been completely removed, Kris Kristopherson is gone as is that whole line of the plot, the body count gets jacked up, and Bronson is a woman.

Plot aside, the newer version is much brighter and more colorful than the theatrical version, completely dropping the washed-out look, which struck me as odd being he wanted a noir look in the first place. But a lot of the softness is gone, picture clarity is improved and there's a grainy element not present in the Theatrical version. That got me thinking if the director wanted to shoot in black and white, if he wanted that noir look, maybe he lit it that way.

I started messing around with my TV's settings and I've got to say this director's cut looks outstanding in black and white. Grainier, grittier, darker picture matching the darker plot. Maybe the guy messed around with the picture for the re-release so it would look so striking if people set their TV to display how he wanted the film to look in the first place.

It's just half-baked, crackpot theory, but this things works pretty well as a noir film if you watch the Director's Cut, crank the contrast and drop the color. It's got the look, sound and feel.

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[TacomaDiver]

I know that I saw this in the theater (back in the days where I saw everything they came out - side effect of literally having nothing else to do during the weekends) and I'm pretty sure I own this on LaserDisc (I seem to recall that it had some sort of extended cut) but remember nothing else about this film. I should revisit more of these movies.

[Martin]

12 Angry Men keeps showing up in different places, and I've only ever seen the remake. Some consider it noir and some don't, but since the list isn't exactly pure, I'm adding it in based on the film's apparent merit. Thanks for the recommendation and the second!

For The Wrong Man, I wasn't hit by the full weight of the film until a few hours after completing it. I'd kind of felt like taking a break from the reviews and wasn't planning on writing anything about it, but it just got too heavy to ignore. Not many films continue gaining momentum offline like that.

The remake does not hold a candle to the original.

[bugen]

The remake does not hold a candle to the original.

Yeah, I wasn't a huge fan. It was OK, but from what I'm gathering the original is supposed to be out-of-this-world good. Looking forward to it.