An engaging encyclopedia sheds light on dark movies
Written: Jul 18 '05
Product Rating:
Pros: Extensive information is presented with clarity and passion.
Cons: Hard to single out best movies because ratings (1-5 stars) are not listed separately.
The Bottom Line: The author combines a fan's enthusiasm with an accountant's eye for detail. His opinionated overview of the best and worst classic films noir is enlightening and useful.
eplovejoy's Full Review: Michael F. Keaney - Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of ...
Michael F. Keaney knows what he's talking about when it comes to vintage black & white movies about tough guys, tougher dames and the dark worlds they inhabit.
His Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940-1959 is packed with detailed descriptions of movies listed alphabetically, from Abandoned (1949), which is about a woman (Gale Storm) looking for the killers of her sister and the sister's baby and which Keaney gives a rating of three stars out of five, to The Wrong Man (1956, four stars), in which Henry Fonda is accused of armed robbery. Keaney shares several dozen crisp photographs. He cites the studios, casts, crews, running times and years of release for each movie.
Keaney also knows when to keep his mouth shut. He tells enough about a movie's plot so that you can know whether it might interest you, and then he clams up. One could read each of his 745 entries, his introduction and appendices and not have any of the movies' countless plot twists and endings spoiled. Staying silent at the right times is a smart move for a guy who spends so much time in shady neighborhoods filled with shadier characters.
What constitutes film noir is subjective. Keaney exploits the phrase's wonderful elasticity with impassioned fearlessness. He includes in his Film Noir Guide many movies that some might say don't belong. To Have and Have Not (1944, four stars) is there. Citizen Kane (1941, five stars) is as well.
Many of Keaney's other selections are film noir by almost every definition. About perhaps the greatest, Double Indemnity (1944, although Keaney gives it only four and a half stars), he writes, "Despite the handicap of a stiff leading man and a leading lady with a laughable blonde wig, director [Billy] Wilder and screenwriter Raymond Chandler were wildly successful in translating pulp fiction writer James M. Cain's novel into a masterpiece of film noir suspense." A lesser-known gem is widely credited with being the first film noir. Of The Stranger on the Third Flood (1940, four stars), Keaney notes, Peter "Lorre's role is brief but exceptional, and [John] McGuire's unusually lengthy nightmare sequence is intense."
That five-star rating system might be problematic. Your results may differ. Keaney, for instance, gives the seductive Rita Hayworth/Glenn Ford thriller Gilda (1946) only three stars, but I'd put it in my Top Ten. And although Keaney provides several helpful appendices (one lists films by director, one by year and another by such topics as "Amnesia" and "Racist") and offers both an extensive annotated bibliography and his advice on "How to Build an Affordable Film Noir Video Library," he does not provide a breakdown of his ratings. To find all the films to which he assigns five stars, one has to comb through the entire book and take notes. Some of the films that get his higher ratings are listed below so you can get a sense of his tastes.
Keaney identifies actors who might seem familiar, especially those we may have seen on television. He identifies, for example, Ossie Davis (Evening Shade) as playing Sidney Poitier's brother in No Way Out (1950, four stars). He points out that Harry Morgan (Col. Potter on M*A*S*H) is a tenant farmer who refuses to pay rent in Dragonwyck (1946, three stars).
For many of the movies in Film Noir Guide, Keaney provides brief descriptions of scenes that are especially noir. He also quotes some of the hardboiled dialogue:
In Laura (1944, five stars), a cop (Dana Andrews) tells a "fey columnist" (Clifton Webb) that he is a murder suspect. In response, the columnist looks into a mirror and says, "How singularly innocent I look today."
In Niagara (1953, four stars) Joseph Cotten is upset that a red dress worn by Marilyn Monroe is "cut down so low in the front, you can see her kneecaps." Another man is not bothered, at least not that way. He asks his wife, "Why don't you ever get a dress like that?" She answers, "Listen, for a dress like that you've got to start laying plans when you're about 13."
KEANEY'S DEDICATION
A guy who spends so much time in the hard lands of film noir might become hardened himself. Not Keaney. He dedicates Film Noir Guide to his wife: "To Doreen, my loyal moll of 32 years, for not kicking me out after the many hundreds of hours I spent with Lizabeth, Ava, Ida, Veronica, Audrey, Barbara, Joan, Marilyn and scores of other gorgeous dames during the planning of this caper."
That's sweet, but many of the brutes in films noir would take a softy like that for all he's got.
SOME OF KEANEY'S RATINGS
Five stars Asphalt Jungle (1950)
The Killers (1946)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Murder, My Sweet (1944
Out of the Past (1947)
Scarlet Street (1945)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Four and a half stars Gun Crazy (1950)
The Killing (1946. Directed by Stanley Kubrick.)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955. Adapted from Mickey Spillane's novel.)
The Mask of Dimitrios (1944, with Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet)
Mildred Pierce (1945)
Stray Dog (1949. Directed by Ikira Kurosawa.)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
This Gun for Hire (1942)
Four stars Criss Cross (1948)
Crossfire (1947)
Detour (1948)
D.O.A. (1950)
Key Largo (1948)
Kiss of Death (1947)
The Lady from Shanghai (1948)
The Letter (1940, with Bette Davis)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946, with Barbara Stanwyck and Kirk Douglas)
Sudden Fear (1952, with Joan Crawford and Jack Palance)
The Window (1949. About a boy who witnesses a murder but no one believes him, except the killers.)
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