Live it up! 11 essential nightclubs of noir

Karen Morley, 'Scarface' (1932).

By Paul Parcellin

In noir, nightclubs are smokey hideaways where criminality thrives under moody lighting. Ritzier than typical barrooms, they are havens for hedonists and the racketeer elite. 

Crucial to these nightspots are floorshows. A chanteuse may whisper a torch song designed to torment an ex-lover sitting ringside. Her words spell out jagged details of his predicament, defining his emotional state or perhaps the moral decay that engulfs him. 

In noir, entering a nightclub is like stepping into hell’s waiting room. It may be steamy and dazzling at first, but all exits lead to damnation. 

Here are the top 11 nightclubs of noir, hot spots where the underworld cools its heels and lives are sometimes broken: 

Osgood Perkins, Paul Muni, Karen Morley, 'Scarface.'

‘Scarface’ (1932)

The Paradise is everything a swank gangster nightclub should be: an orchestra wails swing jazz numbers, swell looking couples fill the dance floor, guys are clad in their formal best, ladies sway to the rhythm in chic evening dresses. Wiseguys Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins) and Tony Camonte (Paul Muni) spar over glamor girl Poppy (Karen Morley) — Tony, an upstart, comes out on the winning end, but egos are bruised. “Scarface” wasn’t the first crime movie to use a nightclub setting, but it sure knows how glamorize the seductive charm of such establishments. Without warning, shots are fired, a gunman is subdued, the orchestra plays on and patrons carry on unruffled. How gangster can you get?

Roger Duchesne, 'Bob le Flambeur.'

‘Bob le Flambeur’ (1956) (‘Bob the Gambler’)

Bob Montagné (Roger Duchesne) is a former bank robber earning his keep at all night poker matches and other games of chance. A suave sophisticate, he’s respected as a prince among thieves. No one can cross a cafe floor and command the respect Bob receives from fellow larcenists, gamblers and even the police. His nightclub of choice is Jour et Nuit (Day and Night), but he’s a creature of the latter. Sleeping when the sun rises, he only comes alive when the lights of Montmartre twinkle at dusk. Parisian cafes, bars and nightclubs are his domain. When his luck turns bad he looks for alternative means to pay his debts. That one last big score is the thing that tempts graying outlaws, even retired ones, and Bob is no exception. 

Frank Bigelow (Edmond O'Brien) puffs on a cigarette
at the Fisherman. 'D.O.A.' (1949)

‘D.O.A.’ (1949)

 Calling San Francisco dive bar the Fisherman a “nightclub” is stretching the definition of the term until it screams. But the F’man’s got a stomping jazz sextet that cannot be denied a mention here. The joint’s a beatnik hangout where straight-arrow accountant Frank Bigelow (Edmond O’Brien) wanders in and sips a beverage that changes his life forever. The place is a seething mass of hipsters grooving to the bebop beat as the band blows a frenzied set that sends the bohemian crowd into orbit. The atmosphere is claustrophobic and the scene teeters on chaos, much like Frank’s immediate future.

Edward G. Robinson, 'Little Caesar.'

‘Little Caesar’ (1931) 

The hoods hang out upstairs at Club Palermo, a gangster stronghold in the big city. Stickup man Caesar Enrico “Rico” Bandello (Edward G. Robinson) pokes his beak in to talk with crime boss Sam Vettori (Stanley Fields), who runs the club and uses it as a front for his illegal operations. Rico passes muster and is immediately introduced to the rest of the gang. Besides being an entertainment spot for the corrupt, the club becomes the incubator that helps Rico launch his criminal career. At the club downstairs he eventually commits a brazen and violent act in public that shakes up the city’s mobster elite and catapults him to the top of the syndicate.  

Cathy Rosier, Alain Delon, François Périer, 'Le Samouraï.'

‘Le Samouraï’ (1967)

Martey's, an upscale Parisian jazz lounge, attracts a more refined crowds than do other nightspots mentioned here. But criminals operating behind the scenes are a continuous presence there. Hired killer Jef Costello (Alain Delon) visits the establishment to carry out some business for an employer. He isn’t the kind of assassin you’d expect him to be. Jef lives the austere life of a Buddhist monk and adheres to the code of the samurai. He’s an outsider among criminals in this nocturnal playground. Vocalist and keyboard player Valérie (Cathy Rosier), who performs at the club, witnesses something she wasn’t meant to see, and Jef soon finds that he’s the one being hunted.

Richard Widmark, Mike Mazurki, 'Night and the City.'

‘Night and the City’ (1950)

The Silver Fox nightclub sits among the cheap clip joints of London’s Soho district. It’s where low rent hustler Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) hangs out, ever on the lookout for a fast buck or a get rich quick scheme. Harry uses his gift for gab to pry loose greenbacks from the unwary, especially his lady friend. He’s in his element at the Silver Fox, a place where bar girls fleece tipsy customers, sweet talking them into buying overpriced champagne and chocolates. Everyone there is either a crook or a victim. Beneath his bravado, Harry fears he’ll ultimately be one of the latter. When he schemes to become a professional wrestling promotor things don’t go his way. Unfortunately for him, he’s burned too many bridges to get a free pass this time.

Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, 'The Big Sleep.'

‘The Big Sleep’ (1946)

Crime kingpin Eddie Mars’s Cypress Club plays host to the denizens of a dark side. In it, illegal gambling is the main attraction and all things illicit are for sale. In between crooning pop tunes for the punters, rich girl Vivian Sternwood (Lauren Bacall) tries her luck in the casino. When she pockets a thick wad of cash at the roulette wheel she nearly gets robbed, but private dick Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) steps in and saves her bacon. Their liaison leads to a well remembered steamy conversation of double entendres involving race horses and jockeys. The Cypress is not the kind of place where Vivian or her younger sister, Carmen (Martha Vickers), should frequent, but these girls do love trouble.

Richard Widmark, Ida Lupino, 'Road House.'

‘Road House’ (1948)

Jefty's Road House isn’t a swank, big city club. It’s a backwater joint with a bowling alley. A love triangle with Chicago songstress Lily Stevens (Ida Lupino), club owner Jefty Robbins (Richard Widmark) and club manager Pete Morgan (Cornel Wilde) sets the drama in motion. In one of its best scenes, Ida Lupino makes a lukewarm crowd sit up, take notice and applaud when she sings “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road).” She isn’t a trained vocalist, and her slightly raspy two-pack-a-day voice radiates a world-weary sense of dissatisfaction, which is what makes the scene work. It’s all about heartache and raw emotions and she’s got a hell of a story to tell.

Raymond Burr, 'The Blue Gardenia.'

‘The Blue Gardenia’ (1953)

Loneliness seems to float in the air like clouds of cigarette smoke as Nat King Cole warbles the film’s title song in the softly-lit Blue Gardenia club, a South Seas-themed watering hole. It’s a romantic setting, but one couple is having a difficult time of it. Calendar artist Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr) plies Norah Larkin (Anne Baxter) with cocktails. Norah hesitates to imbibe, but Harry is insistent. The music and atmosphere reflect the isolation Norah feels, and the club resonates her emotional distress. Matters get worse when a dark crime is committed and a memory blackout obscures the events of the previous evening.

Magali Noël, 'Rififi.'

‘Rififi’ (1955)

L’age d’Or (The Golden Age) is an ironically appropriate name for the nightclub of choice for a band of French jewel thieves who are casing out a stronghold of precious stones. Aging gangster Tony "le Stéphanois" (Jean Servais) is persuaded by his buddies to help rob an exclusive jewelry dealer. Tony wants to go for a bigger score than just the ice in the store window: their target switches to the retailer’s highly secure vault. It’s a flawless plan, or so they think, but relationships with women in their lives complicate matters. Viviane (Magali Noël), a chanteuse at the club, performs the film’s memorable title song, describing the plight of a woman in a relationship with a roughneck gangster. She ought to know — her beau is in on the heist.

Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, 'Gilda.'

‘Gilda’ (1946)

Rita Hayworth’s iconic hair toss helps make her vocal rendition of “Put the Blame on Mame” sizzle in what is perhaps the greatest noir nightclub moment of all time. She’s voluptuous, self assured and more than a bit dangerous. The scene is packed with drama as Johnny Farrell (Glen Ford) looks on with fury and ringsiders scramble for the gloves and necklace she tosses their way. Make no mistake, she weaponizes her performance in a psychological battle with Johnny and her husband, Ballin Mundson (George Macready). When she asks the gentlemen in the house to help undo the back of her black strapless gown she may as well be lighting the fuse on a powder keg.

The Demimonde After Dark: Two Visions of Paris, and the Gangsters Who Inhabit Each are Worlds Apart

Roger Duchesne, “Bob le flambeur” (1956).

Contains Spoilers

By Paul Parcellin

Two films about the Parisian underworld are as different as fire and water. One is awash in old world charm, a nostalgia-tinged tale of the gangsters and gamblers of Montmartre. The other takes place in a Paris at odds with the city’s romanticized past. It’s an icy portrait of an outlaw who’s more a cypher than a man. Both films are directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. He also co-wrote the screenplays.

Roger Duchesne — Bob had become an anachronism.

“Bob le flambeur” (1956)

Bob Montagné (Roger Duchesne) emerges from a Montmartre gambling den at dawn. The sky is steel gray; it’s neither night nor morning. He looks worn out, melancholic. He’s broke from a bad night at the card table. Gazing disapprovingly at his own reflection in a storefront window he mutters, “A real hood’s face.”

He does little but haunt bars and cafe and gamble, yet he appears to be well fixed financially. His apartment’s picture window looks out upon a stunning view of the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur atop Montmartre. Like most Melville antiheroes, we know practically nothing about his background. He merely lives in the present, roams from place to place until dawn, and retires to his residence. He lives a solitary life, save for frequent visits by his inquisitive landlady and housekeeper, who endlessly annoy him. 

The quaint cafes and cobbled streets of historic Montmartre, and the neon-lit Quartier Pigalle, the city’s red light district at the foot of the Montmartre hill, are the backdrop for the action. 

Bob meets Anne (Isabel Corey), an attractive young woman who has just lost her job, and he takes her under his wing. He wants to protect her from Marc (Gérard Buhr), a pimp whom he loathes. Instead, he guides her toward his young protégé Paolo (Daniel Cauchy).

Bob has stayed out of trouble for the past 20 years, although in his younger days he served time for a robbery. During the holdup he saved police commissaire Ledru’s (Guy Decomble) life, pushing another henchman's arm as he aimed at the weaponless lawman. He earned Ledru’s respect for that.

But his admiration for the legendary gambler doesn’t keep him from pursuing a tip that Bob is involved in another robbery plot. Bob is low on funds and the prospect of robbing a Deauville casino vault of 800 million French francs too tempting to resist. 

The plan seems foolproof, but human nature has a way of scuttling the most carefully arranged schemes.

Guy Decomble, Roger Duchesne, André Garet.

Bob’s downfall is his addiction to gambling — despite his current losing streak, he boasts that he was born with an ace in his hand. He gambles more and loses. On the day of the robbery he breaks his promise to abstain from gambling at the casino as he waits for his co-conspirators to assemble and the heist to unfold. The problem is, this time he begins to win and it has a narcotic effect on him.

He gets an endorphin rush from scooping up piles of chips. He’s riveted to the gaming tables and the action there causes him to shut out the rest of the world — a disastrous frame of mind for a robber who’s poised to knock over the most secure casino vault in France.

Other factors conspire to turn the meticulously planned heist into Bob’s Waterloo. Loose lips have passed along critical details to the commissaire, thus signing a death warrant for some in the gang. Yet, the final scenes are both tragic and wistful, and leave us wanting more.

An influential film of the French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), “Bob le flambeur” is Melville’s love letter to American gangster films. The director was a fan of American culture. He wore cowboy Stetsons and drove big American cars. Hollywood films were his true love.

In the end, Bob is but a mythical character, channeling the gangsters of Warner Bros. and other studios who created their visions of the demimonde. His is a nobility that is too good to be true. Fortunately, that romantic vision of the Paris Bob inhabits will live on in glorious black and white prints and in our imaginations.

Alain Delon, “Le Samouraï.”

“Le Samouraï” (1967)

Killer for hire Jef Costello (Alain Delon) could hardly be cooler. He betrays little emotion and seems to live only for the jobs his masters pay him to handle. When he’s not preparing to exterminate another mark, he lives in a shabby, very gray apartment. Even the twittering parakeet he keeps in a cage is colorless, and we must wonder whether Jef or the bird is more the prisoner.

If the hired assassin is emotionally muted, Le Commissaire (François Périer), the lawman determined to bring the killer to justice, is his opposite. Agitated and obsessed with capturing his prey, Le Commissaire is frustrated by Jef’s wiliness as undercover officers follow and lose sight of him. He has an uncanny ability to give police the slip as he maneuvers his way around Paris Metro stations.

Prior to carrying out a contract killing, Jef visits Jane Lagrange (Nathalie Delon) and asks her to help establish an alibi. It’s never made clear whether or not she and Jef are lovers, but she’s most willing to help him evade the consequences for the crime. Their relationship brings up another in the many unanswered questions about Jef. We know little about him — who he is, where he came from and why he turned to the vocation he practices.

Lengthy scenes with little or no dialog are fleshed out with plot-advancing activity, a tribute to Melville’s minimalist approach, which gives the film its sharp edge. 

Alain Delon, set to boost a car.

Character details energize the story, such as Jef’s routine as he prepares to do his job. He dons standard film noir gear, a tan raincoat and gray fedora, carefully smoothing the brim. It’s his ritual, the meaning of which is never explained. But the film’s small mysteries make it all the more compelling. We’re left to absorb the actions, tics and traits and make of them what we will, for explanations would only let the air out of enigma that is Jef Costello.

We see Jef steal a car off the street, bring it to a back alley garage, where an attendant puts on new license plates and hands over paperwork — and a gun.

The killing goes off as planned, but as he’s making his escape from the scene of the crime, the back office of a nightclub, he hits a snag. Jef comes face-to-face with pianist (Cathy Rosier), an entertainer at the club, and she gets a clear view of his face. But when police interview her she fails to identify him as the gunman. Left open is the question of why she’s protecting him. We’re never quite sure of her reasoning, and neither is Jef. But through a tangled set of circumstances the film comes to a violent closing scene in which she’s involved.

In an interview with Sight and Sound magazine, Melville said of the enigmatic last scene, Jef Costello doesn’t want to commit the murder he’s been hired to do. He removes the bullets from his gun and walks into the trap that’s been set for him inside a nightclub.“He kills himself, he commits hara-kiri,” said Melville.

“From the outset, the black woman in white (the pianist) is the incarnation of death, with all the charm that death can have … Jef Costello is in love with his own death. In the first shot he’s stretched out on his bed, already ‘laid out,’ already dead at that moment.”

Jef’s prepared to die for his masters, as samourai at times do. But true samourai will make the ultimate sacrifice when honor or a principle is at stake. Jef kills to enrich himself. He’s his own employer, and with police closing in on him he chooses to walk into the line of fire. His idea of an honorable death, no doubt.

Cathy Rosier, the angel of death.

Post Script:

Bob may have been the last gangster in Paris who subscribed to an underworld code of ethics. His outlook was old fashioned: he wouldn’t tolerate pimps, and he saved the life of commissaire Ledru during a robbery because the lawman was unarmed. With that he earned a measure of respect from police and underworld figures alike. But a gentleman gangster such as himself was surely an anachronism in the 1950s. In the end, Bob may or may not live his final days in prison, but his code of conduct had certainly become extinct.

In “Le Samouraï,” life in the underworld has devolved into a chaotic jungle in which no code of ethics or sense of honor exists. By then, Bob’s Paris was but a hazy memory that few could recall. Perhaps Nazi occupation during the war was what wiped the slate clean. Survival had become difficult and no one could be trusted.

Jef Costello seems more connected to the world of espionage than he is to old school gangsters like Bob. That would make sense, since agent 007 and his ilk became the new movie heroes of the 1960s. Those matinee spies had no way of knowing from which direction the next life threatening attack might come. Either friend or foe might one day press a gun to one’s temple, the reasoning for which might be unfathomable. 

Jef belongs to that tribe — the ones who smile when they finally encounter the angel of death.