Noir, etc.

[meshkalina]

Lots of recurring detective stuff is anything but cute-Archer, Marlowe, many of their spawn.

I meant They Live By Night although They Drive By Night (dir by Walsh) is good too. 

[limitedreadership]

Great thread!

Here's some of my favourites:

Movies:

From the canonized ones, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, SUNSET BOULEVARD, LAURA, KISS ME DEADLY, TOUCH OF EVIL, and OUT OF THE PAST are my favourites.

From the rest (most already mentioned):
-The Killers - I'm a big fan of Burt Lancaster noirs generally, and this is the best. One of the films that best summarises noir fatalism.
-Murder My Sweet - One of the best Chandler adaptions in my opinion.
-Nightmare Alley - Only saw this recently. So cynical and pessimistic, a real gut-punch of a film that's like Elmer Gantry meets Jim Thompson. I need to read the book since I hear it's even more brutal.
-Mildred Pierce - Okay it's as much a melodrama, but I fucking love this film.
-Riffifi, Thieves Highway and Night And The City - The best 3 Dassin films I've seen. Perfection pretty much.
-Jean Pierre Melville films - While he didn't just make crime films, his run of them is great (Bob le Flambeur, Le Doulos, Le Deuxieme Souffle, Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge). Unparalleled.
-LA Confidential - Best '90s noir film.
-Underworld USA - Sam Fuller films always have an oddness about em. Great revenge flick this one.
-Fritz Lang noirs - All worth a go, from good to great. Fury, Human Desire, The Big Heat etc. M is my favourite Lang though, and has enough noir elements to include here.
-Experiment In Terror - Such an effective psycho-killer neo-noir from the early 60s.
-This Gun For Hire - Probably inspiration for Le Samourai, one of the best 'hitman' noirs (Blast of Silence and Murder By Contract being other good ones that spring to mind)
-Gun Crazy and They Live By Night - Already discussed, both so good, included together because of the Bonnie & Clyde elements shared.
-Sweet Smell Of Success - I doubt this can be included, but since it's so good I'm including it anyway. Same goes for Ace In The Hole.
-Asphalt Jungle and The Killing - Included together as Sterling Hayden heist movies, doesn't get any better!
-In A Lonely Place - If I had to choose one Bogart, this is the one.
-Narrow Margin - Best train-set noir, so fast-paced.
-Les Diaboliques - Again, not really noir, but what a fucking film.
-The Third Man - Simply one of my favourite films in general. Love all the slightly warped framing. Put Odd Man Out here too.
-Lift To The Scaffolds.

Honourable mentions to Pick-Up On South Street, The Big Knife, and The Unsuspected. There's lots of other good stuff but I'll end it there...And that's not including '70s 'neo-noir' stuff (Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Klute etc). Also no Hitchcock (if included I'd put VERTIGO).

I could happily watch noirs all day. Even a solid second-tier effort is enjoyable, like Kiss Of Death which I watched the other day - Sidmark great in his first role as a psychopathic killer, plays it like The Joker.

Books:
James M Cain - Everything. Guy wrote with such a fast-paced narrative even when there's no 'action'.
Chester Himes - A Rage in Harlem. Need to read more by him.
Dave Goodis - Down There. Actually read this based on a recommendation on this board, prior to seeing Shoot The Pianist. Really excellent.
Ethan Coen - Gates of Eden. I was so surprised by how good this short-story collection is. Each one reads like a potential Coen Bros noir film. Highly recommended.
Greene - Brighton Rock. I'm a massive Greene fan anyway (Heart Of The Matter is my favourite), and his crime books are excellent.
Alfred Doblin - Berlin Alexanderplatz. True, it isn't a noir per se but it's got enough elements to appeal to fans of the genre. One of my absolute favourite novels, and I finally just got the Fassbinder 15-hour film version on dvd.
Jim Thompson - Everything.
Ross Macdonald - Everything. As reliable as Chandler, even if not QUITE as good. The 2 film adaptations with Paul Newman in actually aren't bad.
Eric Ambler - Journey Into Fear, Mask of Dimitrios etc. Read quite a few Ambler, like a more fast-paced Le Carre; more spy-Cold War based cynicism but again enough noir elements. Plenty of ok film adaptions that don't match the books.

This thread has given me loads more recommendations, cheers!

[limitedreadership]

And if anyone's into old radio noir (loads adaptations of popular films), all the SUSPENSE episodes are up here: http://archive.org/details/OTRR_Suspense_Singles

[I Am Not Marty Feldman]

Lots of recurring detective stuff is anything but cute-Archer, Marlowe, many of their spawn.

Sure, and I enjoy some of those titles.  I just can't dissolve the Inspector Clouseau association in my mind. 

[meshkalina]

There are lots of cute ones. I'm no Maigret fan. Is the Pink Panther association only w detective novels or all aspects of life?

[letsgethurt]

On Simenon, Dirty Snow and Tropic Moon are his best. Tropic Moon deals with French Colonialism in Africa and definitely has a noirish vibe to it. Dirty Snow is up there with the bes noir novels for me, dealing with a teenage pimp and hustler in German occupied France. Great noir story, and considered one of the most accurate stories of life in France during the occupation. The Maigret novels are solid train reads, but just light detective stories and definitely not essential.

[letsgethurt]

For modern neo-noir novels, I enjoyed the Marseilles Trilogy by Jean-Claude Izzo. Good overall for modern crime fiction, even if he goes into poetics a bit much.

[Vinnie]

And if anyone's into old radio noir (loads adaptations of popular films), all the SUSPENSE episodes are up here: http://archive.org/details/OTRR_Suspense_Singles

I'll check this out, like listening to this stuff while doing prep at work.

Love these too:
http://archive.org/details/TheLivesOfHarryLime

Orson Welles revives his The Third Man character Harry Lime in tales of mischief around Europe. Could listen to Orsy read the phone book.

[hillside wrangler]

There's two shelves' worth of Simenon at work.  I'm in the same boat as you, but Dirty Snow and The Man Who Watched Trains Go By seem to be calling my name the loudest.  I don't hear/read many people talking up the Maigret books for some reason.

I'll check out those two, and Red Lights. Huge oeuvres are intimidating, especially when the quality is more or less consistent throughout. I feel that way with Greene too, although his body of work isn't enormous compared to some. I try to navigate through his novels using recommendations and criticism, but reading what other people are praising only gets you so far. You've gotta throw a Hail Mary once in a while. And I know Greene well enough to know that I wouldn't be disappointed by anything he cared to publish. His non-noirs are worth investigating, too: End of the Affair is a good one if you like to hang with D.H. Lawrence (and I mean that as a compliment), or even if you just like a good fucked-up anti-romance thick with emotional unavailability and Catholic guilt. Journey Without Maps is pieced together from a journal he kept while traveling Liberia on foot in 1935. The writing's as concise and conscientious as ever; speculations on tradition in the jaws of progress and descriptions of the alternately florid/dead/lethal countryside are riveting. It's full of hair-raising shit. Captain and the Enemy is a kids' book (so he says), but don't be fooled. It's a Graham Greene pirate story.

I've been on a Ross Macdonald kick recently myself. Making up for lost time, maybe. I finished Black Money a couple weeks back and started in on The Chill a few days ago. I like his writing a lot. It's terse and well-balanced between exposition and action, but there's also a fine thread of compassion that runs through it. Much like Greene. There's a new(-ish) Macdonald bio that I'd like to get my hands on, by a guy named Tom Nolan. Anyone have it/read it?

[Rowdy Yates]

Ex libris copy of a 1972 Coronet edition I picked up at a school fete when I was13 or 14, along with The Black Ice Score (long since lost). These two books were my first introduction to Parker and Richard Stark and the start of a love for noir and other genre fiction.

[letsgethurt]

One of my top ten noir films. Luckily Criterion put it out after only being available on bootleg vhs copies for years. Here's the great opening sequence.http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JVXRNLu055k

[Vinnie]

Saw PARKER last night and all I can say is LOL

[Dr. Humpp]

One of my top ten noir films. Luckily Criterion put it out after only being available on bootleg vhs copies for years. Here's the great opening sequence.http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JVXRNLu055k

A triumph of low budget filmmaking. Amazing film!

Noir faves; Sunset Boulevard, Kiss Me Deadly, Born To Kill, Kansas City Confidential, The Asphalt Jungle, Night of the Hunter, The Killing, The Killers (w/Burt Lancaster), Pick up on South Street, Gun Crazy, The Lineup.

[hillside wrangler]

Finally watched the Drowning Pool flick a couple days ago. 'Twas great! I was a little leery of the decision to set it in Louisiana 'stead of Southern CA, as Macdonald's descriptions of the landscape go a long way toward setting the mood of the book: violence/insanity/backstabbing 'gainst a backdrop of white sails, sun-striped lawns and moonlit bays. It's incongruous, but also fitting, and he gets a lot out of the juxtaposition. Louisiana was a fine substitute, though. Was also concerned that the cinematic version of Archer might veer close to the smooth-talking, wisecracking private dick trope, 'cause that's what they figured folks'd want: a hep, leisure-suited Philip Marlowe for the '70s, not the isolated, emotionally-driven Macdonald creation who's coasting by the seat of his pants more often than not. With this in mind, I was relieved when Paul Newman spent the first three minutes of the film wrestling with the seat belt of a rental car. The grand old moss-draped estate bore more than a passing resemblance to the one from Frogs! with Sam Elliott, which was an added bonus.

Also recently picked up the Macdonald bio I mentioned earlier in the thread. He's a fascinating guy. Wrote his dissertation on Coleridge and spent the rest of his life hammering out detective novels that operated on the level of Greek tragedy. His first couple of books garnered positive reviews, one or two of which went so far as to call him the "new Chandler", which understandably pissed off the old Chandler, who came back swinging with lots of nasty remarks re: the comparison. A tough blow for Macdonald, who idolized Chandler, but it prompted him to begin developing his own style, moving away from the Chandler and Hammett tropes and using his own life experiences and peculiar sensitivities to create something that was wholly his own province. Great books. Great guy.

[Vinnie]

MacDonald is my absolute favorite. Black Money and Killer Inside Me are constant back and forth for my favorite hardboiled crime novels of all time.

About 3 mins before posting this user: I Am Not Marty Feldman called me to talk about my favorite "Parker" novel. Like I said on the phone old buddy; Sour Lemon Score or The Outfit.

Theresa, what is the MacDonald bio called?

I really want to check out the Samuel Fuller autobio soon too.