Noir Served Asian, Italian Style

In a recent post I lamented that U.S. studios aren't interested in making crime films anymore, but on other shores things are different. Here's further evidence that the film noir genre thrives overseas:

CANNES - The Weinstein Company has landed one of the first big deals in Cannes this year, taking worldwide rights outside of Asia and French-speaking Europe for Dragon (Wu Xia), the martial arts film noir from director Peter Ho-Sun Chan (Bodyguards and Assassins), which premieres in a Midnight Screening here Saturday. Dragon stars Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tang Wei and features Hong Kong legend Jimmy Wang Yu (One Armed Swordsman) in his first film role in 17 years.

"The Double Hour," a spiffy new Italian film noir (see photo above), combines mystery and suspense with a love story in a twisty plot that’s worthy of Alfred Hitchcock. Viewers are kept guessing until the final denouement. The romantic leads, Ksenia Rappoport and Filippo Timi, though little known at the time, won best male and female acting awards at the 66th Venice International Film Festival in 2009. The Double Hour also received the Young Cinema Award at the Venice event.

The title refers to the moment on a digital watch when the minutes and hours are the same, for example 12:12. When this coincidence is noticed, the observer gets to make a wish. “It’s about the second chance or one’s capacity for grabbing that chance when it comes,” says director Giuseppe Capotondi. A Samuel Goldwyn Film release, the movie debuted in New York and Los Angeles in April, followed by a national rollout.

Thanks to Below The Line and Shockya.com

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Raoul Walsh Biographer Intros Two at Egyptian

If you live in the L.A. area you'll want to be at the Egyptian Theater Friday, June 10, when two of director Raoul Walsh's towering achievements in crime cinema, "High Sierra" and "The Roaring Twenties," will be screened. And to celebrate the first book-length biography of Walsh, Marilyn Ann Moss, author of "Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director," will be on hand to introduce the double feature. Both films are 35mm prints and star Humphrey Bogart.
"High Sierra" (1941) is the quintessential gangster romance. Humphrey Bogart plays Mad Dog Earle, an outlaw looking for one last score, sidetracked by love, hounded by inescapable fate. With the incomparable Ida Lupino and Joan Leslie. Remade twice, as "Colorado Territory" and "I Died a Thousand Times."
With "The Roaring Twenties"(1939), Raoul Walsh came bursting onto the screen in his first Warner Bros. directorial outing. This gangster tale stars James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart as World War I vets who return to an unwelcoming American society and go straight to the criminal life instead.
The script is by Warner Bros. writing team Jerry Wald and Richard Macauley, and the film was produced by erstwhile journalist Mark Hellinge.
Also starring Gladys Cooper as Cagney's saloon-owner friend and Priscilla Lane as the woman who just can't love Cagney the way he wants.

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How Do They Know About Noir?

Video gamers are taking to recent release "L.A. Noire," a game based on films noir crime stories. The game is set in 1947 Los Angeles, and its story includes the stuff that makes up hard-boiled detective fiction that inspired several decades of crime films released after World War II.
Most video gamers are younger folks -- at least that's the impression I get whenever there's a new release. The store across the street from me in L.A. has a line of teens going out the door whenever a hot new item goes on the market. So, I wonder, how does this young demographic know about, and it would seem, identify with something buried so deeply in Hollywood's past? Hell, the original films noir haven't been in theaters since their grandparents' day. Would they know Barbara Stanwyck from Lady Gaga?
Maybe that's why the Web is offering primers on film noir, such as this (click here), and this. Here's a list of noirs from IMDB. Kids will need to catch up on actors such as Robert Mitchum, Bogie, Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni and Ralph Meeker (in photo above in a scene from "Gun Crazy"), to name a few.
Somehow in the arena of video games, films noir seem to communicate with a younger generation, and translate into a medium different from the celluloid fabric from which they came. Maybe that speaks to the power of the original films. They were well designed and executed. And great architecture is eternal.

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Hammer Swings Again

Although he died in 2006, Mickey Spillane has a new crime novel out featuring New York private detective Mike Hammer. Spillane wrote numerous crime novels from the 1940s until shortly before his death, including "I, the Jury" (which sold 3 million copies and launched Spillane's career), Vengeance is Mine" and "My Gun is Quick." He is reputed to have sold more than 200 million novels worldwide. Hammer, the New York City detective featured in Spillane's books, was a hard-as-nails crime fighter who preferred to punch and shoot first and ask questions later. More a vigilante that a detective, Hammer's escapades were reviled by the critics and gobbled up by the general public. Spillane's detective novels were revolutionary for their time due to the inclusion of frank sex and violence in their pages.
The new book, "Kiss Her Goodbye," is the work of Spillane and novelist Max Allan Collins, who completed the unfinished book. On his deathbed, Spillane instructed his wife Jane to give his unfinished manuscripts, notes and outlines to Collins, whom he'd been pals with for a number of years.
Spillane's posthumous novels completed by Collins include "Dead Street" (2007), and the forthcoming "The Consummata."

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Touring Scenes of the Crime (Film)

You can still see some of the hauntingly familiar locations where film noir scenes were shot in the 1930s to '50s. For instance, the rooming house at the intersection of Franklin and Ivar (1851 North Ivar Ave.) in Hollywood. Early on in Billy Wilder's masterpiece, "Sunset Boulevard," hapless screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) taps out pages and puffs Luckies at the residence. Gillis, the struggling scribe with a couple of B pictures to his credit, plays gigolo to faded silent-screen legend Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). As we all know, things go badly for the writer. But Gillis does end up getting the in-ground swimming pool he always wanted.

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AFI Picks Top 10 Gangster Films

American Film Institute members vote on which films they believe are the best. They offer a list of the top 100 films of all time as well as top 10 lists of best genre pictures. Here's the lowdown on their picks for best crime films.

AFI described gangster films as "a genre that centers on organized crime or maverick criminals in a 20th century setting. Profit-minded and highly entrepreneurial, the American gangster is the dark side of the American dream. The gangsters' lifestyles are portraits in extremes, with audiences cheering their excesses and reveling in their demise."

Nominees: Robert De Niro was the most featured actor with seven movies; James Cagney and Al Pacino were featured with five movies each.

Winners: The Godfather (1972) (# 1), GoodFellas (1990) (# 2), The Godfather, Part II (1974) (# 3), White Heat (1949) (# 4), Bonnie and Clyde (1967) (# 5), Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (1932) (# 6), Pulp Fiction (1994) (# 7), The Public Enemy (1931) (# 8), Little Caesar (1930) (see photo above) (# 9), Scarface (1983) (# 10).

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Foreigners Drive Noir Projects Forward

American directors don't seem interested in making many noir-inspired movies these days. Maybe some would like to but can't get the funding. Most American-made films are targeted at a younger audience, and hard-boiled fiction doesn't usually make the cut.
That's OK, foreign filmmakers are picking up some of the slack.
Case in point is Denmark's Nicholas Winding Refn, who just won the Best Director award at Cannes for his film, "Drive," a film noir he shot here in Los Angeles. The movie stars Ryan Gosling as a stunt man who makes movies by day and does robberies at night.
I'm reminded that it's often non-Americans who keep American film and music genres alive after audiences in the U.S. turn away. Europeans and Asians have remained solid fans of U.S. home-grown jazz and blues. And the same goes for film genres such as film noir and gangster movies.
I'm glad that someone still sees the value of this kind of filmmaking. Maybe overseas enthusiasm for the genre will catch on here. Let's hope.


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