Film Noir. The term is used to describe slick talking Hollywood crime movies. It was coined by French film critics to signify a movie that many times was dark, cynical and didn’t end well for somebody. Or maybe everybody! It’s the genre of our film, Table 47.
Double Indemnity – the best film noir of all time?
Courtesy: filmforum.org
Some building blocks for a film noir movie are a strong, devious and clever femme fatale and a basically good guy who falls for the dame and gets in way over his head. As Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) put it so well in Double Indemnity, “I killed him for money and a woman…and I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman.”
Body Heat – Ned’s life is about to change.
Courtesy: fanpop.com
Maybe you like something newer. Body Heat featured unknown Kathleen Turner, as cunning and clever a femme fatale as the screen has ever seen. Bill Hurt’s Ned Racine was the perfect sap. As Turner’s character, Maddy, says, “You’re not too smart. I like that in a man.”
Or maybe the quirky Bound. A complex plan, a frantic frame job and one of the best death scenes ever make this one worth watching.
Bound – Violet and Corky. Femme fatales or good guys?
Courtesy: rogerebert.com
Or another film that keeps you squirming wondering if the guy will figure it out and extricate himself from a big mess. Or even survive. Or will the femme fatale win? Or will neither?
No matter how it ends, razor sharp dialogue, unforgettable characters and plot twists you never saw coming will keep you watching film noir.
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