Hi, everyone! I found some great stuff in my college library yesterday. It was pretty amazing to see one of my three favorite noir movies: Sunset Boulevard.
     Its story, set in '50s Hollywood, focuses on Norma Desmond, a silent-screen goddess whose pathetic belief in her own indestructibility has turned her into a demented recluse. The Sunset Boulevard mansion where she lives with only her butler, Max who was once her director and husband has become her self-contained world. Norma dreams of a comeback to pictures and she begins a relationship with Joe Gillis, a small-time writer who becomes her lover, that will soon end with murder and total madness.

For Noir fans, including myself, there is no doubt that the 1940's produced a wealth of noir directed by many of the greatest film noir directors in the genres history. Here are my favorites:



       Alfred Hitchcock

       Suspicion (1941)
       Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
       Spellbound (1945)





       Robert Siodmak

       Phantom Lady (1944)
       Christmas Holiday (1944)
       The Spiral Staircase (1945)
       The Killers (1946)
       The Dark Mirror (1946)




     
     Billy Wilder

       Double Indemnity (1944)
       The Lost Weekend (1945)




   
        Orson Welles

        Journey Into Fear (1943)
        Tomorrow Is Forever (1946)
        The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
        The Third Man (1949)






     Fritz Lang

       Moontide (1942)
       Scarlet Street (1945)
       The Woman in the Window (1945)





   

     Jacques Tourneur

         Out of the Past (1947)
         Berlin Express (1948)

Of the three types of noir women, the femme fatale represents the most direct attack on traditional womanhood and the nuclear family. She refuses to play the role of devoted wife and loving mother that mainstream society prescribes for women.  She is a stock character of a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. A femme fatale tries to achieve her hidden purpose by using feminine wiles such as beauty, charm, and sexual allure. In some situations, she uses lies rather than charm.

Today, I've wanted to cite my "Top Ten" femme fatale characters from the classic film noir era. I think those are the most unforgettable and dangerous ones:

1- Phyllis Dietrichson















2- Laura Hunk















3- Gilda Mundson Farrell















4- Terry Collins














5- Cora Smith












6- Vivian Rutledge















7- Debby Marsh














8- Jane Palmer













9- Kathie Moffat














10- Kitty Collins

She was the first actress to ever reach ten Academy Award Nominations, and she won the award for Best Actress twice. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her as the 2nd greatest female star of all time (she was second only to Katharine Hepburn). She was also the first woman ever to receive the Lifetime Achievement award from the same organization.

Bette didn’t arrive in Hollywood until 1930, and was greeted by a surprising amount of failure. She was told she didn’t “look like an actress,” and failed her first screen test. Her break arrived in the mercy of George Arliss, who gave her the lead in The Man Who Played God (1932) after her disappointing flops in many unsuccessful films. The success of the picture earned her respect, and more importantly a contract with Warner Brothers Studios.



Bette Davis is inseparably attached to the femme fatale archetype, and is possibly the most recognizable film noir starlet of them all. Deception is a 1946 film noir released by Warner Brothers, and directed by Irving Rapper. Film critic Dennis Schwartz generally liked the film, writing, "Irving Rapper (Shining Victory / Now Voyager / Rhapsody in Blue) helms this labored romantic melodrama, a remake of the early talkie 1929 Jealousy that was also based on a Louis Verneuil play. It's written by John Collier and Joseph Than ... With classical music filling the background, cheesy soap opera dialogue in the forefront, histrionics taking over the concert hall, none of the characters being likable and Bette Davis as hammy as ever, this preposterous opera-like tale is amazingly enjoyable as straight theatrical drama that is nevertheless campy and could easily have been treated as comedy."



The Letter is a 1940 American film noir directed by William Wyler, and starring Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall and James Stephenson. Variety magazine wrote, "Never has [the W. Somerset Maugham play] been done with greater production values, a better all-around cast or finer direction. Its defect is its grimness. Director William Wyler, however, sets himself a tempo which is in rhythm with the Malay locale . . . Davis' frigidity at times seems to go even beyond the characterization. On the other hand, Marshall never falters. Virtually stealing these honors in the pic, however, is Stephenson as the attorney, while Sondergaard is the perfect mask-like threat".

My favourite: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

1) Sunset Boulevard, 1950

2) The Lady From Shanghai, 1947

3) This Gun For Hire, 1942

5) Gilda, 1946

5) The Third Man, 1949

"Raymond Chandler defined it best. He described the Film Noir hero as a knight in dirty armor. He is a knight, he just doesn’t look like one. And he’s never rewarded for what he does. He’s this lonely character who’s out there and he’s just bugged by stuff."

"I can tell you I know it when I see it but I don’t know how to define it. Almost every element you name as the definition of a Noir film would apply to Casablanca but you would not call Casablanca a Noir film."

"Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and ganster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood."

"Noir is premised on the audience's need to see failure risked, courted, and  sometimes won; the American dreams becomes a nightmare, one strangely more seductive and euprohic than the optimisim it repudiates... Noir provided losing with a mystique."