Best underrated noir movie

Out of the Past

Does everything need to be ranked?

[quote]Out of the Past

Ummm, the key word here is "underrated." On what planet is Out of the Past underrated?

TOO LATE FOR TEARS…

I love old Film Noir! Great thread, OP!

Angel Face is a great choice for an underrated Noir, OP. I think Simmons is a bit underrated as an actress as well. Love her and the film!

R3 EVERYONE MUST PARTICIPATE AND CRITERIA BE DAMNED!!! Everyone gets a star for participation!

Wow, good responses, tks . This is one of y favourite movies (noir or otherwise) because is somehow all over the place.nothing and everything is planned, there is a blatant social theme and motivation is all over the place. Jean Simmons descends the stair with prominent nipples and plays the piano a melancholy music of death while killing someone she loves . I think it is a perfect portrayal of a psychopath, mostly due to all erros done. And the ending is unique.

I like Out of the Past (and agree with r3 it is the opposite of underrated) but leaves me perfectly cold

In A Lonely Place

R10, Bogart is praised for his acting that movie, but it’s Gloria Grahame who’s really great. She’s totally believable as a woman breaking down from the stress of a bad relationship.

Nightmare Alley. It's a trashy, creepy, and ultimately great movie. Fabulous cast with Joan Blondell and Tyrone Power, and not to forget the beautiful Helen Walker, who died of cancer at 47.

Forgot the link--sorry!

I love 'Pitfall' with Dick Powell and Lizbeth Scott. I don't know if it's underrated, just hardly known. Although it was made in 1955 under the Production Code, there's nothing stereotypical 1950s about this. The married couple at the heart of the story are very "modern". Other characters are equally naturalistic.

IMO, this script could be remade today without changing a line of the dialogue and people would find it relatable and compelling, never suspecting it originated in a bygone era. Give it a look.

Oops

Forgot to post the link for TOO LATE FOR 😭

Narrow Margin

Please Murder Me is rather forgotten in 2023, but quite fun to see Angela Lansbury and Raymond Burr facing off.

So gratified that my favorite film noir beauty, Lizabeth Scott, is being recognized in this thread. Her voice and face always mesmerize.

I am fascinated by your details and your discussion of the 50s film Pitfall, R14, which was made and released in the 1940s. The date 1948 is on every link of information about this movie, including the one you used in your post, right there.

Fallen Angel. Linda Darnell is exceptionally beautiful; the Jessica Alba of her day.

CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY starring Edna Mae Durbin and Gene Kelly. Unjustly panned upon its release, simply because the people were shocked to see two beloved musical film stars play a hooker and a psycho murderer, respectively. I loved that midnight mass scene filmed in LA's old catholic cathedral.

Miss Durbin's other Xmas-themed noir offering LADY ON A TRAIN is a lot of fun too.

I love Angel Face. That's the movie with the infamous slap story. And the topper was that Howard Hughes, who had just bought her contract, was obsessed with Jean.

I found Christmas Holiday ghastly. Terrible pacing and boring.

and Deanna's makeup is drag queen.

Gloria Grahame in a lust/hate triangle with Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford un Fritz Lang's "Human Desire" is quite good and perhaps a bit under the radar.

R26, thank you for the tip off on this! I'm going to watch it as soon as possible. I've never even heard of this movie, and I feast on a lot of film noir. Gloria Grahame is one of my favorite film noir legends. Her personal life was a total disaster, too. She had some kind of weird obsession with her upper lip that led her to have plastic surgery; then, later, she contracted breast cancer and tried to cure it through diet or something? I'm remembering all of this in a blur from Wikipedia. But thank you for linking to the trailer.

Gloria Grahame has a funny line in In a Lonely Place when she tells Bogart, I can't marry a maniac!

R28, yes! I think I remember that line! A great movie. Bogart was an extremely convincing as a twisted *&^%.

Caught with Barbara Bel Geddes and Robert Ryan

The Red House with Edward G. Robinson, Judith Anderson, Julie London and Rory Calhoun

The Window with Bobby Driscoll

Side Street with Farley Granger

Ace in the Hole - very dark and seldom seen. Excellent noir.

R23 What is that infamous slap story? Trying to remember one related to Angel Face, but I cannot.

Otto Preminger wanted Bob Mitchum to slap Jean Simmons for real rather than them do the usual fake slap. Otto had Bob do it again and again and Otto was not satisfied. The next time Otto said Again Bob slapped Otto and asked Is That How You Mean? Otto wanted Mitchum fired but since Mitchum was RKO's biggest star at the time that wasn't going to happen. Naturally Jean hated working with Otto and couldn't even bare to sit through the film when it screened at a revival house where she was invited to speak.

Here it is mentioned in The RKO Story documentary from 28.00.

Odds Against Tomorrow

That video for The RKO Story episode seems out of synch.

“Woman on the Run,” (1950, dir Norman Foster) with the wonderful and woefully underrated Ann Sheridan and noir mainstay Dennis O’Keefe. Great plot twists and a dizzying ending at an atmospheric California boardwalk.

Gloria Grahame had a very odd habit:

Extremely insecure despite her good looks and acting confidence on screen, Grahame was fixated on what she deemed her imperfections. Unhappy with the tilt of her upper lip, she often stuffed cotton along her gum line to straighten it out. The effect was cosmetically less than flattering and made it difficult for her to speak. A leading man, after kissing her, ended up with a mouth full of cotton.

It's a whacky one, but I love "His Kind of Woman" from 1951.

It's not the best and it's a stretch of the noir presentation, but very satisfying. The cast alone is wonderfully peculiar, and the plot bravura with nasty violence:

Robert Mitchum

Jane Russell

Vincent Price

Tim Holt

Raymond Burr

Jim Backus

And Whitney Blake shows up as a bar patron.

Shadow of a Doubt , a Hitchcock film with Joseph Cotton as young Teresa Wright's charming Uncle Charlie, who she begins to suspect may actually be a murderer.

I don’t see Ace in the Hole as a noir. But it’s a great movie about the media. It pairs well with Face in the Crowd, Ace in the Hole is very dark and I doubt it would be made today.

Is Nosferatu a noir movie? Because I hate that and I want everyone to know it.

"Angel Face" has a better reputation in more recent decades than when it came out, OP. I love Jean Simmons, but the ending is over the top.

^^^Or more precisely, over the cliff!

Angel Face has similarities to The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Spoiler - here's the Angel Face shock murder.

R31 -- Isn't in "Ace in the Hole" where Jan Sterling says, "I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons"? Billy Wilder was so brilliant with world-weary cynicism.

R47 Yes, that's the movie and the dialogue. One of the above posters remarked that Ace in the Hole is not a noir film. I think its bleakness, isolation, greed and sexiness alone qualifies it as noir but I admit to not being a film noir expert.

R48, it’s noir-adjacent. Noirs usually have plots driven by crime.

[R49]: Well, in ”Ace in the Hole,” Kirk Douglas deliberately extends the time to rescue Jan Sterling’s husband, trapped in a cave-in, knowing he can profit on it in his reporting career. So that could be deliberate exploitation, leading to second degree manslaughter.

What’s creepy is how everyone else jumps on the bandwagon, even a traveling carnival. Hence, Paramount’s changing the film’s name to “The Big Carnival.”

The story was inspired by the actual case of Floyd Collins, a man trapped in a cave in 1925, with similar consequences.

Films like LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN and NO MAN OF HER OWN are not conventional noirs but rather women’s pictures with heavy noir undertones.

R51, Leave Her To Heaven is typical noir, Gene Tierney is femme fatale on steroids and technicolor.

R43, agree it is over the top but is very symmetric Also it is in order with her being seriously nuts, which you only realize gradually . She’s not a woman on the make.

Born to Kill