by Sam Morris, Staff Writer

Having seen fellow students terrorized by the drama teacher in high school, I never explored the possibility of acting or tech work until my first year in college. Through a series of fortuitous events, the director of an upcoming show encouraged me to audition for his production of Charles Ludlam’s The Artificial Jungle. The play, a parody of classic film noir, is about nerdy pet store owner Chester Nurdiger, his wife Roxanne, a drifter-turned-employee Zach Slade, and a parrot named Frankie. The director supplemented Ludlam’s script with several ensemble parts, scenes from famous noir films that were reenacted during scene and act breaks.

And that’s the story of how I played, for a brief time, Bogart’s version of Philip Marlowe. In addition to Marlowe’s speech about grieving for manners, I also performed the final scene from Touch of Evil. I had a great time, and then I proceeded to never act again. Not because I was bad, I would say, but because other folks are much better at it. I made a lot of friends, and I learned how to hang lights and direct, both of which I continued to do throughout college.

More to the point of this article, though, is the fact that this experience was the first substantial step in my becoming a full-fledged “film person.” Because of this experience, film noir became something that I love. Later, I would invest significant time and energy into learning about screwball comedies, problem films, and the Prohibition-era crime genre, but film noir has always been my favorite.

The first six films on this list were assigned for research to the cast by our director; I’ve included two additional films at the end to round out the list. All of these films explore the choices that men and women make when their backs are up against the wall as well as the societal forces that forced them against that wall in the first place. These films are at once lurid and nuanced, a feat made all the more impressive by the rigid enforcement of the Hays Code.

The Big Sleep (dir. Howard Hawks, 1946)

There’s a good reason or seven that everyone recommends The Big Sleep. It is that good. Admittedly, it’s not the most sensical film ever made, but try not to get too caught up in the details. There’s an unsolved murder that Hawks and screenwriter William Faulker couldn’t figure out; when asked, novelist Raymond Chandler admitted that even he, the man who wrote the story, didn’t know whodunit. If the viewer wants to piece the film’s Byzantine plot together, good luck. Lose focus for a few seconds, and the entire thread of the film’s plot is gone.

Fortunately, the plot doesn’t matter in the slightest. If it did, the fact that the Hays Code makes it impossible for any character to say out loud what is actually happening would doom the film. What matters here is Humphrey Bogart’s Philip Marlowe, the private detective who spends the entire film collecting bruises and guns. An early scene has Marlowe entering a bookstore to try and find the owner, only to be brushed off by the ice-queen shopkeeper. Going across the street to another bookstore, Marlowe finds a warmer welcome from a much more amiable shopkeeper. After the interview, it begins to rain. Marlowe tells the girl, “I’d rather get wet in here.” Mmhmm. Moments like this one are why The Big Sleep is a great film.

Of course, The Big Sleep is best known for the pairing of Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Sparks fly between Marlowe and Vivian, despite the fact that detectives and femme fatales typically don’t play well together. In terms of the pairing alone, To Have and Have Not is likely the superior of the two films, but that judgment is a photo finish. Bogart is the film noir private detective (although many others have played Marlowe in later films), and his performance in The Big Sleep is unforgettable.

In A Lonely Place (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950)

I have insisted for years that In a Lonely Place has a Bogart performance that rivals everything I just wrote above about his performance in The Big Sleep. Screenwriter Dix Steele (Bogart) has hit a rough patch in his career, unwilling to participate in what he considers Hollywood hackery. When Dix’s agent begs him to consider a novel for adaptation, he balks at reading the novel. Instead, Dix opts to take home the coat check girl—who has read the book. Don’t get excited. Dix takes her home, she tells him the story of the novel, and she leaves. When he is implicated in the girl’s murder the next morning, the viewer’s first thought is “I was there! He’s innocent!”

Fortunately, Dix’s neighbor Laurel (Gloria Grahame) says exactly the same thing to the police. The lead detective (Frank Lovejoy) has difficulty believing his former commanding officer is capable of this murder, but his captain disagrees and continues to investigate Dix. The film’s title comes from Dix’s theory of how the murder occurred— “You get to a lonely place in the road, and you begin to squeeze”—but it also refers to Dix’s headspace as those around him continue to grapple with his explosive behavior.

What I love about this film is that Dix isn’t good or bad. Yes, a seemingly false accusation brings out the worst in him, but that doesn’t mean this coddled artist and war veteran wouldn’t have shown his worst tendencies for some other reason. While Dix is prone to temper tantrums, it’s also difficult for anyone to change when they are placed in the crucible of constant suspicion. Film noir often deals with a loss of self, but Dix is unable to lose that part of himself that everyone (including Dix himself) wishes he could change. He’ll always be stuck in that lonely place.

Double Indemnity (dir. Billy Wilder, 1944)

I know that this reference may be an outdated one, but I grew up watching Nick at Nite in the 1980s. Lots of Mister Ed, The Donna Reed Show, The Patty Duke Show, and My Three Sons. This experience is important because, to me, Fred MacMurray is a sitcom dad, star of My Three Sons, not the bent insurance salesman Walter Neff in Billy Wilder’s seminal noir film. On the other hand, Barbara Stanwyck is made for the role of femme fatale—or con artist (The Lady Eve) or sassy newswoman (Meet John Doe) or fraud (Christmas in Connecticut) or shoplifter (Remember the Night). In fact, with gangster extraordinaire, Little Caesar himself, Edward G. Robinson as a loss prevention insurance officer, nobody in this film is who they seem except for Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson. If Bogart is the seminal private detective, Stanwyck is the seminal femme fatale.

This film is best summed up during a conversation between Neff and Phyllis: “We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder. And I was thinking about that anklet.” Wilder makes great use of screenwriter Raymond Chandler’s snappy dialogue: Double Indemnity is about insurance, but it’s also about murder—and sex. If an actuary created a table on risk based upon one’s association with a femme fatale, they would say that a person’s risk grows exponentially each time that person comes in contact with the femme fatale. Repeated contact will almost always result in death.

Wilder wants us to think that Neff is a sap. Or maybe the viewer is supposed to think that because Neff narrates the film. To hear Neff tell it, Phyllis is the one with the sexy gams and the black heart. Which might be true, as far as it goes, but Neff is an unreliable narrator. The film begins with Neff dictating his story to his boss (Robinson), and the viewer can clearly see that something very bad has befallen Neff. Thus, even before Neff relates his story of damsels and damnation, one has to wonder just how much Neff is to be pitied. Probably not much.

Touch of Evil (dir. Orson Welles, 1958)

While Touch of Evil isn’t Welles’ final directorial effort, I like to think of it as a bookend to a directorial career that began with Citizen Kane (1941). Universal hired Welles partially on the advice of Charlton Heston who, riding high off of The Ten Commandments, takes the lead role of a Mexican law enforcement officer named Miguel Vargas. Welles casts himself as the antagonist, American police captain Hank Quinlan. Despite the problematic casting, the inevitable Welles walk-off, the studio edits, and the reshoots, Touch of Evil may be the last great first-wave film noir.

Touch of Evil certainly is the most disturbing film noir that I’ve seen from the 40s and 50s. Having seen hundreds of films that passed the Production Code, I have no idea how Touch of Evil got through. The film has two plotlines. The first is Vargas’ and Quinlan’s dual investigations of a bomb placed in a car in Mexico and detonated just over the border in America. The second, which seems trivial at first but becomes more and more terrifying over the course of the film, centers on Vargas’ new American wife, Susan (Janet Leigh). Quinlan’s racism appears casual at the beginning of the film, but he gradually reveals himself as a white supremacist who doesn’t believe in the worth of anyone who doesn’t look like him. Welles piles on the irony by having Susan terrorized by a gang of Mexican youths, seemingly proving Quinlan right in his beliefs. But of course nothing is that simple.

What makes this film so impressive to me is that, despite studio-sponsored butchery, the film’s plots and themes wrap around each other in continually surprising ways. Even the film’s most famous feature, the opening three-minute tracking shot, tells the viewer exactly what is happening in the film and how everything the viewer sees is connected. It isn’t until the film’s climax that these connections are fully made clear. Quinlan makes Harry Lime (see below) look like a saint; Welles only allows the viewer to see brief glimpses of Quinlan’s humanity through the eyes of club owner Tanya (Marlene Dietrich). As for Heston, he’ll never be Mexican, but he does a good enough job in the role of would-be good guy who doesn’t quite understand the lengths that some will go to force their agenda on others. A touch of evil, it turns out, goes a very long way.

The Third Man (dir. Carol Reed, 1949)

Where is Harry Lime? That’s what Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) wants to know; Lime (Orson Welles) invited Holly to occupied Berlin and then promptly disappeared after being attacked and carried away by three men. Strangely, no one can seem to identify this third man. Lime left behind a girl–because there’s always a girl; together Holly and Anna (Alida Valli) search for Lime, gradually unraveling a conspiracy that has much larger stakes than the viewer might think. The Harry Lime that Holly thought existed unravels as well, although as Anna tells Holly, “A person doesn’t change just because you find out more.”

The real star of the film, though, is the zither, a stringed instrument that dominates the soundtrack. Its jaunty tone contrasts with the shadow work and Dutch angles that Reed deploys to make sure the viewer knows that, yes, The Third Man is film noir. Film noir is thought of as an American phenomenon, and that thought holds up during some of the clunkier moments of a British film set in Germany. In this way, the film certainly makes an effective point of comparison to the other films on this list.

The Third Man is funnier, however, than the average film noir. Prior to the third act, Reed and screenwriter Graham Greeme spend plenty of time dunking on Holly and his career as a pulp Western writer. Convinced to give a lecture on the contemporary novel, attendees scoff at Holly’s recommendation of Zane Grey. Reed is nowhere near as competent as Hitchcock is in balancing the intrigue and humor in a film like North by Northwest, but he does his best. The film’s legacy is its set pieces and shadow work: a town square at night, a ferris wheel, and a third-act chase through the sewers.

The Asphalt Jungle (dir. John Huston, 1950)

To be clear, The Asphalt Jungle might not actually be noir. It’s a heist film, yes, and it takes place in the mean streets of the big city. There’s immorality to be punished and lives to be ruined, to be sure. If anything, whereas The Maltese Falcon is essential noir, this John Huston film stretches the definition of film noir. Then again, welcome to the 1950s! Huston seems to be exploring a post-post-war mentality that chafes against the more immediate “just happy to be alive” post-war mentality and its corresponding moral code.

Newly released from prison, Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) has a plan for the perfect heist that he had been unable to execute before his last stint in a prison. He just needs a financier, a fence, a driver, a safe cracker, and some muscle. Little does he know that the financier (who also offers to be the fence—not shady at all!) has problems of his own. One of those problems is a much younger mistress named Angela, who is played by Marilyn Monroe in one of her first credited roles. Over the course of the film, everything goes wrong, and bad things happen to all those involved with the heist either directly or indirectly. Par for the course in film noir.

What makes this film worth watching other than Marilyn Monroe is the muscle, Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden). Sure, he’s a criminal and not a very nice guy to most people, but the viewer can’t help but begin to sympathize with him as events unfold. Had his family farm not been taken away from him, he would have never had to turn to a life of crime. All he wants from this big score is to go back to Kentucky with his girl, Doll (Jean Hagan). These things rarely work out in film noir, but the tragedy is in how close some of these characters come to breaking the cycle—a cycle in which they never wanted or deserved to find themselves.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Tay Garnett, 1946)

Funnily enough, even though the basic plots of this film and Double Indemnity are the ones being directly parodied in The Artificial Jungle, I didn’t see The Postman Always Rings Twice until several years later. Frank Chambers (John Garfield) is a transient who stumbles upon the Twin Oaks, a diner on a dusty road outside of Los Angeles. Considering the help wanted sign, Frank meets Nick (Cecil Kallaway), who immediately takes a liking to Frank and offers him the job. Frank refuses—until, that is, he sees Cora (Lana Turner), the angel in white, in all her glory.

Except Cora isn’t an angel, is she? This is film noir, after all. She never loved Nick—she was just so young when she married him! Who would expect her to spend the rest of her life paying for one little mistake? And so Cora and Frank plan to kill Nick, except as we all already know from Double Indemnity, their plan isn’t going to work. Like the witness on the train for Phyllis and Neff, a cop and a cat (yes, a cat!) spell disaster for Cora and Frank. Unlike Double Indemnity, this story becomes a comedy of errors that ends in a tragedy more melodramatic than any other film on this list.

The film’s title is explained in the last moments: “It's like you're expecting a letter that you’re just crazy to get, and you hang around the front door for fear you might not hear him ring. You never realize that he always rings twice.” Time and guilt are often connected in film noir just as they were in many of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. Even if a character manages to get away with murder, the guilt never quite goes away. Sometimes, the longer the crime goes unpunished, the greater the guilt becomes. At least while Hollywood is ruled by the Hays Code…

When the postman rings for the second time, he won’t just ring…he comes to find you “even if you’re way out in the backyard.”

Laura (dir. Otto Preminger, 1944)

The only noir film that features a main character doing journalism via typewriter in a bathtub. Okay, I don’t know that that’s true for a fact, but I feel pretty certain that I’m on solid ground with this assertion. Despite it being on my list for over twenty years, I only saw Laura for the first time this Noirvember. As we discussed on Monkey off My Backlog a few weeks ago (shameless plug alert: check out our podcast!), Laura gives off a distinct Lynchian/Twin Peaks vibe in places—even the central premise of the film is “Who killed Laura Hunt?”

Preminger and the screenwriting committee who adapted Vera Caspary’s novel rely on differing points of view to extend the mystery of who murdered Laura (Gene Tierney). Preminger’s film is more Suspicion-era Hitchcock than Rashomon, but there’s still a lot to recommend this film—just maybe not the opening bathtub scene with its strong Mr. Burns vibes.

Even if I didn’t enjoy this film as much as some of the others I’ve discussed, I want to emphasize just how much classic film noir from the 40s and 50s is the gift that keeps on giving. For example, ever seen Vincent Price do noir? If not, Laura has something new to offer. Laura also continues to demonstrate how there are infinite ways for ineptitude to ruin lives. Beyond that commonality, Laura is an idiosyncratic film. Why is that guy from the bathtub so hung up on antiques? Okay, the guy from the bathtub has a name—it’s Waldo Lydecker (Cliffton Webb). Webb has his hands full playing this character, who says things like, “ I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.”

Again, one could argue that Laura isn’t even noir. It’s suspense, sure, but it’s missing some of the tried and true tropes that I discuss above that we expect to see. Tonally, Laura is more like Hitchock’s Suspicion. Laura is a goofy movie, relying on a twist that may not be entirely earned, but watching it was certainly a fun experience.